Are Private Schools worth it?

tidyfinance

When our son entered the private system we did wonder where in the academic level he would rank, as he knew of a few lads that had gone private from day 1 (5yr olds). I have to say that we needn't have worried. He is well up there and indeed surpassed most of them in his exams so far. Let me say that his manners and speech seem to be a lot better also!
Praise for us as parents I suppose. We should never loose sight of the role of Parents in our siblings education also. Having shed loads of dosh and sending the kids private won't always deliver the social bright young thing we hope to see emerge out of the other end.
That said, I still advocate my lad going private because I know damn well he will come out the other end as a clever, social young man that has, hopefully, reached his maximum potential. As I stated earlier, our youngest really doesn't have the same desire to go to private school, but so long as he is an upstanding, caring young man that 'gave his all' in school, then I'll be happy if he is.

tomstickland

Or you can claim religious observance and send your children to the faith schools that year in, year out, top the league tables.

My ex girlfriend was a teacher at a Catholic primary school and there was intense competiton among parents; they were more "private school" than the parents I remember from my own private school.

[Deleted User]

my daughter went to the local comp and is now a successful dentist and an army officer. My neighbour`s daughter want to a very exclusive private school which cost her parents an arm and a leg. My daughter was allowed to play out with friends, climb trees etc and their daughter was not allowed any such freedom. Their daughter is now at uni and is studying philosophy. I would say that my daughter is much more confident in mixed society because she was allowed to mix with different sectors when younger. Isolating a child from the cut and thrust of society might help the parents but imo is not to the long-term benefit of the child.

tomstickland

There is so much randomness in the conclusions from this thread that I would say that every parent should make their own decision based on their own situation and that all routes can have a succesful or unsuccessful conclusion.

tidyfinance

Absolutely.

tidyfinance

Our lads gone private but is still allowed out with his friends from his old junior school, still climbs trees and is extremely sociable. Not all privatly educated kids are kept indoors with their heads stuck in books you know.
By the way Kitty, our son has ambitions to become a dentist also. Might even try getting his Uni course paid for by the services like you did!

ReportInvestor

Half the As at A-Level Chemistry are gained in private schools ( from 7% of the students). I presume we want our future doctors and dentists to know what they are doing? Why are Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics in such decline in the UK?

The English language may help us to avoid the hard issues by recruiting doctors from abroad, to the detriment of other countries .

The government's decision to allow UK children not to study a language to GCSE has condemned language teaching in some state schools as students vote with their feet.

The quality of education in China, India and Asia often leaves us far behind, and we will have to compete with their economies in the future. Mathematics students from Lithuania have reached A-Level standard (age 18) by 16. I was astonished over Christmas by the perfect English and political knowledge of a Romanian student (state school educated) who is currently studying Chemistry at a French university.

tidyfinance

I think it's a real shame that our kids don't take French until year 6. I reckon it's almost too late by then. They need to be doing languages from five I reckon. I'm really big on this, and I am trying to encourage my lads to have an interest in languages. The eldest is loving his French and German at his new school. Let's hope his interest continues.

gingerdad

Tojo_Ralph wrote:

I really don't want this to come out the wrong way, (but it will), as I appreciate that there may well be underlying reasons for the punctuation and grammatical content of this post, however, in the event that there are none, (and even if there are), should a school be it private or state not be promoting basic literary skills over sports and hobbies?

The reason I comment is that one of the major factors in deciding against the private education available for my son was the very fact that the school available, whilst having a solid academic record, had a far stronger bias towards sport, a bias that I felt was not in the best interests of my son.

I know i have issues with my grammer and spelling that is also why the school i went to gave me extra english lessons and tried to help me deal with my problem, the state school just treated me as an idot and a trouble maker!

Bargain_Rzl

I have really mixed feelings about this discussion.

Had my parents been able to afford to send us to private school I still don't think they would have done. I've never asked them but I think they must have been quite strongly against it, given some of the decisions they made about insisting on "normal" schooling . Firstly, it was never even suggested to me that I might want to sit scholarship exams for anywhere, secondly I was considered a gifted child (when very young) and my parents decided not to put me into any kind of fast track system in the name of ensuring my social skills developed adequately (I'm possibly mildly autistic though never diagnosed).

Because when I was 9 we moved from expensive Maidenhead to cheap Durham, we went from a small 3-bed house by the railway line to a large 5-bed house 2 minutes' walk from the best comprehensive school in the district. It is high-achieving academically and always oversubscribed. However, although I'm generally pleased with my education, this school failed me and my sister in some ways.

For my sister, it was a case of her main talents and interests being practical rather than academic - a profile which wasn't supported well by the school unless you were in the lower ability levels which she wasn't. She ended up with lower GCSE results (albeit still all grade A-C) and exactly the same set of A level results (ABC) as me, despite working a LOT harder (I was one of those lucky people who could pretty much breeze through exams, and for the reasons I've gone into below, I never found much incentive to apply myself).

For me, I found there was a total lack of support in the one area I could have excelled in - music. The basic teaching at GCSE and A level was ok, but there was no school choir, the orchestra was dreadful, and the A-level music lessons were such an afterthought on the timetable that we had to have our lessons on Thursday afternoons when all the other sixth formers got to do sport/community service/activity-type lessons. I was in the county youth choir (thanks to my parents telling me it existed) but was never given any information about the other opportunities that were out there. By the time I was 18 I started meeting people who were members of the National Youth Choir, who'd competed (and in one case won!) at BBC Chorister of the Year, etc, and I wished I'd known those things were available when I was of an age to do them myself. I only got a C in my music A-level - I think if I resat now I'd have no trouble getting an A, and had I done so at the time I might have done a music degree/gone to music college.

There's also been some discussion of Latin on this thread. Latin was available to GCSE at my school but was very much a minority interest - you had to choose between Latin or German at the age of 12 and most people (including myself) chose German because it's a modern language. I dropped it two years later - if I'd taken Latin I think in hindsight it would have interested me so much I'd have taken it as far as possible (I did a Linguistics degree and am borderline obsessive about linguistic structure!)

I just think if I'd been privately educated I would have been better supported in my real strengths - though I don't know what would have happened to my social development. As it is, most people meeting me for the first time assume that I went to private school because I have quite "highbrow" interests, a very neutral "RP" accent, and an interest in cryptic crosswords :rotfl:

And if/when I have kids of my own, it'll be a hard choice (if I have the financial means to allow me to choose) as to whether the leftie in me (which is most of me :rotfl:) will be able to silence the little voice saying that private schools bring the best out of children...

(P.S. my brother on the other hand breezed through the same school we went to, but then again he has apparently NO weaknesses which need ironing out, and is now at Oxford having got 4 A's at A-level, with all the social skills and sporting ability on top of that :rotfl:)