Don't worry about affording private school. My experiences as a mature uni student have convinced me private school is a waste of money.

[Joffmognum]

For context: I didn't go to uni at the usual time - I was a teenage mum, didn't do A-Levels, dropped out of school and had DS unplanned aged 18. Working class, worked minimum wage jobs, rented a room, toddler and I shared one bed, etc. I was well into my twenties before I had £1000 to my name. But I decided that I wanted to go to university anyway, so, with a lot of hard work, and after waiting for DS to grow up a bit, I did. I'm now 26 and almost done with an engineering integrated masters degree at a very nice, top 10 university.

I've since befriended a lot of other students who went to private schools, including boarding schools. And they're VERY aware that their parents spent £100k+ on an education that meant they "could go" to a university like ours - which gives them A LOT of pressure - but they're going to the same place I am? Which I managed to get into with a young child to care for, an underfunded state college course, and not quite enough food in the fridge?

If you have a lot of cash to spare, then I understand paying the fees. But if you're paying for private school primarily so your kid will get into a nice university, it almost seems like a waste of money to me?

Like, if they have the drive to go to a nice university, they will anyway? And if they can't get the appropriate grades on a state-level education, they'll find it very difficult once they're there?

There's so much depression, anxiety and stress amongst students these days. I adore university and the technical internships I've done through it, but among the private school kids especially, their hearts often don't seem in it, like they're doing it because of inertia.

One told me recently that the reason he works so hard for firsts is because he can't face telling his dad he got low grades, because he knows how expensive his boarding school was. Another confided in me today that he doesn't actually want to be an automotive engineer: he'd rather be a mechanic.

Completely agree. The education inequality gulf is enacted in state sector & grammar schools with competitive entry. State schools whose intake is tutored and middle class kids with parents who understand the entry rules and have finances for tutoring etc. parents who can and do buy within catchment to facilitate entry

only In Edinburgh is private school very commonly seen (1 in 4) Elsewhere private school is the minority.

I went to a state school then an RG uni and lots of my uni friends were privately educated (lots weren’t). The biggest difference I noticed (apart from them being generally wealthier) was on graduation all the privately educated friends had contacts which helped them get fantastic jobs/opportunities or places on amazing graduate schemes whereas the state-educated had no ‘leg-up’ as it were. I don’t think it’s just about the grades, it’s about the people you meet. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know and all that.

I was grammar school educated my DD is privately educated but she’s still very small, I’m not in the Uk and state isn’t an option. I like the culture of high expectations around sport, academics and behaviour. I like the smaller class sizes etc. Tbh I want my DD to be able to maximise her options, it’s as simple as that. I want her to have the best crack she can at life. We are not white and she’s a female, life may not always be easy for her and I want her to be best placed to be able to achieve what she wants. This may mean a lower paid job doing something she loves it may be something financially rewarding, I don’t care as long as what she does is a choice she embraces.

If we were in the UK I would have opted for grammar. I know quite a few oxford grads who went from grammar who had no problem carving out successful careers. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was harder from a comp though.

What I would say though is success in the workplace is going to be more about performance than what school/uni you went to. It may get your foot in the door but it won’t keep you there. I think that’s increasingly true, employers are trying to squeeze every last penny out of their workers and I genuinely believe that if you had a reasonable education regardless of where it is and you are reasonably bright with a strong work ethic you will be ok. My DH doesn’t have a degree but he’s very clever and extremely hard working, he’s built a pretty good career from that.

Well done on your achievement, you should be very proud of yourself. I agree to an extent, an intelligent child with a desire to succeed will do well whether they are in private school or not. I think people probably pay for private schools for other reasons too though.

Well done OP for what you've achieved.

Your thinking and conclusions however from speaking to a small number of people at your uni shows a lack of critical thinking tbh. For many a private school education for their DC is not about results.

@Noicant one of the big disadvantages of that imo is the hothousing of little kids at a very young age to get into the grammars.

