Private Vs State school

[Ilikepinacoladass]

I know this is a controversial subject. But genuinely trying to decide if private is worth it.

I see loads of comments saying things like I didn't send mine to private because I went to a comp and was at the same uni as loads of privately educated people and got same results etc.

But surely the GCSE / A-level results speak for themselves? Lots from the comps won't have even made it to uni whereas maybe they would have if they'd gone to a private school?

A-level results from 2023
56.5% got A/A* - local private school
39% got A/A* - local grammar school
20% got A/A* - local state school

I don't want to waste money, but I do want the best for my child (as we all do!) and trying to decide if having more local friends / a free education / short walk to school etc (state school) would be worth the potential loss in opportunities a private school would offer.

What rich and or very educated people get is options to choose where to live and work and increasingly also where to send their DC to uni. It is not about private vs state but prioritising education and your family around it. Whether it means moving house, tutoring or paying private, or being very lucky and already having a good state option, won’t make much difference.
Essentially, the parent group being educationally motivated is just as important as the teaching. You don’t need to be rich to be educationally motivated though. This is why some of the London comps with loads of immigrants and high expectations (from parents and school) do so well. You need buy in from and support from parents towards a school. Those that have paid (in its broadest sense, meaning catchment, grammar, private, stringent church criteria) usually fulfil this criteria because they have invested a priori.

Contextual offers are good if properly and fairly applied. If the balance shifts so far anti privilege that we alienate anyone well educated and self funded, then that won’t be good for society. We need the best educated to keep working and paying taxes especially now are demographics are skewed.
If a child really has gone to a school with very low attainment overall they should get contextual offers whether or not their parents are on benefits or in a detached mortgage free house. Even the latter are perfectly allowed to go to their local school. The anti privilege and jealousy growing in our society is ridiculous. People who earn well and pay taxes are good. They contribute and ensure the NHS etc is funded.

In terms of maybe being discriminated against for uni applications because of coming from private school - I wonder if the risk of this is mitigated by the risk that if you don't go to a private school you are potentially less likely to even be applying to uni / get the grades required etc?

I know MANY children at private schools also being tutored. Some of my pupils are exactly those children.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7857/CBP-7857.pdf

Both Group 1 (most disadvantaged) and Group 5 (most advantaged) are down in relative terms? The richest British are running off to overseas unis? At the moment student numbers are high because we are still in the high birth years and we have outside of EU overseas students funding our unis and picking up the massively falling EU student tab. That could change. Keeping up the reputation of our unis is really important so overseas students keep coming. For many countries going to uni in the U.K. is seen as really prestigious. If your rich connected British student is no longer there you lose the prestige aspect. So we do need to be careful as our unis need the overseas cash. Neither group should be falling.

If anything the decent state school pupils end up the worst off as they don’t get contextual offers and also don’t get the advantages of being at private school!

Also private school pupils are hardly “discriminated against” 🙄😀! Universities are trying to address the massive advantages they have had historically- that’s not discrimination.

Also be careful what you say about not achieving at state schools most able children from supportive families do exceed at decent state schools. Please don’t throw mud at state education to justify your own choices its pretty tedious (not to mention offensive). Dh got to Cambridge from a state school and the girls at dds state school go on to do all sorts of amazing and impressive things medicine law etc.

@TheaBrandt
I mean it does sound like discrimination too me, I guess it would be classed as positive discrimination?

Talking in board terms about risks / probability of outcomes. Of course lots of children do extremely well in state school.

Just countering the point that suggested it might not be a good idea to do private as they may have less chance of getting into uni...

Re higher ed/uni - there are so many variables

of course private school often enables better A level predictions and results which means more offers etc

but also some unis are doing more than others to redress the imbalance meaning that private school students may get an offer for AAB at some unis/courses where a contextual offer for the same state school student may be BBC.

some unis - not all. some courses - not all.

just be aware

I think in our case the risk of not getting the grades in state would be higher than not getting in because of being from private, but it's good to know.

But surely the uni's doing that acknowledges the fact the teaching/results are better from private schools, otherwise why would they need to do it? And kind of goes against the 'a bright child will do well anywhere' 'it doesn't matter if they go to state because my DH went to state and now is a doctor' type anecdotes?

Which kind of loops back round to the original point of the post

In all of this discussion, don't forget the fundamental fact that the structure of English education is such that each stage of it is primarily designed to take you on to the next stage rather than as an end in itself.

Once you have a degree, most employers don't take very much interest of A level results, so yes higher A level grades will give you more choices of which university to go to and which course(s) you can study, but that's often the end of their importance. When you are applying for a Masters, application forms don't require you list A level grades because their relevance is minimal.

Class size per se is not nearly as important as parents tend to think it is. The pedagogic research suggests that children do better in a large class with a great teacher than they do in a small class with a mediocre one. The quality of teacher/teaching is the single most important factor in educational attainment. Parental support, friendship group and home environment in general are also more important than class size. (The level of educational achievement by the child's mother is also a significant factor, but there's little you can do to change that.)

@Ilikepinacoladass - yes - private schools are likely to achieve better results. Teaching will also be 'better' in the broadest sense - simply because the teachers will be less stretched (smaller classes, less disruptive pupils) and because they are better paid, they're likely to have an absolute passion for their subject and be at the top of their game. That's not to say you don't get similarly brilliant teachers in the state system - of course you do - but the pressures are different.

Equally, the line 'a bright child will do well anywhere' line that always gets trotted out isn't quite right imo - if you can't learn the GCSE syllabus properly because there are a lack of teachers, or the teachers are dealing with very challenging pupils, it makes a difference. You could be looking at the difference between a 5/6 grade over a 7/8 one. It's not fair at all - but I think that's the harsh reality unfortunately.

