Private education

Private schools also tend to offer a wider range of sports activities, often with top class facilities on site, and a wider range of extra curricular activities from instrumental lessons to skiing trips and from debating societies to foreign exchange visits.

Our children went to state primary schools and private secondary schools and we were recommended to send our eldest child privately by his state school teachers and the audiologist at the clinic he was sent to because it was thought he had hearing problems.

It was clear when he started school that he were exceptionally bright. He was advanced a year but did assessment tests with childlren in the class above that. The school thought had hearing problem, hence the audiologist. It turned out that the real problem was that, good though his school was, when he was bored, which was quite often, he used to retreat so profoundly into his own thoughts, he was unaware of anything happening round him. The audiologist said he would sink without trace in any local comprehensive and recommended private education. His teachers agreed with this. When we asked for solutions in the state system they seemed surprised that we thought there should be any.

So we took their recommendation. We chose a small school with a good pastoral system. The classes were much as he was used to in the state system but we knew we had made the right decision when we went to the first parents evening. Each teacher recognised DS's nature and problems and came up with their solution, most of them trivial. DS had decided when he was four what he wanted to do when he grew up and his teachers nurtured and encouraged his special interest, even though it was non-curricular. His school would have liked him to have applied to Oxbridge but he wouldnt because he said other university courses were better suited to his requirements.

DS has achieved everything he wanted, he is a university lecturer who has won a number of awards for his work. Would he have achieved this had he gone to a state school in the 1980s? I doubt it. In the past week we have again had reports that the state system betrays the really bright child. However as far as the intangible benefits of private education, most boys at the school had parents like us, professional but struggling to pay fees out of income. There were few expensive flash cars outside the school, more old bangers. Few people would recognise the name of the school so it is not immediately identifiable as a private school. What mattered was that the school put the interest of the individual child at the centre of everything.

Flick You have reminded me of a boy in DS's class at junior and infants school. In the first year the mother was told she kept him up too late at night and that was why he was falling asleep in class. The school (in middle class Solihull) didn't ntice he was bright but at 11 gained a scholarship to a very good school and ended up at Oxford university.

There is though probably a huge "old boy network" of influence between the top public schools and the top positions in government and the biggest universities.

I am sure there is a lot of truth in the adage "Its not what you know but who you know." how much influence is difficult to judge.

I asked the question of my two young men now in their thirties and they definitely believe it was an advantage and a privilege.

Extremely interested to read what Flick has written. I've just been watching my DGD for a week. I initially suspected bullying as she was so reluctant to go to school as her weekly grade has always been tres satisfaisant. She mentioned when I said she looked rather dozy on the way home that she fell asleep in class. When we talked to her it was evident that she finished her work rapidly and the teacher offered no ways of expanding her work so while she waited for the rest she just fell asleep. The teacher teachers to the curriculum with no imagination.she is bored out of her skull. At home she had intense discussions with DH on the building of the Pyramids. She follows David Attenborough downloads on iPad and is reading the three musketeers in French and a history of Egypt on her Kindle in English . Normal for an intelligent English nine year old? I expect so as her mother was the same.But no scope in her state school in Geneva I suspect similar children go to the Lycée francais or the international school. If there had been Grammar schools when my children were young I would have sent them there .as it was I had them go privately.

Yes, there is a strong old boy network in top private schools. This is because most of the children are the offspring of the country's movers and shakers, but the majority of private schools are not in that league, some parents with children attending private school as day scholars may be wealthy but many are not and like us, economising and leading modest lives to pay the fees. This can be scary, particularly when DH was redundant for several months.

For me the benefits of a private education, apart from those I have listed above were having our children at schools with other children who had educationally motivated parents and who were reasonably well motivated themselves. They also had teachers who were more committed to their pupils, as individuals, on average, than their state school counterparts. My son was taught by three exceptional teachers at his state primary but had to cope, at the age of 8, with a form teacher who was actively hostile to him because he was clever and had been advanced a year and generally other teachers who were well-meaning but indifferent and recognised his problems but thought the solution lay with him and not them.

I'm struck by how many posters are saying they sent their children to private schools or went to them themselves or at the very least grammar schools.

And yet only 10 percent of all children go to private schools, so we are obviously an upmarket bunch on Gransnet.

I didn't send my children to private schools because I couldn't afford it. I would have if I could have I'm sure.

Just one plea, those who did manage it, please don't say it was because you made sacrifices, as though everybody could do the same if they wanted.

The average wage is £25,000 gross. School fees, what about £10,000 a year. Do the maths.

Mine went to private school. The local comp had a bad reputation at time and my son was being bullied at his junior (state) school. We decided he would be happier at a smaller school. We therefore felt we had to do the same for DD.
Actually she was always a feisty lass (don't know where she gets it from) and would have been fine.
Both my Dzh and myself were ex grammar.

DH! Not dozy!

My sons went to comprehensives. When we moved north from Norfolk, we researched the best schools around Greater Manchester, fixed on one that had the best results and bought a house in the catchment area, one of the more expensive suburbs. This is the middle class solution when they can't or won't send their offspring to private school. It wouldn't be necessary if the state sector was brought up to the standard of the private sector.

