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

I do think that people often assume that the discipline is bad in state schools and good in private schools.

Fluffy, if I remember correctly, you weren't that impressed with the way the children behaved in your ds's last school either.

Boaters and standing up when an adult enters the room doesn't necessarily mean an absence of bullying and good manners between peers.

It was a big failing for children when the Grammar schools were abolished. If you have a class of 30 children, 10 want to work, 10 want to work but are easily led and the other 10 really can't be bothered then it doesn't bode well. No child can learn in a class like this.

I don't see poor manners being the same as poor behaviour. To have a child walk into you is one thing, to have your own child's head pushed into a table (on purpose) or to have other children try to pull down his trousers and underpants in the playground is something else. Children shouldn't behave this way.

Seeker that's a v good point.
(thinks: Tom Brown's Schooldays and roasting fags in front of the fire....)
My parents didn't want to send my brothers to the local boys' grammar because there was a lot of bullying there.

Mrz, I certainly would expect the people teaching my children to be qualified to do so - whether I am paying thousands of pounds or not. But I don't think that a teaching qualification is the only one that counts.

There is bullying in every school but it makes a huge difference how it's tackled. In the state school ds is currently in, the head denied that ds had been hurt, she denied that someone had tried to humiliate him by trying to pull down his underpants in the playground because he was too embarassed to tell a teacher . Poor manners I can cope with, this is on a different level. In the term and a half he's been at his school he's been sworn at countless times, been scratched, punched, kicked, being pushed (head first) into a filing cabinet, had a ball thrown into his face making his nose bleed, had clothing taken from him and thrown across a fence, been pushed into a table. To be fair, he was hurt at his previous (private school) by two boys on different occasions, both of them from state schools. I'd say discipline is poor in his current school.

stillstanding would you be surprised to know that some staff employed in PVI have no formal qualifications? by that I mean GCSE upwards.

I would be very surprised to know that, mrz, and - unless there were some rather exceptional circumstances - quite horrified ...

It isn't unusual with younger age groups judging by the staff I've spoken to on courses.

and a colleagues sister in law who has "taught" in a prep school for a number of years has just applied to do her foundation degree studies if she can get maths at gcse c grade.

"perhaps grammar schools had been a good thing for social mobility all along"

Well, knock me down with a feather...

Next they'll be telling us bears sneak off to the trees for a dump and that the Pope might be suspected of taking the odd Mass.

Grammar schools certainly aren't good for social mobility here in Kent - they just entrench the class divide.

seeker - I was at a Kent grammar school when I was 11 and 12. It was very socially mixed.

When do you think that stopped being the case?

There is a discussion on TES about school allocated (obviously secondary level) and opinion seems to be that the problem of "sink" schools is in large caused by parents unwillingness to send their child to a local school they often mistakenly believe isn't as good as another school out of the catchment area. Families move out of the area to get into the catchment of the better school and the concept of the school not being good becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.
As to Grammar schools the competition to get a child into a Grammar school leads to those who can afford to pay for a tutor to swot/cram like mad for the tests can result in the equally clever child with parents who aren't financially able to pay for extra help missing out on a place so limiting the social mix in schools.
Headlines such as "School League tables: State grammar schools beat private sector for A levels" www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5519688.ece will only encourage more parents who naturally want the best for their child to spend more.......

Maybe the only "solution" is to change the rules for school selection regularly and in an unpredictable, random way?

Like Brighton and its lottery?

This was done in France last year. The teachers didn't like it much!

I don't know, Anna -I've only had experience over the last few years.

My children go to an incredibly socially mixed primary school - it's smack bang between an area of significant social deprivation and an affuluent Islington-on-Sea market town. The VA is great - it does very well by most of its pupils - but children from the estate don't go to the grammar school, either because their parents don't put them in for it or they don't pass the test.

In my dd's year all the children that passed came from middle class professional families.

Perhaps it's because now you have to actively choose to put your child in for the test - I think in the past everyone sat it automatically.

Certainly the % of children who qualify for free school meals at the grammar schools is shamefully low.

Whereas in the late 1970s I remember there being a lot of children on free school meals (and free uniforms).

IIRC the % of grammar school pupils on free school meals is about 2 - against 15ish% for the secondary school population at large.

League tables and parental choice will automatically intensify the differences between schools. I don't know what we do about that though.

Don't know if anyone's mentioned this data before, but I had to comment on the opinions that Grammars somehow enabled greater social mobility that comprehensive education does.

Anyone really interested in this should read 'state schools since the 1950s: the good news' by Adrian Elliot. The book (albeit a polemic) counters much of the anecdotal stuff one reads in the press about the parlous state of our schools.

I should probably admit a bias too, before we go on - until this year I was a secondary teacher in a successful state school.

There's a bit of data coming up, but I don't think one can really understand this debate unless one is given a bit of perspective.

So, Elliot cites several studies, including Jackson and Marsdenn (1966) who found that social class B (lower professional) children were 4.5 times more likely to complete a full seven year grammer school course than children from those from skilled manual classes. These children were in turn than 3.5 times more likely to complete grammar education than unskilled, class E children.

When they looked at their data in more detail, some of those working class children in groups D and E who went to grammar school were 'sunken middle class' - their families had formerly been in the middle classes, had owned businesses or had close relatives in middle class occupations.

Zweig (1961) found that only 8% of semi and unskilled workers' children passed the 11+. Coates and Silburn (1970) found that in St Annes, Nottingham only 1.5% of the children obtained a place in a grammar. They didn't study how many completed their courses.

Right - there you go - Grammars were highly selective places, which served to maintain inequality in society. Discuss!

SleeperService - surely if some of those children were "sunken middle class", the Grammars were helping them reascend the socio-economic pole? Which is a good thing.

Do we really believe that the IQ bell curve is identical across children from all social classes?

Hi BonsoirAnna,

I think what the study implies is that the 'sunken middle classes' found it easier to re-ascend than other social class E and D students, that some of the E and D studnets who seeemed to have been helped weren't really E and D. Which means that the Grammars didn't offer an equal leg-up to all across society's different levels.

As for IQ, hmm, not sure I believe that we have a good way of measuring raw intelligence yet. Don't have the studies to hand, but IQ tests are widely distrusted as a way of measuring 'cleverness'. It's a self fulfilling prophesy to say that lower class children do worse than upper class children at intelligence tests.

If what you're actually saying is that lower class children are genetically programmed to be less able than upper class children then we're into a whole new, and perhaps slightly darker, set of arguments.

Or just maybe the kids who currently qualify for free school meals look at those leaving university with £20k worth of debt and think actually I won't bother beyond the basics as I get a nice little top up in tax credits for an easy stress free life where as those guardian/time readers stressing about league tables etc will never be able to get much further than me anyway for all their tail chasing.

"Which means that the Grammars didn't offer an equal leg-up to all across society's different levels."

You cannot deduce this from the post you wrote. Just because the final destination of all the children entering grammar school was not equivalent doesn't mean that each child at grammar school didn't get equivalent VA from their education there.

Gosh, OrphanAnnie - the system and their parents have truly failed them if they are so deluded.

Well i certainly see a lot of that attitude from my own family, brothers, cousins etc. I think what people need to realise is whilst some are hard done by, plenty more are just plain lazy.