Private School Worth It?

[beantltc]

Would like to know an adult's opinion on private school and if you think it is worth the money compared to normal schools.

"I want him to have a balanced, holistic education"

He can't get a balanced education about LIFE if he's being educated in a privileged ghetto.

I'm well aware of all the potential issues, thanks mini.

I currently work in a state college with a significant intake of privately educated students, and guess what? They are not all arrogant, up their own arses, unable to mix,unbalanced little hooray Henry's with a stick up their backsides. In fact, most are very polite, hardworking, respectful young adults.

Just like all state school kids aren't well balanced, down to earth, adjusted teenagers . Likewise, most are respectful, polite and hardworking. But there is an issue that the main feeder (state) school seems to have a very high number of students who come to us with extreme anxiety issues, partly because of the pressure the school puts on them to maintain their 'outstanding' reputation.

Sorry, nope, no way. I fully intend to ensure my son has a very balanced and respectful attitude as it is my belief that at the end of the day that comes from the home.

xenia
State school selection by house price in a posh comp area is argually morally more deficient than relieving the state of the cost of supporting the 500,000 children at private schools when you can afford it and pay school fees.
Do, please name and shame .....

One of the highest performing true comps (ie no admission criteria beyond date of birth ) is Thornden
but it takes a fair few kid sfrom out of catchment areas because nobody moves house any more ....

so please, name the Comp schools with no poor kids

Dame Alice Owen's comes pretty close. Formally not a fully selective school, is supposed to take at least 125 out of 200 (62.5%) on a distance-based criterion and yet has all of 1.7% of pupils on FSM.

More generally, the Sutton Trust documents the following:

• The top performing 500 comprehensive schools in England, based on GCSE attainment, continue to be highly socially selective, taking just 9.4% of pupils eligible for Free School Meals (FSM), just over half the rate of the average comprehensive (17.2%).

• 85% of schools in the top 500 admit fewer FSM pupils than live in their catchment area, with over a quarter having a gap of five percentage points or more.

• Living in the catchment area of a top comprehensive school is associated with a house price 'premium' of around 20%.

This report looked at the top 500 schools out of approximately 2500. I strongly suspect that if they had looked at only the top 100 schools the numbers would have been even more extreme.

stateschoolparent - only pretty selective private schools have decent admission rates i.e after the top 40 private schools the Oxbridge admission rate tends to fall below 15% of pupils.

Indeed, it is true that the 2011 Sutton Trust report showed that the Oxbridge admission rate of independent schools tended to fall below 10% after about the top 100. However it also showed that the average Oxbridge admission rate of all independent schools was 5.2% vs 4.2% for selective state schools and 0.8% for comprehensives (Table 3 of the report).

By your metric, only a half-dozen state schools - all of them selective - had a "decent" admission rate, and not a single comprehensive would have made it into the top 100.

mini, I agree - private schools do not offer free places to low achieving children (in fact most of them cannot afford totally free places to many at all). I don't think see that as a problem. I think it helps ensure the UK private schools are some of th best in the world and that the products of those schools go on to do so much good in the Uk and abroad in the world of work and life. People from benefit from the sacrifices parents make to pay school fees.

There are selective state and selective privaet schools and unselective in both sectors. What is not fair is in my original area NE England grammar schools were abolished about 1970 whereas they are kept in other regions and yet is "state education" -it should be the same wherever you pay your taxes. If we think comkprehensives get the best out of pupils then that is across England not just in Bucks etc. If we think grammar schools are good then similarly it should be univerally provided.

User149 it is difficult to compare the Oxbridge admission rates of private schools -especially selective private schools- with state schools. Firstly Oxbridge admission rates very much depend on the subject you apply for. In some subjects like Classics and MFL I think the admission rate at Oxford is around 40% of applicants! These invariably tend to be subjects studied mainly at private schools as not many state schools pupils do eg two MFL GCSEs and even fewer do Classical Greek etc.
Secondly the pupil body at state schools is of course vastly different and to make a better comparison you would need to compare the performance of children of parents with similar backgrounds/ earnings (say eg children of doctors). Furthermore the steps taken by the universities in terms of contextual offers is definitely starting to be felt. This year for the first time over 10% of sixth form pupils at our local comp have had Oxbridge offers (and all for hard subjects to get into). As my DC are in the top 10% of pupils in their year, they are IMO undoubtedly more likely to get into Oxbridge from there than from most leading private schools where they would be unlikely to stand out.

