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.

I disagree. My dad went to private boarding school and told me how horrific it was. He told me that as a child he vowed to never send any of his children to private boarding school and he didnt.

He was very messed up after going. And he struggled with his mental health al his life.

His two siblings didn't go to private boarding school and they turned out much mentally better

I have experience of London state schools 20 years ago - they are much worse now as they have been underfunded for 20 years.

If they end up in trades, as you suggest, then you may have done them no favours sending them to a private.

Going private is not just about getting jobs.

Goodness me, did not expect. 🙈 Please note that at no point did I say that ALL parents who choose private education believe that unless they do so, their children face an unremarkable life or a life of crime. That’s some magnificent extrapolation on your part.

These are simply people I know - so I’ll not be ‘naming and shaming’. And they’re hardly a representative sample. My underlying point is that these people know that their audience (that being me or my husband) were not privately educated…and they also know we’re not criminals either. 🤣

But you said "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."

"A number" isn't just one, is it?

And people only half-read and half-remember comments. And so they'll remember this as "private school parents all say they believe state school kids are criminals and beneath them"

So you get people like @Borka saying things like
You clearly haven't read the earlier comments about state school children 'living on X boxes' and never reading or doing anything cultural.

When no such thing was said. I've been back over the thread. Quote the post if you can find it.

These threads are filled with horrific, bigoted bile spewed against private school kids (as I quoted above) and yet people still say that "the insults go both ways" because they half remember the bullshit which state parents make up and imagine private parents saying. It confirms their prejudice, so they don't need to think further.

@strawberrybubblegum this is the post I was referring to, specifically this part:

At independent schools the children aren't all living on XBox's at home, they are doing sports, reading, out for days with family.

I said ‘a number’ because I was surprised by the number of personal conversations I’ve had or my husband has had where that was cited as a concern. One friend even said she didn’t want have children unless she could afford to educate them privately.

As with anything of this nature though, they’re only opinions. Not facts!

There’s no bile-spewing here on my part. I think people make choices based on what they value and what they can afford. Do I agree with the VAT levy? No. Have I already seen a parent make an explicit choice to move a child to state school as a consequence of that levy? Yep - and she won’t be alone in making that choice. I just hope that our state schools are ready for the extra pupils.

Well if private school parents do want “other people like them” primarily, if they all go to particular state schools bought via catchment, they will surely achieve much of the same anyway. And then they will top up with extra curricular and networking or whatever else private school parents get accused of, and academic tutoring etc, and the outcome will be the similar (and you can surely purchase some finishing school classes ultimately somehow if you want to, Debretts is still a thing last time I checked). Except that the taxpayer foots the basic amount of education. And the private school teachers move into tutoring etc. And it is all very disruptive for no ultimate gain or change. Except that maybe going to private school becomes even more rarified and for the super rich elite only - which will probably translate to lower academic results.

If Labour want to dumb down the curriculum and focus less on grades, it is probably a good thing if a whole lot of ambitious private school parents go into state schools and demand more. You see most head teachers are quite happy to have the driven committed ambitious parents who ensure the DCs behave and do the work.
The big question is not about those parents. The big question is what to do about the poorer children from poorer households and children with special educational needs and disabilities and it seems, the Government are just not willing to spend or care about those kids. Other than dumbing down. Post Covid there is a big chasm between educational attainment across the two sectors so the solution they have come up with to make it look less stark and cheaper for them is to move a few higher achievers state way. Then they do not have to spend tons of money on the poorer kids and those with SEND as that would actually cost billions and billions given what was done to those DCs during the pandemic.

"Post Covid there is a big chasm between educational attainment across the two sectors so the solution they have come up with to make it look less stark and cheaper for them is to move a few higher achievers state way."

Yes, because it automatically follows that the previously private school educated children moving into main stream are higher achievers than the mainstream kids, and will continue to achieve highly despite no longer benefiting from small class sizes and all that ethos and extra curricular stuff.

