Factors on deciding between private and state

[MaybeNeverSoon]

We are considering private secondary school for our daughter currently in year four. She has one younger sister who would follow three years later.

They are both currently at a lovely state primary.

Having always assumed we would send them private for secondary, we are now having to consider the decision carefully as costs are higher than we anticipated and our salaries perhaps not quite as high as we’d have hoped.

Please could I ask if there are any other factors you’d add to the below pros and cons list? I didn’t go to private school so some of my thoughts may be misguided.

We live in Wimbledon park and would look at day schools as close as possible, so we are looking at c£30k a year fees plus extras, rising each year. Our local state school options are fine but not brilliant.

State
PROS
More grounded view on life.
Will be able to walk / travel easily to school.
No cost!
Shorter school holidays.

CONS
Larger class sizes.
Potentially more disruption to learning.
Teachers potentially less able to focus on the individual due to other pressures.
Fundamentally - that my girls might not achieve their absolute best possible academic outcome.

Private
PROS
Hopefully / presumably a higher quality and more individualised education.
Potentially higher grades achieved at gcse and a level.
More opportunities for clubs and activities.
A “network” or cohort which may be beneficial to them throughout their lives / careers.

CONS
Placing us under financial pressure for ten years.
Longer school holidays (we both work full time).
Likely to have to travel further for school. Friends may also live further away.
Potentially giving my girls the impression that privilege is normal / to be taken for granted.
I would presume we’d be amongst the least wealthy families, and therefore our daughters might feel like they can’t “keep up with the Joneses” in terms of holidays / size of house etc.
Potential impact of positive discrimination in the future for both university and jobs.

Music lessons are the norm in private schools, why do you present this as something that can only be had by saving money on private school fees?

Group dance lessons are relatively cheap, DD did ballet outside of school and contemporary/commercial in private school. These things are not mutually exclusive.

This is absolutely not our experience of sending a child to a private school from a state primary. On the contrary, they were really keen on getting all the children to try as many extra-curriculars as possible and there was very little catch up to be done.

All schools are different and it can be hard to work out if the ones you are interested in are actually providing the kind of environment you want. I think talking to the schools and asking the hard questions plus also trying to speak to people who actually have children at those schools is really worthwhile.

I disagree. My DD went to a super selective private school (it was top 15 or 20 when we joined), yes they do focus on academic results in seniors but they're also big on competitive sport and high level music. It is more or less the same in many other super selectives we applied to.

Look at the actual schools around you and see how good the state/private schools that you are actually looking at are for your child.

To answer your question, the key is in what I wrote! "If people have to weigh up the costs..." Reading comprehension is a marvellous thing!

OP you need to visit and research your target schools. We haven't even applied to one of the schools mentioned on the thread as I instantly disliked it when visiting, it's just a gut feeling.

The choice of private school depends on the child, how academic/sporty/musical/sociable your DC are, is there any signs of potential SEN and many more things only you would know.

@MaybeNeverSoon there used to be a SW London school transfer at 11 thread on MNet. Have a look on the education boards to see if it's still there.

In relation to some of the comme ts on rhis thread, the situarion in relatuon to SW London ondependents is a microcosm of it's own and cannot really be compared to elsewhere in the country.

Our state school has a counsellor who comes in every week. We have School Mentors, an Art Therapist, a weekly NHS drop in facility and every year group has a Pastoral Year Leader.

If people have to weigh up the costs, like OP, it's definitely worth remembering all the life-enhancements that the money could be used for if they went to a good state. (I had ballet, tap, modern dance, and private piano lessons every week, for example.)

You say it like they don't have that life-enhancements in private school.

DD's dance lessons are included in school fees, there is nothing to weigh up 🤷‍♀️

The same goes for sport, you either pay for after school clubs or you pay private school fees and all sports are included and organised by the school which saves you a lot of time, and time is money.

If you think it would be tight from the outset, don’t do it. Our school fees and associated costs of sports/trips/uniform/activities have increased significantly in the 8 years our DD’s have been in private. Some years there has been a 8-9% increase in the fees with three months’ notice. We have just had notification of a residential which is £500 and needs a £100 deposit next week. More often than not, every month is an extra £100 for some random thing or other, and the fees go up every year.

Art Therapist is unusual in state, you must be very lucky with your location :)

Did I? I thought it was pretty clear that I meant if someone isn't sure that they can afford private school and there is a good state school, the money that can be saved on private school fees can be re-directed towards extra-curriculars that you wouldn't get in a state school, like ballet. (Not sure what the music provision's like in state schools these days.) Of course private schools have all such extra-curriculars right there on campus; I know that.

That’s great - OP should certainly compare specific state with specific private

Surbiton and LEH do, cant speak for the others. At Surbiton there will be plenty of wimbledon girls to catch the train with but a lot will be from the Study so already know each other.

I do agree that you need to look round the specific schools. Go everywhere, even places you aren't sure you want to apply to. You may be surprised, I know I was.

Most private schools will have access to counsellors and extensive pastoral support these days.

I chose private secondary for ds because :

• He'd been bullied at primary for liking maths and science. Private pupils (or at least their parents) see nothing wrong in trying to do well. Expectations are higher.
• The only state place we were offered was at a failing school that Ofsted said wasn't safe.
• Consistency of well-qualified, long term teaching staff
• Smaller class sizes
• Better facilities
• Better food
• No violence/disruption
• DS was awarded a 50% scholarship

OP, look carefully at all the school, ignoring the funding. Consider which school will suit your child best. Arrange taster days for your child and then ask their opinion. Look closely at school rules, religious allegiances etc.