Quite!

My son used to go out with a Ukrainian girl who had been a teacher in the Ukraine. She couldn't understand our education system at all. She said that in the Ukraine there was no fighting to get into the "best" schools because it was a given that any school would provide the required standard of education. She had also taught in Bulgaria and said it was the same there,

I get a bit of prejudice from my hisband 'cos I went to a grammar school - the old fashioned free type where you got in if you passed your 11+. He reckoned I had an elitist education. Ha. There was nowt elitist about Heckmondwike Grammar, but it did have excellent teachers. (Except the PE teacher who was the original bitch from hell). Anyway, we both ended up with good degrees, admittedly when we were in our 50s.

At Mirfield where I lived during my school years, Patrick Stewart (Star Trek - Capt Jean-Luc Picard) went to Mirfield Modern School, same as my oldest brother. Stewart credits the English teacher there as the one who inspired him in his drama career.

My other brother went to grammar school like me - both brothers ended up as engineers at around the same level.

Here in Australia our local state school was a disaster so I sent my lads to the local catholic school. The fees were affordable, and the school atmosphere was great. They went to the local catholic secondary school too, and my eldest lad teaches there now. Religion takes a back seat there though, and many kids are not catholic; there are protestants, buddhists agnostics etc.

Both lads got degrees.

it seems to me it is the parents as much as the school, that make all the difference. Both our lads knew that while the subjects they took were their own choice, there was no choice about university - they were going to go by hook or by crook!!

There are elitist schools here too, but I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. They breed snobbery and are usually single sex. I prefer co-ed - it is better for boys as girls tend to civilise a school. Anyway, I couldn't afford a posh school even if I wanted to.

Ha ha Joan I too passed my 11+ and went to an all girls grammar school. Maybe it was because I wasn't very sporty ( understatement of the century) I don't know , but all of our PE teachers were " bitches from hell too" mind you so were most of the English teachers, history, French geography ...............

On Question Time last night one member of the audience posed the question about the fact that Nick and Miriam Clegg are considering sending their oldest child to private school in September. Of course only time will tell if this is to become an eventuality, but I had to laugh because Mr Clegg appears to have passed the buck, by allegedly saying "he would not seek to contradict his wife". Miriam Gonzalez-Durante, human rights lawyer, and the preferred choice of career for many a male politicians wife it seems. Oh how very convenient whilst simultaneously trying to appeal to women by saying "look I'm such a new man, I do exactly what my wife wants", he can absolve himself of any responsibility in the matter. Rubbish! anyone would think she has his albondigas in some sort of a vice, in that case get your own human rights lawyer Nick! Once again Clegg, never fails to disappoint by intimating he may do this, in spite of all the rhetoric we have heard from him about the divisions in our society manifested by the top echelons being dominated by the private schools, but sadly he may just find he has to capitulate to Miriam and send Alfonso/Alexandro/Alberto or whatever his name is to a select London school with very nice blazers, just like his old Alma Mater. Why were we duped in thinking he was a man of the people, maybe it's cos Clegg sounds a bit like clog! I'm afraid I had a John McEnroe, "I don't believe it!" moment with Nick Clegg when some years ago he was asked what he thought the weekly pension was and he said "about £30", these people are so divorced from reality it just not true. Whilst I accept that many do make sacrifices to send their children to private schools, I feel it's kind of inferred that anyone could do this if they just tightened their belts a bit and didn't take an annual holiday. For heavens sake, it's out of reach for the vast majority of the population. It's kind of depressing that we seem to have gone back to a time when our political elite are mainly drawn from one class, as are civil servants, judges, journalists and members of the top professions. These bloody unpaid internships don't help either because they presuppose mummy and daddy will support the intern forever and that option is not open to a lot of graduates already burdened with debt. Alan Johnson remarked that he and Baroness Warsi were the only state school educated members of the panel on Thursday evening's programme and I think that's good going because I'm sure on some occasions there wont be any. I believe the question was related to the prejudice private school pupils feel they sometimes receive but I was impressed by a young woman in the audience who made the point that that prejudice is nothing compared to a rotten education that will always keep you on the margins of society.

Good post, BAnanas.

Jeni i have just caught this post. Were your children at school in Bristol because their secondary schools have had a dreadful reputation for being rubbish in the eighties.
I attended a Bristol Comp in 1959 it still says on the Ofstead reports that a lot of the families lack aspiration.

DD went to st Brendon's in Clevedon and DS to Bristol cathedral.
Our local comp was Gordano which had a certain gent who became head honcho for schools inspectorate.
It had a reputation for bullies and shoplifters at the time.
Any child who spoke Queens English got thoroughly bullied.

