WWYD? Pre-prep or state primary?

[SurreyCoconuts]

Hi!

Bear with me...

My 4 year old son starts Reception in September and nursery identified that he is particularly strong in maths. He can carry out mental maths i.e. deduct and add without any aides and has now started "Dynamic Maths". He counts beyond 100, can write his name. He is on Oxford Reading Tree Level 5 and has a good serve whilst playing tennis. He is relatively confident and generally a big character. Key worker says he plays the role of leader in his social activities.

He has a place at a competitive pre-prep school linked to a private grammar secondary school.

By contrast to our backgrounds - for secondary school, DH came out top from a rough state school having been to a state primary. I did well at a state grammar (was bright at Primary but firmly middle of the road/average at grammar secondary). So essentially as you can now probably tell: we are independent school newbies.

Sadly we don't have any state grammars close by so private is the only option if I am to replicate the competitive environment I felt worked for me. Although I appreciate his needs may not exactly the same as my own; I have identified that, like my son, I was a geek who loved learning and asked for extra homework. I voluntarily made scrap books on topics; would take tallies of the car colour that I saw on long car journeys and as sad as I would admit it, loved to read the thesaurus! He is showing signs of the same.

DH is now asking me (as we complete the school onboarding paperwork of all things!) if we really ought to pay for private primary education (or not!) and rather why don't we just save the £ (we should be able to afford it - joint income is north of £200k excluding bonuses, but also have DD in the year below to send through the system).

I'm getting frustrated as hate the uncertainty of sending him to state or having to compete again for a place at 7+ where the applicant ratio gets tougher. Knowing DS he would fair fine moving schools. He was totally fine switching nurseries when we moved/barely fased!

Also as the independent school options locally are single gender schools, we will have to line up getting places at different schools for each of our DS and DD and ensure these are in commuting distance of the other.

My worry with the state option is that my son won't be pushed or he will just be left to his own devices given he is already performing at at least Y1 standards. Worst still he may become disruptive. We haven't rejected our state place and DH is glad we didn't as we have recently learnt that the state primary intake size is only 22 due to a low birth year... I guess a small class size can be both good and bad. Probably worst if you have a disruptive bored child??

WWYD - stick to our guns with pre-prep or save and see how he turns out??? What other considerations should I assess? I am aware of the risks of less local friends, being surrounded by even more under wealthy than us (we are also relatively young parents - just hit mid 30s) and having to cover longer school holidays.

We have recently moved to the area so from a selfish perspective I was hoping to make some new Mum-friends. I assume harder if families live within 30mins of all directions from the school.

Thanks for reading my ramble!

I've had very similar experience to @Wor
We chose state in the same postion but moved to private (Long comment sorry!)
DS(7) is bright, particularly in maths and coding and went to nursery at a local private - we considered either keeping him there or moving to our outstanding state primary. Class sizes were about 12 at both. We chose the outstanding state where he stayed for reception - year 2. We thought the small class size would mean he would be challenged academically, not overlooked, and the outstanding rating was a big draw (as was the short 5min drive). At the end of year 2 we have just moved him to a selective private 15 mins away.
The first school failed our DS hugely from a safeguarding perspective (bullying), failed to challenge him academically so he was very bored and grew to dislike school. A number of other parents/families have recently left there for similar reasons. Others however are perfectly happy there and I don't regret choosing the state school to start with. For us the school definitely seemed to think "we know he can do the work easily so we'll leave him to it". He'd read a book waiting for others to finish their work. I find it hard to believe it is rated outstanding.
The indie so far has been amazing, has brought back DS's confidence and love of learning and he is really enjoying being challenged.

If we had other state options we would have considered them as we saw it very much to be a school vs school thing rather than state vs private. One big difference with the indie is the extra curricular provision. I work FT so wraparound care is important and DS does something exciting after school every day (the school day starts at 8am which also helps).

Whatever decision you make, commit to it but don't be afraid to change things further down the road if you need 🙂 Sorry for the long reply! Good luck OP.

I've had very similar experience to @Wor
We chose state in the same postion but moved to private (Long comment sorry!)
DS(7) is bright, particularly in maths and coding and went to nursery at a local private - we considered either keeping him there or moving to our outstanding state primary. Class sizes were about 12 at both. We chose the outstanding state where he stayed for reception - year 2. We thought the small class size would mean he would be challenged academically, not overlooked, and the outstanding rating was a big draw (as was the short 5min drive). At the end of year 2 we have just moved him to a selective private 15 mins away.

The first school failed our DS hugely from a safeguarding perspective (bullying), failed to challenge him academically so he was very bored and grew to dislike school. A number of other parents/families have recently left there for similar reasons. Others however are perfectly happy there and I don't regret choosing the state school to start with. For us the school definitely seemed to think "we know he can do the work easily so we'll leave him to it". He'd read a book waiting for others to finish their work. I find it hard to believe it is rated outstanding.
The indie so far has been amazing, has brought back DS's confidence and love of learning and he is really enjoying being challenged.

If we had other state options we would have considered them as we saw it very much to be a school vs school thing rather than state vs private. One big difference with the indie is the extra curricular provision. I work FT so wraparound care is important and DS does something exciting after school every day (the school day starts at 8am which also helps).

Whatever decision you make, commit to it but don't be afraid to change things further down the road if you need 🙂 Sorry for the long reply! Good luck OP.