arabella weir on why we must send our kids to state schools

[nowirehangers]

Arabella on why she would never send her kids to private schools
What do people think?
Fwiw I find the tone unbelievably smug. I also disagree with a lot of what's being said. I don't think all parents send thier kids to private schools so they can avoid the great unwashed, though some do. I would love my dcs to go to a state school for the reasons she mentions.
What puts me off is the fact the teaching is so often mediocre - as the Chief Inspector of Schools admitted this week. Of course there are so incredible teachers in the state system but I fear there are a lot of second-rate one too. I went to a state primary where the teaching was awful then was moved in to a private school and couldn't believe how much more stimulating the atmosphere was and how much more inspirational the teachers were. I dislike the idea of my dcs mixing only with posh kids, so I'm going to put mye experience down as an unlucky one and give the local state school the benefit of the doubt but if I feel they're being taught badly I will remove them and remortgage the house or whatever to make it work. Anyway, that's my opinion, interested in others.

mine was class free - but not "nice" free ie the nice kids seemed to make friedns with the nice kids. My friends were reasonably diverse but we were all "nice", the hard cases kept to their own scary groups.

She's right.

The ONLY concern I would have would be that my child would be taking the place of somebody who couldn't afford private school.

I went to private school myself, and was in the bottom class. I was left to rot. It took me years to recover and realise that I was not stupid, I was just the worst of the best (It did have an entrance exam, so it was full of academic rich children).

My parents paid handsomely for me to leave school with no self-esteem whatsoever.

Those clever children in the top classes, they would have done well anywhere I suppose.

there will always be social groups and i think KEWcumber has it spot on. i am so v. glad that my dd has 'nice' friends. and my DS has 'geeky' friends and that neither is a hardcase.

that said - i still think LMD's earlier point about parental investment in the schools system - when that partic system doesn't apply to you ( becuase you send your kids to private) is questionable en masse

i got called posh too which is ridiculous as i'm dead common

What's wrong with being called Jago - 'tis a good west country name.

ds is educated privately, but I taught in the state sector because I am bothered about it. However, there is a mind set amongst certain of the older teachers that they can't learn from the private sector...they should. There is also the feeling of being at the mercy of whoever is sec of state for education this week. I has respect for Estelle Morris as she had actually taught, and Charles Clarke was very supportive of my subject area and seemed to have an interest in improving things, but Ed Balls hasn't got a bloody clue.

At a private school you teach to the syllabus for the exams obviously, but you are not so straitjacketed further down and have time to enthuse the students and get them interested, because you are not preparing them for SATS. State schools are driven by the varying and ever changing requirements of government, rather than by education, and that's where the problem lies.

dh went to a really rough comprehensive. he was bullied mercilessly for speaking with a 'posh' voice and was repeatedly beaten up. One teacher even mimicked his voice to curry favour with some of the unruly boys in her class and did impressions of dh every time he had to answer a question.

dh said that after a few truly miserable few years when he even contemplated killing himself, he found a couple of friends who were from 'middle class' homes and he finally had people to hang out with.

dh isn't an (old) Tarquin or Cuthbert, he just happens to speak how he does. And he comes from a very ordinary, in fact poor, but educated, background.

What I am trying to say here is that you can't possibly engineer with whom children choose to be friends.

My ds is very geeky and likes chess, cricket and reading. He goes to an ordinary state school. Of course he has found friends with similar interests. Should he be forced to play with boys who like football and play computer games? Should he hell.

FioFio, I remember walking past the children from the local school with my blazer, flute and hockey stick. It was character building.

nothing's wrong with Jago, scary, actually I quite like it
But was at a Notting Hill birthday party the other day and 'twas the name of about three of the boys, made me laugh.
Quite about teachers enthusing, in my private sixth form we spent the first year of English A level studying books that had nothing to do with the syllabus but which gave us a huge, wide-ranging appreciation of English lit. We only buckled down to the set texts in the second year. It was eye-opening, stimulating and sadly I doubt any state English teacher would be granted the freedom to follow such a path

Jago is one of those names which lovely though it is, is practically in the top 30 names in certain pockets of London.

