Secondary choices - middle class angst

[Wincher]

Name changer here, been on MN donkey’s years...

We’ve just done my eldest’s secondary application. We’ve gone for the local company - it’s 5 mins walk away, has rave reviews from parents I know with kids there, seems really welcoming and inclusive. Ofsted Good. Not great results, about 43% 5 good grades, basically in line with national average.

I just keep worrying that we’re not doing the best for my child and I need some sense knocked into me by MN. Both DH and I were privately educated. We are now very comfortably off. We were lucky enough to buy in London zone 3 before prices went crazy and we have a small but comfortable terraced house in a slightly grotty area a mile from the tube. We could afford something bigger in a better area but we have a brilliant group of friends here and our whole life is here. We could also - probably not as well as moving - afford private school for both our kids. But DH is against it in principle and it does seem like a crazy amount of money to spend - at £18k per year or so that’s the best part of £100k for each child just to get to GCSEs. Plus there’s the not minor point that my eldest is bright but not outstanding and really we should have been tutoring him for the last two years if he was going to stand a chance of passing entrance exams.

But I do really think private would suit him - he’s not bothered about being with his friends, he’d love to learn Latin, he’s little and got a posh accent and I worry he’ll be ripped to shreds in a big London state comp.

I think as the deadline for applying to private schools approaches (1 dec I think) I’m just worrying whether Sending him to the local school is really us doing our best by him. People say bright kids will do well wherever they go but is that really true? We still have a couple of months before the exams would be, we could intensively tutor him until then?!

Please tell me I’m being ridiculous and he will do well at the local school! I need to stop the yearning for rugby fields and wood-panelled halls.

@@PresentingPercy - you might think it's rubbish but am only relaying my personal experience of teaching at top RG unis. Let's be honest, most of my students are not even from the UK, and yes the rest tend to be privately or grammar school educated (and grammar school kids get counted as state which distorts the stats). My impression is that this has got worse over the last few years but happy to be corrected if other people have other experiences

This thread seems to have gone way off the original poster's question and into a theoretical debate on state versus private education. But so many people's views on that topic are just based on their own experience (e.g. a person who was privately educated and who would only go private or a person who was state educated and would never over their dead body go private) and therefore (in my view) not that helpful or objective. I think the more interesting posts on here are from people who've seen it from both sides e.g. they were privately educated and have rejected that choice for their children or they were state educated themselves and have chosen private.

I also think there is a lot on nonsense on this thread. e.g. what is a "bog standard" comp? Is there such a thing? If so surely there is also a bog standard private school.
For what it's worth, if I were the OP I would stick to my previous decision and go to the local comprehensive school but do some research into private schools with a view to switching in a year or two if you're unhappy.
In case it's relevant my own background is I was solely state educated in a comprehensive school (non selective, not a faith school), I did very well academically in the state system and I have never wished I was privately educated, quite the contrary. I have middle class parents and I agree with the posters on here who say that unfortunately that would have helped me because, for example, they bought me books if I needed them etc (unfortunately in the sense that it shouldn't make a difference who your parents are to how you succeed in life). I think a child who works hard will do well in any school, and that there are benefits to going to a state school where you mix with people from all backgrounds and where you are less spoon fed. I think a child who does well in a state school is more prepared for the independent study required at university. My own children are largely state educated (on principle, not due to affordability issues) but I do have 1 child in the private system so I am experiencing both systems.

@presentingpercy you can choose to ignore what are actual experiences in my day-to-day line of work because it suits your argument if you like but that is what I see. Obviously these are not hard and fast rules - there are exceptions of course (though Dominic Raab is not a very good one as a white middle class grammar school boy).

I'd go state, I agree that there are better things to spend £100k on. I work at a really good state school and I don't think anyone gets picked on for sounding posh, the kids do gravitate towards others from similar backgrounds (mostly). I have friends whose kids have dropped out of college after private education, it's no guarantee.

I have got a tutor for my son in year 6 and am really glad I did, feeling no guilt about buying in support, it's made a huge difference. I was concerned that he would get poor SAT grades which would result in him going into bottom sets in secondary. In my experience behaviour in low set classes is rarely great (I personally don't agree with it and my own school doesn't set). His confidence and attainment has really improved with a good tutor.

