Help! 7 day deadline to decide whether to switch out of private to state school (London, UK)

[HappyMountain781]

We have been fortunate to receive an offer into Honeywell in Wandsworth, London for both our children (yr 3 and entering reception). It is rated as "very good", recently downgraded from "excellent" but our understanding is this is happening broadly as the government applies new standards. Our older child currently attends an excellent private school but the fees are enormous (£23k p.a. per child) and I recently lost my job and my husband has a solid but normal paying job. Canadian-born, we are having a hard time understanding how important private school is for the UK. The 11+ exam is obviously v important in determining future schools and the stats are scary (6-7% of the population attends private school but comprise 20-30% of the top university schools population) and I hear that thereafter there is a network effect (eg. graduates of Eaton tend to hire people out of Eaton, etc).

Can anyone provide advice? The deadline is painfully short for what feels like such a momentous decision!

Only just seen this thread - really hope you’ve made the decision to switch to Honeywell. It is an excellent school, as is Belleville. Save your money and start looking at tutors for the 11 plus instead of forking out to the local preps!

Save your money and switchto state -but I do mean literally save that money, earnark it for supporting your children's education later.

Depending on what happens it may become appropriate to switch one or both of them back into the private system either at y9/10 or 12
If they stay in state they may well need extra tuition at some point, including residential summer schools in the Easter break before exams which can be thousands.
If neither of those are necessary it will be great to have a lump sum available to support them through university.

Literally in the same boat, secondary is £23k including VAT and I’m swaying towards state secondary school for my eldest now (it’s new so not even ofsted rated yet) but I expect to put my child back into independent for a levels before uni and save the money inbetween. I also hope to go abroad more with the children with less financial pressure and just live easier, plus get a tutor 1-2 a week to go over what was learnt that week at school - that’s the plan anyway… unless I cave into the pressure of staying

I’m assuming you’ve decided to switch to state. We were in exact the same position and even accepted Reception place with the council and given notice for both children to the school (as we have to give a full term’s notice if we don’t want to lose a term’s worth of fees), but then I went to see the school, emailed their head and we chickened out and decided to stay private for one more year…

Financially this is probably not the wisest choice, it’ll be stressful, but I really hope they get onto one of the grammar schools later, so that we don’t have to go private for secondary.

The reason was that my older son (currently Y1) isn’t very academic and potentially has mild SEN, so smaller class sizes are working really well in keeping him motivated and challenged in a good way. In a class of 30 (unfortunately with lots of under-privileged children in the school where we got the place), he wouldn’t get as much individual attention and most likely lose motivation to work hard.

And I didn’t have the heart to put one in a private, one in state.

I wish someone in the same position but 10 years later would tell me how things might work out 😃

My DD, who was educated privately, is at Durham, a very good uni which has the ‘privately educated Oxbridge reject’ rep. She says she avoids saying where she went to school as there is an active bias against anyone who went private! Like a reverse snobbery. She has come across this before and while she has never hidden she went to a private school she has come across such prejudice she never volunteers the information. I must say I rarely have seen the opposite.
If there are good state schools near you I’d go state.

There are hierarchies everywhere and the top of the food chain varies from one university to another, with tribes rivalling for the top spot - and winning it according to demographics!