Primary Education ¦ Comparing Private vs State

[user1498285774]

Hi All,
My wife and I have a 15 month old daughter, we live in Chiswick, West London and are trying to get our head around the options for primary education to plan ahead. We are aware of the primary school league tables compiled by the Department of Education, that are published by the major national newspapers on an annual basis. However, this does not include private schools. As a result, we wonder how private primary schools compare on the same scoring mechanism to the states schools mentioned in the tables. This would give us a way to assess how much better the education is for the fees payable. Does anyone have any experience on this?
Thanks

Depends what type of private primary you're looking at. Preps are largely judged by the destination of their leavers, parents are only really interested in 11+ or common entrance results rather than SATs, which is the basis for league tables. Schools that go from 4-18 often do sit SATs but I don't know if they have to publish them.

You should take the league tables with a pinch of salt anyway. As well as the educational standard of the school they will also be affected by the profile of the intake, the mobility of the intake, how many parents tutor (probably lots in west London) and how which schools turn Year 6 into an exam factory and do nothing else but focus on getting high SATS results.

I would say that you should choose the school based on what your future aspirations are. At my DD's old prep in Bucks (with quite a few West London girls) the focus was totally on Common Entrance at 13 and the vast majority went to top boarding schools. A few left for Bucks Grammar Schools at 11, but most stayed until 13. If you want a London day school at 11, join the total scrum and tutoring roundabout needed for getting a place. The preps will be geared up to this. Lots of preps do not take SATS. They just do not need to, so why bother when the 11 plus and entrance exams are the focus of the school?

The curriculum will not be much different in a prep but the homework is likely to be more intense and competition between the families and children more obvious. The parents are likely to be 100% focussed on the next phase of education but even in Chiswick, there will be a more laid back attitude from some in the state schools. As you meet parents, you will get a feel for the prep schools and what they offer and where the children go who attend them. I would just caution that children who are not considered clever enough can be asked to leave by very acacemic preps, so choose wisely.

As has been said above, there's no easy way to compare the value of education in state vs private sector. We moved our DDs from an outstanding chiswick state primary school to a private non selective prep in Y3 and Y5. So we only have experience in one of each school but we found that the standard of teaching was no better (and sometimes worse) in the prep school. And Contrary to rumors, certainly our prep was not "years ahead of the curriculum" compared to the state (maybe different in selective preps).

What was very different was the standard/culture of behavior. Academic achievement was treated as cool at the prep. The kids generally don't swear or indulge in graffiti or play grand auto theft at home.

I stress that that's not meant to be a generalization, it's just our particular experience. It'll be different in each school, even each class.

Forget looking at results. They tell you very little apart from the ability of the intake and how intensively the state school parents tutor their children. You need to visit the schools, talk to existing parents and work out what will suit your child best.

The main difference between state and private is the class size and the preparation for independent school exams. You have to prepare your child yourself if you choose state.

And extra curricula offering in sport, music and drama may vary but is more down to individual schools. You need to compare what the schools you are considering offer.

We moved our DS from state to private at the start of Y3. (many years ago). As others have said it isn't just state in general to private in general but particular schools you need to compare.

In our case DS thrived by sitting in a row looking at the board, rather than on round tables as they did at his state school. He also did better when they all did the same thing at the same time, and a much stricted fixed routine.

The private school he went to had different teachers for science, languages etc, instead of one class teacher for everything, and the expectation was much higher. When he went back into the state system at 11 he was doing work in Y7 that he'd covered in Y5 and was bored.

But private schools don't do well with SEN, nor with children who aren't very clever.

I'd also add there is no point looking at schools you have no chance of being allocated. One reason many go private is choice - you are not stuck with local school school 100m away as all others you are ineligible for.

Thanks to all who have responded to my post. It seems that it isn't as easy as Initially thought. I will need to do a little more research.