Dilemma... 'more average' sibling to follow super-bright brother to same school, or somewhere else, with a chance to 'shine'??

[fluffyhamster]

I'm sure we're not the first to have had this dilemma..

DS2 has been/ will almost certainly be offered places at two schools, and we can't decide.

• School 1 is a local independent with an excellent reputation (Top 100 in the country). DS1 is already at this school. Doing well (is super -bright with top scholarship etc) Excellent facilities - esp. music & drama (which DS2 is into).

We weren't sure that DS2 would get offered a place, but he has. However we know that he was in the bottom 20% of those who passed the entrance exam. I worry that he might struggle a little, will always be towards the bottom, and constantly in DS1's shadow. It also seems to be a school where you need to 'find your own feet/ stand up for yourself'. DS2 is not massively confident, and may find it hard.

• School 2 is a local voluntary aided school with fantastic facilities and above average results. Rapidly getting even better, but not the same academic pressure as school 1.

We are lucky to be in the catchment for this school - parents lie and move to get their kids there . Feels a bit more nuturing. Is smaller. I think DS might feel less stressed and more confident here. But he may not 'stretch' himself enough if he can get away with it (he has a tendency to follow the path of least resistance...) Music & drama isn't as good though.

The other consideration is that DS2 is very young (August birthday) and it feels as if he may still be doing some catching up vs. his peer group.
The change in him over the last year has been massive, and in another year it might seem as if he could have coped better with school 1?

I just can't decide.
School 2 would obviously cost less too, but I couldn't bear it if in later years DS2 accused us of sending him to a 'less good' school to save money!
Any wise words?

Lol seorae, you're ok, no Latin comments here. I do know my sis is on here somewhere though, but afaik haven't bumped into her yet...

She'll recognise this though - she went on to a local poly and picked up a diploma and our parents attended the ceremony and lauded her achievement (rightly - she then went on and used it in her work and made considerable promotions etc etc. a year later I graduated with a first and my parents didn't even come to the ceremony - so it isn't necessarily all about the school or the academics lol. But I do wonder about their motivations and if they were maybe trying a bit too hard where dsis was concerned... Ishoos? Moi? )

I only mention that as an aside to the op... I can see I do a similar thing with my own dcs (in a slightly different way - one has a disability and does, if I'm honest, get treated slightly differently in that her achievements are slightly more lauded than that of the other two.) so as a bit of a warning to myself as well.....

Could I add two things:

1. sit down with both your children as a family, and put it to them, the pros and the cons, lay it all out - (reassure DS2 that ££££ is not his problem, he is valuable and worth it [children should never be burdened with financial decisions you make]), and ask them to go away as brothers, think about it, and return with their thoughts back to the next meeting.

So many reasons for this recommendation: a) communication is open, clear, democratic and open family based. b) they get a little taste of the realities that go into decision making processes. c) this is how corporate life/the world of work works. d)they get given the power to influence their lives, and the knowledge that they have a voice, and they know that they have responsibility in the outcome. e) it gets the two brothers COLLABORATING and SUPPORTING eachother in their decisions you will find out how much they love eachother.

then,

1. follow your gut. It is important to PRAISE DS2 for his achievement in getting selected, and to reassure him that the decisions he and bro make are valid ones.

Please think very seriously about my suggestions in 1. When children are included, felt heard and given a chance to have a say, you will be amazed at what you see, the wisdom, reality, responsibility and strength that lie in your wonderful children - and the huge drop in alienation/teenage stuff.

I t is not fair to burden a 10 or 11 year old with making this kind of decision. We as parents have to take charge of making decisions they have not got the maturity or experience to make yet.

I re-iterate to you that in years to come he will turn round and want to know why you have paid tens of thousands on his brothers education and not his! I don't think he'll remember / be appeased by you saying you asked for his input.I am only saying this because I have seen it happen in several families when the children get to their 20s and 30s and however well they have done, start wondering if they would have got further with a private education
Send him to his brothers school.If it doesn't seem right move him then.

"I re-iterate to you that in years to come he will turn round and want to know why you have paid tens of thousands on his brothers education and not his!"

So dandelioness do you think this will also happen to us? Despite the fact that my DS1 is very happy and doing well at his excellent comp and would never have got into to DS2's school super selective boarding school?
In my occupation we have an ethos of treating people as individuals we also do this at home. I believe what is right for one is not right for the other. Maybe if the OP DS is sent to his brothers school he will turn around in the future and say "why did you let me go to DS1 school if you had doubt about my ability cope? I hated it, the pressure to do well was enormous and I was always aware that i was at the bottom of the year group and always felt inferior."

