Private primary worth it?

[Happytimes83]

We live in a very affluent but rural area, our local catchment is a tiny COFE school of about 100 kids with each year combined with two year groups, I haven’t heard anything bad about it but as you’d expect the resources of a small school are very limited. We stupidly visited a really nice selective private school in the very affluent city we live on the outskirts to (literally a few miles from nearly all the private schools along a safe bike path). I was blown away by it, it wasn’t just the spaces it was the breadth of the curriculum, the neat workbooks, the technology & things they had access to and the school had a good happy feeling of both sporty & academic with well behaved kids. Fees are therefore starting at 16k up to about 20k a year as you move through the ages at pretty much all the private ones. We are not wealthy but comfortable and only have 1 child so we could do this and still have some leftover money as long as we reign in our current very high annual holiday budget. And we have about 6 years worth of fees saved but still have a reasonable mortgage to pay down which we had been saving towards overpaying the mortgage when our fix ends in 2026 (which would then go on fees instead). Obviously this all assumes we maintain work to the same degree for the much longer term, I wouldn’t say we are in your usual guaranteed salary professions. Would you do this and just play your circumstances by ear if in the medium term things change or look for other ways to enhance your childs experience at the basic small school?

Are we crazy to even be considering this, it is very hard when you just want the best for your child. I had an awful state school time when young which probably neither option will be like.

I think it depends. If we had unlimited money then yes, we would send dc private for primary. But we have 3dc and so we have to make choices on what makes most sense for us. If we had one dc then yes I would consider private, but perhaps not until age 7. The main difference I noticed was sport. The private dc are doing so much sport within the school. I am sure academics is better in private as well, but in the end my dc are doing well in state and will catch up if needed when doing private secondary. My eldest just started at an academically selective private school and LOVES it. That being said she did love her primary school too, but struggled a little bit with boredom the last 1.5 years because they kept going over things she already knew.

Unless you believe the education is subpar at the local state primary I'd send your DC there. My DC go to a tiny village school (half the intake as the one your looking at) & it's fabulous. The pupil/teacher/TA ratio is much higher than other local larger primaries. Our DC get to go on lots of trips, swimming every week from Yr3, sports coaches brought in, attend sports fixtures locally with other schools; everyone gets a part in plays & on teams etc.
But it doesn't have a massive library or even a school hall; it doesn't have an IT suite etc.
The facilities will of course be much better at a private school - that's what you're paying for; but I know a few people who work at private schools & they haven't bothered sending their DC to private primaries, rather saving for private secondary.
That's your next consideration too - can you afford private secondary?

Interesting to hear the thought processes of others, at the moment my husband is pretty against the idea of private he wants the convenience of the school 50metres away & to be integrated into the community though it does sound as though we will be very much integrated with the church which us atheists aren’t so keen on, but I can probably overlook that item. It has a heated pool outside for summer use, a hall and library so it could be worse on the amenities front, after school options do however look very poor and it certainly doesn’t have an engineering building like the private place we looked at!! Secondary is also a tough one, we live very close and inside the catchment to one of the top 3 performing county state secondary’s albeit it’s not selective so I don’t really know what the culture is actually like there and it’s one of those mega schools of 2000 kids which sounds terrifying so I really can’t imagine it being this really calm safe place if I am honest... Given its huge though the sports offering really are the best for a state school in the whole area, even allowing for what state schools reside in the nearby city.

Do many of the private schools pupils go on to the state secondary? How do you think your DC would transition from being at a private school to going to state? I imagine it would be quite hard to go from one to the other especially if most of their friends are going on to different private schools.
If you're concerned about the sports or extracurricular stuff not offered at the state school you could provide that yourself through after school clubs etc? If you have the funds for private you'd be able to pay for your DC to try lots of different things.

Also factor in the very likelihood of Labour getting in at the next general election and slapping VAT on top of fees.

I am not in a position to send my children privately so it probably clouds my response but I would agree with your husband about the community aspect of things. There is great value in knowing the children locally who your child goes to school with. Socially I find it is great that their friends live around the corner etc, we can walk to school and they bump into their friends at the park etc. There is plenty of time later to move to private, perhaps for juniors and then secondary. It does sound however like you have a fantastic option ok your doorstep for both primary and secondary.

“I had an awful state school time when young which probably neither option will be like.”

There is your answer OP. You have trauma and want better for your child.

The local school sounds easy and lovely to me. Start there and see how it goes. Love your child and shower them with attention and read to them every day. Make them passionate about words and stories and bake together etc for real life maths skills. This is what matters in the early years and having lots of nearby friends.
You do not need to spend 20k per year. Save it for later, if you must, 11-16 or even ages 13-16 is the best value if you have to do private school.

