I am happy with my children's state education but every so often I find myself talking to a 'private education' parent and just feel totally stressed

[Twiglett]

that there is no way my children can have the same quality and range of education and range of experiences and access to extra-curricular activities

poo-bum willy-faced bollox

" IMO having her in the class is a wonderful learning experience for ds. "

I find this sort of comment about a SN pupil deeply patronising and hear it all the time. SN children are not there simply for other's education and learning.

Every metropolitan area has a pecking order of schools. Where we are it would have Westminster, St Paul's, North London Colegiate, Haberdashers boys and girls , then merchant taylors all near the top. Then second league St helens then down a bit to schools like Royal Masonic (girls very sport but not very bright) Aldenham etc.

There are more private schools around the country which cater for the normal or lower IQ child than those who re in the top 10% for IQ.Rich parents are as likely to have children with average IQ as anyone is and they need places to educate their children. Most of those boarding schools that limp along lowish in league tables do so because the chidlren aren't very bright.

Why would there not be a market to educate not very clever children of the rich? Of course there would be.

We never had the experience someone described above of school dominating lives. I just would not have been prepared as a full time working mother to sit around waiting for children to finish clubs etc. Perhaps you make these things as you would and we like perhaps most parents at Haberdashers and the other schools were all buying the shiny second hand blazers in the school sales of course, not the brand new stuff.

Teslagirl: I really shouldn't allow myself to be provoked (esp. not when I should be working), but...

Is your friend really a "very close friend"? To judge by your comments, it would seem that you don't really like her that much (her son is "precious", you assume that she's "jealous" of you). What makes you think she'd be jealous of you - unless she's actually said so?

Frankly, I'd rather have our bargain bucket week in Scarborough and private school for the DCs than European Center Parcs and Brittany, but that's just a personal choice.

One could say that your friend (and I don't know her, so I could equally well be wrong) is doing the common private school mummy thing of telling you all the disadvantages to her children's school and their family life in order not to come across as a snotty, pampered private school mummy. I suspect that if she really disliked the school, or her lifestyle, she wouldn't be spending her/her husband's money on it. Just a thought!

(And school may very well not dominate the family's life during the extensive holidays... which I love! Being able to go out and about without hordes of other children around is wonderful...)

For my own part, I am glad that my DD won't be going to a school where the girls wear polyester trousers, which are my pet hate. At least she will be wearing a lovely woollen tunic while she's learning about willy-heads. That in itself has to be worth £110, no?

Oh, and Xenia is quite right - there are plenty of independent schools for less-bright children, most of which schools serve their pupils extremely well.

I would like to suffer from private school envy more than I do! Unfortunately the reportedly best private school doesn't look much cop so no chance of bleeding the family coffers dry to pay for the privilege.

The main thing is not to worry about it all. I've three children at university stage and so much of how children turn out is genetics about which you can do nothing. Too many parents blame themselves for things all the time. Women need courses on how to ditch some of their guilt, guilt over being home or work, over how much attention they give their husband and children and employer and what schools they choose for children and how they bring them up. Do the best you can and then that's enough. Don't sit there worrying about it. Do what you think is right. Most children go to state schools. Many do very well.

If you can afford to pay for a good day private school then I'd say go for it because they do tend to be better but if you can't afford it or don't want to work as hard or smart as you'd need to as a woman paying fees then don't. If your ethos is I'd rather have a showy car or expensive shoes or nice holidays than pay for education then that's fine - those are your values - be proud of them.

If you can hardly afford to feed the family never mind go on holiday then either earn more or accept they go to the best state school you can manage. Always think laterally. Ours for example were pretty good at music. I think our son who got a music scholarship at 12 had grade 8 singing, grade 6 trumpet and piano, grade 5 theory etc By that means he got a discount on fees. Other couples we know get jobs in private schools so they don't have to pay fees. There are plenty of ways to skin a cat.

I suspect Dot's experience of private schools is the normal one and like mine, lots of parents working hard who aren't particularly well off, 100% of one net wage going on fees for 2 children. As the cost of full time child care for 2 or 3 children such as a day nanny is not too different from the cost of 2 private school day places I suspect plenty of parents where both work full time don't feel a huge extra cost when the children go to school at 5 because they've been paying for the child care anyway or so we found.

