Sending our only girl to private school to give her an advantage

[SouthPole]

We have three kids. Boy 4, girl 7 and boy 9.

We are considering private school but it is looking likely that we'll only be able to manage it for one of them now, perhaps two.

There's obviously a lot for us to think about on that front, cries of favouritism etc in the future but I went to private school and my sister didn't and it's all ended ok there.

So I don't want this post to be about sending one sibling and not another, nor the virtues of private v state.

My husband would like to send our girl. She's not very confident but is a talented artist and story teller. She's also extremely quick -
Picking up on the elder one's work and answering the questions when we do homework or spellings. But the reason is her confidence.

Girls do better in all girls schools.

He wants to send her to give her the head start that will bring her into line with her male counters. It's not an argument I've considered before but I am now.

What do you think?

Now, time for me to go back to deciding what to do / one in private and the others not or all three remaining in state so that I can't be accused of bias.

TIA.

What advantage do you want to confer? What do you think your daughter will get from an as yet undetermined school?
There are lots of very good schools and lots of not so good. The division isn’t between state and private.
There are many rubbish independents - quite often single sex ones. Unless you’re talking St Paul’s, St Mary’s or Benenden I’d look very carefully at the advantage each school actually offered.
Coeducational schools definitely confer advantages when transferring to university and having to live with the opposite sex.
State school children actually do better at university once they’ve got there.
Some private schools have dreadful teaching and unqualified staff.
Look carefully and don’t be blinkered by kilts and wood panelling.

Surely the opposite is the case. Girls progress 8 for 2016 was 0.11, boys was -0.17. Boys progress less at school than girls. So if you are following your logic, wouldn't it make more sense to send your boys to the private school?

Although I'd never advocate giving one of my children a (perceived) advantage over the other(s) dependant purely on their sex.

I went state, although my parents did consider private for me as I needed good grades for my chosen career. As it was, I got into my career anyway and then was a happy sahm for 12 years before restarting it at a low level.
My brother meanwhile has worked continuously apart from times of redundancy. I'm just wondering whether there would have been a lot of resentment for my later choices if I had been the only one to benefit from a private education.

Ehm OP...girls already outperform boys at school anyway !

I think this is a really interesting proposition. I don't have a fully formed opinion but enjoy reading the thread. My concern would be lots of girls schools are positively anti feminist and that would concern me

Whilst girls outperform boys at primary it's not fully understood why and huge resource is going into boys performanace to try and change that. So girls could come of negatively as a result

Through my secondary years I went to a girls grammar, and to a mixed comp. At the girls grammar, I was expected to be good at maths, did engineering, did physics etc - there was no issue there at all, but I struggled socially.

At the mixed, I was the only girl in engineering, I was hounded out of physics, one of two girls in Maths - but the school itself was a lot friendlier. I came out of it with lower grades, and not the exams I needed for my degree, but with better social skills (still not great - but I was a little more confident)

I think that as others have said, you need to look at what's around you, find the strengths - for a girl who's strengths lie in creative arts, it may be that a private school is better (better facilities) or worse (more emphasis on academics).

We live abroad, so both my kids (both boys if that matters) go to international schools - the one thing we've found in the 3 countries we've been in, is that it's not what you pay, but the teachers, the ethos, and the atmosphere of a school (of course with a whack of facilities and opportunities) that makes the biggest difference.

Send all your kids to the best State school you can, and save your money for tutors and higher education.

Ehm OP...girls already outperform boys at school anyway

And yet, when out in the world, boys still do better, repeated studies show that women are estimated as less competent and paid less than men, given identical CVs with nothing but the name changed, or in non-blind auditions.

I think with anything you've got to look at what you're getting. We pay for school so my kids can be taught in English, can have good facilities, and small class sizes, because we move around a lot, and that could otherwise hold them back. You need to look at reasons and just make the best choice you can at the time with what's available. When we lived in the UK for a bit, I didn't like any of the private schools around us, and sent DS1 to a little local school where he thrived for example.

Fizzy- yes. From what I can see, girls outperform boys from pre-school level to university level. Girls/women get better grades overall and yet are massively under-represented in the higher management world of work.

Girls getting better school grades than boys doesn't help them in the world of work sadly.

Forget about the sex of your children OP. Choose the school that is best for each of them based on their interests, personality, strengths, weaknesses and needs without disadvantaging the others. It might be best to look at extra curricular activities to boost your DDs confidence.

I think it will depend.

These subjects are male dominated at A Level:

Computing - 9 boys to every girl
Physics - 4 boys to every girl
Further Maths - 3 to 1
Economics - 2 to 1
D& T - 3 to 2
Maths - 3 to 2

At top single-sex schools:
fluencycontent-schoolwebsite.netdna-ssl.com/FileCluster/GuildfordHighSchool/MainFolder/misc_downloads/A-Level-Breakdown-2017-Revised-Newsletter.pdf
www.rgs-guildford.co.uk/userfiles/rgsgmvc/documents/Academic/Results/A_Level_Results.pdf

72% of boys did Maths vs 57% of girls
29% of boys did Physics vs 18% of girls
23% of boys did Further Maths vs 17% of girls
32% of boys did Economics vs 18% of girls
22% of boys did Politics vs 13% of girls

(The girls did MORE A levels, 3.2 per candidate vs 3.0)

Obviously it's different doing Physics or Economics with 15 other girls in the class than with 2 or 3.

BTW, overall girls disproportionately outperform boys at Physics - WHEN they do it. In 2007 the stats were girls 59.3% AB, boys 51.2%

That's +8.1%. The gender gap for all subjects was 52.9% vs 47.9%, that's +5.0%.

For a subject with more female entries, Biology, the gap was only +4.0%

D&T is also male-biased, and the gap is here is huge - 12.4% advantage for girls.

And it works the other way round, too - English Lit is hugely female-biased in entries, and here boys actually outperform girls by 1.9%. Same thing happens in MFLs, boys outperform by 2.0% in French, in German by 3.6%.

So yes, if you don't want your daughter to be stereotyped into doing female-dominated subjects and would prefer to give her a better chance of participating in male fields where she may more ability than men, then send her to girls school. Because too many girls are doing 'girl' subjects where they actually have more ability in 'boy' subjects.

My two sisters (one older, one younger) went to a private school, I went to the local comp. The reasons for this, as I understand them, are too long to go into here.

I we are all in our 40s, all degree qualified all independent. I think the difference between us comes down to personality and if anything my younger, privately educated system has the least confidence and social skills.

HOWEVER, at the time I massively resented the way my mum totally bought into the life of my sister's school but couldn't name my closest friends, that I was dragged along to school events (speech days, sports days, open days etc). They meant nothing to me and were dull and bloody awful.