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.

"I said clever, socially deprived children should have access to the very best education possible"

No - all children should have access to the very best education possible. Less bright children need to be stretched and to be taught in small groups in well resourced classrooms just as much as clever children!

"and that children who swear, throw things and are generally rude and disruptive (whether they be impoverished working class or upper middle class) should not be allowed to ruin the former's education"

But unfortunately these children can't be wished away, and at the moment they're all being shoved into schools together where they create even MORE havoc than if they were fairly distributed among all schools. And this happens because middle class people are able to play the system or pay to get their children into educational environments which keep difficult children out. Pity the poor children whose parents can't 'pay or play' who are left in schools with disproportionate numbers of unruly kids. Pity the teachers too.

"There surely has to be some form of separation"

Yes - and most state schools DO put pupils into sets. But why does there have to be SOCIAL separation too?

"No, no, no!!!!! I didn't say socially deprived children should have special schools. You are looking for snobbery where there is none."

This is what you said:

"Why can't someone set up a school specialising in helping children from really disadvantaged backgrounds? That way they'd get the attention (and expert handling) that they really need, while a separate school would cater for other children."

There is social seperation in many state schools already. Children from disadvantage backgrounds don't have horns and most of them aren't evil. Infact there are plenty of awful rich kids who are throughly spoilt.

I think that they do deserve more funding to make up for the fact that their parents cannot afford to take them on expensive holidays or so many toys and books.

Also there are issues like when a child has inadequate housing it affects education. Schools in deprived areas do have more than fair share of children with special needs without the funding to match.

It is unfair that some state schools get better outings than others. Or better extra facilites because the rich parents can contribute generously to the PTA.

ReallyTired - have only read OP. The person at your church is making a judgment on almost no facts at all, and her unsolicited advice is full of wrong assumptions. One assumption she seems to have is that private education is always better - not so.

This week I had occasion to visit a private nursery class for one day. Although the staff-pupil ratio was better than my own dc had at nursery class in the state sector, the education offered was very inferior, not least because there was no trained teacher, and it showed.

The advantage you will usually get in private education is a smaller number of pupils to staff in each class. But that doesn't mean the staff are as well qualified or motivated or organised or equipped ... I could go on.

I did say that - but I wasn't making it very clear. I just find it incredibly frustrating that there are heaps and heaps of children who have huge potential - but whose potential is never discovered because there's no way to get around the background problem. What I meant was that there should be some kind of extra help for those children who, through no fault of their own, are written off by mainstream schools as disruptive and/or as suffering from some kind of syndrome.

I would have hoped that it would go without saying that all children deserve a chance at a good education, but evidently it didn't. Just to make it clear: I would like all children to have an equal shot at a good education. When you say that "Less bright children need to be stretched and to be taught in small groups in well resourced classrooms just as much as clever children!" - well, of course they do. But it isn't going to happen in the vast majority of state schools - whereas it does happen in the vast majority of independent ones, however much you may dislike them.

This is one of those rather circular arguments, isn't it? I think on the whole most of us already have an opinion about state vs private, and it would take a minor miracle to make us shift our views. I still think the state should remove itself entirely from education. If parents had real, free choice about which school their children attended, some schools would be forced to shut down very quickly!

FWIW, my DD (4) attends a private nursery school for three mornings per week. Bizarrely, it doesn't cost us a penny (the termly fees are about the same as the prep schools around here) - thanks to the government childcare voucher thingy that we get for her. We choose to use it at her particular (v. old fashioned, hence boaters) nursery school; other parents use it at the local day nursery; others use it to top up the Reception year prep-school fees. Why can't this idea be extended to primary/secondary education as well?

And yes, there are some frightful and grossly spoilt children at my DS's school!!

I like the nursery voucher system. It enabled me to choose a nursery suitable for my son. I felt very strongly that I did not want my son wearing school uniform at the age of three or being forced to do formal work that he wasn't ready for. I think he benefitted from playing and did not need a qualified teacher at the age 3.

He was ready for education at five rather than three and not attending state nursery has not harmed him.

Sweden has a voucher system with the proviso that parents cannot be charged top up fees and the schools aren't academically selective. It would be good if the UK had a similar system.

They wear boaters ???

What I find disturbing about this national obsession with the 'best' school, and the 'best' nursery, etc., is the inability to understand that human life has to round off. In order to survive as a species, we need clever people, and we need people who are clever, but who clean toilets.

I am disturbed by the current climate in the UK .. that you have somehow failed if you don't get a 'good' education and earn at least £100K per annum.

In my grandfather's generation, almost all blue-collar workers were intelligent and knowledgable. Today, you're either highly educated (debatable) and highly paid, or you're a no-hoper.

Where did the middle-ground go?

