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.

Well educated doesn't mean right about everything.

Of course not. But I find it v sad that a supposedly well educated person can be so trivial, silly and ill informed. Hey the benefits of public schools. Ill-informed arrogance.

All too often, Sykes.

Reallytired- our local academically selective state school most certainly does remove children for being thick. They screen their pupils to keep the most compliant applicants (ergo, compliant parents), and remove children by agreement with their parents if they turn out not to be up to it.

Conversely, you have to do something really serious to be removed (oooh, like for example, get pissed and burgle the bursary, to snatch but one random example from the air) from my children's independent school.

or bugger the bursar

or is that still allowed

Probably compulsory.

or conversely would one ask are working class parents small minded chavs?

erroneous to generalise or stereotype about class in either direction

Don't be so daft. Whata are you objecting to? Your are even worse than Xenia,

Don't be so daft. Whata are you objecting to? Your are even worse than Xenia,

i object to OP question. i like xenia

I like Xenia too, but she's bonkers

nah she is a clever lady. some contentious views but always eloquent

You're in her camp. Good luck.

"Some contentious views but always eloquent". Could also be said about Hitler, who certainly was a petty minded snob, among other more heinous faults.

camp?oh like kenneth williams?like it .glad you're not kneejerk generalising

grow up and stop bellyaching about xenia in her absence. why does she rock your world, hit a nerve eh?

Xenia loves it! As you say, she is a clever lady, so i'm sure she knows her bizarre posts will cause great hilarity!

"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"

Actually - this is all so much nonsense.

There are plenty of super bright children in the state sector who do not achieve even at a basic level. I used to teach GCSE retakes at a South London FE college and I frequently encountered kids of sixteen who were extremely articulate and perceptive but who had the literacy skills of 11 year olds (or worse) because of a history of truancy and disruptive behaviour at school. This was particularly true of a proportion of the Afro Caribbean boys I worked with. There are very bright children throughout the state sector who will always under achieve because of things in their lives which are beyond the scope of schools to cope with: parents with poor literacy skills, severe poverty, language and cultural issues. There will be bright children who are behind when they start school and who'll never catch up with their peers. Children at private schools are uniquely privileged and in developmental terms strongly supported from the moment they take their first breath. In other words what I'm saying is - you shouldn't compare children from vastly different backgrounds and measure their intelligence in the same way. Children who are supported and nurtured will do disproportionately well in academic terms - but this tells us little about raw talent or potential.

fantastic post im not teacher but have worked with adolescents and other's who are bright astute full of potential people have experienced socio-economic disadvantage and this detrimentally affect their educational outcomes

it is not right and not fair

You say that this is nonsense but you haven't actually addressed the point I made and go on to make a totally different point about why bright children from deprived backgrounds might underachieve in state schools.

Your point was stating the obvious; of course there are bright children in state schools and of course there are a myriad of reasons why they don't realise their potential.

But there will be a greater concentration of bright children (who have been nurtured and supported) at academically selective schools. To suggest otherwise is to assume that all the children there are only of average intelligence and just coached up to the nines. That's simply not true of academically selective schools. If you have an intake of 100 children, 50 of them will be of average or above average intelligence. If you have an intake of 100 children but ONLY take those of average or above average intelligence then you will necessarily have a greater concentration of bright pupils. This is the ethos of academically selective schools. You may argue with the ethos as many people have done very articulately on this thread but you simply can't deny that they have a greater concentration of bright pupils.

Academically selective schools take bright children and coach them up to the nines. This is why there is such a massive number of privately educated children at top universities.

Who was saying that Quattro? My post was about a specific comparison between two schools. And I was talking about the very bright kids. Of course most private schools are going to have a greater concentration of above average pupils, but that's a different issue.

Hi FTR - I was responding to Titty. Perhaps why children underachieve is something that happens way before school careers start.

I said there were problems when working class children were taken from that environment and put into a "posher" middle class state grammar school environment in the 1950s because in some ways they felt different then from the families they left behind but also didn't quite fit into Oxbridge if they went there and that that was an issue. It was certainly often written about. My own mother became very different from her original poor family because of her education. She would obviously be very glad she had it as it took her out of poverty but she then never introduced us to her 52 first cousins and their families and in a sense moved class. COmprehensives don't do that - they keep (in theory when they work) people of all classes together rather than taking very very clever children from very disadvantaged homes and placing them in middleclass state grammars.

On where are bright children - 94% of children go to state schools so most bright children are in state schools but if you take the very selective schools in either sector you will get more bright children there. If you take a school with 5 or more children competing by examination for a place as I think at my children's schools or 10 in some state grammars (in the rare places they still exist) then of course tehre are more bright children there and in my view bright children do better with other bright children even at age 5. That's one of the fundamental reasons I paid fees over what is now 20 years if we go back to when I started paying nursery school fees at nearly 3 for my oldest who finishes her education in a couple of weeks.

The issue is many bright children are not well served by being in schools with disaffected or disadvantaged children or children who cannot behave in class. It's only fair on all children if they can sit in a class room where they can hear the teacher and aren't teased too much if they are clever and interested.

So one issue is whether mixed ability schools do as well for the top, middle and bottom cohort as selective schools (in either sector). Most comps stream, never mind selective schools.

The personal issues for parents who can afford to pay is that paying seems one of the easiest and best ways to be sure your child gets a good education (if you choose the school wisely) so it's a no brainer tha more then 50% would pay if they could including Labour supporters....now I'd better get back to work to fund my school and university fees bill......

(What did I say that prompted someone to compare me with Hitler? One very good thing about academic selective schools is they tend to be religious, cultural and colour blind in a way the state schools these days don't manage so if you want a racially integrated school in many parts particularly London if you pay you achieve that).

Just about all state schools in London are racially integrated.
Obviously, fee-paying schools do not integrate children from poorer or disadvantaged backgrounds as they can't afford to go. So children there do not get the opportunity to mix with the full range of society. But the children that go to private school will probably never have to mix with them in their working lives anyway.