And no, if I had a sizeable mortgage no way would I spend it on private school without trying to local state school first. For a start, I would not want to have to do lots of extra homework with my DC when young.

I think it’s a mixed bag in terms of where the primary school pupils transition to at our local state school. Some years they only have 6-8 pupils join, 2022 was 6 2023 was 16, and there is always some that go off to private school at the end or part way through, I suspect his cohort will unfortunately be on the lower side for 2024, though given the amount of younger children here I am glad we aren’t considering the cohort of 2025! One of the neighbours talked about how much their child struggled with the transition to the large secondary from a peer group perspective and now they regret sending them there, hindsight is wonderful, no one complains whilst the kids are there though, but that will be a problem at any secondary if we go local unless he starts off early in a private setting. Across the state schools he has friends that will be joining 3 other schools outside our area but local enough, however these are not usually at capacity so we could get a place at any school but they are also ALL tiny.

Well that would be great but actually of the children we know likely to be joining our local village school in 2024 only 1 of them actually lives here so there aren’t going to be loads of mates to just call on!! It being a fairly small village I would already say we are integrated & know what’s going on and who’s who hence why I already have a fairly good idea on who’s applying… church selective criteria is not actually that common for a primary, maybe the only one with such request in the entire county but then a lot of church schools are no longer governed by the church so I guess that’s why

Could you delay your decision and look at state ‘til 8?

This I have been giving some thought, but I can now see why some of the parents did just dip out of the local school straight to selective pre prep in recent years.. it’s such a brainy high achieving place they don’t want them to lose out on the learning in these first years & then not actually get into a selective private school in year 3+ or be playing a stressful game of catch up, they don’t want them on the back foot. If he was already doing multiplication & subtraction at 3 like some of his peers I would be less concerned about waiting and when I say it’s a selective it will obviously get harder and harder as the divergence in learning becomes apparent between private and state. It is not the most selective school that we looked at as frankly he wouldn’t even get through the assessment now and yes we know some that have tried unsuccessfully to get there 3 year olds to pass the assessment!

This sounds ridicules, having 3 year olds memorize multiplication tables? They all learn it eventually and learning at 3 is just silly. They should be playing at age 3 and being a kid. Plenty of kids go to state and get into highly academic secondary schools later.

Haha to be fair all the kids I know that are natural maths wizzes with a natural interest in learning (no parent pressure or coaching at all to be doing this kind of stuff they are the ones asking) are not going private! I mean they don’t need to🤣! The private schools we didn’t look at though as they were too selective do make them do assessments at 3 I don’t think it’s that kind of testing it will be to really understand how they think through play exercises, but of course none of my friends who applied with normal kids got a place there! And none of the naturally bright ones I know need to apply because they’ll do great whatever.

My DC went to the local village primary school where most of the classes were combined age groups.They did regular trips and had school camps in the older primary years. DD learned to play the guitar and did cross country running and DS played football for the school.
They both went to private school at secondary level. Never felt either of DC were at a disadvantage going to a small state primary school.
They both left school with excellent exam results(straight As),went on to an RG university and then into good professional jobs.
If we'd payed for private primary schooling I'd think it would have been a waste of money.

I think seeing all the comments it sounds as though it probably won’t be worth the cost just yet unless we had soo much spare cash lying around that money was no object. I guess we will just see how he gets on, maybe he will determine it’s too small for himself at some point but unless he’s super mature I suspect it will be quite hard for a 7+ year old to decipher this! In the mean time we will just keep up all the other stuff he does plus some extras on the music front that we are enrolling him in, poor boy will probably end up at music school every Saturday morning as a replacement haha. But I want him to know what’s out there and if he doesn’t get thrown into other things I am quite certain his personality will just gravitate towards his own little village bubble.

Would you sell a retirement asset to educate your only child in the best private school of London? (13+)

No. We live somewhere much nicer than London (at least in our opinion) & fortunately the school fees are not quite London ridiculous so I’m not sure why we’d do that!! We will just see how work and savings go over the next few years. I think we will reign in the holiday expenditure to just 1 ski trip a year from when he starts reception & then everything else will have to be camping to put us in a better position if we do need to make the switch!

I'm in the exact same quandary as you. We are looking round the state primaries but meanwhile saving like stink (while on mat leave 😩) to try and save as much as possible to cover private school fees with the hope of being able to count it as a viable option. Your financial situation sounds better than mine and if it's something you value enough to make sacrifices for (ie giving up holidays) then I would go for it. I've posted similar questions on here (diff usernames) and replies always say it's not worth it but everyone I've spoken to IRL with kids are prep school have said it's totally worth it and they are all families making sacrifices to afford it.

