Are the 'contacts' children make at private school really worth the expense of sending them there?

[Enid]

As someone said this at the weekend - that their children met so many 'well-connected' families through their schooling that it would make it easier for them to get a good job later.

Is this true? How does it work then?

I lived with four incredibly successful people when at uni but I have never needed them to get ahead with my own career.

All networks are potentially useful. The more powerful/successful the people within a given network, the more potentially influential the network will be.

You can, however, be in a network that is of little use to you - if your personal/professional interests are wildly divergent from those of the majority of the network, for example.

Personally, I think networking is a very useful tool and one that women underestimate hugely...

A very very very distant relative of mine went to Eton, he's thick as the proverbial and left with no qualifications whatsoever. He now earns over £500,000 as the Head of Europe something or other. His boss is the daddy of a chap he knew at school. Having said all that, he is utterly charming, kind, generous - absolutely lovely personality. But no brains. If he'd gone to a state comprehensive he'd be a dodgy second hand car dealer!

barnstaple's post is a classic example of why this kind of thing is so wrong, and, fortunately, is so outdated.

IME even those types of organisations who did actually used to give people jobs because they knew someone rather than because they were good don't tend to do it anymore. Even they have now cottoned on to the fact that, as well as being unfair and making them legally vulnerable, it's doesn't make much business sense recruiting that way either.

Anchovy / Bink - and let's not forget the cultural impact on the law firms of recruiting large numbers of antipodeans with funny, impossible-to-pin-down-social-class accents and egalitarian ideals

It may get them an entry into certain areas ... but what they make of any 'on a plate' opportunities after that is down to hard work rather than connections I'd have thought.

And ask yourself ... would you really want your own dc's to work for a dinosaur-like organisation or with people like that? As flowery has said, that type of thinking is on the way out.

And flipflops.
(Do you think they're to blame - or to credit - for other bits of wardrobe relaxation, eg women being able to wear trousers to work, even in bluechip sorts of places? Which only just started happening 15 years ago. (Further - do you think there is any correlation between the parallel dissolutions of the Old School Tie and Rigid Work Uniforms? Discuss.))

(that was to legalalien, the meaning of whose nickname is now dawning on me)

you mean Jandals? (yes, I'm that kind of alien ).

I don't think we're to blame for the wardrobe thing. We were very surprised when we arrived (back in 2000) and were told that there was a "dress down Friday" policy (not to mention, peeved, as the only work clothes we'd brought with us were formal work suits, and we'd spent the last of our Australian pesos paying for them to be drycleaned so as to make a good impression). I recall DH being absolutely HORRIFIED at the prevalence of pink shirts.

Sounds like wishful thinking/justification to me.

(the actual old school ties are still quite often seen in the fuddyduddier places - my sister went to great lengths to get hold of some school etc cufflinks to bring her in line with the tie-wearers...)

i guess it depends what kind of job they think their children want
certainly seems to help if you want to be a tory mp
will not be sending dd to private school btw...

according to guardian most of the leading journalists went to private school too here

Oh - can I do an old school tie story? My dh went to a school not yet mentioned here I think but, you know, major, where they had not whole-School ties but House ones.

Those who went to dh's school are quite notoriously boffiny & unsociable & anti-networky - like anti-charged magnets, they run away from, rather than rally round, each other. So basically dh has just about never knowingly met a schoolmate.

We met an ancient man socially - dh peered at the tie & with shock recognised it. "Yes," boomed the ancient man, understanding the shock. "I've kept it. It's GOOD FOR FUNERALS."

DH won't wear his Old Boys' tie as it's too recognisable - he wears his Colours one instead and keeps the buffers guessing...

I went to a very famous public school - boys but takes girls in sixth form
I'm not sure the "contacts" I made there have helped me apart from being able to say "I was at school with blah blah" which just makes me sound like a twat.

But, as some have said, there were kids there with famous parents or whose parents had very interesting jobs. Seeing them helped me open my eyes to a world out there which I realised I, too could infiltrate. Coming from a bog standardish school where you weren't encouraged to do anything unusual or exciting it made a massive difference. I was encouraged to embark on a really interesting career. I think if I hadn't gone there I would have played it safe and not got nearly so much satisfaction from my job. Of course then I had kids and that was the end of that. Bloody women, why bother educating them, eh?

TBH I think this is complete nonsense promulgated (Enid do I mean promulgated) by people who never set foot in one.

It made no difference to me and I am sure it will make no difference to my DCs

Jobs are won on merit - the idea that an old school tie helps is just so dated

I think the person who posted that networking doesn't come naturally to women is right. I would never phone up a school friend I hadn't seen for years to ask a favour. However, DH is an ardent believer in networking and has used it over the years for various purposes, including getting rooms in hotels on the cheap. He always says its not what you know but who you know.

Connections may not get you a job (and shouldn't anyway) but they can definitely open doors. If a prospective boss has whittled down interviewees to two and you went to his old school - who do you think gets the job.

BTW when DH1 started in City (he wasn't educated in UK) if you wore brown shoes with your suit you were told in no uncertain terms that these were for the weekend in the country and not the office!

P.S. Found out recently that attending DS1's school gives you automatic membership to some ghastly snobby 'gentleman's club' once you have left school. When this came to light DS2 who does not attend the same school said "At my school you probably get automatic membership of the Spearmint Rhino Club !". Hes only 13, I think he'll go further than his brother !

ok so the general concensus seems to be not

They seemed very lovely and reasonable people with lots of experience of education. I have to say most of their kids friends seem to be dropping out of uni or really not enjoying their uni courses, so maybe they are clinging onto the 'contacts' idea to justify their educational decision? Gawd knows I'd want to justify spending the amount of money that they have...

IME of private school, the contacts theory does not apply.

Anchovy on Thu 05-Jun-08 13:23:28
"My DH was at school with Hugh Grant. Ponders how this has helped his career. Draws blank."

Anchovy, that's really funny: my dh was in the same class as Hugh Grant. Apparently, he spoke 9 words in a school play where Hughie had the lead. They have not led him to fame and fortune .

Oh, and I see Riven has also failed to cash in.

It's a small world

Do you really think women don't 'network'? I've always thought this is one of women's major strengths - they are great communicators and always know someone who knows someone. Maybe not to ring up and ask for a job but for lots of every day useful things.

Look at mumsnet with its array of experts and people who can help each other out.

The difference perhaps is that women don't see it as networking.

Or maybe it's just me. A friend of mine used to say when we went out I knew everyone. Even now people often comment that they've spoken to someone who knows me/knows of me. But I'm just an ordinary mum who doesn't do anything particularly interesting, outstanding or influential (even though I went to a private school for five years). I do get involved in all sorts of things though, spend lots of time talking to people and getting to know them and love introducing people to each other and seeing them get on.