Private school visit

[mammanbebe]

Hi mums..I am new to MN.My DS has just started reception in a local state school and i was planning to consider private options at the end of year 1 or 2. I went to visit a private school today and was surprised to see the kids doing addition in reception!! Its still early days and i thought reception is all about learning through play? Do all private schools start formal learning right from day 1 in reception?
Would like to know what the real difference is between a good state school and a good private school in terms of academics..TIA.

mammanbebe - just found your post where you said your DS is 5 and has been looking for more challenging teaching. Unfortunately he wouldn't qualify for EYFE funding but it sounds like he would really enjoy more lessons, eg the maths and English, and more factual teaching about science and geography type things - ie not just playing with a tractor but getting teaching about how things work on a farm. There are also state schools with more formal teaching of this sort - there is no reason why you couldn't consider switching to a different state school, but of course, if you live in a crowded city, town or suburb, it's likely all places are already full; not so likely in villages with small populations in sparsely populated parts. Worth ringing up state schools to enquire if you live in the latter area.(if I missed your post about where you live, pardon the cross-post!)

Dialsmavis - lol..... fees cheaper than the cost of petrol for a very long commute sometimes! And the prices for the properties near the good state schools also ridiculous, often with badly maintained and poorly designed homes (right next to a busy main road, anyone?). Often works out cheaper to save on the interest on the mortgage and paying money to petroleum producing countries....plus we couldn't have afforded even the downpayment on those homes near the state schools anyway. We're really the cheapo class, TBH!

I disagree that living in a small house to be near a good state school is the same thing as living in a small house in order to be able to afford private school fees. They are only shades of the same thing if those people paying more on their mortgage would opt for private education after all if they couldn't get their children into the good state school.

*Their... Goodness, that post just made it plainly obvious that I will never be clever enough for mine to go private ! It has been a long day....

I don't judge either option but it is still using your wealth to give your DC opportunities not available to those without wealthy parents. I don't think there can be a better way of spending £ you have worked hard for which ever way you choose to do it. My DC go to a good school in a fairly nice area in which we rent a really nice house, luckily they are clever enough to do well at the varying schools they have they have been to over the years. DS actually did best at the "Satisfactory" school he went to before we moved, the facilities at the "outstanding" school down the road were shite.

It's not just your wealth that you can use to give your DCs opportunities not available to those without wealthy parents. You can also use your own intelligence, your own education, your own time, your own contacts. The extent to which it is acceptable to exercise all or any of these advantages, or whether the use of some of those advantages is more acceptable than others is generally a matter of hot debate and always will be.

Well I know my kids are fortunate enough to be advantaged in many ways before we even consider their independent education. But then almost all the children where we live are materially advantaged whether the parents are paying fees or not so in many respects their wider environment is just as much a bubble as their immediate one. What I mean is that they'd be in that bubble of advantage even if they went to the local state school.

It's like that in many parts of the Home Counties where we are and it was like it when we lived in Cheshire too. Therefore there must be thousands of kids in similar situations.

Most of the country is in a bubble if you want to compare it to Afghanistan or Somalia. A tiny minority of the families where I live could afford private education, but they nevertheless live in a bubble of privilege and safety compared to a lot of people in this country. You could say they are part of the largest bubble...

pop!

I think it's a tiny minority of areas where you can honestly say that the population of the local state school is as well heeled as the local private school. I'm not convinced that I would find quite so many children of policemen, firemen, bus drivers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, builders, shop workers, secretaries, care assistants, nursery workers and dustmen at the local prep school. I'm also not convinced I would find quite so few children of doctors, solicitors, accountants, bankers and entrepreneurs in the local prep schools.

Well it obviously depends where you live but you'll find many areas of Surrey, Sussex and Cheshire (last 3 places we've lived) which are full of school catchments where houses cost 5, 6, 700k+ so that very often means that the children living in those catchments and attending those state schools are from relatively affluent homes.

I agree with lovingthecoast - the only places near the state schools on sale were double the price of the place we currently stay....and on top of that needed money spending on the property just to make it SAFE to live in. We didn't even have the option of a smaller size property....they just weren't built.

We live in a school no-man's-land as far as catchment areas are concerned - we are furthest away from ALL schools. And there are council flats within the catchment area of TWO state schools, one very good. We're not eligible for a council flat. Quite a few friends as well as us are paying private fees just so that we can actually go to a school in the first place!

I volunteered in an inner city programme so years ago to help tutor children without the benefit of family with higher education. In the last month I have been to WH Smith several times (prob cheaper online, I know, but they were needed urgently) to get textbooks and revision aids for children of people I know who didn't have higher education either. None of the books for my own child. Had to read a few chapters to refresh my memory if and when they should call on me to help work out the answers! And many fellow grads in my year didn't have well educated parents but somehow graduated from university (from both state and private schools). I think the world is less of a bubble than one fears. At least some of us hope so.

*some years ago (typo!)

