Do you think private schools give your children a advantage in life ?

[mistybear]

I am thinking of going back to work full time so I can send my dd to a private secondary school. My husband and I keep going around in circles of whether or not there is any advantage to a private education. We are not rich hence having to work full time to afford it and this is one of the questions, will having parents that are not that well off be a massive problem being at private school, we are not in London and the area we live in is not massively affluent. One of the reasons I keep thinking about it is that the people I have as friends and some of my family that have been privately educated are doing well and more importantly doing a job they wanted to do. My dd is hardworking and has already achieved her leaving school targets even though she is in year five, the state secondary schools around us are not the best but a couple are not too bad educational wise but all of them do not have clubs and sports that the private school has. She loves her violin, science and space also her ponies and she loves her warhammer !! she is also a only child x

I mean, you can't have it all ways. Either they are over represented in positions of power or they aren't. The statistics I am told indicate the former, so they must be unusually attracted to such posts...

We're any of these people scholarship and bursary boys?

Orwell was, but he wasn't a politician.

Macmillan was, but his parents were wealthy from publishing anyway.

Douglas-Home was an Earl

So was Lord Longford, in Attlee's government.

Hugh Gaitskell, Labour leader from 1955 to 1963, was a Wykehamist, & might have been PM in 1964 instead of Wilson, had the reaper not called.

Either they are over represented in positions of power or they aren't

I'm not disputing that, no - for every 7 women MPs in the House of Commons there is one Old Etonian MP - and these two data sets, do not, of course overlap.

I don't think Macmillan was a scholarship boy in the parents can't afford the fees sort of way..........

7.4:1, if we are being pedantic.

Hmmm I am reading this with a bit of trepidation. If intelligence is just biological? Can it not be a combination of Genetics, environment and teaching. People tend to forget that the social environment is also very important to get good grades. The teacher making the subject interesting and accessible to their students is just as important.

So the question is does private school provide the later? If it does and the other two are in place then yes things do look good. If either link in the chain fails the task becomes harder. Not impossible but harder.

On income if the school fees keep on going up. I'm afraid the only language spoke at private school will be Russian and Chinese. That will not do at all...

I can't understand why people aren't incandescent with rage about the public school/Oxbridge stranglehold on the Establishment. Even the the vast majority of private school parents on here must know that their kids are no more likely than their state school peers to break into the inner circle............I've only seen maybe 4 posters who have children at the sort of school that will give them the magic key...............

Hak

What difference does it make, its always been the same really.
Most people aren't that bothered if their dc aren't in the inner circle
There's more to life than this and most parents even those who pay for their education just want their children to have a good career and be happy.

A Times/YouGov poll from last year found that a candidates drug use or participation in soft porn was preferable to the fact they went to Eton. 54% of UKIP voters and 53% of Labour voters thought being an OE was an unsuitable characteristic.

Even 19% of Tories thought being an OE would be an unsuitable characteristic.

But still they keep getting elected.

I don't think there's a more passive-aggressive electorate in the world than the British

hak my theory ( very much borne out from what I read on MN ) is that people adopt a sort if wilful blindness in order to protect their own feelings.

No one wants to believe that their DC are disadvataged that there chances and choices are curtailed. That's a terrible thought for a parent.

So people adopt a number of responses;

Outright denial of the advantage ( you'll see posters in a queue for this on any private school thread).

Making oneself an exception; accepting the disadvantage as a generality but placing your own DC as a special exception ( my DC will get on because they're middle class, have supportive parents ... Insert bullshit of choice).

Demonising the dominant group; we wouldn't want to have what they have it was handed to us on a plate. Our own DC are too moral/ interesting/ happy... Power, status and wealth are dirty and our DC don't want it ( especially women/ mothers - they esoevially don't want it. No way, no how).

The other side of the coin is that a child from a working class background may never quite fit in as hard as they try - this happened to my auntie. She talked wrong, her handwriting was wrong, she even had the wrong type of name. During her school years she went by the name of Edie instead of Ivy to try and fit in. All her peers had fathers who were powerful, her education was paid by a life insurance policy when her father was killed in the war :(

"Making oneself an exception; accepting the disadvantage as a generality but placing your own DC as a special exception ( my DC will get on because they're middle class, have supportive parents "

I don't think this one is wilful blindness -(well, I wouldn't, would I? ). I think this one is actually true.

Don't forget the other myth much belived by private school parents "my dc is so special/clever/sensitive/talented they would be eaten alive in state school"

Word or people just don't care. I know my DC won't ever be part of this inner circle but so what? Technically they could move the US and run for the US Presidency but that's not going to happen either. There are lots of areas shut off to them and they are very privileged children. There are still a million plus opportunities open to them.

But then I'm foreign so maybe that influences my views.

Taz - I agree that most people have zero interest in obtaining the sort of power/status/wealth that enables them to run countries/corporations/banks or be part of the coterie that lives off them!

Well I would buy the lack if interest in these things if the opportunity were remotely ope to them.

But since it's not...

You see people said the working classes didn't want to go to university ( including the working classes) but when given the chance, when the barriers were lifted, they went in their droves.

Do most people have zero interest in being, say, a head teacher or the manager of a supermarket?

Saying oh well, most people don't want to do it so it's OK if they can't- and that the sort of people who have always done these things should carry on doing them is so defeatist and paronising!

my theory ( very much borne out from what I read on MN ) is that people adopt a sort if wilful blindness in order to protect their own feelings.
aka cognitive dissonance.
Like the poster who came from a dire background, worked hard and now pay to send her DC to a fee-paying school, we also don't have expensive tastes or upwardly mobile aspirations, just want our DC to enjoy their time at school, in a calm and purposeful working environment.
Results and destination are irrelevant, that is just the outcome. To us, the life they lead now is what matters. I see many hardworking children utterly miserable in classes where a minority disrupt the learning. Any number of putative A*s, RG universities don't fix the now. so we spend our money on that, and eat Aldi, because Aldi tastes the same as Waitrose and brands are irrelevant to us.

But I could have allowed DS to apply for Eton- he would have loved to. I don't want my children at boarding school for purely selfish reasons. I genuinely don't care that by refusing this I am effectively closing off any access to some inner circle. I'm quite happy for my DC to be at an ordinary Edinburgh day school and whatever future that brings. I accept that I'm in a minority of people in this position, but some people really don't care.

"I'm quite happy for my DC to be at an ordinary Edinburgh day school"

Private obvs.

Oh yes, Hak, I've made my views on our local schools very clear!

"my dc is so special/clever/sensitive/talented they would be eaten alive in state school" Hak

the reverse standpoint is equally true 'my dc is too sensitive/northern/proletarian to survive in a socially exclusive and/or academically pressured environment - and anyway we can't afford it, so...'

just want our DC to enjoy their time at school, in a calm and purposeful working environment

that's what 80%+ of parents would want for their child, I think, irrespective of income/social status/whatever...

That is quite funny Taz oh the irony.

I do agree that I don't want my children at boarding school and am certainly not ambitious enough (or deluded) to think that they could run for President of the Student Youth Club US President.

Nationaltrusthandbook I'm fairly certain every American child is told at some point that they too could run for US President.

It's probably no bad thing Taz aim for the stars n all that!