On @leavingvegas point, my uni was a roughly 50/50 split state to private, everyone I knew who went to state school is now working in public sector; privately educated peers have significantly better paid employment in private sector. My state educated friends are female and private educated ones male, so that may also be a factor, but that public school arrogance certainly exists and seems to have an impact beyond university.

I do also have friends from state schools who have done very well for themselves, it can be done.

once Brexit is done and dusted I can get over my anger
Yes well you do sound very angry but at least you get pleasure and fun from sneering at people.

Here’s an opposite view which comes to the same thing as your viewpoint:
‘We’ve got these cousins whom we are very fond of, but they are so common. They’ve got this huge tv about 6 ft wide and this enormous fake leather three piece suite. The children go to state school which as you can imagine is full of knife carrying, chair throwing, teacher kicking students, most of whom will end up in jail”

I love meeting people from all walks of life.
That’s really decent of you! Do they realise what an honour you are bestowing by deigning to be friendly to the lower classes?

@Andante57, well it certainly doesn’t sound like you are going to get over it anytime soon!

@Andante57 I do love meeting and working with people from all walks of life I just have a problem with own family right now. I will have to get over it but as you can see I’m not there yet.

Your post did make me laugh @flourandeggs. But gammonism isn’t restricted to county brigade obviously, it’s missing out the likes of the local community Facebook page gammon who will write irate comments in CAPS whenever they are triggered. A cardboard BLM sign in someone’s window at the village crossroads? ALL LIVES MATTER! THIS IS A DANGEROUS TRAFFIC HAZARD! Teenagers doing wheelies on the pavement? SNOWFLAKE PARENTS. BRING BAG NATIONAL SERVICE! A British Asian family having more than 6 people over to say goodbye to their dying grandmother? IM NOT A RACIST BUT..

They’ll be out clapping for the NHS every week, noting the disrespect of anyone else not on their doorstep but won’t raise a murmur at nurses not receiving a payrise. Also (and without any sense of irony given they are proud Brexiteers) they’ll complain about the local Covid testing site being turned into a Brexit lorry park and the likelihood of our streets in West Kent coming to a standstill in a cloud of exhaust fumes!

Anyway, enough ‘sneering’. But perhaps were the difference is that we’re doing something a bit wrong in making fun of this minority of Leave voters but I don’t imagine anyone calling people Remoaners, snowflakes etc have any such qualms.

Lots of grammar and spelling mistakes in my post, quite clearly I have some unresolved anger too!

Just for the record, I've taught plenty of arrogant state school boys too! Usually top set and popular. Such a stereotype that it's a private school thing.

gsha I think you're right. It is very hard to generalise. I think my view is probably warped by living in a grammar school area, where the school that DS would have gone to if we hadn't gone private is very white MC with a vanishingly small percentage of FSM, so it would hardly have been a diverse experience if we'd gone for that instead. (Incidentally, on the 'spoon-feeding' question, one of the reasons we rejected the grammar is that it has a reputation for spoon-feeding and teaching to the test, which the independent doesn't.)

I say again what I said before - we are defined by so much more than our secondary school. Presumably the posters on here who were privately educated but now send their children state don't think that they themselves live in a narrow-minded class bubble, even though they went to private schools? So presumably they think it's possible to avoid that fate. Looking at myself, I have been to an average state school. I have been to a grammar school. I have been to Oxbridge. I have worked in a high-earning City type job. I have done another job which involved working with some of the most deprived communities in the UK. I have been a SAHM. I have been a state school parent. I have been a private school parent. Which of those things defines me? Answer: all of them.

@SJaneS48 my father-in-law came to visit during the BLM protests and his opener was..."You do know of course that the blacks sold their own people as slaves to the English." Sigh. This was in front of his granddaughter who begged to go (and was taken) to the Bristol protests. And his endless "I'm not a racist buts" drove me mad in 2016 and beyond. And if I were to point out to him that the people who have gone some way to saving the world with the first covid jab trials were Turkish immigrants he would harrumph and pretend his hearing aid wasn't working.
Loved your post - I recognise all those people, and agree I was being a bit narrow with my rural definition.
Have a good weekend everyone!

