To think unless you’ve been to private school you don’t really understand why it’s so valuable?

[huopp]

I have so many people telling me the state system is fine, a private school just has better facilities, that the teachers aren’t any better, that the extra curricular stuff can be done after school at a state school but at a different venue etc etc…

whilst all the above is true, it isn’t what makes a private education valuable? And that you have to actually have lived it, been to one, to get the whole experience it gives you across the board and not just academically?

i think this is why a lot of people with ‘new money’ don’t always spend it on school fees. In contrast those who have been privately educated mostly want the same for their children.

We can't afford private, and I don't rate it that highly. (My brothers and I were privately educated, me state at the end. ) I'm not bothered, because our local schools are extremely good, and I checked this pre even having children. If they hadn't of been we'd have moved. The school that ds's attended is good, strict, good pastoral care, and results are the best in the country, not just county, country, beating many independent and private schools. That's good enough for me. Plus both boys are reasonably bright, and more importantly have parents who care and are highly invested. Thats more than enough.

If you didn't have the above, and can afford it, I completely understand why others would.

I'm perplexed at the extent of envy publicly displayed in the UK these days. People have been brainwashed to think equality and fairness means reduction of standards, lowering of ambitions leaving private schools to be filled up by foreigners who value British education and will end up ruling the world.
In some communities, most arrived with nothing but because high premium is placed on education, send the children to private schools. Rarely eating out, no new cars, designer clothes, expensive foreign holidays untill all the children are educated to university degree levels. Long distance travel is reserved for attending family events such as weddings, significant birthdays, funerals and the opportunity to visit family members.

The very first post on this thread should knock any claims of envy on the head.

Its so irritating for any discussion to be reduced in this way but it seems to happen on any thread about a contentious issue; people don't want to hear any genuine discussion in case it disturbs their beliefs, so they tell themselves that naysayers must be envious, jealous, bitter, or in the grip of some ideology or other.

Not read thread, I was privately educated, and was horribly bullied. My DC have so far been happy in system. My eldest is in year 7 and loving school. IMO private isn't worth it.

Always baffles me when people cite avoiding bullying as a reason to go private. The worst and cruellest incidents of bullying I have heard of anecdotally took place at private schools my rough around the edges comp waS far from perfect but nothing as bad happened as the events my friend at a local private school recounted. The Warwick university misogynist WhatsApp groups were mainly from the same local private school. I don’t think you can buy your way out of avoiding this.

Safe to say I see the value of private school after attending a sink state school and hating every second! Would move mountains to ensure my daughter doesn’t go through that.

Ah but at private school they are being bullied by the right kind of people not those horrid common scumbags.

Why be such a arsehole?

Private-school parents never sneer at state-subsidised-school parents in the way you're doing to us.

In a comment about bullying. The irony 🙄

Excellent post

@OneWorldly4

Obviously, on average, private school pupils are less disruptive and brighter (about 10 IQ points based on median), but there are plenty of exceptions and the distributions have massive overlap.

Can you elaborate more on this? where this stat is from? about IQ?

Whilst I don't dispute /doubt the article, it's not difficult to see that many more rich and famous men are accused of sexual offences, in many cases years or even decades after the event, than low SEC status men? why is this so? don't lower SEC men sexually abuse?

You clearly haven't read the earlier comments about state school children 'living on X boxes' and never reading or doing anything cultural. And not just in this thread, there are plenty of sneering comments on other threads from private school parents about state school parents and students.

If you have been through it then your frame of reference is out of date. State schools now offer far more than they did 20-30 years ago.

I know many people from state and private (including St Paul’s, Latymer and Godolphin) they are a mixed bag.

Those from the privates got more ‘exotic’ jobs (TV, barrister, journalist) because they had parents to buy them flats and do their washing while they worked their way up earning peanuts. Almost everyone else got a job and worked hard be that as an accountant, ad exec or teacher. A few were drop outs / although the private school ones seem to have found wealthy wives to marry. The state school ones not so much!

You are reading different threads than I am, then. Generally private school parents don’t sneer at state school parents because many of them are ALSO state school parents.

what does frequently come up is concern about behaviour in state, but that is a common concern AMONGST state school parents and is frequently picked up in the press as well.

bullying and bad behaviour occur at all income levels, but the difference in private is that there is more flexibility to remove trouble makers if remedial intervention is unsuccessful - bad behaviour doesn’t have to be tolerated. And if you aren’t happy with how the school is handling things, you can move your child to another private school of your own choosing.

I have two friends who went to private school. Both absolutely hated it. They send their kids to the local state school.

Why don't you re-read from the start of the thread?

The insults start at 20:05, just 14 minutes in. I don't mean opinions and personal experiences (uncomplimentary though they might be) but nasty, sweeping insults against a whole group of children who you 'other' and condemn for no good reason.

20:05
private schools are set up to produce arrogant wankers natural leaders.

Then one anti-state insult at 20:07. Notably milder and not sweeping

Some state schools are ok, primary schools aren’t as bad because the kids who will eventually become awful people aren’t old enough to really be awful yet. It’s secondary school where the real problems start

And then back to the sweeping anti-private insults at 20:10

I could have all the money in the world and I wouldn’t send my kids to private school. I want them to grow up in the real world, and not be entitled brats

20:16

It buys your child... a gormless lack of self awareness and yet with full superiority.

Cheered on by 2 further posters. One of whom praises the poster using their own snide dig against imagined private school opinions.

20:34

I'd rather raise a child with integrity and compassion. [in contrast to a child sent to private school]

And so it goes on. 5 to 1. And the 5 are almost always sweeping character assassinations of all private school children... in contrast to the 1 which is almost always milder and limited to some state school children.

You don't even see it, because you actually agree with the sweeping condemnation of 500,000 children. Children who are in fact no different to your own.

