Is private really worth it?

[Farmersswife]

We are rally lucky to have an amazing rural village school in an affluent area. My daughter year 1 loves it and it’s superb. There are two local state schools and a private. 1 further away state school also. Half will go private and half will go to the state school’s from her year.

all state schools have poor performance.

at a push we could just afford the private school but would put us under financial pressure. My daughter is bright and achieving well with no concerns.

option A private
option B state school that’s the best at the time & private tuition.

You will get private school parents saying private and you will get state parents saying state.
Only you can decide which option will suit your DC eg class sizes, extra curriculum, results, sports facilities etc.
We chose private because :

• the 2 local state options are dire and I won't let DDs education suffer
• private she does double games every day in a wide range of sports and this physical emphasis is important to us as teenage girls are highly at risk of stopping physical exercise
• the extra curriculum activities that they do as part of the school day rather than us having to provide them after school (both work Full Time)
• small class sizes, calm learning environment and learning + doing well is valued so kids don't get bullied for doing well at school
• it isn't an academic hothouse and has more emphasis of an all round education rather than just churning out exam results. Excellent pastoral

If you have good state options + have the time to do the extra curriculum stuff yourself (music, drama, art + sport) plus tutoring if needed then that's a good option.

If you're under financial strain with the choice now, this will intensify as they go up through the school, and you'll disrupt education moving.

Have you got a sufficient financial cushion or security for the duration of their schooling?

Do you mean for secondary school? As she's in year 1 now and that school is great?

If so, financially things can change quite a bit in that time. I personally would not put myself under financial strain for private school though.

Yes sorry should have made that clear. Secondary school. The primary she is in is great.

@Farmersswife we did state primary up to end Yr 6 and used those years to save up for private secondary, that's what everyone we know who sent their kids private for secondary did.

I just want to do the best by her. My family were all privileged and privately educated. I massively failed absolutely hated school due to sever panic attacks and left school with nothing. I’ve worked hard since but have massive regrets I wanted my life to be so different to how it is now. I want her to be set up for whatever she may want to do in life.

@Farmersswife obviously there are no guarantees on anything. IMO it depends on the personality of the child. DD was the only one from her state primary who went private; some of her friends are coping well at state secondary but others are having a tough time and already experiencing bullying.
Everyone's experience is different and you can't predict what will happen but we are so far very happy with DDs school and as a naturally shy girl she is coming out of her shell already due to only 22 in each class. With a class of 30+ she would have hung back and been lost so just coast along. She can't hide in her smaller class sizes.

I don't think so. I'm privately educated and my children have had a far superior state education than I ever had. That's not to say there are not good private schools, I just have both experiences. Sending my children to private school wasn't an option for me financially but even if it was, I still wouldn't do it. My brother felt the same and he could afford it!

The reality is you can’t afford it. No-one should be paying school fees if it comprises the family financial security.
If it will stretch you now what happens when they whack VAT on fees etc? Fees have been going up hugely year in year as it is.
No-one wants to be the poor kid at private school-DH was and it was miserable.

I’d do state with additional tutoring if needed and see how she fares.

There is no single answer to this. It all depends on the schools, your child, your child's experience of that school, your finances etc. No-one can answer that for you. What is true is that if you have the money to pay then you're more likely to have a choice of schools and more likely to be able to choose the school you think is best at the time. If you think that you will value that choice then you should do what twistyizzy did and save as much of the fees as possible whilst she's at primary. If you don't use the money for fees you can then use it for uni support/house deposit/tutoring/experiences etc and that might well be the best thing for her.

It’s worth it if you can afford it— that to me means a decent standard of living, holidays etc. I wouldn’t kill myself and our lifestyle for it. A child’s life isn’t just school, they won’t fail just because they go to a state school.

I write this as someone who went to a private school and whose children will only ever go to a state school.

Also it's likely that by the time she's going to secondary we'll have had a full term of a Labour government. The decision might look quite different then, espeically if they put VAT on school fees and more money into state schools.

A teacher once told me bright children do well in any school. Lower achieving academically get a lot of help. It’s the middle ground that suffer the most.

Monitor your child and their progress.

Change to private if you have to or move house to a catchment area with better state schools.

State educated here and kids were, in good states and will/have done ok. Lots of rubbish private have folded in 2008 and then again recently with economic downturns. If I could afford it I would pay for good private - I want that for all children. Small glasses, extra curricular and good facilities. States just don't have these in the same way. My kids hated the large and impersonal nature of the big comps.

