Are all private school parents petty minded snobs?

[ReallyTired]

I had someone at church telling me that she thought I ought to pull my son out of his state primary and send him to a private school that helps children with learning difficulties like dyslexia.

My son is mildly deaf, but does not have any learning difficulties. He is doing well at his state school. Even though the class is big he has a good teacher. He is in middle ablity groups for everything at the moment.

He is in year 1 and can add and subtract numbers below 100 nicely. His reading is developing well as well. His spelling is very strangem but don't most six year olds have odd spelling? I can't believe that private school kids are two years ahead already at the age of 6?

This person made it clear that she thought that if my son went to a normal private school he would be in the bottom group for everything. Apparently her daughter is bright and she attends selective girl's school so she isn't held back children with SEN.

Found some stats to back up my half remembered figures on state school funding.

Government funding per pupil

Obviously plenty of people are totally happy with our state education (which is great!!). But plenty aren't and it seems to me that it isn't through lack of government funding.

The private v state education rants are amusing and keep us all busy, but they actually don't achieve much.

findtheriver - I agree with so many things you say in your post, particularly this:
"Knowing that there are people out there who don't have privileges, who don't have loads of money, who maybe have a learning difficulty or whatever.. these are things that are really helpful in enabling young people to become interesting and well balanced adults"

My dd (who goes to a local primary in a very deprived area) feels very privileged - she has BOTH mummy and daddy at home, she has a room of her own, a dog, two loving sets of grandparents who she sees every week and lots of cousins. She gets home cooked food every day, outings to the countryside, she gets read to every night...... she knows that many of her school friends don't have half of these things.

She's not super bright but is miles ahead of most of her classmates in terms of her reading and in top sets for everything. She is very confident and feels like a success.

I do wonder how she'd feel if I bunged her in an expensive private school where she'd be mixing with children who are much better off than she is and probably a lot more academically focused...... They do say that one of the secrets of happiness is feeling well off in relation to your peers......

Amey - this thread has been really helpful to me. It's made me feel MILES better about my inability to access private and selective education for my children!

As far as my husband is concerned this thread has achieved a huge amount. I've been reading it for ages and he's been left in peace watching those blardy noisy cars going round and round at the Montreal grand prix.

tittybangbang,

I think you have to believe that your daughter is getting the best. She is happy and isn't made to feel inadequate and neither are her classmates.

"Knowing that there are people out there who don't have privileges, who don't have loads of money, who maybe have a learning difficulty or whatever.. these are things that are really helpful in enabling young people to become interesting and well balanced adults"

I definately agree. I also think that realising that ALL these people are of equal worth as human beings and realising that there is more to life that school results.

Admit have not read it all but there are plenty of children with plenty of problems in private school. If the private school does not have very specific help for say a dyslexic child then in my experience they are far better off in a a state school.

I suspect the better private schools are less exam factories than those state schools which aim for top results which are more like crammers. I always thought one of the main things you buy at private schools is a holistic approach to the child, ethos, values, bringing out the best of all you have even if it's in working on the school farm or playing in the orchestra as much as raw exam results. I think private schools do all those things so much better than most state schools such at it's almost damage to the child if you have the means to pay but choose not to.

"I suppose if you put an intelligence scale from 1-10 on it, he'd say the private school had kids from about 5 to 8, whereas the state school has 3 to 9 and a half. So, wider ability spectrum overall, but going lower and higher each end."

That cannot be right actually. If you have a child in a selective school they weed out the bottom 50%-70% depending on the school and the pool of children it can draw on. There is no possibility that a private school excludes the brightest of children - indeed it would be against its own interests to do so.

If your DS has found that there are one or two brighter children at his state school than his private school it is either because he was not at an academically selective private school or it is a highly unusual state school with a couple of exceptionally bright pupils.

Desiderata - My DD will confirm that you can eat slugs whilst wearing a boater.

TTB - I have not "slagged off state schools". I have slagged off (for want of a rather more erudite phrase) the whole notion of governmental involvement in education.

Xenia's point is interesting, and is demonstrated in our local area. Our local primary is "very highly regarded" (top school in the area, according to Ofsted). A parent of one of the current Year Twos commented recently that huge numbers of the children have been making themselves ill with worry over their SATS. The mothers of children at DS's prep school reported their children coming home and remarking that they "didn't have any lessons today because we did some tests".

The main difference, of course, is that the local state school needs the good SATS results to maintain its pole position, and DS's prep school does the tests for internal evaluation only. However, it seems that there is much more pressure in some ways if you're a child in a good state school...