I wasn’t willing to do that to dd which is how she ended up at the comp in the first place. She may have got into one of the grammars without tutoring, but it was too far away in my opinion. She was also at 10 really scared of taking entrance exams etc and maybe I’m too soft 😁

I understand your position and have seen it for myself in American (very different there where a degree of 4 years costs an average of $100,000) children are divided from the off and have to work SO hard to earn a scholarship. The pressure is horrendous for them. But in the UK there is a huge place for oriavte schools, where I live there are a lot of excellent grammar and secondary schools so I would not dream of paying for a private school, we are very fortunate in that regard but so many people’s only other option for their child is a failing school with a bad reputation. As a Mum my priority is protecting my children and if my options were a failing school or having to pay for a private school I would do the latter.

sure you can

Look up, darling, look up

I’d send my children to private school if I could afford it. Not necessarily so they become high flyers and go to a top university because I think it’s natural excellence that will get you there, but for the other benefits like smaller classes, more individual nurturing, the independence and self confidence instilled and the extra curricular activities. I know that not all private schools offer the same, but I’d have the choice to pick a school more aligned with my children’s needs or the environment I want them to have.

But no, I don’t think private school is a necessity for a spectacular career and life in adulthood, but I do think it gives a certain polish to an adult that I can’t really describe!

I’d send my children to private school if I could afford it. Not necessarily so they become high flyers and go to a top university because I think it’s natural excellence that will get you there, but for the other benefits like smaller classes, more individual nurturing, the independence and self confidence instilled and the extra curricular activities. I know that not all private schools offer the same, but I’d have the choice to pick a school more aligned with my children’s needs or the environment I want them to have.
Same here. If I had the money I'd pay for my children to have an education that's not driven by whatever the latest government has decided is in fashion or whatever poorly thought through initiative needs implementing.
I've seen first hand how there's trade offs in state schools, including good ones.

In an ideal world I'd want a school for my children that offers a genuinely broad curriculum, excellent SEN support, good pastoral care and enrichment, and a school that can focus on education instead of spending a lot of time and resources filling the gaps from other services falling apart. Pigs will fly though.

OP makes a big statement then fails to engage with any of the other posters…. In case you’re still there, did you get any assistance from levelling up type schemes to get onto your course? Thanks.

Well done on your achievements, you are doing brilliantly and have a lot to be proud of.

But your anecdotal experience isn't data. It is of course brilliant that you have manged this (and I have a colleague wgo followed a similar path who is one of the most highly skilled professionals I know in our field). The existence of success stories of excellent careers for some of those who came through the state system is not in doubt. The existence of people from wealthy families who are traumatised by the pressure from their parents is also not in doubt. The existence of private schools that aren't good value for money and mostly exist to shield wealthy children from having to mix with ordinary folk is not in dispute, and the existence of excellent state schools achieving brilliant results is not in dispute.

To show that private school is a waste of money you these pieces of anecdotal evidence don't prove anything.

What you would need is to be able to compare the statistics between the two sectors across a representative sample of state schools from the downright failing and inadequate ones up to the very popular outstanding ones (and with 32000 schools theres going to be a lot of variability), and a representative sample of private schools including both the academic hothouses and the less selective and more nurturing ones, and do large-scale comparisons of outcomes for the whole cohort, breaking the data down according to low medium and high inate ability if possible, and reporting for high levels of additional needs, medium and low levels, and none (a lot of kids at academically selective schools have a very high proportion of bright kids with low or medium additional needs who were being let down in the state sector because they were bright enough to self-conpensate for totally inadequate support, but weren't thriving).

The question is not whether you personally would have done any better in a different school. The question might be: if you identify 200 kids at 11 years old who are just like you were at 11, spread up and down the country, and put half through the state system and half through private, what differences in educational achievement, career success and overall life satisfaction would you see? But then you'd only know whether it was worth it for that specific type of 11 year old.

@Zone2NorthLondon What do you do out of interest? Sorry to derail, I just feel I need to try and get a more successful career.

In answer to OP, you only have to look at all the prime ministers’ school backgrounds as an example - I think it is changing slowly but you can’t deny the advantage private education gives. If I could afford it I would.

As many Pps say - it’s not the uni access. It’s the breadth of learning, the social network + the ‘cultural capital’. It’s also about a hard-to-quantify polish.

A small example : my son is expected to look his teacher in the eye, doff his school hat and say good morning to his teacher on the way in. They proactively work on table manners at their family style school lunches

I assure you, he loves school, his teacher is very gentle + positively affirming in her expectations. But aged 5 he’s already got used to greeting new people with eye contact and saying good morning / good afternoon to adults.

at his swimming lessons + gymnastic lessons outside school (pretty diverse range of students + backgrounds) he has good habits instilled and his tutors there are delighted to help him. It’s really positively self reinforcing.

is it fair? No. Again - ideally all children have access. But I don’t think it’s a waste…

The Op's lack of understanding of the many reasons why people choose private education highlights her own socially limited background. It's obvious from her post that her own social network is limited & she only mixes with similar people to herself. She's not able to see outside her own bubble & think outside the box. That's the difference between the op, who is an average state kid, and a private school kid.

