constant battles on the subject of private versus state education, so why didnt anyone mention this before?

[vvvodka]

dc just been put into private school. and they do games. lots and lots and lots and lots of games. and i dont have to scout around for decent footie, or karate or whatever, they just do it all at the school, coz the school organises it. he now does about six hundred percent more sport than he ever did in his ofsted outsdanding state school.

and he meets a bigger variety of people. more skin colours, more accents, more cultures, just more variety of everything. not just in his school, but also in the schools that they go off to play matches against and that come to their school to play matches with. in dc1's entire seven year career at the outstanding state primary, he never once met another childf rom another school in an event organised by the school.

so far, i am very very pleased with it. i just am surprised that no one ever mentioned it on the state versus private threads on here. or maybe they did, and i had tuned out at this point? or is ofsted fibbing about that particular state school being outstanding?

seeker: Guildford will have council estates and will have millionaires' enclaves, but they won't be the same place geographically, even if they are still nominally 'Guildford', and if you live in the council estate you won't get into the millionaires' school.

In part of London the 'posh school ghetto' can be as small as a few hundred metres round a particular school - house prices will invariably be horrendous and therefore extremely effective at keeping out the 'less well heeled'.

It's easier in some ways to fork out the cash for private school (a few thousand per year) than it is to come up with the best part of a million quid for a house in the right area. Neither option is open to all, but personally speaking I chose the first option.

A £50k income would be adequate to send a child to private school in Guildford, let's say RGS Guildford or the girls equivalent, both top 10 schools nationally, but if you decided instead to go with the state option, and bought a house, you might end up with grotty looking house like this: [[http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-11513055.html] for four times your salary, and you'd then be looking at (www.upmystreet.com/local/schools-in-gu2-9tf.html) a choice between Kings College for the Arts and Technology, and Christ's College, both poor schools with only 30+% of students getting 5 good GCSEs.

I know actually know that much about the school sysyem where she is but they live in a fairly modest house which they paid about 800k for. It is a very pretty area though.

I'm in Cheshire, so nowhere near Guildford so this is clearly a pattern around the country.

As someguy pointed out, it is often financially easier to find school fees than to buy a house in certain small catchments. Though the parents who happily pay through the nose for a house in a tiny catchment because they don't want to pay for school never seem to grasp that that is exactly what they are doing.

Well I think part of the point of buying a house in a posh school area is that you get the money back when you sell.

Although of course there might no longer be such a premium when you sell.

But from a financial point of view generally you'll get the extra money spent on a posh area back.

It is no different of course not, but it does affect your net wealth less.