What are STATE schools in London like?

[TeenTimesTwo]

I've been reading with mild interest the issue of exploding offers for CLGS.

But it made me wonder. From what I see in media (TV news, and papers), I have the impression that state schools in London have made great steps forward over the past 10-15 years and are now considered very good.

Is that true? Not just for schools with convoluted admissions criteria (like Grey Coats?) but on average for your ordinary run of the mill local secondary?

If so, why so much angst over applying to so many private schools? And the willingness to set up your 11 year olds for such long commutes? Is the education really so much better? Or is it 'snob value' or fear of the unknown, or 'because that's what my social circle does' or old reputations?

[DullAndOld]

they send them to boarding schools out of London like Millfield.
AFAIK most private senior schools in London are selective. I daresay there might be one or two 'rich but thick' type schools at senior level.

At juniors I am sure there are plenty. eg Notting Hill prep, Wetherby, that school that the tiny prince attends, whatsitcalled...

[londonista1]

@TeenTimesTwo There are... lower performing Private Schools in London too, although I'm sure that is really a case of wanting to be with "people like us" and would have different motivations than the properly selective indies. Of course, if you're rich enough and thick enough you might drop £30k/year to send your kids off to board from 7, taking London day schools out of the equation.

[Backingvocals]

Interesting thread and very relevant to us right now.

DD has an offer (accepted in time!) at CLSG and one other private but is waiting for a place at state school. She wants to go to our local very high performing state school. If she doesn't get in she'll go private - the next school down the state list she probably won't get into anyway due to religious requirements and the third school I put down I only put down to fill up the page because she just won't go there - it's had a serious problem with knives.

But it has been a really interesting process and yes there is a habit among middle class parents of thinking private school is the only way. All her friends from her state primary are going private. Interestingly, unlike her, they are also all of foreign parentage. I think aspiring, wealthy foreigners come here and see what the other wealthy people do and do that. There is an element of that.

What would I get from her going private if she had to? Less need to fight for her I guess. I went to state school and at times it really wasn't good enough. Homework at 12 consisted of colouring in a photocopied picture (literally). We read a book in English at 13 that was on Jackanory the same week. This wouldn't happen at CLSG. Or any of the other good private schools. It probably doesn't happen at many state schools any more but it did happen to me and it won't happen to her if I can do anything about it.

If she goes to the state school, I worry about her not being streamed quickly enough. I don't worry about opportunities to do enrichment things much - we live in C London and we can bring that to her life. I don't worry about the social mix - she'll get that obviously. I didn't like the bubble at some of the private schools but CLSG looked to have a considerable social and ethnic mix. The intake looked like my daughter's class at her inner london primary.

[Taffeta]

I pay into a “development fund” at each of my DCs state schools, as well as paying for text books etc.

So it’s perfectly possible to pay towards a state school without paying individual pupil’s fees as at a private school.

[Gowgirl]

If you dont want to go private and want a choice of schools in london you get religion! Everyone i know with children attends church regulary, im not talking sneaking into the back pew either, upfront participation, sunday school and coffee with the congregation after.
There are more atheists in congregations than ever before, im one of them.

[Backingvocals]

I did get religion! The right one for primary but the wrong one for secondary! This is why people go private - because they already have a full time job and having a second full time job of attending all the right churches and being on the Parish Council and whatnot is just too much

[Dapplegrey]

If London secondaries are considered the best in the country, just imagine what they could achieve with the same money or some of the money given to private schools.

Quicker - Plenty of well off to very rich send their children to state schools. Are they asked for donations? Do state schools ask successful former alumni for money?

[DullAndOld]

anyway there is a lot to be said for non selective private education.
My dd was starved of oxygen at birth and would never have passed a test to get into a school.

However she was also a likable and interested student.

What a shame that lovely playing fields, music lessons, a range of subjects, well behaved peers, and so on are only supposed to be available to those who are good at IQ tests...