This just proves the point that whether you pay to go private or go to a state school you can still leave with nothing that counts.
I used to work for an independent school and the fees were eye-watering - at the end of every year there would always be parents complaining that their child had cost them tens of thousands for their education and they left with no GCSEs - they couldn't even progress to 6th form as they didn't meet the criteria for A levels.
It ultimately depends on the student - you can throw all the money in the world at them and they are not academically minded. You can also send them to a state school where despite the school reputation - the students leave with good GCSE results. I have seen schools slated by OFSTED which is just a pen pushing exercise - if they get the results the school have proven themselves excellent at teaching their students which is what matters.
But if you feel the financial sacrifice will be worth it then be guided by your gut feelings.

Are your children of decent intelligence, without any special educational needs, and relatively “normal”?

If so state school is likely to be fine.

If they are a bit thick, need extra help or tuition or have additional needs then possibly paying could make sense.

We opted to send ours to state school, with the understanding that if they struggled or turned out not to be the sharpest tools in the box then we’d switch.

I would say private IF the financial strain isn't too much as it always gets harder but changing is massively more harmful then never doing private to start. If you can do it without risk of having to change course later I would do it; but as other poster said, you will get darn near 50/50 saying its worth it and opposite saying its a waste of money - so ultimately its down to your beliefs and feelings. I think you can succeed without private behind you, but I also think its harder so self drive is at least as important as intelligence.

Only consider Private if you are absolutely certain you can afford it for all 7 years of secondary. The disruption caused by having to take DC out because you have run out of money could undo any benefit gained.

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight my DC who would have most benefitted from the right private school was not either of my academically very able DDs but my less academically able DS.

We couldn't have afforded private school so DCs went to the local failing school (Hobson's choice of one). DDs did well, went to their first choice universities and came out with good degrees.

DS disappeared in the school. He was quiet, well behaved but not remotely engaged. As he was neither trouble nor academically bright he got overlooked.

Thanks I think your right

The bright children doing well at any school is a bit of a myth. Bright children pass at any school, but I think a lot would do a lot better at a really good school that pushed them - state or private. So for example, a bright child might get a handful of 6s and 7s at GCSE that should really have been 7s and 8s. I do think private is worth it if your state options aren’t good.

It depends how bad the state schools are. I’m in a secondary blackspot re admissions (too far from the outstanding states to get in and only able to access mediocre secondary). We will do private as long as we can afford it but started saving from reception. We will only go ahead if I have saved enough to never have to pay double fees as otherwise the financial strain would be too much. You also might have options to do state sixth form so may be 5 years rather than 7.

@Summermeadowflowers I agree 100%. A bright child should obviously be able to succeed in any school but if their classes are persistently dogged by disruptive behaviour and the teacher is spending most of the lesson managing this then this is blatantly going to have an impact. How much better could that child have achieved in a positive learning environment with fewer children in the class?
I'm not saying all state schools are like this but the 2 options around us are hence the decision to go private. Some areas are lucky to have good state options with excellent outcomes, if we had those around us we may have thought twice about private.

Mine are at prep school and we've decided to send them private for secondary. We've done a few tours of private and state schools and the facilities and opportunities were far richer at the private schools. Some of the state secondaries do offer good provision, but mostly the grammars or those in very affluent areas (which are not the kind of areas we'd want to move to). But even then, the facilities tend to be more tired and limited than the private schools. I don't know if I'd make the same decision if the finances were a stretch though. It might be more financially sensible to move to the catchment of a top state school.

It's odd you say that you live in an affluent area and the state primary is superb, but the local state secondary has poor results. Do you think all the affluent parents just send their dc private at secondary then? Are there any selective state schools you could consider, even if it's further away? Many dc travel miles to go to the top grammars around here.

Senior school day fees at the 3 private schools near me are £20k, £26k, £30k annually.

It’s a huge commitment with a 10% increase or thereabouts annually.

I'm sure there are good state schools and some awful private somewhere in the UK. However OP has said the local state options are poor. In her shoes, I'd certainly go private.

Ofsted rated 'Good' schools are pretty awful in my experience. Our local outstanding was down rated recently and for good reason: constant stream of supply teachers and high staff turnover, plus a pervasive problem of consistently disruptive students for whom there is no adequate discipline system. The state schooling system is broken in many areas including mine. And I live in a good, naice part of the country