Everyone who lives near me and can afford it seems to be sending their kids to private schools…

[sanssucre]

That's it really, I guess I've just been really surprised that none of them has even considered the local primary schools. DD will start school next year and I'd just always assumed she would go to one of the decent primary schools nearby (there are several and I'm confident we'll get into one).

Thing is, we could actually afford to go private (it would mean some sacrifices but it's do-able), we've just always wanted her to have local friends, go to a nearby school, mix with a wide variety of people etc so I haven't explored the independent option at all. However, in all honesty, the fact that so many people in a similar financial situation to ours haven't even bothered to look round the state primaries is making me wonder if I'm being hopelessly optimistic. But seriously, is it really worth spending thousands of pounds a term to teach a 4/5/6-year-old? I'm not being sarcastic or judgy, it's a genuine question, I just honestly want to know what can be so terrible about a reasonable state primary school that so many people wouldn't even give it a second look.

I appreciate that my post might raise a few heckles. I know we're very fortunate to be able to afford private education if that is the way we choose to go. I also understand that this is a very contentious/emotive issue but I'd be really grateful for some honest opinions.

Our local primary is Ofsted oustanding, lovely teachers and just over the road from us. It would be silly to spend thousands to drive 45minutes to take daughter to the (admittedly nice) pre-prep.

I would have been offended if anyone had suggested that I couldn't get into a private school or decent university because I'd been to a state primary.

I graduated from Cambridge University with a first having been to a motley collection of primary schools, a good state comp. and a fun State Sixth Form.

My last village primary was dire (they would not be allowed to be like this now) but many of its alumnae are very successful medical directors, academics, engineers etc.)

Around us we have very good state primaries but there is a lot of snobbery about them...a school with a poor Ofsted but white middle class parents will remain popular whilst a school with a good ofsted but poorer parents will be less so. I alternate between finding people's attitudes infuriating and being relieved that our school (the less pop. one) isn't full of anxious parents driving from miles away.

Builder - that goes back to the fact that clever, self-motivated people with loving, supportive parents are likely to be pretty well out of life regardless. Maybe some parents worry that their children aren't clever or self-motivated enough and need a little extra push (she said provocatively...).

If you are comparatively, unusually posh and very well off, what then? Thinking of a child in a 'new money' area who stands out like a sore thumb and isn't liked as a result. Wouldn't it be much better for them to blend in amongst an upper middle class cohort? This would be more likely found at a private school.

I think that people who have been privately educated themselves tend to want to privately educate their children if only because they think they understand what they will be getting and because they are fearful that if things went wrong for their kids in the state sector they would feel guilty that they had not given their kids the same "opportunity" they had. ie, it's not that they necessarily think state provision is inadequate.

Or the opposite in my case... I was privately educated, so were all my siblings, and it is the LAST thing I would want for my children! Private schools do not give a better level of education. They rely solely on the fact they are selective and are able to cherry pick the right families who have the motivation and desire for their children. If private schools had to take a cross section of pupils from all backgrounds (ie offer a high percentage of non academic based scholarships), I believe most would fail spectacularly.

The teaching is often antiquated and outdated but goes unchallenged as the result remain high.

Children within private schools tend to grown up with a skewed perception of the world - I remember feeling sorry for people living in terraced houses ffs!

They have pupils on the whole who come from well educated families with a strong drive and desire to succeed - and for their children to succeed.

cortina... whuuuuu? In this area where there's some new money of which you speak, the posh child must be kept away from those whose wealth was more recently accrued, as he would certainly be bullied and unhappy, is that actually what you're saying?

yes, spot on - grovel

And thank you all very much indeed, you've been v helpful & insightful. It's not that I have no experience of private education, I went to a private, single sex secondary school ? albeit one with a fairly good social & ethnic mix (there were lots of scholarships available and also a lot of international students) ? but the circumstances were very different. It was a nice school and I still have many friends who I met there but academically it was no great shakes and I'm not convinced that the fees were worth it. Having said that, I appreciate that my parents worked very hard to send me there and were doing what they thought was the best thing for me and of course I want to do whatever is best for my own kids, I'm just not convinced that is necessarily going private. DH, for example, went mostly to state schools (apart from a short stint at a grant-maintained school) and really thrived academically, though of course it's not just about that.

I'm speaking from experience and being totally honest about what I've observed. It may not be PC but if a child is going to vastly differ from their peers they might do better elsewhere, I've seen children destroyed over time. If the families belief and value systems and the childs are completely out of line with the peer group it doesn't always end happily.

what if the child in question is poorer or less 'posh' than the average at his local state school?

Feckwit- that wasnt the case at my private school.20% of pupils were on the assisted places scheme yet at the time the school was the 4th highest in scotland for exam results.

However, to answer the op, if i had the means i would only consider privates at secondary the dcs who had been to the private primary had a big advantage esp re languages and music.

Ds is at a well regarded state primary but it isnt a patch on the education his friend at a private is getting, yr3.

Righto, I seem to have cross-posted with lots of people.

cortina - not sure I get your point, you think that upper class children will be picked on by wealthy but less posh kids and therefore it would be better for the two groups to remain segregated?! Apologies if I've misunderstood.

Re the wraparound care point that lots have people have made - I can see how that would make a big difference. As it happens, I work freelance so it's not such an issue for me. And actually, there seem to be pretty good wraparound options at our local primaries should my hours become less flexible.

At secondary level though - isn't peer pressure really important?

I mean if you compare two schools both with similar standards of teaching, but one with children who are all pushed/motivated etc to achieve (whether state or private it's irrelevant in a way), and one where most don't achieve, I would worry that my child loses the motivation to succeed for fear of appearing "uncool". Or is that a myth? (No experience of this myself).