[abblebabble]

I'm a governor of a London state secondary, so I see it from a "warts and all" perspective - not just the proverbial swan gliding over the surface, but the legs working like crazy against all the odds underneath - and so long as I can see the right Senior Leaders staying in place, I wouldn't send my own DCs anywhere else. I could never send them somewhere where I didn't have absolute confidence in the Head, SLT or Governors because everything stems from that.

As for private schools, if they were all abolished, and those parents threw their weight (and finances) behind the state system instead, I think everyone would be a lot better off. It's not going to happen though.

It's worth mentioning that we've lost some teachers to the private sector in recent years, but they have never been our strongest teachers, and in some cases they have been our weakest (though they have all had excellent credentials on paper - the sort of credentials that impress parents when listed on a website, postgraduate degrees etc).

[TeenTimesTwo]

If she goes to the state school, I worry about her not being streamed quickly enough

This, I think, is a hang over from the days when 'everything mixed-ability' was the 'in-thing'. From reading here, most comps across the country set pretty quickly for Maths & English at least and then at some point y7/8 for other academic subjects.
Some high performing schools seem to get away without setting (e.g. Thornden comp in Hants which sets for very little I understand).

I too would wish to steer clear of a school that had a 'serious problem with knives'.

[herethereandeverywhere]

I'm currently living abroad but used to live in London. I walked past our local comp every day.... and the marauding hordes of pupils that attended it. It has a memorial garden for its stab victims and on several occasions a police presence (including van full of reinforcements) outside.

I went to 'the local comp' equivalent in my Northern town. Like my kids I was bright, obedient and interested in learning. I had an utterly utterly miserable time there for 5 long years (no 6th form as not enough ids would attend, I had to travel to 6th form college) in a culture of laziness, insolence, disobedience and bullying. Being bright was uncool and I was made to feel it - often. You could choose to describe my schooling as being 'socially diverse' (oh it was - I learnt how to hot wire a car, derail a train and make a cannabis pipe out of a coke can in my extra-curricular time) and that I thrived (achieved straight As and went on to become a City lawyer but by God the day to day experience scarred me. And I can tell - those comp kids pushing past me in London are just like the 'rufty tufty' (to use another poster's expression) kids that went to my old school.

Given the two personal experiences above I'd beg, borrow and steal almost anything to avoid my kids having to experience that. Anything. I'm a left wing voter but I wouldn't punish my kids for my principles like my parents did. It was awful.

[Dapplegrey]

What a shame that lovely playing fields, music lessons, a range of subjects, well behaved peers, and so on are only supposed to be available to those who are good at IQ tests...

Dull I thought you said all Etonians (Eton is a selective school) are thick.

[NaughtyButNise]

Quicker Did you mean rich but thick kids (very unpleasant term by the way OP, especially for one not wanting a bun fight ), go to Eton ? I sincerely hope that is not what you meant.

[DullAndOld]

nope I never mentioned Eton , must have been somebody else.

[DullAndOld]

anyway I do believe that Eton is quite intellectually demanding. You have to pass a test to go there, don't you? I daresay the test might be waived if you are in the royal family, but it is much more egalitarian and brainy than you might assume.

[Dapplegrey]

My apologies Dull, it was Quicker that said it.

[TeenTimesTwo]

Naughty You are right that 'rich but thick' isn't a great term which is why I quoted it. I used it as short hand for 'children with well off parents but who are less academically able' which is a bit of a mouthful.

But I am slightly surprised there don't seem to be many non selective private schools offering small classes for well behaved children and good extra curricular and teaching facilities. I would have thought there would be a demand for them.

Or is it that there isn't any angst around them, you put your child's name down at birth / age 5 / age 7 and if you are in the first 100 bingo you have the place?

[Dapplegrey]

and those parents threw their weight (and finances) behind the state system instead, I think everyone would be a lot better off.

Abble - and state school parents aren't throwing their weight behind the schools?
Also, if you've lost weak teachers to the private sector and kept the strong ones then your school seems to have the advantage.

[TalkinPeace]

Teen
My views on the reality of London State schools because I like you went to private school are based on DH's work.
He goes to State schools in London many, many times a year. Ranging from the superselective up their own backsides to the utter sink cannabis growing outside the door, check the wheels are still on the car and pretty much every permutation in between.
It is frankly impossible to treat the whole of London with one sweep because the areas are so varied.

