Would most people choose private education if they could afford it

[mids2019]

My children go to reasonable state schools but especially from my older daughter I keep hearing about a succession of cover teachers and general malaise in the school system (governments fault not the schools)

That for me asking the question would most people choose private education if affordable in their heart of hearts or are there egalitarian parents who would still choose state on ideological grounds?

I am in two minds about this but certainly the private sector locally is attracting quite a few.

. If we get a good state school that can meet her needs, DD will go there. Otherwise she will go private and I will delay my retirement/career change by 5 years to pay for it.

If I had unlimited money on hand - she’d probably go private just for the access to music specialists, a wider range of sports, better facilities, better food and because girls apparently do best in single sex.

WhatsTheUseOfWorrying
I agree with you that those stock phrases are nonsense.

When I looked at schools for my DC I looked at the published outcomes for all local schools. Even nice schools in nice areas had some interesting outcomes, particularly when progress and attainment is looked at by pupil group. A not unsurprising number of schools had worse progress for more able pupils than other groups. By secondary those bright children will have lower target grades than if they'd attained their potential in Year 6.

I also find some of that rhetoric annoying and insulting because as a bright working class child, I object to the idea that I should be viewed as offering an experience to middle class privileged children. There's an undertone to some posts that has an almost poverty porn undertone that somehow affluent children get to gawp at poorer children, those in smaller houses, who might rent as part of giving the naice child a rounded experience, sort of 'look DC, you're so lucky because you're not like those other children'.

What would really help schools is if social care, family support, CAMHS, SEN services, SALT, education psychologist services and more are properly funded so schools can focus on teaching.

I don’t view it as poverty porn. I want my dc to be empathetic and not to ‘other’ any group of people. They will only be able to do that by being with people from lots of groups within society.

@LolaSmiles

interesting point about poverty line or at least middle class children attending school with working class children simply for social observation. I think in reality with schools where you have mixed affluence unfortunatly you can get resentment for the have nots and superiority from the haves (shouldn't happen but it does).

already my daughter knows of groups that avoid the 'chavs' and poorer kids taking the proverbial out of the 'posh' kids.

comprehensive education doesn't equal social utopia.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying
I agree but also there are bright children (often boys) with huge potential who behave badly in the state sector. I can think of so many examples of children, including middle class children, who did well and behaved fairly well at primary school and stopped behaving well or trying with academics at secondary. That will partly be peer influence and wanting to fit in.

I’m mindful that my own sons could easily fit into this category as they grow up. Private schools can obviously have behavioural issues too though rarely to the same extent and there is not usually stigma in succeeding academically.

I agree, and yours is a very important point.

If a school environment encourages suspicion of academic achievement, or worse, any child can be affected. As you say, children who stick out in that way may well be the most likely to adopt a poor attitude to school work, to conform.

And, again as you say, academic success is very rarely looked down on among pupils in the private sector.

The most laughable of all the ‘principled’ rejectors of private education are those who push their children towards Oxbridge. Where the child can gain all the kudos of the best possible education and qualification, in the most traditional and most privileged of all universities, among many privately educated peers. But by then the parents’ egalitarian virtue points are in the bank.

And the money for the private tutoring and European city holidays is soon forgotten, while the mortgage on the house near a good comp was actually earning for them.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying very good point about Oxbridge, ir indeed any RG uni. Egalitarian values don't seem to extend to Uni! I don't see any posters saying they would reject Oxbridge in favour of the local ex-poly!
So rejecting privilege only extends to primary/secondary schools.

If finances weren't a consideration, the main criteria I'd be looking at in schools are:

1. Which schools have the lowest amount of in-classroom disruption?
2. Which schools have the highest levels of student attendance?
3. In which schools do the most children do the work that's assigned to them?
4. Which schools have the highest percentage of specialist teachers in each subject?

After that, I'd be looking at opportunities for music, sport, art, and other extracurricular activities. Then comes distance, both from home and to my work.

Quite frankly, the levels of economic or ethnic diversity don't make my top ten concerns.

Some private schools will rate highly on my chief criteria. Some state schools such as grammars and Michaela will also rate highly. My choice would depend principally on what was available to my DC.

I’m highly amused at the people who are so desperately trying to make principled objectors to private education be ‘wrong’. I’m WC. I got to Oxford from a shit school without anyone even helping fill out the forms. DS leads a much more MC life than I ever did, but I’m certainly not sending him to the nearest state secondary school to ‘expose him to the WC’ — his granddad is a retired binman, both his grannies and his aunt are retired cleaners, and his wider family are entirely WC, and at the poorer end of it. He won’t be tutored/crammed. If he wants to apply for Oxford, that’s up to him, though it’s puzzling that people are claiming that this would somehow negate previous equality decisions. Oxford is also just a university.