Happy to know I live in a cosy bubble where the local schools are perfectly good and the house prices not affected by this (there are clearly not enough children around, so not enough competition for spaces!).

Seriously, though, if I felt the only option for a good education in a secure environment for my children was the private school option, then I would take it and happily go around calling myself a hypocrite.

DS is on formal learning already in the second week of term (in a prep school) - but it's fairly low-key and they do still have toys in the classroom and a dressing up area etc. It seems to work really well - he's settled in very happily and is starting to learn the basics in a gentle kind of way. Looking at yr1 work though, they seem to progress quite a lot during reception and basically they run about a year ahead of the NC through-out school.

My older DS went to a state primary for reception (and before you all shout, I'm not saying this is representative, just my experience) and there was no formal teaching all year that I could discover - there were not even chairs at their tables. They really took "learning through play" to extremes - telling us that if the children said all they had done was play all day was good because it meant they had done their jobs properly and taught them by stealth, whereas really (witness the fact DS couldn't write his alphabet at the end of reception until I taught him) they just weren't teaching them at all!

"It's not just your wealth that you can use to give your DCs opportunities not available to those without wealthy parents. You can also use your own intelligence, your own education, your own time, your own contacts."

rabbitstew you really take this too far! As an intelligent (and responsible) parent I should be restrained from talking to and reading to my children? It's clearly totally unethical of me to carry on trying to engage them intellectually because a less intelligent parent can't do it on the same level!

rabbitstew if you go to one south yorkshire city which shall remain nameless you will find the state schools full of the doctors', lawyers', accountants', professors' children, and the relatively few private schools schools full of the builders' children. I kid you not!

sugartongue, I'm not surprised, around here you have to be seriously wealthy (not just middle class) to be able to afford private. And some very wealthy friends send their kids to State.

sugartongue. I do not take this too far. You mistake my words for my opinion... I have absolutely no qualms about taking full advantage of my education and time to indoctrinate my children, as my parents did before me. mummytime - you have to be seriously wealthy around here to be able to afford private, too: there are not many private day schools nearby, but several private schools with boarding options, an international intake of children and sky high exam results. Most definitely a different world.

teacherwith2kids - thank you for showing me that I'm not the only one really shocked by the idea of 24 YR children sitting doing the same 'sums' ! Unless there were 'interesting' mitigating circumstances (such as the intake all being carefully selected to have the same abilities and aptitude) then that is really naff teaching and I'm to wonder how much parents are paying for it!

argh, just wrote an essay then realised it was veering off-thread.

My Mum once said that she'd have sacrificed everything to get me to be a day girl at a private school if the local state schools had gone pfft (this was the 80s). Dad didn't agree - he figured if I were bright I'd do OK regardless. I agree with Dad, in that I did do OK, but I also agree with Mum, because it would just have been a darn sight easier if I'd not had to battle to learn when most of the other kids just wanted to mess about.

Humph, ASByatt. I think you'll find I commented on the lack of differentiation on page 2... sulk.

Life is selective, you choose where to live (well most of you not me DH is told where to live as in the military), you choose where to spend your money. If I choose to send my DCs to a private school then why are others complaining, surely you are just getting rid of all of us with no morals (as we choose to educate privately and our principles are non existent) out of your great state schools

My parents were brought up in council houses, they own their own home, they told us that if we work hard at school we will get a better life, they sacrificed everything to send us to university. I now choose to install the same values in my DCs and sacrifice everything and work hard to send them to private school, as we never know where we will live and what the local school is like they have enough to overcome in their lives with constant moves without playing the school place game every 2 years. It also means they are not lumped into a category at a local school like most of the other children that live on the military installation that we live on.

I find it shocking that people don't realise that many state school kids are two years ahead of the national curriculum. Its not unique to private schools.

It often requires brains to make the kind of money required for private education and an element of intelligence is genetic. I doult that non selective state schools have the same intelligence range as my son's state school.

There are good reasons for private education like being in the forces. People who move a lot have to make painful decisions. Similarly I can see if you follow a weird religion like Steiner then you might prefer private.

Apologies, rabbitstew [hands rabbitstew a sticker emoticon]

Mammanbebe, I think it depends on the private school. My children only did a term in Reception, and I found that the 'work' tended to be tailored to their own stage of development (so DS had lots of 'proper' adding up and so on, and DD didn't).

I can't say what the difference is between state/private in terms of academic achievement as I have no personal experience of state schools. However, I do have experience of children from state schools joining my children's prep schools (one has just joined my Y6 child's class), and they tend to find that they are nowhere near as 'advanced'. However, that doesn't mean that the prep school way is the right way. It also has the risk of children becoming burnt out by the time they've done Common Entrance. My other DC goes to a standard 3-18 girls' private school, and they are nowhere near as advanced academically as the prep school ones. However, they do lots of other things which are just as useful for life.

I think all independent schools vary, and the only way to find out is to visit several (not on an open day!) to get a feel for the place generally.