By the way I do agree with you that you cannot burden children with making decisions about which school on their own and that sometimes we have to override their wishes.

I totally agree with you Happygardening. However, you and I appear to be saying this when we have truly fantastic state options and therefore feel hand on heart that by sending one child there is not in anyway giving them an inferior education. Perhaps some of the other posters don't have such good state options and my sending one child state and the other private it IS a big difference. But, there is no way I am turning down a school which gets nearly 90% A-C at GCSE including English and maths, 50% EBACC, value add of 1019 and approx 15 a year into Oxbridge as well as offering extra curricular as long as my arm purely because it is a state school so that I can say to my DS I spent the same amount of money on you as on your sister for you to get an almost identical education.

If he throws it back at me then I will have to live with it but we have made that decision and stand by it. I hope that she will go there too but it may not suit her and having just had to move her quickly out of a very good primary to prep it has reinforced to me that one size just does not fit all.

happygardening- i really hope not.Obviously he couldn't have gone to the same school as is younger brother but was there not another independent school which would have suited him and his particular talents.It does sound rather as if , because he is not so academic, his education is less worth investing in.
In the Op's case why enter the the poor child for the entrance exam, have him pass it and then still decide he's not bright enough for the school.It's a well documented fact that 'borderline' grammar school passers do much better in a grammar school environment than at a comp.

Abitwobblynow, your approach ONLY works if your child's decision and your decision happen to align. If it doesn't then it is I am afraid a terrible idea. My sister did exactly this with her son, and thought because they had explained very clearly all the benefits of the school they were hoping he would choose that he would do so. He didn't, and they realized that they just couldn't continue sending him to the school that they were very unhappy with. So they moved him. He was very very angry (for years). Not only did he have to go to the school he didn't chose, but he also felt that his parents had lied to him about offering a choice, and had disregarded his feelings. It would have been much much better just to tell him what was going to happen (NB I think that they made the right choice, just did it the wrong way)

dandelioness we live in a rural area the two nearest idie schools to us (he didn't want to board any more) have either worse results or only 2-3% better results than his top performing comp. The later also had a bloody awful journey to get too. The decision to send him to the local comp was the best one we/he ever made; he has local friends, is doing well and his confidence has come on by leaps and bounds. He walks to school across fields and can also walk to all his friends and is involved in community activities including voluntary work. Everyone knows him and all say hello when they pass him. It?s the sort of education many Londoners dream of. Why pay when you have this opportunity? So pleased are we with the school that we seriously considered sending DS2 there but he?d just been offered a place at his boarding school he?d been sent to his prep 4 years prior to this with this school in mind so it was too difficult for him or us to change courses now. He was also three to four years ahead of his compatriots in the state sector and I could not see it working for him.
What ever decsion the OP makes she needs to really believe that its going to work and in my experience it probabaly will.

If your ds passed the exam then you should send him, otherwise why did you let him sit it? Sounds like he likes music and drama which you say are excellent at ds1s school. Probably not a good idea to send one child to fee paying and not the other especially if he passed the exam to get in!!!why not look at smaller independent schools where you think your ds2 might flourish. As good as your local state school is they do tend to focus on the brightest. At my local state school which is supposed to be very good they run a scheme for the so called 'Gifted and Talented' which for a supposedly non selective comprehensive is appalling. Imagine how the children who are not labelled 'Gifted and Talented' feel? That is the main reason my ds will not be going there even though he would probably be in this 'G and T' group.

If your ds passed the exam then you should send him, otherwise why did you let him sit it? Sounds like he likes music and drama which you say are excellent at ds1s school. Probably not a good idea to send one child to fee paying and not the other especially if he passed the exam to get in!!!why not look at smaller independent schools where you think your ds2 might flourish. As good as your local state school is they do tend to focus on the brightest. At my local state school which is supposed to be very good they run a scheme for the so called 'Gifted and Talented' which for a supposedly non selective comprehensive is appalling. Imagine how the children who are not labelled 'Gifted and Talented' feel? That is the main reason my ds will not be going there even though he would probably be in this 'G and T' group.

What is the philosophical difficulty with a non-selective comp attempting to stretch the gifted and talented? Surely differentiating is exactly the right thing to do?

? at fluffpuff? You won't send you'd child to a comprehensive school because it provides differentiated work for children of different abilities? What on earth are you on about?

My gut is saying same school; if he did ever get mauled emotionally he would at least have his brother to help him/ look out for him.