There are many reasons for the SEN crisis, most of which reside firmly in the arms of Tory policies.

1. Huge funding cuts to local authorities, who have ultimate responsibility for SEN funding with tiny budgets to do so
2. Allowed academisation and multi academy trusts with principals on huge salaries who set bizarre rules which discriminate against neurodivergent children.
3. Made the curriculum substantially harder and overhauled the GCSE system to make it hugely complex in terms of required knowledge and very challenging, and have invested precisely zero into any alternative curricular pathway for those with SEN so a good 30- 40 percent of children have zero "passes" on leaving school at 16.

None of which is the Labour party's fault and I am quite amazed at the mental gymnastics you must have performed to lay their tragedy at Labour's door.

@Toasticles - for all their faults, the Tories have massively raised standards for the majority of children https://www.gov.uk/government/news/england-among-highest-performing-western-countries-in-education
Labour is going to destroy our PISA rankings and it is going to look bad, if they continue as they have started.

Private school children as a group are higher attaining, the proof is in the results! And of course those who move state would use tutors to top up, if required, anyway.
Academies are not bad per se, many are well run. The cheap generalisations do not work.

Your point 3. Just offer an alternative for children like functional Maths and English rather than being forced to do tons of GCSEs. It is not rocket science. There does not need to be a massive overhaul, yet again. Teachers won’t welcome restarting the whole thing over again.
STEM and Maths are very important in the 21st century and we are doing very well on that front. Yes, it is hard work but it does mean children are well set up for A levels and if you are serious about Higher Education access for the many, you make sure they learn how to learn and revise for complex GCSEs at 15/16 - and that there literacy and maths skills, in particular, are excellent. We just need to reintroduce more Arts and MML into the curriculum. That will require a bit more funding.
As for SEND, again, funding funding funding and tailoring to the specific need of the child. It is not about forcing children into mainstream huge classes, but fund SEND hubs in many schools and specialists so those children can access safely and as much as they can. If you give the Academies enough money, they will take those children. Asking them to self fund 6k a year and then judge on results obviously does not work. Different progress measures for children with SEND, tailored to their needs very precisely?

"Labour is going to destroy our PISA rankings"

Evidence please?

Yes I agree. Both DH and I were privately educated before coming to the UK and the difference is significant. It’s not just about the jobs where people end up (though to progress either in investment banking or medicine you do need a private or grammar based education) but the interests they develop, their outlook, the way they view life can be different.

Pisa includes private school results. It is a rubbish methodology to use to compare education. UK samples always over-represent higher performing private schools vs state schools and rarely have a proportional representation of kids on fsm.

It's tricky bcause there are not just two comparators here - private school and state school. There are some amazing state schools which consistently outperform the private schools in the same area. Equally, there are some utterly awful, violence and drug-ridden state schools, and in most cases, even the worst performing private school in the area would be a better bet. And that's before we even consider SEND provision. Most parents want the best for their kids, but that choice is not as binary as private school or state school (assuming funds allow a choice). Much depends on where you live, and what sort of state schools you have in your area. Many parents also game the system by deliberately and consciously purchasing property in the catchment area for good state schools.

Just on the PISA
“COVID-19 effects on education
Compared to other OECD and partner countries/economies, students in United Kingdom have a relatively weak perseverance. (-0.17 PISA Index, rank 42/50 , 2022) Download Indicator
In United Kingdom, students are characterized by their weak cooperation, when compared to other OECD and partner countries/economies, as measured by the PISA index of cooperation. (-0.22 PISA Index, rank 36/39 , 2022) Download Indicator
United Kingdom is one of the OECD and partner countries/economies with the lowest level of stress resistance, as measured by the PISA index of student's stress resistance. (-0.15 PISA Index, rank 38/42 , 2022) Download Indicator
In United Kingdom, students are characterized by their weak emotional control, when compared to other OECD and partner countries/economies, as measured by the PISA index of students' emotional control. (-0.14 PISA Index, rank 52/61 , 2022) Download Indicator
Compared to other OECD and partner countries/economies, students in United Kingdom had a relatively bad experience with learning at home. (-0.21 PISA Index, rank 69/71 , 2022)”

I think we should learn from this. It sounds like social & emotional issues primarily. What can we do to improve these? We know mental health, perseverance etc are all problems here amongst the young.