It has been worth it for us. We started state but then moved part way through reception when we weren’t happy with the experience. It wasn’t a bad school - it was in fact an ofsted ‘outstanding’ school that is very well regarded locally. But dc were not happy and having volunteered a couple of days it was clear that most of the day was spent on crowd control rather than meaningful activities educational or play ( lots of worksheets, waiting in line, etc.)

we switched to a non selective indie, and it has been life changing. Both dc love going to school. Class size of 10 vs 31 with similar levels of teacher and ta support mean it is possible to have a personal relationship with the teacher, and teacher knows my dc (vs. In state they kept getting my Very non identical twins mixed up). So much enrichment built into the day (music, forest school, swimming, French, art, 3x PE vs state), and then the afterschool club options are broad and accessible. Breaks during day are the day are lengthy - the entire school takes a lengthy mid morning break together, possible due to larger grounds, and this is such a critical element for young children who need to move and have free time in order to learn effectively . In state it was 15-20 ins on the courtyard, most of which was taken up with standing in line.

we are not committed to continuing in private for secondary, and will seriously consider our state options. I feel like it is so important to build a solid foundation in education, and a lot of what happens in secondary depends on a child’s enthusiasm, confidence and ability to self direct learning. I don’t think my kids will be further along in month or reading as a result of going private, it I do expect them to me much more enthusiastic learners.

I think if you can afford it do both, but if you have to pick one, I would def pick secondary private.

Those teaching ratios look great for private if there’s only 10, I have not seen anything of that class size round here, some say it will be around 18 but I can tell that by the time they finish class size will actually be nearer 24. Only the smallest private schools provide a headcount cap at 18! Maybe it’s just a viability thing for the area. However the outstanding school you reference doesn’t really sound like it has the space of a village school, they have large playing fields so it always appears they have lots of long breaks when I walk past. I am surprised that an outstanding school would just spend there time doing worksheets but then in reality outstanding is only relevant if it’s the same teachers they were assessed against, it’s such a static rating when in reality things can change in a school environment quickly and these ofsted assessments are pretty infrequent! I guess I won’t know for certain what the class size will be until they start which makes it hard knowing what to do!

Both schools should be able to tell you the class size maximum. The state school will have a PAN which is the max amount of pupils they want/can take in YR. Obviously occasionally this changes if there is a bulge year & the LA determines they can take more. The private school again will have a set number they want to admit, but it's true they have more flexibility in increasing that limit. But then are more likely to split the class into two than have an overly large group. Parents are paying for smaller classes in private so it's in the school's interest to keep parents happy.
If the village school have 100 pupils then it's PAN must be 14-15 pupils per year group. If they're in mixed classes that will mean 28-30 per classes. How many teachers & TAs are in each class?

The pan is 20, but the most it’s ever taken in recent years has been 16 actually this year, and 2022 was 6. So they are generally averaging low 20s combined classes, theres also one older class that had a bulge and that’s actually on its own but again it isn’t 30 as they’ve never reached the PAN number. Some days 1 TA and other days they have 2 TAs, not sure if this is a floating TA that actually moves classes over the course of the week but from speaking to parents there’s mostly been 2 TAs in the room every day at the start of this term for the combined reception/yr1. As we know resources & staff can change & it seems the intake can be very low or higher some years so although I know from the pre school and who’s in the village that there’s a lot less children that will go into 2024 there could be some others pop up that don’t attend pre school or live in the area.

FYI the private school said there numbers are generally around 16-18 BUT they were explicit in that they don’t have a classroom cap & I can tell from the leavers that by the end of the school they must of actually had 23 in a class as there was 70 split across 3 classrooms! So it seems the numbers creep up over the years in the private school… there’s also one other much smaller private school that does have a cap and that is 18, none of the others give a maximum number though!!

@Happytimes83 the village school had large grounds, including playing fields and a forest school setup. Mine loved forest school but I think they only did it twice over one term as the logistics with 31 kids and 2 adults was too daunting. The village school also had a heated outdoor pool for use in summer term, but my understanding again is that lessons frequently cancelled, and even when not cancelled they get very little time in the pool. I also had the impression that kids were always out playing in the courtyard playground, but having shadowed my child’s class during the day realised it was always different classes in turns - my own dc class only had 2 short manic breaks + a little bit around lunch. My two are not particularly sporty, but young children need breaks to move.

I also think worksheets are more common than you think. Again, the logistics of 31 kids and 2 adults - they fill the space when the teacher is trying to intervene with a subset of the children. On the day I was there, I estimate 15-20minutes of teacher or ta contact (as in their group was getting direct support, not as an individual) for every hour and the rest either worksheets, book nook or transition time.

so much more happens in their day at private - both structured learning or enrichment and unstructured down time where they can really unwind - and a lot of that is down to logistics and access to in house facilities (and also brilliant teachers, but that will vary school to school).