Oxford is a uni that very few people get into and it has a certain cache and prestige. In exactly the same way as private school does.
If people send their DC to state secondary schools because of their high ethical principles to avoid privilege and to make sure that their DC "live in the real world" then surely they should also avoid Oxbridge?
I personally don't care where anyone sends their DC but it is interesting that their principles don't extend to HE. In fact some have proudly declared that their state educated DC have gone on to Oxford without acknowledging the privilege that Oxbridge affords in accessing better jobs etc.
Just pointing out the hypocrisy.

I don’t view it as poverty porn. I want my dc to be empathetic and not to ‘other’ any group of people. They will only be able to do that by being with people from lots of groups within society
And the families who choose private education can't do that? Their children never attended clubs, never play in the park, never do sport outside of school, never access media, never read about different experiences? Everyone in a private school has identical family arrangements, identical religious and cultural backgrounds, identical world views, all look the same, all have the same values?

I’m highly amused at the people who are so desperately trying to make principled objectors to private education be ‘wrong’.
It's not that they're wrong, it's just that the vast majority of the time there's a lot of hypocrisy within them
Eg. Won't touch private on principle, but buy house in a naice area to get the right school/ conveniently chooses not to live in catchment of the schools known locally to be below average or have issues.
Eg. Won't touch private because they don't believe in buying experiences and a rounded curriculum because all children should have it... As they also fund music, sports, drama, enrichment for their children and provide them with a huge range of experiences that many children don't have.
Eg. Won't touch private on principle because most children do well everywhere and they're not going to give their children any academic advantages... But they'll definitely sit down with their children and support them revise, use their own education to benefit their children, will be on the phone to school asking their children to be put in interventions, will hire private tutors if required

Eg. Won't touch private on principle, will make some sweeping claim that most state schools are great so it's only a tiny number that have problems, but then refuse to acknowledge that even in schools that look good on paper there's children suffering from bullying, children whose learning is being endlessly disrupted, children with SEN needs who struggle to learn in such loud environments, children who are miserable at school so their parents choose something else etc.

It's very easy to stand on principle when it isn't your child that's struggling.

Edit to add: I used to be quite black and white on this topic, but then I started to listen to people with different views to me and started to pay attention to people with different experiences and I couldn't justify continuing to hold black and white views.

‘Principled’ objectors - those who could afford private but declare their opposition to it - aren’t ‘wrong’; they are, in the main, just hypocrites. I think we’ve established that you’re not one of those.

Oxford is also just a university. (As is Cambridge presumably.)

Oh yes, just a university that’s centuries old, owns vast tracts of land and property in the town and elsewhere, has student accommodation in grade 1 listed buildings (generally much more spacious than other universities’ rooms), requires gowns for exams, has its own jargon (battles, scouts, bedders, noughth week, bulldog, etc etc), holds May balls (gowns and black tie), awards blues, takes part in the boat race and Varsity matches, and much more...including having a high proportion of privately educated students, many from the major public schools.

I don’t have a problem with any of this. But then I don’t posture against privilege and elitism.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying

I agree. I guess all parents want the best for their children 🤷

I don't think you can underestimate peer pressure on terms of lowering standards and and creating a culture of low aspiration especially if being academically successful makes you stand out. My daughter doesn't want to be a 'nerd' or 'geek' and we have had to have conversations about how being a 'nerd' means you probably have greater life chances.

I think we all live in bubbles to an extent and it was a bit of a shock to me how many parents don't give a sh%t about their children or education and yes it does become apparent at a secondary school level. I guess a lot of parents worry about who their children mix with and their influence.

I think if all state schools were of equal quality and high standards then no one would pay to send their kids to private schools. Poor education falls at the feet of the government and poor funding.

It is still just a university, @WhatsTheUseOfWorrying — better in some subjects than others, the tutorial system suiting some but not others, different colleges with entirely different levels of formality and tradition. I went to one of the old, very trad, very ex-public school colleges because it was beautiful and had a lot of hardship funding available, but other friends went to modern colleges with ordinary modern buildings, no formality, formal halls being only occasional etc.

The stuff you’re talking about is incidental. An ‘ordinary’ university would have been just as exotic to me, as I had no experience of them, and didn’t know anyone who’d been to university. I rowed once in a scratch boat in a joke Eights race, had no involvement in sport at all, avoided the Union, generally went to formal Hall as my friends did, liked the short terms as they allowed me to work outside of termtime, got to live somewhere beautiful, had very different rooms throughout my time (one very primitive, on a staircase without a bathroom), but it was also just somewhere I studied, not some magical transition to a privileged adult life. Most of my friends from that time are doing entirely ordinary things with our lives.

@Couchant , I hear you. My DH was the first in his family (both sides) to go to university.