I should have added that as you probably know a recent study showed that "the 7% difference in performance on GCSE results between selective schools (private and grammar) and comprehensives was almost entirely explained by differences in the ability and family income of the pupils. Once these factors were accounted for, the value added by selective schools dropped to less than 1%."

While you may not agree with the particular study there have in fact been numerous other studies in the past that show eg that the academic performance of middle class children in state schools -including inner city comps- is virtually identical to that of middle class children in private schools. I personally think the reason for this is partly because parents overestimate how difficult GCSE/A levels etc actually are. Even if their school teacher is not up to scratch, your DC can get top marks by reading a text book and/or getting a private tutor at a fraction of the cost of private school fees. (My DCs excellent online MFL teacher charges £25 per hour .) Of course there may be good reasons for many parents to go private, but I don't think concerns about your DCs academic performance should be one of them.

That Sutton Trust report includes a lot of schools that are NOT comprehensive
Single sex for a start
many are faith schools

Please name me the school that has no entry criteria other than date of birth that has no poor kids

Dame Alice Owen - as per its own website damealiceowens.herts.sch.uk/admissions/ is partially selective
so not a Comp school

stateschool, I don't think most parents pick private schools to get higher exam results as their only factor actually. There are lots of reasons and they will differ between parents. Some want small classes yet in my view if they are too small there can be no one to bounce ideas off or not enough contributing in class. Others want something else - i do a lot choral singing and have liked being in parents' choirs at the chldren's schools (and I am not saying you can't get that in comprehensives nor that you cannot find it outside school such as in church choirs of course).

Schools with no entry criteria other than date of birth with no poor children in them presumably in the state sector? Are there village primary schools in Devon or Northumberland where every single house costs a huge lot of money so every child must be from a better off home? The kind of schools with just a handful of pupils miles from anywhere? If there are then you might find a few like that. But I don't think anyone is saying state schools and private schools have the same make up of pupils anyway.

The study you refer to was only of science, maths and "the English" GCSE (whatever they meant by that). Those are the subjects that are most likely to be set in state schools. Subjects like history and MFL, which were not included in this study, are less likely to be set due to fewer children studying them. There are also issues with many state schools not setting in Key Stage 3, usually for ideological reasons. Children in unset subjects are likely to be disadvantaged in comparison to children in classes with a narrower ability range. This study provides no measure of that.

In addition, you say yourself that GCSEs are "easy" - thus they are likely to be subject to ceiing effects (meaning they aren't measuring learning over and above a certain relatively low ceiling). This is important because children who lack that wider, more extensive learning beyond the ceiling are less likely to do really well at A level and at university, particularly in humanities subjects. Thus, a measure only of selected GCSE results really cannot tell us much about the "value added" by different schools.

I would be interested to know what other studies you were referring to in your post?

TalkinPeece

The last distance offered for Thornden School in 2017 was only 0.93 miles - there are plenty of houses for sale on Rightmove (Chandler's Ford/Eastleigh) in the £400,000 - £700,000 price bracket that mention Thornden catchment area as a main selling point. Saying that, I would never swap my dcs' private schools (or indeed many of the private schools in Surrey/South West London) for Thornden - it doesn't compare at all in my mind.

stateschoolparent
This year for the first time over 10% of sixth form pupils at our local comp have had Oxbridge offers (and all for hard subjects to get into). As my DC are in the top 10% of pupils in their year, they are IMO undoubtedly more likely to get into Oxbridge from there than from most leading private schools where they would be unlikely to stand out

Not necessarily - unless your dc are already in the sixth form. Any state comprehensive school with 10% Oxbridge success (if it exists) is going to be highly desirable at sixth form and will open up to many external applicants previously outside the catchment area - your dc may well be overtaken by a new crop of A* students.

I live in Trafford which is a grammar authority. Like all grammar authorities, the schools in the more expensive, more desirable parts of Trafford are further up the league tables. In fact, when we looked for DS1, the local to us high achieving comp had better gcse results than a certain grammar the other end of trafford.

Around here very bright boys from deprived backgrounds also have the option of trying for a place at Manchester Grammar. They are one of the few independent schools in the country to operate a genuine needs blind admission policy. The brightest boys get offered a place regardless of their parents’ ability to pay. I’m not sure if any other independent school base their admissions just on ability. I’ve certainly not heard of any others and I imagine the vast majority simply couldn’t afford it.