I think if the school you are considering goes from nursery, there's also a big advantage to not having to go through the whole tutoring hell of the 11plus.

I will also say to think very, very carefully about the long term financial impact of doing this, particularly if you have more than one child - and what private schools might look like in a decade's time. The fees just keep on rising and the VAT impact when labour get in will only make it even more expensive. It will mean that bursaries are impacted and more 'normal' families who might stretch themselves to send their kids to private will be priced out - therefore privates could eventually end up being the preserve of the super-super wealthy, which is not the healthiest environment.

@Loungechaise
Yes it goes all the way through, one of the appeals, as the comps near here aren't great so would def be looking at 11+ / grammars.

Good point on the VAT if labour get in. But do you think that rise would all get passed on to fees? I think I read somewhere a lot of the shortfall would be made up by doing less work in the community/ offering less bursaries etc? Obviously less bursaries would mean less diversity too, which wouldn't be a great thing. I like the fact the one we're looking at offers a lot of these so a mix of children!

From personal experience of the last 8 years in independent prep, expect annual fee increases in line (sometimes) or higher (usually) than inflation. I'd also expect the full VAT increase being passed onto you. Also add additional costs: UK trips, trips abroad, ski trip, musical instrument lessons, paid school clubs, PTA donations throughout the year, more expensive school and games uniforms costs, school fees insurance.

When you look back when your DC is about to leave the school, you will realise you have paid way more than what you estimated/planned for in the beginning, guaranteed.

You don't want to find yourself running out of means half way through as switching to a comprehensive before A levels will probably be very disruptive.

@Ilikepinacoladass - It won't all get passed on, no. But even if the school adds on, say, 12 percent, there will doubtlessly continue to be further rises in fees as the years go on. Put it this way, the fees at the private school my kids go to have pretty much DOUBLED since they first started there over a decade ago - our household income certainly hasn't doubled, so we've had to dip into savings significantly and make a lot of sacrifices to keep our kids there.

I can't regret it, as they've had a wonderful education so far and loved the place - they have a brilliant time and have achieved great results so far. However, our lives would be SO much less stressful (and our retirement would look a LOT better!) if we hadn't made this choice - but we are in it now, so hey ho. That said, my younger one will go state for sixth form as there are other great options open to us at that stage and financially it is becoming impossible.

If money is absolutely no object, I say do it - you can always pull them out later if the environment becomes less well-rounded than one would like.

@Ilikepinacoladass "But surely the uni's doing that acknowledges the fact the teaching/results are better from private schools, otherwise why would they need to do it?"
It's not about private schools being better. It's about children from disadvantaged backgrounds doing less well. As far as I am aware, it's not about holding back children from private schools- it's about levelling the playing field for less privileged children. It applies to children at state school as well.

Our child will be attending a private school because my husband and I both had terrible experiences at our local comprehensive secondaries. We can afford to have them in private from primary.

We like the wide range of sports and extracurricular activities, the opportunities available to the children, the excellent pastoral care, and the small class sizes. We haven't given any thought to future exam results.

If you take a kid at Westminster and a kid at QE Boys both trying to get into Oxford, say - the same grade requirement will be offered. But for a kid coming from a more challenged state school where the average results of the cohort are far lower across the board, the grade requirement will be lower. This is right and fair.

This isn't true - Oxford do not make lower offers for contextual candidates. (Other universities do, but mostly not based on school type, more about encouraging those from areas of socio-economic disadvantage and low progression to HE.)

I don't think there's any need to worry about the "discrimination" faced by private school students - they are still over-represented at top universities, even when you take educational attainment into account. So your money does still buy you a better chance of a place at Oxford, for example.

@Hughs - gosh you are right, I've just looked. They say they look at 'contextual data' to get the full picture of candidates - but I am surprised that they wouldn't make actual contextual offers.

@Loungechaise

They do allow for contextual factors such as coming from a low performing school or an area of deprivation or spending time in care, so all that is taken into account when deciding who gets an interview and then an offer. But everyone has to get the same grades, at Oxford anyway. I guess that's their bottom line by which they ensure that people will actually manage the course. And the offers don't tend to be ridiculously high, either AAA or with an Å or two for stem subjects. There are thousands of state school educated DC achieving grades like that every year, three times as many of them as there are coming out of private schools.

If two DC look the same in terms of grades, I can imagine that the one who has done it in a tougher environment is more attractive - they have achieved a more difficult task and shown additional qualities that universities value.

Don’t forget that universities take into account the elevation in grades gained by going to a private or grammar school.
The playing field is becoming much more even every passing year.

Plus it’s all blind cvs and anti nepotism now - well at Dh firm it is anyway.

The higher grades achieved by going to grammar are mostly because the only take the brightest children to begin with, so that would be ridiculous if uni's were holding that against them.

Blind as in they can't see the grades, or just which school?

Not seeing the school is a good thing I guess, I had no idea people were being discriminated against for jobs and uni's because of which school they went to.

Looking at the contextual policy of for instance City University, to apply you have to have been in a school in the bottom 20% for average QCA points, (or been in care or live in a area where least people have gone to uni). While I think that is a good thing to help more disadvantaged pupils, I think it would be pretty bonkers to actively chose to go for the bottom 20% school, or live in a worse area in the hope you will be in with a chance of getting a contextual offer. First and foremost uni's are after high grades (especially for competitive courses like medice) which statistically it looks like you are more likely to achieve having been to a grammar or private school?