groaning under the weight of private school fees!

[pearso]

Hello,
I've got one child at private school, the other still at state primary for another year and we're dreading the decision next year about what to do. It's very unlikely we'll be able to afford a second set of school fees. Is anyone else in a similar situation? I'd love to hear from you if you are.... I'm also writing about it in my column for the Evening Standard so wouldn't use names but would love to hear what people think, especially in London and about any experiences good or bad.
thanks!

Xenia, I didn't ask what kind of teenager thinks about future earnigs when picking a career, I asked what kind of teen thinks about school fees.

You can have a very comfortable life on £50k a year but if you want to put 2/3 kids through private education you will be skint on £50k a year!

I am guessing you live in London Xenia. I don't, and my DSs have all been through or are going through the local comprehensive. Children regularly go to Oxbridge and other good universities. It isn't a sink school! The pupils and teachers have high aspirations- and I can assure you that the parents do!

I think Xenia is being a little disengenuous when she goes on about 'clever teenagers planning ahead and picking a career that will earn them enough for private school fees'. She is quite open about the fact that she picked a pretty useless husband who has since fleeced her of a large slice of her earnings. That wasn't very good planning was it?

Violethill!

what?!

I'm not saying anything Xenia doesn't tell us herself!

I think Xenia sounds like a good laugh actually - I have nothing against her personally! But some of her posts are bizarre! If she seriously thinks that teenagers should be planning ahead regarding income and school fees, then surely it makes sense to plan your marriage carefully too!

"And 70% A - C is not at all good compared with 99% A or A* which you get in the better priave schools but they are selective"

Of COURSE you get that sort of result at a selective school - it would be shameful if you didn't! My dd's state school gets that sort of result too - so it should, it's selective.

The top 30-odd % of children will get very good results whether they are the top stream of a comprehensive or the entire year group at a grammar or a selective independent.

"The top 30-odd % of children will get very good results whether they are the top stream of a comprehensive or the entire year group at a grammar or a selective independent."

That is not our experience. DD took CAT tests when she entered the Secondary at Y7 and was predicted A Grades in every subject, bar one. After five years in a school that did not value acheivement nor effort, she came out with a string of Bs. All effort seemed to be on getting the low-acheiving up to a C Grade. Whether the more able got a C, B, A or A* wasn't important to the school.

In the grand scheme of things, she didn't get a bad result but definitely not a "very good result".

iamdisappointed - CAT tests are not really a good indicator of whether a child will achieve A grades in each subject.

However, if your dd genuinely was an A grade candidate and underachieved, then I agree, it sounds like a pretty disappointing school.

"CAT tests are not really a good indicator of whether a child will achieve A grades in each subject."

Excuse me!?
Isn't the whole point of CATs that they are used as the base point (compared to the end-result GCSEs) for calculating value-added.

The problem is that the DC has to put in the work. I know several bright DCs who have not fulfilled their potential-their social life has become more important! My DS2 struggled throughout school, his best friend at primary school got top grades early on but he messed up at GCSE (bad choice of friends) and my DS outperformed him! The school can only do so much. I am not saying that it isn't the school's fault,not knowing the school iamdissapointedinyou,but other things come into play. Some DCs are late developers. CAT tests are only an indicator.

CAT tests are a measure of verbal, non-verbal and quantitative potential.

GCSEs require a range of skills; getting A grades in particular means that a pupil needs to work fairly consistently to achieve well in module exams and coursework throughout the whole of Year 10 and 11. There are also quite specific subject skills that CAT tests in Year 7 are not designed to predict.

I wonder if everyone thought like Xenia just who would look after her when she's taken ill or look after her children when she's off to work? It's a good job that some people do like caring/nursing etc and get more out of a job than money as I don't think my children would have arrived safely having them alone!
My old comprehensive (in Somerset), now a beacon school, does much better than any private school where I live now.

I think Xenia has that totally covered Divine - it's the poor people from state schools who provide those services lol.

As you say, she needs the very thing that she denigrates constantly, bless her.

i agree violethill - for my subject CAT tests are generally nonsense. We have some pupils who score extremely highly on these tests but are tone deaf, unable to keep a beat, differentiate between instrumental families or play a simple melody. Theres more to ability than verbal and non verbal.

Those people usually drop music so it is never actually assessed at GCSE for them.

That would hopefully be the case ScienceTeacher - but the point was that CAT tests are not always an accurate indicator of GCSE performance.

They are not 100% predictive in every case, but there is a strong correlation between CAT results and GCSE performance. As others have pointed out, there is a lot that goes on between Y7 and Y11. A child might go off the rails despite everything a school does to help, but similarly a school can fail the child.

They are used in AV calculations.

We use Midyis in our school, and we use them very seriously throughout a girls' senior school career.

I think the whole point is that school is a two way process-it is not something delivered to a passive pupil by the school! It seems to me that pupils are spoon fed these days and a lot don't like having to think for themselves-as a wide generalisation. It doesn't matter what the scores are, or how good the school is-it still requires effort.

I agree pisces - there is too much spoon feeding these days.

What do you mean by spoon-feeding?

If it's any consolation to parents out there who couldn't afford school fees, and worry that their child will not fulfil their potential (e.g. get Bs or Cs at a weaker school when perhaps they could've got As at an independent school) - universities are increasingly looking at the whole package of an application. So, for example, a student applies with Bs and Cs from a weak school. They are seen to 'outperform' a student with all As from a very good school, because the former student had to work against the odds to achieve the result they did.

Independent schools have been bleating pathetically about this for some time, calling it positive discrimination. Bollocks. We interviewers at universities can tell the 'hot-housed' independently schooled students who get As, but are really pretty average, from the bright kids from weaker schools who could never have got an A because of their school's background. Guess who gets the offer?

It's happening. Believe me. It'll take time to balance out a centuries' old inequality, but it is happening, slowly. Even at Oxbridge (exceptions are being made to the 3 A requirement these days - I've seen it).

You're right - it is happening now, and long overdue Penthe

My kids wouldn't want to go to Bristol anyway, so there!

Who said anything about Bristol? I'm not at Bristol...

True, they made the headlines with apparent positive discrimination. More power to them, I guess.