Nowirehangers - that sounds fab.
I don't understand why the government insist on strangling state schools with the NC and SATs. Do any teachers think they're a positive thing?

tis fear of exactly the opinion that state education is rubbish..they need to show, in facts and figures, that it is good/improving.

it's also this capitalist culture we have, where we expect to be customers for every service, rather than parents/patients/passengers.

our taxes are paying for this! we demand to know how well our school is doing! we demand to know if our school is better or worse than the school up the road! we demand to know if little Johnny is achieving at the right level for his age! therefore we need more exam results and tests!

whereas if we pay for education, we tend to start from the assumption that the education is good, and just look at how happy little Johnny is, and how his grades in his class are good, and take it on trust that this means he'll do well in his GCSEs.

posh accent/not posh school here too - thankfully no blazer or hocky stick and the cello was big enough to be intimidating... (and I'm a bit of a posh bruiser)

Litchick - I'm a teacher and I hate the NC and SATS. There's enough standardisation of the syllabus at GCSE, why do it lower down the school?

SATS don't test the kids, they test the teachers!

Grrr to all the Londoners nicking our Cornish names..stick to Tarquin!

must be a very specific area of London - have never come it around here.

Go to w11, kew, shout it in westbourne grove and a head will stick out of every blue bugaboo in response

A state grammar school, if only! I went to one and I was so happy there. There are still grammars in Salisbury where I grew up, not around here unfortunately.

DH had a similar experience to someone who said earlier that their DH was miserable after moving from private school to a rough comp, my DH had a similar experience but for him it was the teachers not the pupils who made his life a misery, mocking his accent, and generally ripping the piss out of him in class to try to impress the kids. He had been at private school under assisted places scheme and the rules changed (the funding changed and his parents refused to contribute even though they could afford it as they frankly couldn't be arsed about his education).

yes, I don't think it is a fair assumption that people who pay for education don't care about state education. As things stand, we will go private because our local state schools are dreadful. But I have no problem in paying more tax to improve state education: but only if it works!

I haven't read the whole thread but where I live the state schools are not good at all, and even one of the better ones which I worked in, (and therefore got a view from inside the staff room was pervasive apathy in all the teachers!), is not somewhere I would be happy for my child to go.

My younger dd has therefore just started reception at a local independent school because I didn't feel I had any other reasonable choice in the state primaries nearby. I don't want her going to a school where a day can come and go and she's barely noticed because of the large class size, or where she will not have any 1:1 with the teacher for days on end. Nor do I want her to go to a school where the pastoral care is lacking.

I do agree that independent schools tend not to be so good in their approach for children who have special needs. My older dd, who has ASD is a different case altogether. She does ABA with school integration and we managed to get her a place at one of the best state primaries in the county but ONLY because she has a statement. My other daughter wouldn't have a hope of getting a place there. This school has taken her ABA program on very well and there is a lovely community feel, but sadly where I live that cannot be said for the majority.

But deepinlaundry, since using independent schools means you had a choice - why on earth did you choose a school with horrid parents and little pastoral care?

People who are actively using state education are going to have a more active interest. Their interest will also be based on their real experiences, rather than what they think might be the state of play in the state sector. In the same way I was more interested in maternity rights etc when I was starting a family. Certainly my voting preferences over the last fifteen years or so have been heavily influenced by health policy because I was directly affected, given that I worked for the NHS.

I agree with some of AW's comments, certainly some people appear to be afraid of even looking at schools which aren't obviously "flying", and if that means that the only children who go there have uninterested parents then that school is going to struggle.

Clearly stupid to say that not sending your child to private schools is a kick in the teeth, after all the majority of children do not go to private school, and a good proportion of them will be successful in their future lives and careers.

I also think that the hang ups about class size are somewhat misplaced. I understood from the international league tables that there is no particular correlation, at least at primary level. Indeed some of the most academically successful countries have large classes and teach by role learning, something many parents would be horrified by.

Well if we take Rex from BB as an example - product of a private school and couldn't even read the word PLACARD..hmm, money well spent me thinks daddy/mammy Rex. Not. haha

It took the defo public schooled Rachel to put him right, the thicko.

The hang ups about class size are not misplaced at all. If you have 32 students in a class and see them (at secondary) for an hour a week, you have precisely 60 seconds with each child once they are on task and working. In those seconds you are suppose to greet the child, ascertain how they are, and how they are doing in your lesson. Then, if you need to spend more time with one child, another loses out. It ain't possible to do it, believe me, I did it for years.

I am horrified by rote learning which is what I presume you mean. I wanted to produce students who were independent thinkers and could reason and research on their own with guidance. Rote learning is good for times tables, the periodic timetable and the alphabet. I did not use it in my lessons ever.