My dd wore a boater at pre prep, looked gorgeous.

A tad young to be getting all dressed up, though. She should have been eating slugs at that age, not wearing a boater!

not at all, a simple navy blue summer school dress and boater, no big deal imo. She loved it. Sadly now 13 so no boater

Ah! Do you still have it, MABS?

And how is your thirteen year old?

As someone just put there is already social exclusion and ghettoisation all over the country from schools that are 98% bangladeshi to the posh and poor areas of many cities with children to match and selection by house price in the state system.

What titty said about her child's state school about all the disruptive children etc shows why parents who can will pay to avoid those issues. We have had children in private schools for 20 years now and must have been involved with about 5 - 8 schools plus those my ex husband taught in and very very occasionally a child was expelled but only once a blue moon. So how is the bad behaviour contained? I think the rules and discipline is perhaps better. Of course the children are like to be more motivated because of the amount their parents value education. Also other parents will not tolerate a child who is ruining what the parent is paying £10,000 a year to get - a good education in class where the child can hear the teacher and no other children are making a noise or being rude etc. Of course once they're teenagers in every school there will be some behavioural problems but I don't remember at all often a child complaining about others in class ruining things.

I keep reading on mumsnet about private school children educated beyond their abilities and yet I never see it. That may be simply because our children went to very academcially selective schools in the top 10 in the country where presumably everyone is very bright to get into in the first place and most people who apply don't get in. And there may be a middle range of private schools which do do that. I don't think my children's friends at university (3 of the children are at that stage) have suddenly found university hard. In fact one said she fond the state school pupils unwilling or unable to debate very much because they weren't verbally so self confident and she was finding it hard in tutor groups to get anyone else to speak up.

Then there's the question of how they fare after that stage in getting jobs and I still think a good private school education helps with that too because you get all the broad range of extra curricular things too which are as important in education as results. Someone said you want happy children - yes but why not happy children who have good exam results, speak well, are educated to be like their parents and are happy? It's not a choice between private school and your internal psyche destroyed never able to be happily in relationships or state school, job might not be so good but you'll have a route map to nirvana with your spouse.

I am sort of shocked by something my DD came home with tonight though. She and her two friends have calmly entered themselves (themselves!!!!) for their maths GCSR next summer. DD and her friends are 10.

When I picked my jaw up from the floor I explained that I did not think this was a good idea. There are swathes of the syllabus that they have not covered, they will not learn it properly, they will not get the A* that would be theirs if they sat it at 16, and what, if they get it, would they do afterwards?

DD explained to me that they proposed to self-teach, they have got a book, they will learn it properly, they will pass and when they've done it they are going to do more and harder maths.

I have written a letter to the school in a mild panic. I don't think the school would or should support this, it's too early.

GCSE

Desi
any chance you could email me?
kate at
minimum dot
codotuk

"But it isn't going to happen in the vast majority of state schools - whereas it does happen in the vast majority of independent ones, however much you may dislike them."

I don't dislike private schools at all!

I just dislike your argument that private schools provide a better education for children than state schools because of the way they are managed and because of their different approach to education. My view is that children who attend private schools do well because they are taught in small groups, because they have highly involved, supportive parents at home, because there are no classroom management issues and because they're given the chance to take part in extra curricula activities. You've slagged off state schools over and over again in your posts in the most unfair way - you don't acknowledge that there are many schools in the state sector where children are THRIVING and doing very well, despite the challenges the teachers face working with very limited resources.

Re: desiderata's comments "In my grandfather's generation, almost all blue-collar workers were intelligent and knowledgable. Today, you're either highly educated (debatable) and highly paid, or you're a no-hoper"

I so agree with this. My grandfather was the same. He worked at the Ford car factory in Dagenham and went to evening classes where he studied philosophy and politics. My dad who was brought up on a big council estate in Dagenham, left school at 14 and went to work on a newspaper. He eventually became a Fleet Street reporter and from there joined the Foreign Office as a press attache, then British Consul. These days you need a good degree from a redbrick uni to join the diplomatic service, so it must be nearly impossible for an ordinary kid from a council estate to have this sort of career path. Ironic really - we're supposed to have better social mobility now, but we don't.

I know this sounds really snobby and horrible, but I think that working class culture has become so degraded - I don't know how it's happened. If you look at tabloid newspapers from the 1950's - they actually had long articles in them about the economy! And working people often played musical instruments and had a musical culture. My mum knows dozens and dozens of folk songs (I'm teaching them to my children - Sweet Polly Oliver, the Raggle Taggle Gypsies, you know what I'm talking about). And people could cook and sew and make things. And they read books. My dad was reading Dickens at 13.........What's happened to people?

