is private REALLY better?

[ChuppaChups]

just out of interest, i would appreciate some OPINIONS on this area as i am seriously considering the move to private from state. The main reason being is we are now financially able to do so.

So, is it better and why?

Thanks

Quite.

Does your school offer something else to the more able ones, ST, like IGCSE or similar?

I am in a very small school so am not going to go into specifics.

However, we have a school policy of getting C-grades for core subjects, and in the time I have been in this school, that has been the case.

Don't knock a successful school. Try to improve your own.

Sorry ST, seem to have inadvertently joined in the fray there with my Q!

I'm guessing that you have low ability nice kids with supportive parents, but not necessarily on P level (we don't get them either).

I only wish there were more teachers like Janeite who care about getting the best out of their students be it an A* or an E grade. The state sector is lucky to have her. But you haven't answered my question Scienceteacher how many of your P level students get a C grade

Actually, we do get pupils arriving in Y10 with no English, and we also get pupils whose mother tongue is not English (and they read the Q'ran). We get internationally mobile children (yes, they move every few months and for some reason they don't go to boarding school).

It doesn't mean that they don't have potential to be tapped. They should not be written off.

I'd hate to think that if my DH's employers decided on a whim to move us that my teenagers would be educationally doomed because they moved at the wrong time. They would be no less intelligent then than they are now.

But who said they would write these children off? Certainly not Janeite.

Right - now I really have gone. You have avoided a question that several people have asked and kept turning to attack rather than defense.

My school IS successful and I am an AST with a proven track record. However, not all pupils will get a Grade C or above. That is not under-estimating them; it is just a fact.

Realises it is Saturday night and there must be far better things to do with my life than this.

Have to come in to support janeite. I used to teach in a very deprived school in London - kids who didn't speak English, who had escaped war zones and were desperately lacking in education of any kind. In my time there, I only saw one student come in with little or no English and end up with a C grade for his English GCSE. He was an incredible boy, who, had he not had to escape from Iraq during the first Gulf War, would have been hugely successful in his native country. He was an exception, but this does not mean that the school failed the rest of them. To get any grade at GCSE after arriving at secondary school with nothing is a massive achievement. I doubt very much whether many independent schools could say the same.

Thank you so much Cambridge Girl. Going now!

And Kemble.

There are lots of people who choose to educate in the state sector despite being able to afford private. I teach in a school that in every class has children who could easily afford school fees but they recognise a good state school. In my top sets I teach students who could have got into a grammar but again choose a comprehensive education.

We almost put our dd into the independent sector but chose not to and have not regretted it for one moment. Perhaps if she were not as clever as she is we may consider it for secondary as in some state schools middle and lower sets are difficult places to be.

Instead we have chosen to almost go down to a single wage so that dd can virtually have a full time parent at home. This IMO makes more difference to dd than an independent school. I hope she will get into the school I teach in, I am not even concerned about going for a grammar place, and spend money on the many school trips my school offers and extra curricular activities.

I am not going to be drawn in to potentially identifying students on a public forum, or even a private forum.

There is a huge difference between an intelligent child you is a second language speaker and a child who cannot access national curriculum levels. ST you are not talking about the same scenario as Janeite.

You were asked how many, not their life stories, ST.

And that I answered, feenie.

ST perhaps you'd just be better off admitting that you don't, never have, and are unlikely ever to, teach students of the type janeite is talking about.

So that would be none? Because you didn't mention any...

EAL students, yes.

Don't think you did, actually.

ime though the rich people now aren't that clever so their children are a bit stupid, so private school children are not exactly the top of academic excellence

What about the 'selective' ones?

More misconceptions.

I am not going to comment further because it would it would be unprofessional. If you take this as some kind of weakness, well, bully for you.

You haven't answered because you are describing very different students. When I taught in London I taught many EAL students, very few could not access national curriculum grades. Infact I cannot think of any.

I have however taught in a school very similar to Janeite's, I can remember when I set my year group, the bottom set were all working towards national curriculum grades and would have found getting grade Cs at GCSE a real challenge and perhaps not possible.

Statistics aren't unprofessional, ST - they are essential in our field of work.

We don't know where you teach, I guess most of us don't care. There is nothing unprofessional in saying that on average in a year group this number of students cannot access national curriculum grades.