Feeling Disheartened With Private School Visits: Very Unpersonalised & Felt Like Cattle Markets

[roses2]

We're in London and have spent the past few weekends visiting private schools. We are huge state school supporters but willing to pay for the right private school.

We've visited four private so far, all well known in London.

1. School 1 - Great tour - we'll apply for this one
2. School 2 - "self guided"; didn't reply to my email query I sent regarding common entrance exam; bell rang at end to signify "please leave"
3. School 3 - "self guided" again
4. School 4 - had a student guide but they seemed unmotivated; couldn't help with half the questions

2; 3 and 4 all felt a bit like cattle markets. And all charge ~£25k/year. This is our first venture into looking at private but I expected something a bit more personalised especially if this is the sales part where they should be selling the school to me. I'm thinking of scrapping half of them from the list.

Is this what visits to popular private schools are like? Where you are just a number? Does it get better once you are in??

Just book to go and see some of the big name boarding schools if you want an incredible tour experience. Goody bags, breakfast and lunch, follow-up hand written postcards etc!

DH was rather keen to attend one of those himself after the open day! He'd never seen a boarding school before and was shocked at how nice it was.

They made staff attend one of the lunches at one and chat us all up - I remember a poor history master telling me he felt like a used car salesman!

Ultimately we opted for state as found a school that was far and away the better fit for DD on every measure - no wooden panelling or sweeping lawns but National Trust membership worked out a bit cheaper!

I did a huge number of state open days and found a wide range of experiences in terms of what was on offer and how the staff made me feel there too. It was probably the most useful tool in terms of making choices.

@Sleepo
e of the posts on this thread are good examples of why people call private school parents entitled. There seems to be an attitude of “I’ve got £25k and therefore I deserve special treatment”- from OP complaining about not being “wooed”, people expecting individual tours from the head etc etc.

I really don't understand you. If it was about state schools I would but private😮?p
Of course that private school is a business and of course people pay to get a good service during the tour. When you buy first class flight you also don't have expectations and you should not be " entitled" to what is included?.We are talking about private schools. For the rich people. in capitalism. Money talks bulshit walks

Which state school in SW London has self guided tour? Always there is a kid tour or a school worker tour from my knowledge

You’re paying for the education not for a lot of flummery. Going into it as if it’s a first class flight or a suite at the Ritz is completely the wrong approach- if that’s the experience you want, you’d do much better to spend your money on those things.

Of course there are schools that spend the fees on stuff to make parents feel good rather than on the kids. They tend not to be the ones that are over-subscribed though. Popular London independent schools have many times more applicants than places. They don’t need to waste their fee income massaging parents’ egos. Getting cross because you didn’t get special treatment for being rich is the height of entitlement.

@ThingsWillWorkOut - it was Christ's. A few years ago though.

We’re outside London but the open days we did generally included a talk by the Head, a tour with a pupil during which we met lots of subject teachers and saw the facilities. The pupils varied in their knowledge but you could ask to be paired with someone with experience relevant to you (eg a music scholar) if that was going to be useful.

Given the scale of the open days, I hope you still got to meet teachers and pupils at the schools? It’s not clear from your post. Did you get any feel for them at all?

"we are huge state school supporters" = "we can contemplate the thought of our child attending an exceptional state school without becoming physically ill"

>You’re paying for the education not for a lot of flummery.

@Sleepo, tell me that Eton and other famous private schools are not also about flummery. It is all about status and privilege. Also grammar schools are as many of them don't have even decent teaching and pastoral care . Yet thousands thoughtlessly and god only knows why apply . Probably to condition kids into competitive rat race from the beginning.

>They don’t need to waste their fee income massaging parents’ egos.

You sound like you had no awareness that each of those schools employ marketing manager who works hard on affiliate marketing and sponsored articles of the league tables. Yes, it is all part of a ploy. Yes they massage parents and are selective. They are famous for snapping prodigy kids as they surely will vet to Oxbridge. The local school offers for top kids in year 5 state schools a free Saturday program. All with the purpose of finding out who is worth investing in.
Don't be gullible. It is all big business.

Private schools are running a business..the more interest the less effort they have to make!! I personally would rather find a decent state school.

@Peaceandquietfinally not all of us have good state schools within the area.