Xenia on Mon 14-Jul-08 20:02:34
"Cory, that's a really very fundamental issue about education. Most comprehensives stream so you never get the not so bright in the same class the super bright, do you? Thus doesn't that prove just about every school in the land agrees with me that you can't easily educate children properly with different ability levels however left wing you are?"

You speak of streaming as if that were something incompatible with mixed ability classes, but this isn't actually how it works in the state system, Xenia.

Classes are mixed ability, streaming is only done for (a few) individual subjects. Classes are deliberately put together so that you do get the super bright in the same class as the not so bright; schools are usually very anxious to ensure this.

Dd, who is bright, is in top set for literacy and maths, but is taught with her whole mixed ability class for other subjects, such as geography and history. I am very pleased with this arrangement, as it gives her both the chance to stretch herself at times and the (equally valuable) opportunity to develop her communication skills by working together with children of lesser academic ability.

Ds, who is better at maths than literacy, is in a higher set for maths than for literacy. Sets are very flexible, so that pupils are easily moved up when they improve their performance (or moved down if the work proves too hard for them).

This isn't the only way that education can work. I was brought up in the Swedish school system at the time when it was the highest performing in the world. Only a handful independent schools in the country and no streaming until secondary school (and then only on the model described above). Yet I came out of it with a good grasp of 5 foreign languages and a general education which has not made me feel inferior when mixing with top English academics.

'Women need courses on how to ditch some of their guilt' says xenia, who seems to specialise in making women feel guilty

Streaming/setting varies from school to school and LEA to LEA. Some set, some stream and some only set for some subjects. In fact, while most schools do group by ability to some extent in at least some subjects and you might assume this would be common sense research suggests that students actually do better in mixed ability classes and scenarios. Just like those students who don't pass the 11+ those students in the bottom sets are written off and never recover their esteem. They stop competing and are often automatically entered for Foundation or no exams. Streaming or banding can mean that a student is put in low sets for all subjects when really they're just struggling in 1 or 2. Who would want to teach and learn in a bottom group and just with the old grammar school system you can only have a minority at the top who benefit nd as ever these are almost certainly going to be the students who would do well anyway while everyone else (the majority) suffer as a result of this sort of selection.

In principle, I am in favour of mixed ability classes and including students with SN or behavioural problems in mainstream education where appropriate however, as a teacher and parent, I know that this sort of teaching demands smaller class sizes, approprite staff training and support, more time to plan and assess lessons and more assistance actually in the class room. We all know this doesn't happen enough which means teaching and learning in mixed ability classes is stressful and very, very hard work if it is to be successful.

Where there are students with SN or behavioural difficulties I think class sizes should be no more than 10 ideally with 2 staff for teaching and learning to be really effective.

Again this is why I chose private school. THe schools near me take students from very deprived catchments. The students needs are complex and diverse from schools which take a majority of students have English as a second language, to schools which have a significant number of students whose parents are drug addicts etc. But the training and staff ratio is insufficient to be able to deal with all these needs effectively.

While laudible to say, 'I want my child to mix with all sorts of children with special needs and behavioural difficulties etc' it's also quite naive. Most parents don't feel quite like this when their child is trying to study for GCSE but can't finish their coursework because the student sitting next to them shouts out 'dishwasher' every 10 minutes and their teacher has a sheet of targets to tick every 10 minutes if this one student manages to 'remain seated' 'not shout out' and so on (yes, I've taught this student in exactly these circumstances with 29 others in the same class). Most parents don't feel quite like this when their child becomes the victim of bullying by a student who is racist, abusive and sometimes violent (this is what 'behavioural difficulties' sometimes means).

GivePeasAChance on Mon 14-Jul-08 22:09:53
"
" IMO having her in the class is a wonderful learning experience for ds. "

I find this sort of comment about a SN pupil deeply patronising and hear it all the time. SN children are not there simply for other's education and learning. "

I'm sorry about that: I should have put it better.

But as someone who has a disabled child herself, I am deeply conscious that her future depends on what her contemporaries learn about disability now. If they get used to it as an everyday part of life, then her adult life will be of a better quality.