I am speaking about vast differences - for example if you're in a state primary in Biggleswade and your family have staff, a stately pile, a fleet of cars & 10 other homes & you've got a trust fund chances are you'd stand out. Chances are you'd be misunderstood even if you were a lovely kid and your family were very down to earth. Chances are if picked up by your driver you'd be sneered at at best. These are unusual differences and would matter less in areas with a broad social mix. Biggleswade was not the area I had in mind in a previous post and have nothing against it, just don't think it's dense in Little Lord Fauntelroys :).

I do think alot of that attitude is particular to London actually. We lived there for the first few years of our dcs education - in a borough where most people privately educated their children. i remember one such mother saying to me "oh no one sends their children to X [outstanding state school]". Of course lots of people did, and loved it, but it just wasn't the norm.

Where I live now, private school is not the norm and there are plenty of people at my children's state school who could easily afford private education, but wouldn't even think of it, at least at primary level.

I live in west London and the private school ethos and snobbery is pretty intense round this way.

However, I trawled schools, private and state when DD was 4 and we chose the local state. Then we trawled another lot when DD was 7 and now she is in the local private (I rejected 2 other local private schools on their appalling attitude towards me being disabled, and one was also sexist, hum!).
I expect we will trawl another lot when DD is 11 but at the moment the nearest decent secondary is several miles west of us, so we'd have to move house.
It depends on your child's character and the school. Yes, there are parents who want hteir child to get into X secondary school and prep and tutor the life out of them to achieve this, we saw several girls who were clearly under massive pressure form their parents when DD sat one of the entrance exams, and in fact, the whole thing was made 100 times more fraught by the parents and DD said afterwards she hadn't liked it at all, and none of the other girls talked to her while she was there, which I put down to the incredible amounts of anxiety being generated.

I'd pick a state or private school on whether it was right for my child, not because some massive amount of people said X was the right school, so they are sending their child to X and that is that.

Right. Leaving aside the question of quite how down to earth you'd be with your fleet of cars: what about the poorest child in a middle-class state school? How would you segregate him? Move him to a less nice area so that he can go to school with other poor children? Or are you more concerned with the plight of wealthy children and the need to keep them separate from the horrid oiks who will surely bully them?

emy72 - yes, I see what you're saying and of course a learning environment in which doing well is uncool would be a concern but I don't think it's necessarily the case that all the kids at a private school come from motivated homes (some of them will be there for social reasons I'd imagine) and vice versa. And in fact, at the private secondary school that I went to it definitely wasn't cool to work hard, my geeky friends and I were bullied by plenty of people who are now without decent jobs other students

Oiks are ok sometimes, I married one :). I think if we possibly can we should pick a school where the ethos & social mix means our child will fit in and be welcomed.

Thank goodness there are people talking sense on here.

I would NEVER contemplate private school.

DP and I are both from working class backgrounds. Both grew up in rough towns and went to reasonable state primary and secondary schools. We both have degrees and professional post graduate qualifications.

DD1 is just finishing reception at a great local state primary. She has made fantastic progress, is reading at KS1 level and has had a wonderul start to her education. She does a couple of out of school activities.

It is NOT necessary to spend thousands of pounds on your child's education.

I do not have a background of private schooling, but my daughter is enrolled at the local private pre-prep, and will be continuing into the prep school next year. She is the first person in the entire extended family to be privately educated, but I never even considered the local state options. How did we make this leap?

She was at a local private day care center, with the usual high monthly cost that didn't always deliver a high value. I did some research, and found that the local girls high school nursery, which took them from 2 1/2, offered full wrap around care, with access to all the school facilities, swimming pool, playing fields, sports hall, school discos with the big girls, etc etc for the same cost as the poxy busy-bees monthly fees.

The class is led by a proper early years teacher with PGCE and an MA, not under-qualified, although well meaning teenage girl with a city and guilds in bum wiping. The teacher had 4 classroom assistants, and the whole thing was subsidised by the schools sizable endowment. It was no contest. After 3 years in pre-prep I am in love with the school and its Quaker inspired ethos, and DD will be there for the foreseeable future.

I am surprised that more parents shelling out masses for child care do not consider the local pre-prep as a possible alternative.

Yes, Cortina, but you haven't answered the question.

This posh child should be removed pronto to public school, yes, where as we all know there is no bullying, because the less-posh kids would certainly make his life miserable?

WHAT ABOUT THE POOR CHILDREN WHO MIGHT GET BULLIED?

From what I've seen, most primaries are either good, or fair to middling. When choosing a school for my daughter I thought it best to look at the likely end product for the most usual upper/high school that followed on from each primary, and that is where I decided that state education was not for us.

Your decision is sensible. I'm always astounded at how people on rather modest incomes virtually beggar themselves to send their kids to utterly pedestrian private schools when there are excellent state schools available to them.

n my experience an awful lot of it is about snobbery and keeping up appearances. Of course if all the local state schools are awful, it's rather more justifiable but where we are, it appears to be pure snobbery - in fact the local comprehensive gets better GCSE results than most of the local private schools and the sixth form college vastly better A-level results, but still a certain class of people will turn their noses up at them.

Actually it's fine by me - it means that the local schools aren't oversubscribed :)

I agree about the wrap around childcare aspect, as that is what has happened to us. I called our local (excellent) primary school to arrange to go in for a visit. When I was on the phone, I asked about breakfast club / after school care as DH and I both work -there is no provision for it, and the second closest state primary school is exactly the same, so our only option is independent. It's a rural area, and although DH works within 20 minutes of the state primary school, it just isn't feasible to drop DD off in the morning and still get to work on time. Apparently we live in an area where both parents aren't expected to work...