We send our children private at the moment (let’s see after VAT) but their extended family is all WC (many at the poorer end as well), we don’t need to send them to a specific school to “expose them to WC”.

These are hardly incidental things. Oxbridge is an environment of success and privilege.

What was the point in you going to Oxford then? Why not the exotic experience of Sussex or Newcastle or Brunel?

Presumably you, or your parents and teachers or some combination, thought that you’d get a better education at an elite, wealthy and privileged university and greater chances in life.

I genuinely don’t understand why the impassioned desire for children and young adults to mix with others at school and in the sixth form doesn’t apply to university. Your cohort was hardly that of the University of East London.

Absolutely. This is exactly what I feel. The UK is extremely mixed socially with extremes of rich and poor. I want my children to know people from all backgrounds. It's absolutely not poverty porn! I myself grew up in poverty and although we're comfortable now I don't see poorer people as some alien species to be gawped at. I just want my children to know and understand how life is for many people (whether they are rich or poor). This is what I experienced at my comprehensive and it shaped the views I have today.
I really dislike the fact that nearly everyone in the Conservative Cabinet is a millionaire and went to schools like Eton. These are the people who are making the policies yet how can they ever understand the lives of those who are poor. Government needs to be much more diverse in terms of class and background.
I hate the class system in this country. In my mind private education just exacerbates the problem and reinforces our two tier society.

But is this aim, to enable children to really get to know all groups from society - is this really achieved by socially segregated comprehensives (based on distance with expensive houses) and grammar schools?

No, it isn’t. Despite the admirable (and unusual) case of Couchant, most parents with sufficient money to go private but who wish to preserve their progressive credentials game the system - using money.

The truth is that to a certain sort of middle class parent, having a child at private school is the social mark of Cain. It’s about them, not about their children’s rounded development.

That said, it’s surprising how flexible these principles often are when Imogen or Josh are heading for (relative) academic disaster.

Like a private school is just a school. The fripperies are in your words "just incidental".
Oxbridge perpetuates elitism and privilege as seen by the number of MPs etc that it churns out.
DDS private school "is just somewhere she studies".
Sorry, you can't have it both ways ie opposed to private schools but happy with Oxbridge, they are of the same world.

@SallyWD

I get your point and it is admirable.

However ..... those that are disruptive and suffer from a lack of aspiration probably do come from poorer households. There are many reasons for this and it really shouldn't be the case in a better world but I think at least in my town it is the case. There are frequent horror stories about bullying etc. that emenate from some of the schools around here.

I understand your principle but I think in reality parents do tend to get their children into less 'diverse' schools.

I really dislike the fact that nearly everyone in the Conservative Cabinet is a millionaire and went to schools like Eton.These are the people who are making the policies yet how can they ever understand the lives of those who are poor. Government needs to be much more diverse in terms of class and background.
I agree with this.
Most children in private education are from normal families are in middle of the road independent schools, not Eton.

Eton and similar aren't representative of what many families do. It's deliberately used to try to polarise.

I hate the class system in this country. In my mind private education just exacerbates the problem and reinforces our two tier society
I'd agree and ideally many parents wouldn't feel that's what they need to do to have children who are happy and thriving.

The class system is vastly more complex than independent education. The super wealthy aren't going to become more inclusive if private education is reduced. They'll just move to educating their children overseas as independent schools for the super elite and wealthy.

I'd say there's more variation in social demographics between two state schools I've worked in within a single town than between one of those state schools and the local day school.

Fundamentally though I think parents should have the ability to choose how to educate their children, whether that's faith school, comprehensive, technical education, home education, private education. Government creep to limit parental choice doesn't sit well with me because I don't trust successive governments to stop using education as a political football.

My experience of comprehensive schools is that they are very mixed socially. My own one certainly was and my daughter's school is. My daughter has friends from all social backgrounds and I personally think this is important. It reflects society after all. There are many middle class kids at her school and many working class kids.
I also disagree with the notion that if parents can afford private school most will send their kids their. We know several families where both parents having very well paid careers (consultants in hospitals, surgeons, doctors, lawyers etc) and must have household incomes over £150,000 yet they choose not to send their children to private school. I grew up near Paul McCartney and his kids went to the local comprehensive!!

Oxford has the same proportion of state school children as many other UK Universities - in fact a higher number than at e.g. Exeter or Durham - 68% of the students there are state educated and the proportion on some courses (medicine, mathematics) is even higher. And for poorer students there are incredibly generous bursaries and scholarships plus college accommodation is much more affordable than in may cities. Of course it is a privilege to study there but that's because it embodies academic excellence. My ds says that only a tiny proportion at Oxford care about where you went to school or what your background is - the only thing that matters is that you are clever.