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?

Dapplegrey - I’m not sure that as a putative applicant for a potentially dangerous position I should be openly discussing my secret side line project. ?! Could derail the whole thread plan.

We didn't use tutors and very much went on whether DS fancied doing the exam as it approached. Both parents did the 11+ though and we registered him for the exam, gave advice etc.

This particular "outstanding" grammar is situated near a lot of social housing and works with local primaries to recruit bright children whatever their background. Everyone in catchment who passes gets in, and then they take the children with the best results from the areas outside. There is quite a drive on creating opportunities for clever kids whatever their background, and I can applaud that, even as we are waiting to hear the exact outcome of our application.

I am of course motivated by my own prejudices and politics just as much as the titled dad who wants his child to go to his alma mater and follow the family tradition.

Ruffina
Comps that do well are gamed by MC parents. There really is no good argument against grammars.
www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2018/may/governments-grammar-school-funding-wont-improve-childrens-outcomes-say-experts
bollocks right back at you

Sorry, that was in reply to Talkinpeace.

My response to your experiences wherethekestrels is that there aren’t enough grammars. If we were where we were before the ‘dissolution of the grammars’, and we didn’t neglect the other schools, sharp elbows and private tutors foreign holidays would be done away with.

In fact, I understand that it was Conservative policy to get rid of grammars and put in place comprehensives, because Conservative parents with less academic children did not want them going to secondary moderns.

I think that it is madness not to provide appropriate education for children who have very high potential. At the same time, it is
madness to consign huge numbers of the population to feeling they are somehow second best.

It is madness not to dedicate more resources to education.

Talkinpeace

That is exactly the kind of study that I am dubious about. It’s a) social research, and therefore largely unreliable, b) does not examine any aspect of inequality and failure of uniform performance in comprehensive intake and c) comes from a particular preconceived position - just read the titles of the papers on the list it links to.

None of this is convincing.

fees of £40k+pa per child are completely outside the reach of anyone but the very wealthy
Average fee for a day pupil is less than 15k.pa

Ruffina
If you do not like that study, show me a link to one that shows that Grammar schools improve results for children at them by a statistically significant amount.

I think that there are very different schools in the private sector. Certainly 40 years ago there were ladies schools which had very inadequate science & etc.

There are schools with lots of outdoor activities, I understand, for kids who don't get on with academic work in various ways. There are Montessori and Waldolf and Steiner approaches.

There are some schools where there is an openly variable parental contribution and some where parents help out.

And there are schools like Westminster and Eton, where you go to be ushered into Oxbridge, or if you come from that sort of family, or if your parents have half an eye on a political career for you.

The costs will vary hugely across this range.

I dunno Ruffina, I genuinely don't. I completely get the argument for more grammars - but at the same time, I'm not convinced it would work. Where I live, there are plenty of grammars - we're not a super-selective area, it's about 25% that go to grammars. But even within the microcosm of the county they're simply not the 25% brightest kids - there's a huge economic bias. On that basis, if you made all counties into grammar counties, what would there be to stop that economic bias being replicated everywhere? I genuinely can't see a way of making grammar entrance money-blind - partly because it's pretty much impossible to create a tutor-proof test, and partly because the slide into underachievement among poor kids begins way, way earlier than 11. And that's before you even begin to consider the impact of a grammar system on the secondary moderns. I'm not pretending to have the answer. The more time I spend thinking about it the more intractable the problem seems.

I can’t. You couldn’t get academic educationalists to publish such results.

So like nearly all social policy the positive argument for grammars is based on a general view of practical, socially acceptable measures. (Which I accept means that expansion of grammars would require political legitimacy and will.)

Why do you think grammars were worthwhile in the past, as you said upthread?

Ruffina
You couldn’t get academic educationalists to publish such results.
Hogwash.
The report you diss in one sentence delved into the data from thousands of schools over many years.
If there was evidence that pointed the other way, pro selection think tanks would have published it.

Why do you think grammars were worthwhile in the past, as you said upthread?
I do not think Grammars were in any sense "worthwhile"
After the 1948 education act, free state secondary schooling was made available to all children for the first time

The tripartate system picked up a decent proportion of the 1/3 of the baby boomers who were academic
and flushed them onwards into broadening higher education
from whence they have come to dominate the media / politics / law

But once the difference in outcome had settled in for a generation, the rich but dim demanded the upstarts were put back in their place

and so it came to pass

Well anecdotally 25% of the FSM pupils at our local grammar got places at Oxbridge in the last round and the percentage has been higher than that for a number of years since 2012. The FSM pupils do astonishingly well at our grammar and shockingly badly in the local comps. You need to look at the leadership of individual grammars to see what can be done and not allow the numbers to be diluted by poor quality grammars with slack leadership. Those are the ones which allow posters such as TP to quote watery statistics which disguise the potential of grammars to be a really powerful force for good.

goodbyestranger
Well anecdotally 25% of the FSM pupils at our local grammar got places at Oxbridge in the last round and the percentage has been higher than that for a number of years since 2012
The multiple of anecdote is not evidence

How many FSM pupils are there at the Grammar ? 4 ? so 1 got to Oxford.
there are lies, damned lies and statistics ....