My sister was pretty shy age 10 but confidence suddenly sky-rocketed; you don't know your son will always be 'less robust'.

I think if he's into music and drama his strengths may be different to your first's; I'd send him to the school that will make the most of them. Seconding what others have said; be upfront with teachers if you send to same school and express the concerns outlined in OP so that they can work with DC2 to his advantage. Educationalists today are more about positive messaging in my experience, so it would surprise me if teachers did openly make comparisons, to the detriment of your DC2's confidence.

I've sent all of mine to the same school so far fluffyhamster. It's high in the top 100. My DC have a spread of ability too but no teacher has ever, ever drawn invidious comparisons, nor would. Some of mine may sometimes feel, or have felt, that they have a tough act to follow but my reasoning has always been that this school is overwhelmingly their best option and so each, having passed the test, should have his or her chance to prosper. The fact that a group of them are all there has been incredibly positive; in fact there have been no downsides to the arrangement that give me even the slightest regret (the fourth is in Y13, three others are still there, so this experience is over a period of time).

My DS1 has in the past been overshadowed by DS2 when they've been at the same schools. But as someone once said to me when they were little; "this is life someone will always be cleverer than you". But being clever does not make you a better person! Or ultimately even more successful.

He's won a place. You say bottom 20%, but that's not last. You put him in for the exam, he likes the school. No question about it, let him go.

What's with this private school being better because it costs loads of dosh attitude? Shocked that there are parents or children who calculate the cost of what they buy for each child.

I'd send my child to the best school for them - in this case it may well be school 1 which happens to be indie - but because the dc wants to go there and it has good drama etc - not because it's expensive per se!

i say this as someone whose brothers went private when I went state - not till reading this thread had it occured to me that I might have been 'disadvantaged' by this. Ha ha.

It's certainly true in our area that I'd be disadvantaging any child I sent to one of the indies rather than the local state grammar.

breadandbutterfly you are missing the point (and bashing the wrong people).

Private schools on the whole do tend to be better. They get better results, and their pupils get into better universities. Otherwise, why would people pay? It costs a fortune and they are not stupid, you know.

Private schools are better because they are INDEPENDENT. This has a huge and profound impact on (a favourite Labour word) - delivery. This means that the schools have to respond to the people paying them, who want a specific thing: the absolute best for their child. That is what they are paying for. In order to keep their income, private schools have to actively demonstrate that they care about their children and extract the very best from them.

As a result, private schools are more flexible and respond quicker to 'market requirements' (Nuffield report). State schools can still (because their supply source [pupils] is fixed, can still indulge in concepts and ideologies dear to their hearts. If you don't believe me, look at the results of the international league tables (independent of Labour massaging), which find British (state) education slipping further down the tables every year, whilst the gap between private schools and the state sector widen every year.

State schools in this country are socialist constructs: the provider is in charge (with a very powerful teacher's union who are concerned about their interests. This, too is human nature). That is the problem, and this is why BOTH political parties (Tony Blair, Lord Adonis and Michael Gove) have gone down the 'academies' route, which is to bring about independence from the LEA by stealth and bypass the powerful interest groups.

This has very little to do with 'posh' 'privilege' or otherwise. It is straight economics, and the hatred the state sector has for the private sector I think has a lot to do with how their left wing bullshit is shown up.

Where you do have a valid point, is that going to a state school did you no harm whatsoever. Well done. Your parents, by the way, probably did the right thing: the education system as it is structured is more suitable to and rewards girls (more girls are graduating now than boys and this is a worldwide phenomenon and a direct result of the feminisation of schools see left wing BS above. It takes little boys in Reception about 4 months to conclude that school is for girls).

Also, if you are of above average ability and have a fairly stable and loving home, it doesn't matter where you go to school you will succeed. But boys? Would benefit from the extra attention and pushing they get at private schools.

"Private schools are better because they are INDEPENDENT."

No they don't. They do better because they are selective. Even the non selective select on class and wealth.

No more selective than the state grammars.

There is an element of truth in the statement that they are "better because they are independent" though. DSs school only has to answer to itself in respect to how they spend the budget and can therefore respond to whatever their pupils need.

Their success correlates almost exactly to their level of selectivity. And where state grammars select at the same level, their success is almost equal to their independent counterparts.

Their are huge variations in outcome in the independent sector just as there are between comprehensives and as there also are between grammars.

Bread has previously said which grammar she went to and it's at the top end of the range in terms of intake (and results).

I meant: where state grammars select at the same level, their success is almost exactly equal to their independent counterparts'.