And no, it's not 'just telling it how it is'. Like any bully who claims that about their ridiculous declarations, it's nothing but ignorant bigotry.

You have a very odd notion of who attends private. At our school I would say students as likely (more likely?) to end up in trades vs. what you describe as ‘exotic’ jobs. The vast majority come from families with hard working, not particularly glamorous jobs and will go on to not particularly glamorous, but hopefully highly fulfilling careers. Many private schools are working with children of varying abilities and simply trying to ensure they achieve their potential.

i’m also not sure I agree with you assertion that state schools today are better than they were 20-30 years ago. Some maybe do, but some are dealing with more complex student population with less funding.

And every single thread is the same. Mainly vicious sweeping insults condemning all private school children, with the occasional milder insult specifically about a minority of state school kids. Usually as @Labraradabrador says concerning behaviour. (Scattered a lot of opinions and anecdotes - which are fine either way so long as they aren't just bigoted insults)

I challenge you to find a single thread on here where that isn't the case, @Borka : list out the insults from each side as I have above, showing more and nastier comments from private parents against state. Or even a thread where they are roughly equal. Just one thread, out of all the hundreds. I'm confident you can't.

And for the avoidance of doubt, imagined insults which state school parents invent and attribute to private school thinking don't count. Even if they do rile you up.

Comments like @PyongyangKipperbang 's
"Ah but at private school they are being bullied by the right kind of people not those horrid common scumbags."

Because they're not actually being made by private school parents. They're not real. They're being made up by other state school parents to make you angry.

Whereas insults like this from @Peonies12 on page 1 are actually being made by state school parents against private school children.

"I could have all the money in the world and I wouldn’t send my kids to private school. I want them to grow up in the real world, and not be entitled brats"

Can you see the difference?

This sum it up perfectly. Many aspiring parents spend a fortune sending their children to privates but then can’t follow through.

It’s as simple as knowing what is out there, most people haven’t a clue, and how to direct your child towards people who can help them.
I’ve read articles, based on studies, of scholarship children from big names boarders falling at the first hurdle as they don’t have the right suit for the interview, can’t find anyone to rent them a room while searching for work and can’t afford to take on low paid work in lucrative industries.
It all comes back to the family. It’s who you know, not what you know and how well, and for how long, your family will help (answer is indefinitely).
This thread is surely a lazy journo - we’ll find out soon enough who!

I was quoting someone on here who said they used state but had extensive contacts and knowledge to help their children… Not saying I sum it perfectly 🙄

Yes, but your private school isn’t the only private school in the country is it? It’s just your private school. You’ve posted before that your children have additional needs so your school isn’t really what most people think about when comparing state vs private.
You really don’t agree state schools are better than 20-30 years ago? Are you from the UK? Did you go to a UK state school? Have you any experience of a state secondary school?
Every comment you make, on every thread, is based on your very limited experience of state/private then you jump on anyone who may have different experiences . You seem determined to push the message that state is bad. Why? Because you tried one state school, didn’t like it, then went to private and loved it, so all state schools are bad.

Come back in 20 years and let us know how your children are doing. Better still, let them tell us. If they end up in trades, as you suggest, then you may have done them no favours sending them to a private.

@Lazytiger i know my school isn’t what people think of when they think of private, which is why I feel the need to call it out. There are far more private schools like mine than there are like Eton or St Paul’s.

in addition to my own personal experience with uk state education there are only about umpteen threads by teachers talking about how much worse things are now - check them out. The teacher retention crisis has as much if not more to do with the experience of teaching today as it does with pay - an overburdened and stifling curriculum , increasing numbers of send in mainstream classrooms without adequate support, worsening behaviour being some of the factors.

i have never said anywhere that all state schools are bad, and if you are monitoring my posting history you will know I regularly advise others to look at both state and private options as there is a great deal of variability across both sectors. that said, I can only speak to my own lived experience, same as any other poster, and that experience has been that state school was not a healthy or happy place for my children. I know I am far from alone in that experience - it sadly is a very common theme for those of us with send children, or really any child that doesn’t quite fit.

and for the record, if in 20 years time my children are working in a trade they enjoy I will be absolutely delighted. Given neither parent is particularly handy, I would have to give full credit to school, which offers loads of hands on learning. School should be about helping children unlock their on individual interests and talents, not a conveyor belt that ends in a final winnowing at university selection.

My husband is an accountant. He has a number of clients who pay for one or more children to be privately educated. He sees first-hand how the finances of the majority of them are tight AF to manage. Admittedly, one client has said it has forced her hand to move at least one of her three kids into state school asap because they’re simply not academic and she said it’s a waste of her money. The irony of it is that these parents are wondering how they can work harder to afford the fee hike….the consequence of which is that the kids might continue to benefit from a private education but hardly see their own parents. Errrrm…. As someone that was state educated, and I’d go so far as to say maybe done quite well in life and achieved social mobility, I especially love how a number of these parents said they’d be worried about their kids being ‘unremarkable’ or ‘becoming criminals’ if they go to state school. I wonder then, of the two camps, who is most out of touch?!

I especially love how a number of these parents said they’d be worried about their kids being ‘unremarkable’ or ‘becoming criminals’ if they go to state school.

Could you please quote where private school parents have said this? Otherwise we can all assume you're just making shit up to rile people.

I have seen one anecdote where a poster talked about their brother going off the rails, and the parents moving him to private school to get him away from specific friends who were a bad influence. Which I seem to remember worked in that specific case. (another anecdote had a brother go to private school 'because they were easily influenced' then later fall off the rails, I think)

Pretty dishonest disingenuous to suggest that's a general reason for parents to choose private school. You're suggesting they think all children at state school become criminals?!? Wtf are you on about?!?