Please can we have a non-fighty thread about the advantages/disadvantages of independent schools....

[insertfeistynicknamehere]

I attended one myself but it was a long time ago.

Been looking round and keep seeing references to "dodgy independents"
what are these?

Where we live there are excellent state schools but I have no experience of this at secondary, it seems quite scary - DC attend a state village one-form entry school

My oldest is only 8 so it's a fair way off yet but still...
Promise am not a goady fucker btw.

Went to state school myself, but send DD to private prep and assume she will continue into 2ndary private too. For us the advantage of a private school is the attention she gets, it's "cool" to be bright (which she is), more choice - sports, music, science equipment, computer stuff etc. It doesn't suit everyone, but I will walk over hot coals rather than send her to our local state 2ndary which is just awful, and where she would have to go if we didn't pay. BUT agree entirely with everyone else - each child is different and if our state schools were better we might have made an entirely different choice.

Same area as twowrongs where the state schools are the holy grail and the vast majority of parents have them as their first choice irrespective of income. There is a choice of Co - ed grammars or single sex grammars and the ethos of achievement is definitely present.

I agree with a previous poster that generalisations about disruption / badly behaved pupils in state schools is inappropriate. For what it's worth, my H went to a well regarded independent and hated it. He was bullied and in his view the smaller class meant there wasn't a breadth of friendship groups.

So it really is about the individual schools you have on offer and the child.

The small classes is a bit of a red herring at secondary, certainly where we are (London). Our local boys' state has a cap of 25 per class, the independent where our eldest goes has 24 in a class.

I'm like Saffy, an angst-ridden hypocrite. For us, state was the ideal but since we could comfortably afford secondary we went to visit a few. The selective, prestigious, historic, blah-di-blah secondary that he's ended up in feels like a safer bet though I do suspect that he'd ultimately do as well elsewhere.

In comparison to his friends at local states, the benefits are: much better sport: less churn with teachers; a faster pace (by dint of being selective, rather than better teaching); much more responsive to any difficulties he's had (which tended to be ignored at primary since his problems were v minor in comparison to some children, through no fault of their own); wider pool to fish friends from. Oh and less homework, surprisingly, but to me that's a good thing as he's exhausted.

Disadvantages: cost; longer travel; much less diverse in every single way; my mortification at being horrid stinking hypocrite.

I went to an all-girls independent school, but my dd is at a local Outstanding co-ed comp. This obtains similar academic results to many independent schools and does value both academic (and other e.g. sport and music) achievement and doesn't have significant problems with behaviour.
Independent schooling has become far less affordable than it was a few years ago, so many parents are in a similar position to you and have opted for state education.
I would recommend talking to parents with older children and find out a bit more about what the state schools local to you are actually like.
If we had wanted single sex, the only option locally would have been an independent school, but otherwise there are many excellent state schools.
Agree with previous poster there can be bullying in the independent sector too so some factors mentioned depend on the individual school rather than the type of school it is.

It was definitely not cool to be bright when I was at school! The cool kids had musicians or actors as parents, the pretty ones, then an international jet set life style, then the assisted places kids (don't assume they were particularly bright on account of their scholarships aged 11), the children of politicians.

The bright ones were just geeks, who refused to cut class to smoke on the hockey pitch.

And yes the bullying was awful. By the pretty ones of the ugly ones mostly.

Also massive rich/poor divide. They divided is into classes depending on where we lived. The 'Kensington class' were massively dismissive of the 'sheen' class and treated them (the more ethnically diverse class) as hugely inferior.

Heh. And I wonder why I'm not sending mine private! I appreciate that was just my experience tho

Nobody ever explains what these parents would actually be doing in their "pushing the local state school to drive up standards". It always strikes me as horribly insulting to the other parents, and even more to the teachers, that people would assume I had some magic dust I could sprinkle over my local state school if only I would.

I agree, callmeacynic. What are these miracles that private school parents can perform which are, for some reason, beyond the capabilities of the teachers and parents at state school? Very patronising.

Well, you could look at it this way: if state school standards/offerings bother you enough that you are willing to fork out huge sums of money in order to avoid them/get something else, then it seems likely that you are far more opinionated than average and if otherwise unable to get what you want, might well be more willing than most to express those opinions to the school you are stuck with and try to change what they do! I seldom hear people justify using a private school because they just decided to on a whim, or because it was easier to get to - they are always willing to give a huge number of opinions on why they feel their chosen school offers a superior education for their child!

Even if I had some "magic dust" to sprinkle around which I don't I wouldn't want to spend my limited time doing it. Both my DH and I have mentally very demanding jobs, and we work long hours and in our limited spare time we like to do things that we enjoy, we're lucky in that our jobs pay us enough to enable us to pay school fees and therefore we don't have spend manning teddy bear stalls or accosting hear masters to improve standards.
We've found that paying means that any problems he may have (which are few and far between) are sorted out by someone else the most taxing thing I have to do is send an email. I call this hangs off parenting, you others call it lazy parenting or even neglectful parents frankly I care.

Typo:
Frankly I don't care.

And therein lies the problem: poor, uneducated parents have even less time and capacity than you do.

And it is not always the interfering parents who have the most intelligent things to say.

Oh God where are my glasses!
Start again I call this hands off parenting, others call it lazy parenting or even neglectful parenting frankly I don't care.

round I very much doubt they have less time than we do, not sure about capacity as I'm not sure what you mean by capacity? Do you mean mental capacity, that's a bit patronising or physical capacity i.e. availability if the latter again I doubt they have less physical capacity than we have.

