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.

DH was at a fairly well-known public school. When I met him, he used to regularly dodge people he recognised from school in the pubs and clubs of South-West London. He would literally slide down in his seat sometimes to avoid being spotted by a braying Sloane wearing a gopping wool scarf.
So no, I wouldn't say it has helped his career at all.

Rosa -- gopping! There's a word. Haven't heard that since c. 1988.

I went to a private school and nobody has ever pulled one tiny little string for me!

Rosaluxembourg, lol, I've been known to duck into doorways to avoid people from school!

I must have fallen back into the idiom of the era, Frogs. I was reliving those heady nights in the bars of Battersea as I typed.

I would rather like to bump into people I went to school with ... private, yes, but very recently ex-voluntary aided, and big, and rather sort of modest. They do not tend to bray in wine bars.

Actually I remember (something that wouldn't happen nowadays) the teacher going round the class getting people to say what their parents did ... it went "Advocate. Civil servant. Teacher. Civil servant. Businessman. Civil servant. Lecturer. Civil servant. Civil servant." Not sure anyone got any sort of leg-up there.

I was astounded when I heard this put forward a few years ago by someone as a reason for sending to a particular private school. It is utter rubbish IMO.

it is total rubbish.
And my DH is in the city and hires people to work for him - Their school would matter not one jot.

I think that being a private school parent can extend your network of contacts, and there is an awful lot of referrals etc done via school events. But not something I would have expected anyone to pay for, and I expect it mainly arises as we would otherwise have to make small talk about the school.

I suspect that the contacts issue does depend more of how schools etc work their alumni. I know a peer at college who is a partner in an actuarial firm and always recruits at least one person from the same college each year. Don't know whether that is considered a niche area or not. But I do agree that the emphasis on diversity in multinationals has had quite an impact of some sectors.

I know an Actuary. He was brilliant at Maths, he went to a comprehensive and got his job through his own merits.