She's almost speaking from a place of privilege because she's not considered discrimination & lack of opportunities. She is looking at it purely from a cost perspective and that is a working class way of looking at it. Race, sex, SEND, bullying & better resources are reasons why people choose private.

OP, your views are biased as the successful state school pupils are there because they made it through the system. You are not seeing the failures.

I think private schools offer fantastic support to allow very average pupils to exceed what they would achieve anywhere else. To be honest, I think they sometimes fail the real achievers due to the level of spoon feeding. The level of support (despite the DoEs etc etc) actually suppresses resilience, which is why many struggle when they actually get to uni.

Private schools are also fantastic for wrap around care with loads of provision for before and after school, with lots of co-curricular opportunities. I think a lot of parents find parenting really easy with this, no driving them around and encouraging them to find clubs and interests etc.

So, ultimately, it depends on the child and parents. A tough bright child with interested parents will probably actually do better in state, a middling child who needs support will benefit massively from private.

I know someone who partly flunked her A Levels
Still got into a near top uni. Because of her other achievements.
Some of which she would not have achieved at State school, more than likely.
Well one of them she certainly would not have achieved.

Would I have spent, and I dont even want to say how much for years, for that?
No I guess.

You can’t tell where people went to school as an adult. I work in a creative industry that is very hard to get into. Surrounded by confident clever people. We had a survey at work recently and it was a very low % who had been to private schools. You might assume they had but the facts said otherwise

I wasn’t tutored for my 11+ (I wasn’t even given practice papers until the week before the test) and I won’t be hothousing my kid either. I’m not keen on tutoring for the 11+ either because I went to school with a few kids who really really struggled to keep up at school and everyday was hard for them, unnecessarily so. I wouldn’t want to put my DD in a position that is unfair.

I think I’m probably rare in that respect but I understand parents are doing the best they can for their children. Especially when the only other alternative is poor state provision or provision that can’t accommodate your child. I agree with you kids can face immense pressure but thats also down to parents and what their expectations are.

For me private school wasn’t a real choice but I would hope that the class sizes and attention to individuals will be enough. I do care about high standards and achievement but being in an environment where this is valued should hopefully be the drive she needs without lots of pressure from us too.

Wow well done OP, and I’m impressed you chose engineering - part of me would have loved to do that, looking back.

I think reasons for choosing private school are many and varied, as PPs have said. It does definitely seem to engender confidence (or entitlement) and open doors in other ways than just academic. And despite being left wing and from a state school background I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t choose it if I had the money and there was no reasonable, safe state option (for example if my child was being badly bullied).

But I don’t like it precisely because it opens up a social gap. People from private school are over-represented in positions of power and financial might, and in most cases their private school experience insulates them from understanding poverty or even just normal non-wealthy people’s lives, and I think that’s bad for society (though it might be good for the individual). Plus pressure and expectation can be great for some kids, but disastrous for others. Some don’t fit an academic school system and need to find their own way, and I don’t think it’s true that any child will thrive just by being out in private school.

i went to a rough as fuck state school. Dropped out, did a levels at adult education college and got into a top university, got a first and could theoretically have gone on to be high earning. But I’m not because I chose an artsy, lower paid but fun career that suits me better. There are so many factors that affect what people end up doing and I’m glad I didn’t have parental expectation and guilt about private school fees influencing me. So I agree with you about that.

She’s a polyamorous hippy in her other thread. My, how she’s changed, apparently…

I don't think that's entirely the case @Teateaandmoretea - you could have access to a great state school by chance where you live or a school turnaround , whereas with private school ( unless it's a scholarship) it is, by and large down to the ability to afford fees every term.

I'm not anti private schools.

I just find it depressing all around.

FWIW I considered it an achievement fighting for my son to go to SEND schools - that cost time and money.

I'm not sure of his prospects educationally there - but we model in our approach that you can gain qualifications later in life as you go too. You don't have to be done and dusted at 16-21

Your parents didn’t pay then!

OP, I agree. Private education does give an entitled confidence though which can be an advantage in getting on in life.

The access to top state schools is the ability to tutor and move house.

Moving house may well cost more.

So in the end it’s all down to money.

bleughgreen · Today 07:53
**
“I wouldn't be shouting about your achievements so loudly after reading your previous thread OP.”

Op’s progress after her success certainly adds nothing to her poor assertion about private education.

Her previous thread speaks volumes!