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?

Surely the fact it is a bubble is the whole blooming point 😉 let’s not kid ourselves

Totally agree- prep and then very well to do grammar. Didn’t know anyone who lived in a council house until an adult. There may have been a handful in my year at secondary school but they weren’t in my friendship group and all left in 5th year.

I will never forget visiting a friend at Oxford and her friend’s second question (after names) being ‘and where did you go to school?’

These people are in a bubble. The idea that I hadn’t been sent to a private school was just not even on their radar.

Private school can easily be a bubble
Please do not pretend it isn't

I'm not pretending anything. "Can" is not the same as "is".

Frankly if I was paying that money I would expect a bubble and a good one at that . Dd does a sport with a private school group they are very friendly and nice but my god dds Instagram full of their Christmas pics - Dubai, Australia, New York etc. Family after family. We are far from poor but bloody hell!

Anyway, these threads always go the same way. They don't want any kind of discussion just people to pile in and agree that private schools are the devils work.

I have to disagree about music lessons not being for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Parents need to inform themselves what is available very cheaply or for nothing at all.
Children from lower income families just need input from parents, lots of free lessons on youtube and similar sites.
If they show an interest and become good there are even more opportunities and scholarships available right up to PG level.
It's like anything else, the info isn't just going to fall in your lap, you have to be proactive.

Children from lower income families just need input from parents, lots of free lessons on youtube and similar sites

oh simple then!!

The problem is that a lot of people on low income aren’t able to provide that input. They don’t know where to find information or they feel it’s ‘not for them’. My parents, for example, are mortally afraid of anyone they perceive as ‘better’ than them. Even at my graduation, they just wanted to leave as they felt so uncomfortable. We ended up eating at Burger King, wish I was joking but my mother can’t cope with going anywhere nicer than that as she feels people are looking down on her.

So going to music classes/orchestras/a music shop would have been out of the question for her.

Posters are describing astonishingly limited school experiences. I was a direct grant pupil at a London GPDST with the widest range of social backgrounds imaginable, short of the English aristocracy (no great loss - there were dispossessed European aristocrats instead). Much healthier growing up in that mixed environment. The top grammars are aiming for that mix again, although it seems that very few posters on MN are aware of it or even the steady progress that's already been made.

Well I can tell you that you're wrong. I think many people imagine private schools all like Eton. There are lots of small private schools with perfectly normal, albeit privileged to have parents or (often grandparents) that can afford to pay the fees.

They attend local football clubs, dance classes, Scouts and guides etc, all which contain state educated children from all walks of life (Scouts/guides and football in particular).

You can deny it if it makes you feel better but I can tell you with certainty that it's true.

goodbye your experience is as valid as everyone else’s but it is just that - YOUR experience. Everyone else has their own experience.

I don't really buy that anecdote about Oxford students either, as a general truth.

girl why do you assume you’re right?

I grew up next to Gordonstoun. Never met a single one of them my entire life. So no, they weren’t coming to our football clubs/Brownies etc.

goodbye just relating my experience. You can buy it or not.

I will never forget visiting a friend at Oxford and her friend’s second question (after names) being ‘and where did you go to school?’

That was the question I had faced from a gaggle of girls when I went on an Oxford open day. The blank look (and lack of any attempts to make conversation with me after I answered) were a big factor in why I ended up not applying. State school kids tend not to give a shit where you go to school. Private school kids and their parents use it as a measure for how much it makes you worth getting to know, IMO.

Of course it's my experience! And that of all the 1000 pupils in the school at the time! And in the years before and after!

Was your comment supposed to be profound?

goodbye I have no idea who you’re addressing. Maybe tag your replies.

Quite. And I don't buy it. There are lots of private school kids at Oxford who don't ask that question as an opening gambit, you just stumbled across one, or a clutch. And the point isn't even about the asking of the question but about what they did with the answer.

Oh yawn. My DC did cofe leafy state primary first. Like many of their classmates they ended up at independents. Variety of reasons:

V bright and latin, three sep sciences and broad mfl were important and not available in the local comps.

Struggling a bit so smaller classes in the less competitive indies helpful.

Didn't get their choices of state or indy so boarded at a prep for another shot at 13.

Parents didn't have good cofe secondar string to their bow because hadn't kept up church attendance.

Almost all families who couldn't stretch to fees did keep up church attendance.

Common denominator about those who went private - they could afford it for some, somehow.

Everyone knew the reasons for people's choices. People were quite open about it. Everyone knew who the cleverest dc were, which ones were dyslexic, whose daddy or mummy had been made a big 4 partner.

We could afford it. DH went to a comp and Oxford and wanted his dc to have the self assurance and confidence he didn't if they arrived there. They both did. What I find v interesting is that their contemporaries who were as bright or brighter who went to even the better secondaries or the grammar (uber competitive) did not. That imo makes every penny worth it if you can.

Qualify that statement by saying we were in the SW London bubble.

I am addressing you IAmAlwaysLikeThis, at the moment, chiefly :)

Long user name to type though so I'll tag economically if that's ok.

goodbye do you often get so annoyed that people have different experiences to you?

Chill the fuck out, fgs. People are allowed to have had different experiences.

‘Well that never happened to ME so obviously it’s not true.’

God I had the where did you go to school question at a bloody job interview! Partner at top city law firm was scratching his head as he hadn’t heard of my school as he went to school in same city. He went to the top local public school Mine was a rural comp. it was a cringeworthy moment! Got the job though.

so just say IAm or copy and paste. Hard to keep up with who you’re ranting at.

But my experience was the same, goodbye. Do you not buy mine either?

Yes OhTheRoses except the SW London bubble is massively divided. Some of us don't need to spend any pennies to send our DC to Oxford en masse. And they arrive having had a broader social education first, which has to be good - arguably, depending on your politics and outlook I suppose.