It is the SN child who will benefit if the rest are better educated about SN. They will be her workmates, her carers, the politicians who make decisions affecting her future. Children with disabilities do not live in a vacuum. They need a society that is aware of them. And that kind of society is good for all of us.

I was happy for dd to use her disability to educate the other children during Health Awareness week. Didn't seem patronising to me, just realistic. She is the one that will benefit. Uneducated people who are ignorant of disabled issues are no good to anyone.

"While laudible to say, 'I want my child to mix with all sorts of children with special needs and behavioural difficulties etc' it's also quite naive."

Earlier posts in the thread do seem to suggest that there are parents who manage to retain that naivety right through the entire school career of their child. So at what point does naivety become experience?

"Most parents don't feel quite like this when their child becomes the victim of bullying by a student who is racist, abusive and sometimes violent (this is what 'behavioural difficulties' sometimes means)."

Sounds like an account of John Mortimer's experiences at Harrow (as portrayed in his autobiography). I think we have had enough experience-based posts suggesting that independent schools are not necessarily immune to bullying problems. The only place of education where anyone in my family has come across drugs was in a very prestigious private school.

On the other hand, lots of children get through the state system intact. Dd, who is not only disabled but incontinent, has had nothing but support and understanding from the other children. This is not a school with high results or a school that parents would move to get into; it is just a very average junior school in an area, with academic results somewhat lower than the national average. Virtually all schools around here are the same; that does not mean that they don't clamp down on bullying.

What I objected to most in Xenia's post was not actually the "behavioural difficulty" part, but the suggestion that having to work with a child of lesser intelligence is something that should be avoided. In my experience, this is something you need to learn about in life.

Oh, Cory, of course there are going to be examples of disruption in independent schools and wonderful practice in state schools. We are dealing here with a mixture of what is generally true and what is our particular experience.

In general, you do not get disruptive behaviour IN THE CLASSROOM in private schools. And there are obvious reasons why not - any student who is disrupting other people's learning can be asked to leave (this is not something available to teachers in state schools and teachers and students really, really suffer because there is sometimes nothing they can do with a disruptive student), parents of the children in private school all support their children's education enought to pay for it (where there is always going to be a proprotion of parents albeit a small minority in state schools who couldn't give a toss or are even hostile to the concep of education and possibly abusive to teachers) and so on.

While it might be in principle a good idea for students with SN and behavioural difficulties to be included in mainstream education and I'm glad your experience has been positive almost any teacher and many students will tell you that class sizes, support and training are simply not adequate in many schools where students have complex needs.

I wouldn't for a second criticise teachers or schools themseves (after all, dp and I both teach in the state system). In fact, I think by and large they do a great job with the resources and support they have available to them.

Parents have to weigh up whether their local school can adequately support and challenge their own child. I'm glad you think yours does but mine don't. The 'good' ones are faith schools and we don't have a faith and the others have students with such complex needs that I do not believe that my children would get much attention because the teachers would need to devote so much time and effort to students who are more 'needy' in one way or another than my own kids.

"'Women need courses on how to ditch some of their guilt' says xenia, who seems to specialise in making women feel guilty"

Nobody can make anyone else feel guilty, southeastastra, unless they already believe at some level that they need to feel guilty!

Personally, I don't do guilt (contrary to popular belief, it is possible to be a mother and not to feel guilty about anything at all...).

Oh, I forgot...

"Unfortunately the reportedly best private school doesn't look much cop."

Have you met the children and looked round the school, Heated, or do you mean it doesn't look much cop from the outside?

I just think of the friends I know who went to private school. Two of whom are professional lye abouts. One of whom had a stealing fetish and all of whom had a deep love of class a drugs. I'm happy with state school for mine!

whoopsie3 you cannot use the example of 2 people who just happen to know personally to make a wider point about the merits or otherwise of state or private education.

I'm glad you're happy with your state school and I'm sorry you happen to know people who in spite of or because of their private school education have psychological problems but I don't think it's possible to draw any conclusions from these isolated examples.

So my private education explains my lack of a job, my tendency to steal my children's Easter eggs and my fond memories of codeine post-c-section. Bingo! Thank you for enlightening me, whoopsie.