"What titty said about her child's state school about all the disruptive children etc shows why parents who can will pay to avoid those issues"

But you ignored the other things that I said - which were that my daughter is doing very well at school, despite the challenges her teachers face. She loves it and at 8 has a reading age of 13. The school has a wonderful choir (lots of African and West Indian girls who sing in church every weekend!) and does a great line in musical theatre. She's not outstandingly bright and won't be entering for any GCSE's before leaving primary but she's happy, and she's engaged with her education. I don't feel depressed about her schooling at all - not yet.

My concerns are about secondary, because it's here that the issue of 'choice' comes into play. With primaries selection isn't really so much of an issue, but with secondaries it is. My view is that the emphasis on selection we now have in secondary schooling has resulted in a sort of social polarisation in education that's been extremely damaging for ordinary kids.

"With primaries selection isn't really so much of an issue, but with secondaries it is. My view is that the emphasis on selection we now have in secondary schooling has resulted in a sort of social polarisation in education that's been extremely damaging for ordinary kids."

I agree with your second sentence but I am not sure that I agree with you about the first sentence. My experience is that primary is hugely significant - there is a comfortable myth that children are (or should be) just learning the three rs at primary. But they are not. Their schools have main entrypoints at 3, 7 and 11. They have a special not-setted catching up year for the newbies into year 3, because many are quite behind. I cannot tell you how sad it makes me feel that children can be thought of as being behind at 7.

tittybangbang - excellent, really interesting post. I think there's a lot of truth in what you say about the way our culture has degenerated in certain ways.
I also agree with you entirely about the factors which enable private schools to 'succeed'. I think a lot of the perceived positives are an 'absence of negatives' rather than actual positives. ie: you don't get the numbers of disruptive children, you don't get the less able children, you don't have such large classes. It doesn't mean that the quality of teaching is necessarily better. In fact those of us who have experience in education know that there is in most schools a core of really inspirational teachers, often the cream of the bunch, who are not interested in working for the private sector, and equally, there tend to be some teachers who struggle to cope in state who do make their way to private. Obviously I'm not saying all state teachers are excellent and all private ones aren't, but there is definitely some truth in that. I have seen private school teaching which is dull and pedestrian - and the pupils don't challenge it. There can be a culture of acceptance.
Xenia - no, of course it's not a toss up between being privately educated and ending up unhappy and dysfunctional or being state educated and having wonderful relationships!! I am simply pointing out that for most people, having an excellent job (which incidentally is perfectly possible when you've been state educated - I have one )is not the only goal in life. Relationships, the ability to pick a good partner etc are also important. If a private school education is so wonderful, then you wouldnt expect to see so many people who've had the 'advantage' of it, ending up in broken, dysfunctional relationships, or burnt out with stress, or unhappy.
Also - Xenia, your point about not seeing privately schooled pupils being educated beyond their natural ability - with all due respect I wouldnt expect you to see this, because your children are at highly selective top private schools. This, by definition, refers to a very small proportion of schools. There are very many private schools which aren't selective, or at least select only by filtering out the real 'bottom' end of the ability range - there are plenty of average or high average pupils. In these situations, they can and do get hothoused in a way that isn't really helpful for them when it comes to university and getting by on your own merits. I remember this myself from University. I got As in my A levels, from a comprehensive school. Not many of got As, but that was because (in those days particularly!!) an A was a grade that required high skill levels and knowledge and tbh if you weren't up to it, you shouldnt get awarded it. I was then really suprised to get to University to discover swathes of students from private schools who also had As - some of them clearly deserved, but an awful lot more who had been intensively pushed and hothoused and just were not up to it. It didn't do these students any favours at all at this level, where you need natural ability plus the motivation to push yourself.
I think the whole private/state debate is hugely complex, and I know that most people's views are also connected to what is on offer in their own area. If I lived in an area with really disadvantaged state schools, then I would consider private more seriously (though again, to avoid the negatives, rather than actually get 'better' teaching). Fortunately our local state school is excellent and achieves good academic results (at least as good as the local private schools when you consider that they don't take the full range of ability). It is in situations like this that it seems nuts to pay enormous amounts of money for education, particularly as some parents end up hugely in debt - I have friends who borrow money for school fees!! Crazy!
Oh and re: the extra curriuclar aspects of private schools - yes, it can seem that a lot os on offer, but remember, these things have to be paid for over and above the school fees anyway. So it's quite possible to do the music lessons, sailing etc etc outside of school anyway, and it's only going to cost you what it would cost through a private school. Although having said that, I was having dinner with an Oxford admissions tutor the other week and she told me that all the extra curricular activities that applicants put on their forms are largely ignored! She said Oxbridge are only interested in finding the best minds, the greatest intellect and potential, whether it comes from state or private schools. So you could be wasting your money believing all these things are making a difference anyway!!