Research the teachers on LinkedIn. How long have they been at the school? How well qualified are they?

Talk to other parents with similarly aged or slightly older children.

It sounds like money will be an issue. The costs increased year on year by a far higher percentage than we’d expected, we have found it a pressure, especially if there is university and other costs to pay for afterwards. We have been lucky with work and money. The education has been good but if we could go back in time I’d probably not make the same choice.

@TheaBrandt1 Not in the middle of the countryside you wouldn’t! What private MFL teachers? One great thing about a decent private school is that you don’t need to source anything yourself. They have it all.

My DD1 went from state primary to independent secondary. Was in top 5 in y7 exams. Ditto for GCSE results. State primary doesn’t mean a crap education and an inability to do anything.

Consider the long term viability of the private schools. There were several posts on here last summer about private schools closing at short notice.

Also, what are you sacrificing to afford the fees? We chose state + music lessons, holidays, sports clubs, a part time parent, saving for university. DS’s GCSE last year were all 9-7, so no regrets at all.

As a pp says, what are you giving up? I'm not much fun to live with if I don't have holidays 😅

Achieving their full potential - if their full potential is a 9, does it matter if they get an 8?

For us, I grew up locally and all the girls I knew at our local private school were complete weirdos. That absolutely is a factor for me, I don't care that it was 20 years ago!

OP my list of pros and cons was something like this:

PRO
Encouraging confidence and can do attitude. State comprehensive never focus on this, some may be accidentally good at this but it's not their aim. This is particularly important for girls, and girls schools usually do it better.

Excellent sport provision, team sports as the tool for learning teamwork, competitive sports for learning how to win and lose and building resilience. IME non-existing in state but of course it's possible to do local clubs if you have good ones in your area (Wimbledon must have plenty).

Flexibility. If a child turns out academic, you can ask the school for extra challenges. If you need a day off for a competition, it's not a problem. My DD was touring with a ballet company - a state school might have been a nightmare to deal with re. absences. It's quite unpredictable what you would need as they grow and develop, but if you pay you can negotiate with the school. In state you can't.

CON
Living in a bubble.

Academics/class size/teachers/no disruption were not even my top priority. You can meet great teachers in state and not so great in private, and our local comprehensive was full of non-disruptive MC children, but it's the whole system itself that largely defines your experience at school.

We sourced our tutor online so doesn’t matter if you live rurally. Would rather pay for the odd tutor / local sports team and teach my own kids manners and morals than pay literally hundreds of thousands for someone else to! Fine if you choose to do that but we love our holidays and have travelled extensively with ours two and given them a significant cultural education ourselves. They are late teen and it seems to have paid off!

Horses for courses though not saying anyone else’s choices wrong that’s just what we chose.

It is rather rare nowadays for private schools not to have onsite counselling.

You make a valid point raising the issue of students coming from the same primary. Always worth asking what the school does to integrate different groups - our DD is at WHS and although 40pc of girls were from the junior school and a sizeable group from The Study (WHS is the main destination, only 7 girls went to Surbiton if you add up 2024 and 2025) the school made sure that groups were mixed and there were plenty of opportunities to interact ... two years on and nobody would be able to say which girls knew each others and which ones didn't.

I think you have to compare school with school rather than state v private. I have moved one child to a private prep for year 5 (very tricky year group) and left another in the same state primary. I say this as I’m not a private at all costs person but the difference has been bigger than I’d ever imagined and it’s cemented my view that i want to stretch for private secondary.

Our catchment secondary is not a school I like and we’d have very little chance of getting in anywhere I’d be happy with. If your state options are excellent, it’s a different set of choices.

For us, I grew up locally and all the girls I knew at our local private school were complete weirdos. That absolutely is a factor for me, I don't care that it was 20 years ago!

This is a really unpleasant remark. Weirdos? I guess this is part of what we were trying to avoid in going private. DD's school did have quite a lot of unusual girls but people were accepted for who they were, celebrated for what they could contribute to school life, and not dismissed as 'weirdos'. That's worth a lot.

I certainly wasn't wedded to the private option and didn't like some of the private schools I looked at one bit. In the end we only applied to one private school and were lucky enough to be offered both a place and financial support.

the school made sure that groups were mixed and there were plenty of opportunities to interact ... two years on and nobody would be able to say which girls knew each others and which ones didn't

Same at our school. I don't think it matters as much as people might think, as friendship groups change a lot at secondary school in any case. And DD found it quite freeing to be starting from scratch with nobody having preconceived ideas about what she was like or who she was.

Consider the long term viability of the private schools. There were several posts on here last summer about private schools closing at short notice.

I don't think this is going to be an issue for any of the schools mentioned. They are all popular and all have children competing for places every year.

With respect to money, look carefully at bursaries and scholarships. The bigger name schools tend to have a lot more money to give away if a child is bright enough and they don't necessarily have to be the very brightest, just reach the same pass mark as everyone else. Any good school will be happy to talk to you about financial support and how it might work in your specific situation. Some of the cut offs are surprisingly high in London.