Another thing, there is an assumption here that state education is great for kids with SN whereas there are plenty of examples of parents who take there kids out of state education and put them into private education precisely because they have SN and are not being given the support they need in mainstream education. Ruth Kelly springs to mind!!

The bottom line is that there is no child who would not benefit from the small class sizes, specialist teaching and other resources which are often available to private schools but often not to state.

We're probably all agreed that the state system SHOULD have access to the staff to student ratio, high expectations, lack of disruption etc that many private schools have too

BUT

as it doesn't yet people are left to make difficult choices based on their own children's needs, availability of local schools and personal circumstances.

AND

whatever choice you make as with any other area of life there are always going to be disadvantages and examples of people who do not succeed.

Mmm, I would guess I know a roughly equal number of people who went to private and state schools, and I would say they exhibit normal and abnormal behaviours in roughly equal numbers.

I find it remarkable how on these threads people are always saying stuff like "Well, I know someone screwed up/massively successful who went to private/state school" (delete as applicable) and then forming judgments from them. It's the same with the summer-born children starting school too young stuff.

My own experience is interesting, but not does not provide compelling data.

One point that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is the importance of GUMPTION.

Living in the UK, it is absolutely ridiculous for any parent to feel guilty and angst-ridden about the type of educational opportunities we offer our children.

Every single child has the opportunity to succeed. Every single one. It might be harder for some (coming from deprived backgrounds or attending sink schools) than others but the fact remains, the opportunity is there.

Whether or not a child chooses to make the best use of the opportunities on offer is a matter of individual GUMPTION.

My children work hard for now. In general. Bit worried about DS occasionally but on the whole they are very engaged and trying and competing. They are 8&10. I hope that they will continue to do so. The fact is that they may not. We as parents should not beat ourselves up for what our children do. It is for the most part, entirely their choice.

I think you're right QC that the opportunity is there. However, in our country the fact is that the children most at risk at being unable to access or exploit that opportunity (because of their social background etc) are exactly the children most likely to end up in the worst performing schools which means they are even less likely to be able to take advantage of the opportunities which are, in theory, available to them.

There are quite a few children at my dcs' private school who absolutely do not conform to stereotypes. For example, a black boy whose parents are in jobs with low incomes (but work more than 1 job and do night shift to afford fees) and the children of Chinese immigrants whose parents speak little English and have little conventional education. While I know these children would have had the OPPORTUNITY to succeed in their local state schools I really wonder how they would get on. In a school which gets 100% A-C and has high expectations for its pupils the chances are they will get 8 C+ GCSEs but in a school which gets 40% A-C where there is disruption and low expectations and a tangible anti-boff culture particularly amongst black boys...

Being in a shool culture where there is a lack of aspiration and lack of respect for learning (amongst the students) can probably outweigh the positive influence of any amount of 'gumption' or intelligence.

Of course, no real way of measuring these things.

I'm surprised by all the posts saying that one would avoid disrupted classes by choosing private education.

I went to a private selective girls school at secondary level. There were some excellent teachers. However some teachers were not that great and were unable to control a group of 24 high spirited girls...

My brother went to a private boys school and they would also play around in certain teachers lessons.

My DS is in a two form entry state primary school with 28 children per class. Whenever I have had to pop in to drop something off I have always found the class working in an orderly fashion.

I think the main benefit of private schools is the smaller class sizes, and I think private schools focus more on ensuring each child reaches their full potential. I also have a DD in the nursery class of a prep school - when I go to events at her school the children come across as more confident, although some slightly are precocious.

I expect that the lessons at the private school are more interesting as the private school teachers are on the whole more experienced, have spent longer in the school and make the lessons more interesting by making more use of the outdoor space etc., and doing more imaginative acitivities with the children.

At my DS's state primary the school achieves high academic standards, the children appear happy but I suspect that the lessons are not as interesting in some cases as in a private school, and I suspect there is less time allocated to sport and music.

I sometimes look at my DS who is not that confident and wonder if he would do better academically in the private sector..however I don't feel that it would be worth spending £3600 per term for prep school fees at a school 20 mins drive away when he appears happy in his state school, and has local friends which I feel is important at primary age.

If there were a prep school on our doorstep I might be tempted to go back to work to pay the fees. There is no private prep school within a 6 mile radius of our house whereas there are several good state primaries and a good comp.