Dottoressa, you've just summed up the main reason why we went independent - we have good state primaries in a VERY poor performing borough nearby, and we heard similar tales of stressed-out six year olds being harangued to "do their best for LEA and country" . This from parents who were wholehearted supporters of state education, as indeed were we until we realised what the local situation meant
Have only peeped at this thread as it has evolved somewhat predictably, but round my way the uber-posh burb with good state provision is way nastier and more snobbish than the less smart surrounding neighbourhoods. Demographic of our small independent, non-academically selecting primary is far less status-obsessed and socially predatory than other state schools just a few miles down the road.

...which makes me wonder why, if SATS are one of the main reasons that parents send their children to private schools, do parents up here in Scotland continue to do so, in the absence of SATS.

Quattro - I am not saying that private schools exclude the brightest children at all! I am simply saying that the brightest children don't necessarily attend them. Given that 93% of children are state educated, that's hardly surprising! Not everyone has the money to afford school fees, and not all children want to try for a scholarship or even accept it if it were offered. Not all parents who can afford school fees choose private anyway. I could pay them if I wanted; I don't for my ds because he prefers to be state educated. (Hey, just realised according to Xenia I'm damaging him. Oh well, I can live with Xenia's judgement ). But seriously, why would I choose to knowlingly jeapardise my child's education? If I thought he needed a private education to be able to achieve, I'd pay for it. But I didnt need one (and my comp was nowhere near as good as ds's) and neither did my dh. And we've done very well.
As I said before, I think maybe the biggest disadvantage of being privately educated yourself, and putting your children through private school, is that you just have no idea of what goes on anywhere else! Some of the comments about state schools on this thread are hilarious! There are dozens of bright, talented and engaging young people in our state schools.

My children have never been in private schools that did SATS. My twins have exam week next week at school (school exams) and they aren't worried but that's just because I'm very laid back about it all and I am sure some other parents aren't. Just depends on the family. One indian boy apparently almost cries when he had to leave school to go home, my son said the other night because of the pressure at home to succeed and he got a B the other day in something and was scared because his parents require he gets As. This is just what I was told by a 9 year old so may be a load of rubbish but it shows pressure is from parents as much as schools and sometimes from individual children whose personalities are just such that they do always worry about things like that.

"There are dozens of bright, talented and engaging young people in our state schools."

FTR, once again I disagree - I think there are many thousands of bright and engaging people in state schools. What I am saying is that your suggestion that the brightest are in state schools is not true. I don't think that the brightest are in private schools either, but of course there is a much greater concentration of bright pupils in an academically selective private school.

How on earth can you know that that is true Quattrocentro?

As only 7% of children nationally go to private school it is only from that very small pool that the academically-selective schools can get their pupils , and then only form the even fewer that actually apply to their school.

DD wears a boater in the summer. Summer uniform is red striped dress, read blazer and straw boater. She looks sweet. She loves it!

Winter uniform is a grey felt hat and grey winter coat.

I love proper unifoms

Do the maths. There is a reason that the top universities have an intake of over 50% from private schools when as you say privately educated school children only form 7% of the school population. Many parents will scrimp and scrape to give their children better academic opportunities and find the money when/where they can.

Ability is normally distributed - apologies if this is teaching my grandmother to suck eggs - but that means there is a sort of camel's hump shape to the distribution.

If a school only selects its children from the average plus side then there will by definition be a greater concentration of brighter children. This is just simple fact, not a matter of opinion. Of course the same is true of state grammar schools which also can do well in terms of academic results.

Yes, Quattro, I agree about the private schools having above average pupils. DS's was selective in that it didn't take children of average or below average ability. But that didnt mean it took the brightest of the children in the area.

Quattro, a private school cannot take the brightest pupils.

It can only take the brightest pupils who apply to the school

With all respect, you do the math

As for uni entry that's a whole other argument based on different stuff.

I didn't say that private schools take the brightest, that could not necessarily be true, but it was your contention that brighter children were in the state system than the private and that equally cannot be true

It might be, though. You cannot know.

made the point about perhaps wanting children to be like their parents. I made it not just from the middle class point of view but also the working class one. A big problem with the grammar schools were they took children from one class and made them unsuited to either class, fishes out of water at both Oxbridge and on the council estate.
This is the most stupid thing I have ever read in my life.

Quattro, I was giving a specific comparison between two schools. Not making any general assertion. However, my experience (and I have some professional involvement here) is that the really bright kids can be found anywhere - state/private/home educated.

Thank you Sykes for that breath of fresh air.

My pleasure. It's the biggest load of crap. i've ever read. From a supposedly well educated woman.