Why do people openly criticise decisions to send your kids to a private school?

[scotmum1977]

I sent my Son to a private school (Glasgow) last year for various reasons and it's working out really well. There is the cost but we just do without expensive holidays etc. I can't think of a better gift for my children than a good education. I was so surprised at how offended people get when they ask which school he attends. They think it's ok to criticise you openly and make bitchy comments here and there. Surely how you spend your own money is your own business. Anyone else have this experience?

Bertrand

That’s fair enough, but in many cases (at least that I know of) the justification for going private is that the local state schools really are awful. I can’t see any reason for people who can afford to fund alternatives not to do so, and not to say so.

State schools sometimes need reform. Which is best achieved by Ofsted and by good appointments. It’s not done by sacrificing the education of children whose parents care about it.

My parents and a handful of their friends did to some extent sacrifice their children’s education by sending us to the local comprehensive. They believed society and universal education standards were more important than their darling children who they were pretty confident could look after themselves. I know that is an unfashionably socialist sentiment on this thread but thank god not everyone is simply looking out for their own.

No doubt they shunned all the books, trips, extra-mural lessons, tuition, favours, advice, connections and other advantages they had on offer.

Yup Ruffina, you got it !

“That’s fair enough, but in many cases (at least that I know of) the justification for going private is that the local state schools really are awful.”

“Really awful” schools are almost always in disadvantaged areas*It strikes me as pretty unlikely that people in a position to pay school fees will be living in such areas.

*Please note the use of “almost always” not “always”

It's not really a tiny percentage when you get to sixth form. It's closer to 20%.

State schools need reform - well yes, if by reform you mean they need to operate in a society that is not in the stranglehold of austerity with a gulf between the rich and poor that keeps growing. State schools pulling their socks up and trying (even) harder can never overcome the imbalance in terms of pupil intake and it is scapegoating to suggest that schools can in some way make up for the deficit in broader society.

Good for them. Genuinely.

Mine go to state schools. I couldn’t sensibly afford to pay private fees. At the least it would have required making a choice between them, which I would never have done.

But it helps that our local schools are OK. Not great but OK. Which yours might have been too.

State schools sometimes need reform.

This is true BUT it is not always the schools which people THINK need reform that actually do.

Some state schools get poor results, and have to contend with a range of particular issues (e.g. lack of aspiration, illness related to poor housing, gang / drug related violence etc) because of the nature of their catchment and intake. Equally, some state schools get very good headline results, and have few of these issues, because of the nature of their catchment and intake.

The issue is that many people blame / celebrate schools for issues that relate purely to intake, not to the schools themselves at all.

The schools that REALLY need reform are those that do nothing with a decent intake....but that would cause an outcry because they're not what the general public perceives as being the 'bad' schools.

Bertrand

I agree generally. But it’s very different in London, and possibly in other large cities.

It doesn't offend me but I am genuinely curious about what this 'better' education is? Especially for primary aged children...what is it that happens behind those magical private school doors??

All I can see from private schools in my local area is smaller classes (but not always) and a more aesthetically pleasing building.

My primary aged children enjoy their school, their friends and lessons and read and write well....not being arsey I really don't know what your 20k offers you additionally?

I was privately educated (assisted place as I did very well at 11+, this was over 40 years ago).

The private schools were, unfortunately, Catholic. They were also not very good academically, but I was allowed to quietly work at my own pace in the library for some lessons and I worked myself through Oxbridge entrance. I was very aware however of a lot of lifestyle differences (my family was effectively homeless when I started at private school for example).

The parents were often small businessmen, who were buying a notion of a genteel education. Also, their children were being educated into the idea that they were better than the kids at the comprehensive down the road (this was actually said). I remembered the kids from my state primary and I thought to myself that this was highly unlikely to have been the case.

When I went to Oxford, I found that I liked the bright kids who had gone to state schools, generally, better than the ones from public schools, who tended to be more up themselves (big generalisation of course). In particular, the arrogance often born of attending an elite institution really didn't appeal. Therefore, I did not want to send my own kids to private schools, in part because I worried about ending up with entitled kids who wanted to compete with their peers in terms of lavish lifestyle and with values different to mine, whom I might therefore come to dislike very much. (again it is of course more complicated than this, and I am less socialist than I used to be).

I think there are issues with bullying in both private and state schools, but I felt particularly unhappy about how we would navigate those seas with a private school.

In the end my children have gone to a good local village school, where they are doing well, and my son is likely to go to the nearby grammar. We are a bit out of catchment but he excelled at the 11+ and will probably get in. I don't like the ethos of a superior education based in large part on parental ability to produce cash, but I do like the ethos of a grammar school education, based, as far as possible, on natural ability. I think this will very much suit my son, and that is the most important thing at the end of the day.