None of what you’ve written relates to what I’ve said. Yes, schools want lots of applicants and to select the best. It doesn’t follow that they roll out the red carpet for 1000+ prospective parents or that the head can give 1000+ individual tours- this is what OP has found and it’s also the experience of those of us who actually have kids at these schools.

The school doesn’t have time to “woo” 1000+ potential applicants for 100 places, as OP has found. Getting cross about it is pointless. Getting cross because you aren’t being given a feel-good consumer experience is doubly so- if you want a feel-good consumer experience, spend the money on that instead.

Private education in London is a seller’s market 🤷‍♀️

@Sleepo’s point seems to have gone over your head.

Yes private education is big business but that business is educating children. That’s the important part of selecting a school not how special you felt on an open day.

Most schools only have a handful of staff in admissions and marketing. Any more would be a waste of the fees of current parents.

So when 1000s come to an open day it requires all the staff and many of the students to come in and show parents around and even then there probably won't be enough people for the open day of a popular school.

Mainly, as others have said, the current students would probably rather be doing something else on their Saturday. The staff will be very knowledgeable about their subject but won't have been trained in sales, marketing or customer service.

If I was choosing-the unmotivated student guide would be my biggest red flag in any school regardless of sector. In my experience student guides are chosen from the kids most able to do that particular job-confident,good at talking to grown ups-just generally good ambassadors. If a school can't muster a few of them then they definitely have an issue!

At both my DCs schools they all have to do it. No choice- unless a very good reason why they can't. Too many visitors to pick and choose the 'best'. Although the best is subjective as will depend on your own child and what you're looking for in a school.

What @wishiwasidisneyland said. They don't have a choice. Maybe it depends on the school.

Ditto in my DD's school (London). All hands on board on open day. Sheer number of visitors on open days make any other strategy impossible.

@ThingsWillWorkOut you sound like your knowledge of private education is from movies.

And schools like Eton pick their students, not the other way around. They don't need to woo anyone and can firmly rely on their reputation.

I wasn't looking for a personal tour guide. Even a group tour I'd be ok with if it was with eg 20 people. Just someone to point out the main rooms such as "this way is the library"; "here is the art room" so I can see the facilities without unknowing missing half out because I didn't know where I was going.

They no longer do this at my children’s school but when they did, all children in Y8 had to do tours and generally a few tours each. There are just so many people at open days, it’s overwhelming.

It can also be a tough day for the pupils. They were Y8s and prospective parents weren’t always great at behaving appropriately (DS used to come home with tales of parents who’d come with a list of questions about fee increases and UCAS points etc- just not the right questions to ask a 12yo and not appropriate to make them feel bad for not knowing the answers). I’m glad my kids’ school no longer does it, frankly.

DD's school makes them all do it. She is now in the first year of sixth form and so far has done it three times with the whole year group on board each time. She quite likes it on the whole but has had her fair share of bonkers questions. Plus this year, the new joiners for the sixth form had to do it too, so there were about 15 children doing tours who literally had zero idea of the answers to even the sensible questions they were being asked since they have been at the school for a matter of weeks!

We had student tours and self-guided tours and staff-guided tours in different schools we looked at. On the whole I liked the student ones best as they tended to give unvarnished answers to the questions we had. But there is always a problem in that for instance my daughter is not particularly interested in STEM subjects but she had three groups of parents this year who were all about STEM and not interested in anything else. So she perhaps didn't have as much to say to them as they might have liked. And the stuff she did have to talk about (literature, drama, languages) wasn't what they were interested in.

I've never heard of everyone having to do it. I wouldn't like that either. A lot of kids would find it incredibly stressful and would probably do a crap job and be miserable because of it. A total lose/lose situation.

As others have said, a significant number of schools ask all pupils to do the tours (that is indeed my personal experience - both prep and secondary and, as far as I am aware, all the private schools in my [SW London] vicinity). The schools considered that is part of their openness / inclusivity to include all kids and that for some of them (likely to be the ones less likely to put themselves forward) it is a development opportunity.

"and that for some of them (likely to be the ones less likely to put themselves forward) it is a development opportunity."

Yep. Nothing like compelling an 11 year old to show a group of adults round their school being asked questions they don't know the answers to to "develop" them.

And nothing more frustrating for a prospective parent to be shown round by a terrified 11 year old who can't answer their questions.