Even if I were to undergo a massive personality change and suddenly want tp become in school life, I know from on here that what Inthink makes a first class education is not what many others thinks makes one.
Secondly as a public sector worker myself I can tell you that you can tinker round the edges with things but major decisions are made by some pen pusher in an office and disseminated down to the work force, the sort of changes I would like to make to education are not permissible or what many want.

I'm sure you have previously described having to go into your dss' state primary, happygardening, to try and sort things out for your dss, before you gave up and paid for a private prep school in order to avoid the stress. So it's a bit of a fib to claim you believe in hands off parenting. You have just found a way to not have to keep going in to complain... If you couldn't have afforded it, I suspect you would still be trying to bang your head against a brick wall/would have caved in from the stress/would have found something slightly more acceptable...

Main advantage is that children are not penalised by their peers for being clever and working hard. It's normal. Both my two rather despise anyone who doesn't work hard, and think they're wasting their time, the school's facilities and their parents' money.

Minor advantage: teachers never have a 'doctrinal' issue with telling you exactly where your child sits in a class, performance-wise, according to assessments and tests. You always know exactly where you are and if there's a problem, they are pretty upfront in letting you know. In the state sector we could only find out quite obliquely where the children were; it seemed not quite the done thing to ask, so we didn't.

Another advantage: no silly predictions of GCSE grades when children are 12 by looking at SATs results. Some of my state school parents have had to fight for, eg, sitting triple science, being put into a higher set for English that might get them to an A because tests their children took at 11 indicated that they might not be able to manage this. Completely ridiculous as so many children, especially boys, are late developers. Also this business that used to go on of making children resit GCSEs until they get an A or making them enter GCSEs early and often. Or sitting highly modular science GCSEs. Game-playing and if it hasn't been stopped, it should be.

Main con of private is that my two have lost contact with some, not all, of their state primary friends. Though my son, now at university, spends more time with state school people than private, which pleases me.

Another con is that a few of the private school teachers aren't that brilliant. In some subject areas they don't actually have to do too much teaching, if a class is full of clever and motivated pupils; this small section of teachers can basically just set exercises in class and homework and mark them. We didn't come across too many of these, though.

I came on to mention SEN support.

Unless a dyslexia specialist school on the whole independents can be less accommodating towards SEN (especially those which affect behaviour). By secondary you know if that is your child or not, but at primary level things may not be known when you start.

I do actually think that on average those parents willing and able to pay for independent schooling are likely to be the more involved / educated parents who would directly/indirectly help a state school. (This of course is a mass generalisation and only works as an overview, not when comparing to specific sets of parents).

Whether it is setting up a culture that homework is important (more in class thinking this thus leading to peer pressure that it should be done), spending money at school fairs (leading to more PTA funds, leading to more extras in school), being willing and supportive of learning events, questioning the school if teaching appears to be falling short, etc.

However I absolutely support the existence of independent schools, and do not feel any parent should feel under a moral obligation to use state just to 'help' others.

In theory we could afford independent, but chose not to because of a mixture of

• pastoral / SEN issues
• social reasons
• we have good state schools

Just how do you think an uneducated parent can complain about poor teaching of spelling, punctuation, grammar, or basic maths, let alone the physics curriculum, if they were never taught the basic skills properly themselves? How are you supposed to know what a good education is supposed to look like if you haven't been exposed to one?

Ps I'm not actually arguing for more middle class parents to be a pain in the arse at school, just setting out what I perceive to be the argument of those who think that might help!

round yes my DS's both spent a very limited time in a state primary about a year in total and I did try and sort things out but it quickly became apparent to me that I do not have any appetite, patience or time for "sorting things out" and anyway no one was interested in any way about my concerns; I quickly realised I was wasting my breath.

I thought this was supposed to be a non fighty thread

Dapple: you can speak English. You can read and write in English. You understand the system. You have high aspirations for your DC. You are confident. You have cultural capital that you could share: careers talks, networks etc. You could offer a lot to many schools where considerable numbers of parents do not share your advantages in life. I do not think it is s patronising to point that out.

I do not criticise anyone seeking out what they see as the best schools - (private, grammar, selective on faith or postcode) for their DC. I have done exactly that. But the overwhelming factor in how well UK children do at school is social background. (OECD studies suggest that 77% of the between schools differences in student performances in the UK is explained by socio-economic background. Average OECD is 55%).

When the priivileged opt for private (or grammar, or selective by denomination, postcode etc) it leaves a skewed demographic in the remaining schools. Despite the best efforts of teachers, parents and students the outcomes are lower than they would be if there was a more mixed intake.

This exacerbates the already serious issue of inequality in our society, erodes social cohesion and contributes to instability.

That is one of the disadvantages of private education.

Just for the record I didn't complain about the poor teaching of grammar spelling punctuation or basic math, I had know idea how the first three were taught, good bad or indifferent.

There you go then, happygardening - you are not a hands off parent, you just know when and how to complain and when withdrawing your custom is the only sensible option!

I think, dyslexic or not, you would have noticed if your children were being taught entirely incorrect rules of grammar and punctuation, happygardening.

Drink I can speak and write English, Im articulate and very confident I have loads of cultural capital, (I'd be the first to admit I don't understand how the system works), but I don't want to do careers talks (well only to say don't do it) or network in either sector so I do not have a anything to offer to a school.
When I'm at home I just want to mind my own business and do my own thing, walk my dogs, see my friends, chill out, go to exhibitions, garden, read etc this might be selfish in your view but that is the bottom line I am not Mother Theresa and I suspect many parents at my DS's school feel the same.

Not judging you Happy.

Just responding to Dapple's request upthread to spell out what she might have to offer that other parent's don't.