@coolingbreezes you are right of course, we are defined by our different phases of life and you sound like you have lots of different experiences. I am glad that the life I lead now has taken me on a broader direction than the life I led at boarding school, but I met many fabulous people at both of my schools as well as those that were not so fabulous. If you were to take a peak at the Daily Mail online right now (I know I know, horrible paper, but so horribly addictive on a wet November day) you will see one of their top stories is about one of the most down to earth people I ever met at school, you would never have guessed that it was her body guards who were disguised as the school gardeners (Lush and Lust we called them, it was all girls and we were a bit deprived of contact with men and they were rather well built!) Anyhow she appears to have got a bit jiggy with one of her more recent bodyguards hence the story in the grot rag. You would never have known she was a princess by talking to her, she was absolutely without airs and graces, completely down to earth and a breath of fresh air. So you are right, people are usually defined by so much more than their type of education. I do wish you could meet my father-in-law though.

Yes absolutely @coolingbreezes - Private schools don’t churn out this stereotypical cookie cutter shiny confident elite, they produce all kinds of people with different abilities and shades of confidence - just like any school system really! There are obviously individuals who’ll want to stick with type but that again goes for all schools.

@flourandeggs, quite an opening line from DFIL there! My DF’s views on Africa and Africans (White Kenyans being the exception) are so something else I’ll give them no air time here! Strangely enough DD1 is absolute favourite grandchild given she’s mixed race (exDP was Trinidadian, my parents were ecstatic when I got pregnant, my mother had a quiet conversation with me about how they could take care of it all at a private clinic). LGBT, dropped out of Uni and earns a (sort of) living with art, music & part time waitressing and is hard left wing! I think it’s because she’s very funny and gives quite as good as she gets.

I just don’t think I can bring myself to look at the Daily Mail though!

Presumably the posters on here who were privately educated but now send their children state don't think that they themselves live in a narrow-minded class bubble, even though they went to private schools?

I don't now (or I like to think I don't anyway!). But I do look back at the teenage/early 20s me and cringe. I realise I had a lot of ingrained superiority opinions and a lot of arrogance, as a result of private school and (to be fair) from my parents (my mother was the first generation of her working class family to go to university, my father was an immigrant who'd come to England for a better life; they instilled in their children a belief that they were better than (pretty much any) others). But then as a mixed race child I also faced a
fair amount of racism so I guess that kept me in my place.

I made friends with (and am still friend today in my late 40s) a girl who joined our private school sixth form from one of the roughest (if I'm allowed to say that) state schools around. The way she was treated by most of the rest of the year group was pretty intolerable - many openly saying that they didn't know what someone from her school was doing thinking they could fit in at ours. (We became friends because I was bullied for different reasons).

The attitudes I realised I gained, and the experience of my friend were some of the reasons why my DC are not at private school now. Though the experience of their cousins (who are at private school now) tells me that things are better these days, but they definitely have a much narrower view on life than my own DC (they couldn't, for example, understand that someone might not be able to afford to go away on holiday), and my DB and SIL are definitely much snobbier in terms of who they allow their children to mix with (I suspect mine would not be allowed if we were not family).

That’s back to what I was saying about parents choosing friends around 3 pages ago. Everyone on here is making choices based on their experiences. Good or bad. It is shameful to bring DC up to laugh at or even pity other DC. Is this a race to claim the moral high ground?

This is a really interesting discussion, thanks. I guess it’s like any aspect of parenting in which people always need to justify their own decisions - people take the decisions they feel are best for their own children or which suit them but they have to prove to themselves that they have made the right decision. It’s the same sort of thing as breastfeeding/bottle feeding, just writ large!

DH and I were working out how much more expensive private education is now than it was when our parents (both sets in fairly normal jobs, only one parent in full time work) afforded it 30 years ago. We think average salaries have doubled in that time but school fees have gone up approx four- or fivefold. I guess schools are having to compete on the best facilities and also being expensive makes them seem more exclusive and more aspirational - there isn’t any market force to make them cheaper. Goodness knows who is affording those sorts of fees now, for multiple children, plus living in all the really expensive houses at the same time. It does make me glad to be in an area where there aren’t really many expensive houses (well, they all are by non-London standards but they are all pretty similar) and where nearly everyone sends their kids to the state schools. I know all will be fine, I was just having a wobble!

@Stokey

Wincher I didn't see your email that was taken down but think I know the schools you're thinking about. I was amazingly impressed by the local comp when we looked round in Y5, not just the music provision, but general engagement of the pupils and relationships they had with city firms to provide mentoring. I would have put it higher up our list but it is further away from us than two others which Dd1 was keen on.

In terms of the local private school, the grounds and facilities are amazing, but if I were to spend the money I think I would go somewhere more academically high achieving. But I do know children that are very happy there and have done well in their exams.