Just to be clear, I know most other independent schools offer bursaries. But in theory, MGS could end up with a Y7 cohort one year, none of whom are able to pay. Of course that’s highly unlikely but they have the finances in place to support it should it happen.

User149 it is difficult to compare the Oxbridge admission rates of private schools -especially selective private schools- with state schools. Firstly Oxbridge admission rates very much depend on the subject you apply for. In some subjects like Classics and MFL I think the admission rate at Oxford is around 40% of applicants! These invariably tend to be subjects studied mainly at private schools as not many state schools pupils do eg two MFL GCSEs and even fewer do Classical Greek etc

You don’t need 2 MFL to study languages at Oxbridge and you don’t need to have studied Latin or Greek to read Classics either

stateschoolparent. You said "My DC's excellent online MFL teacher charges £25 per hour". There is no fairness in education in the UK, no quality education available to all, something I would like but will never see. Those of us who choose to pay for extra tutoring or independent education are all the same, using our money to gain what we hope will be the best education for our DC.

"The brightest boys get offered a place regardless of their parents’ ability to pay"

So children already succeeding highly in the state sector are offered free places?

Children who are failing in the state sector are not?

Shouldn't educational charity be directed at those who need it most?

I'm with Allan Bennett on this issue. Our education system - where the brightest, best supported and most privileged children routinely get 3x as much invested in their education, is a moral embarrassment.

www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/17/alan-bennett-attack-private-education-lecture-wrong

Nobody who uses private schools can claim to believe in the principle of equality of opportunity for children or the idea of a meritocracy.

For our DC, yes. Reaons include:

DS1 being ubergeeky and wanting to study ancient Greek and Latin which weren't taught at local state school.

DS2 having ASD and getting outstanding ASD support at private school (I think this is rare - usually better at state schools from what I've heard)

Better attitude among pupils. At DCs school it's really cool to work hard, get As and A*s, aspire to get into a great uni or job. It's uncool to disrupt lessons, not bother to revise or do homework. At the state school I went to it was the other way round and that left a mark on me that I didn't want DC to have to overcome.

minifingerz

Alan Bennett (an ex-grammar school boy) wants to abolish private schools and merge them with state schools so that the brightest state school kids can be educated with the brightest private school kids in academic centres of excellence - and the 'not so bright' private school kids to be in a different centre of excellence with the 'not so bright' poor kids, thereby improving them. This would involve selection tests of course - is this the school model you agree with?

Our education system - where the brightest, best supported and most privileged children routinely get 3x as much invested in their education, is a moral embarrassment.
This sentence excludes those DCs who find classroom. learning most difficult. Are they better served in the private system? I though the MN consensus is that no generally not? So the state system is best at supporting that need. As funding is limited for state education is that not the best use of money?
Or should the limited funds be focussed on middle or high attainers? Middle or higher attained but only when the students don't have the benefit of supportive parents supplementing education at home?
Is n't that what is already tried by funds allocated by FSM places?

Or mini are you advocating that to increase available funds private schools fees paid for by parents be paid instead by them into state schools?

Undoubtedly, the children who get the rough end of the stick are those that are neither wealthy nor bright. That has always been the case. When the PM and others harp on about how much better and socially mobile we were when we had the grammar system what she actually means is how much better it was for the very bright kids. Nobody wants to think much on the poor buggers that ended up languishing in the crappy secondary modern. Some were great and really channelled non academic kids towards appropriate trades but some were utterly shocking. And indeed in many (most?) areas, there was double the grammar school places for boys so girls had to be twice as bright to get out.

Having said that, many of those boys offered the full bursary place at MGS would otherwise be attending poorly performing comprehensives. For many of those boys, that opportunity is a game changer. There’s an episode of Shameless where Frank ‘goes back’ to his 11yr old self being made the same offer and he doesn’t take it. It’s interesting because it helps you realise that it’s not just a case of taking the place as many of these kids will be battling with low expectations and aspirations from their community and family making such a choice really very difficult.

Lookingforspace having to choose between community and a good education is I agree one of the hardest choices. Even for the brightest young people I have come across those who can't wait to move away from their community and experience the outside world but also the opposite.
However the question is how can community and a good education be not mutually exclusive? Or do low parental expectations always dominate educational outcome for all but a few?