People always quote the old research on private schools that kids are not happier there. However, I don’t believe it. I think children right now in private schools have more respect, their opinions matter more, they feel more valued etc. and we should learn from that.

I do not believe that happiness and good results are mutually exclusive. I believe that a happier a child, the more likely they will do well and optimise their performance. Children are natural learners. However, being in overcrowded buildings around stressed adults is not good for them.

Wales.

You do not need a private or grammar based education to progress in Medicine.

The (medical) consultants in my family, one who attained this position quite young and the other very senior indeed, would be extremely surprised to hear that a private education is required to progress in their chosen career.

Then they’d be stupid because this is something the BMJ and medical schools in the UK have been extremely worried about for a long time. The 29% figure comes from children who attended private throughout their education. 22% of kids come from grammar schools. 80% of medical students come from the most affluent areas of the UK.

Only an absolute idiot would think there’s any difference between the rich people at private school vs the rich people at grammar school vs the rich people in state school who get places in medical school, other than the fact that they’re probably the children of rich doctors or have them in their connections.

https://questionnaires.bma.org.uk/news/therightmix/index.html

https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i632

In many European countries state education has much higher standards by default than many PS in the UK. I don't think there are many PS in Estonia yet the country performs in maths on the same level as Asia and twice as good as the UK.

If the UK's results include overrepresented high performing PS then the situation is even worse than it seems and they are not "high performing" at all.

You’re talking about a certain economic stratum now. I would have said that conflating economic data with educational background was sloppy thinking at best and an attempt to confuse at worst.

I happen to share the concern that certain sectors, including but hardly limited to medicine and banking, skew upper middle class. But the educational divide is only one aspect of a complex problem

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/nov/13/young-working-class-people-being-blocked-from-creative-industries-study-finds

Thoughts?

My view is that the highest paying sector like law, banking, IT should ensure social mobility is working. However, for the lower paying sectors like the creative industries - a talented working class DC is put off by virtue of the fact that pay is poor.

Medicine, as far as I am concerned, is not that well paid in the UK. It is a massive hassle, loads of study for not much gain. It is a vocation. Not sure about bashing that sector either on social mobility grounds. Having a doctor parent means understanding the sacrifice to enter the profession first hand. I am not sure I am that concerned about barriers to entry there either.

Nobody is stupid enough to not think (selective) private school is valuable to the person receiving it. That's not the point.
I disagree in principle that money should get you this advantage. Kids should learn and know about people from different social and economic backgrounds from a young age and as much as possible, be given an even chance at success.

I did attend both private and state school. But was on AP for the private as my parents couldn't pay. I chose to leave for a comp at 14. Just for context.

"She studied sculpture at St Martin's college" 😂

Music provision is mostly rubbish in state sector, private lessons are expensive => working class talent is being wasted on a massive scale.

Plus the culture itself goes against early development of talent (which in case of classical instruments is often crucial) - MN parents even with musical children call high achievers like NYO violinists who often start at 4 "abnormal weirdos drilled from nappies". It's a shocking attitude to talent and hard work.

Go figure why BBCYM is won by an Asian guy who trained abroad. And why there are virtually no international star violinists from England.

It's not just money.

They mention Oxbridge, Bristol, Bath and Manchester as being dominated by PS students - Bristol/Bath are very close to WCS, Manchester takes from Chets. Even high performing PS cannot compete with specialists schools in creative arts, and many of those students are on bursaries so not really from affluent families even though PS educated.