I went to my state Catholic junior school adjacent to the private convent I eventually went to at aged 11. The convent had a quota of non fee payers, I was one, who the order of nuns reluctantly admitted under duress from the parish priest at our church. I think they were always worried that us the lowly non fee payers, albeit Catholics, would somehow taint the predominant and bizarrely non Catholic intake.In retrospect I regarded my secondary school as all nice blazers and straw boaters, but totally lacking in substance. We were mainly taught, and I use the word taught loosely, by half crazed Irish Catholic nuns whose raison d'etre was to imbue us with the notion that if you had sex before marriage you would undoubtedly end up in a mental asylum. I can only remember doing very rudimentary science, a little bit of biology before it got all too nasty and delved into the realms of reproduction. We had loads of domestic science however, loads of RE, goes with out saying really and history taught from an absolutely skewed stance. By the time I was 16 I knew the following things very well, how to make a basic white sauce,John F Kennedy was almost a saint, Henry V111 and Elizabeth Taylor were very bad people. Mass murder and divorce sort of level pegged in the realms of wickedness in these nuns' eyes, but only if the mass murder involved the killing of Catholics. Catholic themselves could murder with impunity it was merely regarded as a bit over zealous and amazingly, sometimes no more than the slaughtered ones deserved. I was also accomplished at saying Hail Marys very quickly under duress and this has stood me in good stead whilst sitting on various runways waiting to be blasted off to assorted destinations over the years. Happily, I have now discovered Diazapan, or however it's spelt, so I don't have to say the Hail Marys quickly at all in fact they are now quite slurred. Even back then I was astounded that anyone would actually pay good money for this out of dated load of old crap they delivered. It seems that some of the fee payers parents laboured under the misconception that a convent education would open doors, because the nuns peddled that false impression by implying when we eventually went out into the world people will be impressed that you were a convent girl. Their feet were firmly rooted in the nineteenth century. It was a surprise therefore a couple of years down the line when I mentioned to people at work that I had been to a convent and men would come over all Eric Idle with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, "is it true what they say about convent girls". Yeah bloody right it is, the recipients of a rubbish education. I had by this time discovered that sex before marriage didn't put you in a mental asylum, John F Kennedy wasn't likely to be made a saint anytime soon due to his voracious sexual appetite and Elizabeth Taylor wasn't really wicked, just over optimistic. Many years down the line I was also to realise that my ludicrous private convent school education wasn't a patch on my husband's state grammar school education which he still reckons was second to none.

Where to begin?

I passed my 11+ and qualified for an assisted place at an independent boarding school in my county of residence, to which I also won a scholarship. I won a state scholarship to Oxbridge, where my college intake was about 60% grammar school and 40% independent. My own children went through the state system, switching from comprehensive to grammar after GCSE.

I feel I have to say all this so Gransnetters know where I'm coming from.

In fact, I'm interested in international comparisons, having taught in a French CEG in 1967-8, the equivalent of a secondary modern in those days. A few years ago I had some conversations with recent German pupils of my old school in the English countryside and asked them why their parernts had forked out good money to send them to the UK. The overwhelming reason given (though I suspect the chance to become bilingual in English played a part) was that German teaching was so uninspiring - nine to five mentality, strict adherence to the syllabus, no interest in the pupils - compared with the, admittedly private, UK experience. Some of them were equally disparaging about German universities.

And last week I read in Le Monde that the teachers were demonstrating in Paris and this was symptomatic of the appalling state of education in France.

My tentative conclusions are that providers of education are everywhere without honour in their own country, that international comparisons are dangerous and often misleading, and that motivated parents everywhere will move heaven and earth for their children.

It is certainly good for kids to be educated in a place with a different language - that way they effectively have two 'first' languages, and have the advantage of thinking in two different codes, which is very good for the brain. But I think it is true that English schools (and Australian and NZ schools) are more personal and interested in the child itself.

I was an au pair in Vienna and noticed from the experiences of the teenager in the family that it was just work work work for her at her high school, no personal issues at all.

My sister and brother in law live in France: he teaches corporate clients English, as well as the unemployed and various other groups. He tried the school system and hated it.

I once read about an Australian diplomat posted to mainland China with his family. Contrary to the normal choices, he sent his kids to the local state schools. They soon picked up Mandarin, and thrived in the strict discipline of Chinese education. They totally respected their teachers and would never dare fail to do homework, or disrespect adults. When the family returned to Australia after several years, the children were way ahead of their age group.

If it's such a problem having a private education - all the terrible hostility, etc. - then why do people pay vast amounts of money for it?

There are some brilliant state schools but they are always struggling to maintain their standards because of the ever decreasing resources given to them. Those that can afford it choose private schooling because the facilities, class numbers, equipment, etc., are often vastly superior to what is available in state schools - and an added advantage is that pupils become part of a network that ensures them prestigious internships and jobs. Even the entertainment and sports industries seem to be choc-a-bloc with privately educated people. I find it difficult to have any sympathy with the view that they're somehow victimised.

On a slightly different topic, I was also surprised to read an article that said students who were accepted at a particular Oxford college had to guarantee that they had £21,000 available to cover living expenses. One young man, from an ordinary background, said that he'd had to turn down his place because there was no way he or his family could find this sort of money. Just another way our education system militates against the less affluent majority.