I have the KS5 tables on my computer
pulling the correlation between FSM and top grades should not take long to identify the school
if the anecdote has any truth to it

Still waiting for any EVIDENCE that grammars do better

Yes, but that's 25% of the FSM pupils who got in to the grammar. I'm not denying the power of grammars to bring out the potential of those who go there. I'm talking about the difficulty of poorer students getting into grammars in the first place. Obviously some do, but way too few.

TP there are plenty of statistics to show that FSM pupils do better in grammars. You can trawl the reports yourself.

Our school has had significantly more than four FSM pupils in cohorts TP.

wherethekestrelscall agreed although the reason too few FSM pupils get into grammars, and have done historically, is far, far less to do with tutoring than it is to do with challenges facing them earlier in the school career. In our area all FSM pupils achieving high L5s get into the grammar. The question is why are so few FSM pupils achieving high L5s.

TP is massively disingenuous, to the point hat having read her posts over the years I think she is hugely ill or under informed.

Apologies for the typos and grammar (cooking for seven).

“Wish we had grammars; they’d allow so much more opportunity for poor but smart and committed children”
But they don’t. There might be an argument for them if they did-but they don’t.

Goodbye,

You do know that since 2016 Year 6 SATs haven't been reported as levels?

So if 'all the FSM children getting high level 5s' [How do you know this? Level 5 wasn't subdivided?] up until summer 2015 got into grammars, how many have got in in 2016, 2017 and 2018?

Could you point me at the source of your statistics? I know where TP gets hers from - the DfE. Where are yiours from?

I went to a private school and it was awful. I never fitted in, the people were terrible, and it's totally against my values and (confusingly) everything I was brought up to believe. For example people should be treated equally, you shouldn't be able to pay to have better than anyone else. I felt embarrassed by the privledge compared to friends from primary school who's parents were struggling to pay rent and keep food on the table. It just felt so wrong. I never respected my parents because they were never around, I felt like I was palmed off on the school, leaving at 7:30, and not getting back until 6:30. It put me off education, I left straight after gcses. I'm poor now, but even if I had loads of money I wouldn't send my daughter to a private school. Especially if she was really unhappy there.

goodbyestranger
there are plenty of statistics to show that FSM pupils do better in grammars
Link please.
I linked to the peer reviewed report which undermined your assertion.
Please link to the peer reviewed report that supports it.

Our school has had significantly more than four FSM pupils in cohorts TP.
Cool. That narrows it down.
There are only 164 grammars after all .... give me half an hour and I'll link to the schools very own outcome data as reported to the DfE
or do they lie to the DfE and tell you the truth

So, this is more anecdote than data. However, the results published by the government website suggest that our local comp gets results about half a grade less than you would expect per GCSE, from pupils going in, whereas the grammar school gets results about a third higher per GCSE than you would expect, from where the pupils were at the start. And the discrepancy for the comp is greater for the more able pupils.

Of course, this data, while having little predictive value on the national situation, is very interesting if your child might be going to one of these 2 schools.

While this sort of data doesn't seem available for the private sector,, there are very good figures showing the "added value" of some private schools in providing a helping hand in obtaining various sorts of University places or jobs.

It's just jealousy. Years ago my dh would proclaim he didn't believe in private ed however our daughter is educated privately - the difference is (a) she has a 80% bursary (b) she applied for and won the place and (c) we have the money to pay the 20% plus plenty of our friends privately educate. He admitted he wished we had sacrificed more and sent them both from 11.

Hercomes,

Interestingly, locally it has been the other way round - the added value of a local comp is significantly positive, for all groups, that for an local grammar is negative for all groups...

It is about specific schools, not specific 'types' of school BUT at least we are now discussing added value not absolute results. Truly comparable added value won't be that clear for a while yet, though, because in the changeover from letter grades to numerical ones - and in a year or two's time the change to the SATs used as the baseline - different 'conversion factors' have made, and will make, the data incomparable from year to year.

(So for 2017 results, each 'step in letter grade' was worth 1 point. Locally at least, added value for comprehensives was stellar, that for grammars was...not. So for 2018, a step from A to A* was worth 3x what a step between lower grades was...and sugddenly the grammars were looking better. Will be interesting to see this year, as almost all GCSEs will be numerical this year, except for a tiny number of legacy ones)