I also realise that not everyone is so lucky as to be in the catchment of a good primary, or to have a shot at a grammar, or to have a child who could get on with the 11+. I wish we had more resources given to education.

And of course, private is a large financial commitment.

That’s a very interesting perspective here.

IME, though, the subject of grammars will attract more opposition on here than even private ed.

Personally I’m all in favour of grammars.

There are no grammar schools in Scotland so it's either the local state school or private. I might have opted for a grammar school had the option been there.

a more aesthetically pleasing building.

That isn’t always the case with private schools.
I went to a well regarded private school in the South West. It was in an aesthetically unpleasing town (which made our O level book Hard Times easy to identify with as the town in the book was similar to the school’s town) and whenever the school built a new building they hired architects who must have had a very unhappy and dysfunctional upbringing and wanted to punish society.
These buildings would have looked quite at home in Rostock in the 1970s and Stalin would’ve loved them.

I think the issue with grammars (as someone who is currently going through the system), leaving aside any arguments about the rights and wrongs of academic selection, is that they also end up being about wealth. Perhaps not as conspicuously as a 30 grand a year private school, but still very significantly. There's a triple issue of house prices in catchment, access to private tutoring, and the educational and cultural capital that tends to go with being middle or upper class. I have repeatedly seen this lived out. The either poor or lower MC children who started out on a level playing field with DS and his friends at playgroup and primary school have almost invariably ended up not going to the grammars - either because they didn't see themselves as the right 'type' to take the 11+ or because they failed it. And that's just the families who have overcome the first hurdle of being able to live in catchment (sometimes via social housing). Whereas the MC and above kids who started out reasonably average have generally passed the 11+, through a lot of intensive parental and tutor intervention (and the very few who didn't have ended up going private).

The private sector is openly about money. I would abolish it given the chance, but it’s not high up my list of priorities once I become Dictator. But the grammar school system is properly insidiously iniquitous. Horrible. It would go long before private schools in my regime.

Knew it! Any mention of grammars and the hackles rise on MN.

What is it about a system that produced so many of the finest minds and greatest achievements in economic mobility, that people hate so much?

Where I am the comprehensive system is far more insidious for financial chicanery. Wish we had grammars; they’d allow so much more opportunity for poor but smart and committed children.

I don’t agree with the private education system because it unfairly disadvantages children whose parents choose to send them to State schools (whatever their rationale!). Generally private schools outperform State schools and as other posters have said it widens the class divide. I’m certainly not jealous of my peers who attended state school and similarly not jealous of other parents. I am lucky enough to be able to afford private education for my child but I just don’t agree with it.

Shouldn’t every child get a shot at a decent education? The wider problem is the poor education system in the UK maybe instead of the Tories trying desperately to reinvigorate grammar schools they should pump money into the schools that are struggling (of which there are many).

Bertrand do you have a position I’d deputy dictator in mind ? If so I could apply and deal with the private sector issue for you if you trusted me not to usurp your position that is !! could then have a little sideline dealing with private health - she’ll be so busy she won’t notice

Heron what would your plans be for private health?

Ruffina
What is it about a system that produced so many of the finest minds and greatest achievements in economic mobility, that people hate so much?
For a short window between 1948 and around 1975 it did
after that it became an arms race of the sharp elbowed
before that it did not exist

When I was at school,
private schools did not publish exam results (as many of them were shit)
state schools knew that half of their pupils would leave at 15 / 16

But its not like that now
Comprehensive schools beat many grammars
State schools beat many private schools
Grammar schools are bastions of drawbridge pulling, not progress

Ruffina, I'm really not the hackles rising type, and I've strongly agreed with lots of what you've said on this thread. I went to a GS myself, and my son is about to go to either a GS or a private school, so I'm hardly a 'burn down all selective schools' person. But as someone who is going through the grammar process (and has had a close up view of others going through it previously), I have to agree with Bertrand - it's vile. It may be socially levelling in theory - but in my experience, not one of the 'poor but bright' kids I know has ended up going to a grammar.

Mine has a lot of the fees paid, anybody who knows this is great and says what a good use of taxpayers money.
Those who think we are rich and can afford fees are often jealous or spout on about unfairness.
Yes, it was unfair that our other two dc attended dire secondary schools, in the bottom % in the country.
People are jealous and dress it up in many ways, and are quite hypocritical when they do so many thinks to gain entrance to a good school.
Finding religion is the funniest, strange how there aren't these God fearing parents and children queing to get in church every week

Bollocks.

The figures put about by the grammar school antis are very dubious.

Comps that do well are gamed by MC parents. There really is no good argument against grammars.