TBH he also goes to a lot of private schools in London and they range from the ultra academic to the TimNiceButDim
and everything in between.

Its a big city with free bus transport for kids
so the sharp elbowed push out many others
but the immigrants are ultra ambitious
and many others get picked up by the wave

the very worst schools academically are in declining ex industrial areas where there is NO chance of escape locally.
None of London is like that (which is why London scores comparatively low in the deprivation indices - it is too well provided to be deprived)

BUT
I'm very glad my kids are nearly done with school as the damage wrought by and since Gove and austerity will take a decade to clear up.

[user1475317873]

For me it is the extracurricular on offer, facilities, more sports, better art, music, less disruption, more space in classrooms (smaller classes), happier teachers because in state schools teachers have to put up with a lot of reporting and controls on top of teaching.

In my opinion a better learning experience and if you are at school the majority of the day that is very important. I don't believe children are going to achieve better because they go to an independent school as it depends on the child ambitious and family support at the end of the day. If you have the spare cash why not doing it, you a releasing the space in a state school for someone who really needs it.

I find people who said they are against private education but send their children to top grammar schools hypocrites. I know they are not paying but they are selecting better teaching, better results and children on a similar level who want to learn, in general less disruption.

[comeinpax]

If you want to gauge how well a state school is doing look at the percentage of As/7s at GCSE. If you have an academic DC you'll be needing at least seven to eight to be set up for the transfer to a decent university.
Then at Sixth Form it's A/B percentage, bearing in mind most RG Unis will want ABB minimum predicted at the offer stage. (There's evidence that many are lowering this significantly at confirmation/clearing stage though). Don't look at stats at face value. Look at the progress the school makes from lower school to sixth form via DoE website. If progress is in negative - avoid. Look at subjects pupils achieve As in. Is it just those that are less rigorous? If you have a budding scientist or engineer it's no good going for a science department that gets just a couple of As per year. The impressive results might be down to students doing less rigorous arts subjects. I've noticed that over the past couple of years that some previously rated comps have stopped including results tables broken down by subject for A levels on their websites. And it makes one wonder why?

[abblebabble]

Abble - and state school parents aren't throwing their weight behind the schools?

Er, yes, they are. Did I imply otherwise?

But if all the wealthiest and most influential families across the country were fighting for the state system, including politicians and business leaders, (rather than fighting to keep their taxes down, for example, whilst simultaneously claiming to be saving the state some money by educating their own offspring privately) I've no doubt the state system would be stronger.

[DullAndOld]

yes but comeinpax that means that you are not judging how a school does for all its intake, not just the stars at the top of the IQ range. It is as though those children who are not academic 'stars' don't matter. it also seems to assume that everyone on mumsnet is going to have a 'star' child.

Our local school sends a few to Oxbridge every year and that is great, but we hear nothing of the learning journey of anyone else. In fact the OFSTED equivalent (in Wales) is about to put the school in special measures as it lets its average intake down so badly, especially boys.

Yet anyone looking at it would say "oh! marvellous! Six little stars to Oxbridge!" The truth is that it is their own and their parents' efforts that have got them there.

So isn't it time that we had a different way of judging schools besides on how well their superstars do...

[Dapplegrey]

But if all the wealthiest and most influential families across the country were fighting for the state system......I've no doubt the state system would be stronger.

That is probably true. However, according to marytuda no 'posh' person would ever consider such a thing so maybe the wealthiest and most influential families would get round this thorny problem by having governesses/tutors or sending the children to school abroad.

[TeenTimesTwo]

comein You will only get the large number of 'straight As' at the selective schools though, given from what I have understood, most of the 'comps' are near selective schools. It is unfair to judge a school on top grades if the top set have been creamed off. Which is why the 'progress 8' measure is quite helpful I think.

What do people think would happen in London if people had to declare for either state or private at the end of year 5? To stop people having their cake and eating it. i.e. Applying for both but if child doesn't get the good free grammar they pay to avoid perceived poor comps. .