It is a hard decision.

Yeah I wasn’t as anonymous as I thought! Def the same school. We went round it last year too, just as well given that there are no open evenings this year. Though the school impressed me by having a range of videos on the site with views from year 7, parents, subject teachers etc, not just from the leadership team like some schools have had. Plus I think they avoided having the drone that every other school video had this year 😂

On the question of who's affording it and how, there are various answers. One is that it's partly about choice of what you spend your money on. Now, I'm going to try to be REALLY careful here because I know how offensive it is when people on MN say 'anyone could afford private school if they just cut down a bit'. But - for people who already have quite a lot of money, it can be about choice. Looking at people I know, they don't all have expensive houses AND pay school fees. Quite a lot of those with the expensive houses are the ones who've gone state - because they can't afford both and they've opted (entirely validly) for a decent state school plus lifestyle and inheritance rather than school fees. You could easily put a child through public school for 7 years for the cost of what some people I know have spent on their house renovations - before you even factor in the (massive) price difference between their house and ours. And that's before you look at smaller expenses like cars, holidays etc.

Second, you've got international money. There are a lot of international kids particularly at boarding schools these days. (Which is an interesting dynamic because, although they're wealthy, the class lines are much less clearly drawn.)

Third, you've got family money. Grandparents who have money to spare and would rather spend it on their grandchildren now (whether in fees, savings accounts or whatever than spend it on inheritance tax).

Fourth, you've got bursaries. They're a small but significant factor - look at a rich school like Eton and they've got lots of families not paying full fees, including something like 100 families (IIRC) paying nothing.

Fifth, you've got debt. I imagine there are some families who borrow to pay for education, which is of course pretty precarious.

And finally, there are just straightforwardly very rich Brits. There are still plenty of them who have lots of money, inherited or earned, so that school fees aren't terribly significant.

@coolingbreezes. Spot on in your break down. I know with us it is a choice about which bit of education we want to spend on - uni and post grads - as we didn’t fare well at our senior schools. Much more difficult if you love your school years to make a choice but for us it was no brainier - but not without the occasional wobble but the further in we get the more we know we made the right choice for our particular family. Plus we want to do house deposits as that was done for us so we need to pass on that privilege, especially as it meant we could choose jobs we love not on basis of salary. I also don’t want my children to feel that they need to privately educate because it was done for them - that is what my sis in law calls an inherited burden. Fees are only going one way and I don’t want them standing on the verge of parenthood making choices about the size of their family based on something that they feel they must do, I want to show them there is another way to get a great education. I do feel so guilty that we even have these choices which is why I put energy into my work to help level up.

7th, you've got family trusts which are effectively inherited money but may only have provision for education rather than providing everyday income. There are a lot more of those than I ever imagined. But then there is a lot more money around for certain people than I ever, ever imagined as a kid from a financially struggling -in a perfectly normal way- family from the provinces. University opened my eyes.

@SJaneS48 you write so beautifully I can just picture your Dad and daughter together and the love that goes beyond very different personalities. Your daughter sounds fab! X

Looking at many of the terribly MC families that I know with children in state, they live just as much within a social class bubble as we do, in fact in some cases decidedly more. Yes, there may be a larger proportion of children on low incomes at their children's schools than there are at DS's, but those are very rarely the kids that their kids end up being good friends with.

This isn't my experience at all. You mention that most of these hypocritical people you know opted for a grammar or faith school. Maybe that's different, I don't know. Those schools are selective in one way or another.

Yes, that's why I think my experience is a bit warped. I would say the majority of people I know have children at schools which require some sort of obvious selection - whether that's fees, or academic selection, or faith selection. Before you even factor in postcode selection, which exists everywhere. Also, I know I'm trying to make a point, but I certainly don't want to paint everyone I know as hypocritical when I'm not. I'm very aware of my own privilege and hypocrisy (and my son would be at a grammar school if he wasn't at a private school). I just think that private schooling is sometimes (especially on MN!) singled out for criticism in a way that lets other forms of privilege off the hook.

flourandeggs that concept of inherited burden is new to me, and interesting. I went to state schools, my husband private. I don't think he did feel any inherited pressure to send our kids private - that decision was probably more mine than his, if anything - but I can easily see how that could happen. At the moment, DS's ambition is to teach, so I don't see this becoming a problem for him unless he marries well .