Hi Desi - no, haven't still got the boater gave it to a friend's dd who started there after she left.

P.S I've just noticed something in Xenia's last post which is really interesting:

'Someone said you want happy children - yes but why not happy children who have good exam results, speak well, are educated to be like their parents and are happy?'

Why do you want to educate children to 'be like their parents'? Why not educate them to be themselves?
My children may turn out with similarities to me, and with similar aspirations, or with similar aspirations to DH, but I would rather feel that they have had an education which allows them to be who they want to be.

Re extra-curricular activities: some private schools can be a total rip off, like a friend of mine who was charged 2.5 x the going rate for piano lessons for her child and then had to give a term and a half's notice to discontinue the lessons.

Same friend had to spend an afternoon at A & E with 5 year old ds who had been jabbed in the eye with a pencil by another child.

Our music lessons are at the market rate.
On extracurricular activities most of the people with AAA will have very similar hobbies too like D of E awards, grade 8s in music, captain of hockey team and voluntary work. It's anything different from that that stands out and perhaps unusually none of the universities my 3 older children applied for had any interviews at all so how they come over in interview didn't matter.

What does seem to happen however is when they get to the stage of applying for jobs the ability to relate to the people who are interviewing you, to be able to look them in the eye, be interested in the subject etc does matter but of course you can educate that at home, ensure they speak properly with a good accent at home etc too.

I 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. i am glad my children have my accent, have imbibed my ethos, moral values, love of classical music and a whole load of other stuff not directly taught in their traditional private schools but kind of impregnated into them both by their peers from similar home where people work hard and believe having a job is a good idea etc. So part of what I wanted from a private school was to ensure they were similar to me whilst of course accepting they are very different from each other and me too.

I think I would probably be more concerned about this issue if I had children of average ability (and also if my local state school wasn't extremely good). As a general rule (and of course there are exceptions) I think children who have a learning difficulty are often catered for much better in the state sector. Bright children tend to do well wherever, so unless you are an over anxious parent who finds reassurance in the 'safety net' factor of private, then you're probably wasting your money! Or if not totally wasting it, you won't get a return commensurate with the money you spend.But I agree that probably the average child may who might struggle in a large class can make greater gains in a shorter period of time in private - though it will level out eventually, and of course care needs to be taken to not push the child beyond their natural ability.
Super bright children are an interesting case. One of my dcs falls into this category. He was at private school for a while (long story) but is now in the local state school and is happier and finds that the top ability kids are brighter than any he came across in private. 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. As all good state schools that I know of, set by ability, this means that in practice, he is in classes which are very similar to the private school, but larger and with the top end being brighter, which has been a huge motivating factor for ds. I would guess the private school he was at was typical of many - good, but not in the elite 'top' ones. I find it an interesting question over whether he would be better suited to one of the ones that Xenia describes - ie highly selective, choosing only the very bright. I suspect not. Although the pupils would all be very able, I suspect he would find the narrowness which is inevitable with any highly selective situation, rather limiting. He is very socially and politically (in the broad sense) aware. He has aspirations to get into a top university, and knows that he has the ability to do it without needing to be surrounded by very similar middle class people. Of course, he's not there yet, so we shall see, but I think that;s a very healthy outlook to have.
I totally agree with Xenia that being able to look someone in the eye, speak confidently and clearly etc are really important attributes - but they really aren't confined to privately educated people!! I think this is one of the real disadvantages of having an experience solely limited to the private sector - you don't know any different, so you are fearful of anything else and think that everyone at a state school chews gum, mumbles and can't look at you when they're talking. Yes, there are kids like that. But not the bright ones. Walk into a comprehensive and go into the top set, or other high set lessons, and you will see confident, alert and interesting young people. There will probably be very little noticeable difference with private school kids - except a larger class, possibly shabbier classroom (though not always - I know lots of private schools which have beautiful reception areas and then cruddy mobile teaching rooms!!). And you may find the teacher in the state school more dynamic and up to date.
Ultimately there is a lot more to life than school/university and job though. I think it is sometimes really hard for children who have had a very protected environment to cope when things are tough in life. Qualities like confidence (real core of inner confidence , not just being able to put on a good show) empathy, independent thinking.... qualities necessary to live a successful life, aren't always learned just by being protected and privileged. 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.

Tittybangbang--you are so right.

The worst thing our society has done, in my view, is debased a whole part of the working class into an underclass: offer it reality TV and footballers' lives as the best culture on offer.

Perhaps what's happened is that the more prosperous and hard-working in the old working class have moved up into the middle class. But when I hear your father's story and your grandfather's I wonder how far we've moved as a society.