Fallen in love with a school, no idea how to afford it

churchrat

mygirllollypop----if you carry on like this there is now way that you can ever let your children down.

goodluck with it all.

Ada_Doom

glad this thread has helped you get some perspective, I think your little family sounds just lovely.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

mygirllollypop wrote: »

The Coast school is correct but all the other information about the area is wrong. The person already knows where I am but it's too far from where we were for any physical trouble now thank-god!

I have visited both the local schools, and I deal very closely with SureStart because of our circumstances, (who have been an absolute god-send!) I have visited 3 state schools that I liked and applied for them through the LEA applications and hope to get at least one of them but due to catchments I don't hold out much hope!

I've been mucking around with the kids today, painting pasta and the like and have decided that I will try to get them into a nicer state school via the appeals process or hopefully I can move before they are due to start in september if I can get a new job.

I think the Montosorri is amazing and everything but I want us to be able to buy a house in the future and to still have our little holidays and carry on the swimming and dance lessons. I am sure the girls will do fine and no doubt that with fun learning at home that if she wants too she would be able to get into grammer school at 11, but who knows what will have changed by then! 6 years is a really long time for me to be worrying about her secondary choices!

Thanks everyone, It's really hard to put things into perspective when there's so much guilt and were in a much worse area than before. Everything everyone says makes total sense, sometimes you need people to tell you you're being daft!

I just don't want to let my kids down.

You won't. And I'm glad you're safe, didn't want an innocent post to lead to someone being found and put in danger.

Being safe is the most important thing - the greatest school in the country means nothing with the spectre of domestic abuse hanging over a kid.

Whatever you do it is for the best - as you have done by getting out - so don't feel guilty, congratulate yourself.

thatgirlsam

I went to a private school and I have to say that all the money in the world wouldn't persuade me to send my children to one

I am not saying the school I went to wasn't a good school, academically it was excellent, and I left with good exam results

But the elitism, the snobs, and the downright 'my daddy pays for whatever I want' attitudes were a burden that I didn't want as a teenager growing up in a 'normal' house, with a single parent

Honestly, a lottery win or a scholarship (which is what I had) to a private school wouldn't change my mind

I am happy for my children to grow up and be educated with their peers, be exposed to all kinds of people, beliefs, styles and substance

Private education is far to insular for my liking - Yes, your child *may* leave with 'better' exam results or grades but be prepared for them to enter 'normal' life with a bang

I went completely off the rails the moment I left!

Spendless

If I was going to privately educate for mine, I'd be more interested in doing it for the Secondary school years, possibly the latter years of Primary.

In all the time I've been on MSE and private education has come up, I've only ever come across one poster who could afford private education for more than 1 child, unless they either had a 7 year + gap and/or either subsidised fees or an additional income to the main household one.

I would use the nursery and Primary years to make steps so I could afford the fees for the later years eg by working and saving or using the time to qualify in a profession that would pay enough to afford them. If it still didn't look do-able I'd spend the time researching my options to get the best state education I could instead.

Something I do think sometimes gets overlooked is how valuable a little bit of private tutoring is. I did this last year for my eldest who was getting poor marks for literacy and slipping thru the net at his Primary cos 'he'd never performed poorly before'. 4 lessons sorted it. I paid for 5 just to be sure. It cost me £75, less than a week at Private school.

shirlgirl2004

Having paid to send my daughter to a private Montessori primary (which looked lovely when we looked around) I can confirm it was a waste of money. I withdrew her after 18 months and now we home educate. She has progressed in leaps and bounds since.

Don't be swayed into thinking because you are paying you will get a better standard of education. If your child is bright they still end up waiting for the rest of the class to play catch up. I realise Montessori is structure in a different way with regard to ages but it is child led. Child led sounds great but when they leave a child sat in the corner reading for hours on end you have to wonder what you're paying for.

The school my DD attended was part of the Montessori Schools Asscociation and the Headteacher was quite high up in the structure (don't want to give too much info for obvious reasons). The MSA report of the school was glowing and yet the school should be closed down. Some o what went on would not be believed. Private schools do not have to adhere to the standards of state schools and there is almost no redress for parents if the school is poor. Montessori Primary Education is relatively new to this country and I believe the MCI has stopped giving awards to teachers for primary education because they have doubts about its effectiveness.

Having said all of that the Montessori nursery my daughter went to was fantastic.

shirlgirl2004

emsywoo123 wrote: »

Just a note, most, if not all private schools hold charitable status.

You're right most do have charitable status but not all, my DD's Montessori school was a Ltd company.

However they still weren't bothered about making sure parents were kept happy.

sueeve

Have you asked to go and look around and spend time in the local state pre school and reception class? You may be very pleasantly surprised . If you have to work double hard in order to earn the money to send children to this fee paying school it is time that you could have spent enrching their lives by your presence, imagination and love. It can be very emotionally hard to move to and fro between state and private, so you really need to decide if you can make the long term commitment. My local independent secondary is £25000 a year; that is boarding, but I believe it's more than half that for day pupils.

motherofstudents

I'm glad you have come to a decision and I'm sure it will prove to be the right one. I admire you for your concern for your girls' education. I was extremely worried when my kids had to go to a really bad inner city school. It was rough. A lot of the teachers were great, some were awful. Both my boys got 13 GCSE's there. They went on to a very good 6th form college got 4 A levels and both got 1st class honours degrees. One is doing a PhD and doing cancer research, the other is very successful in his career. Just echoing what some others have said, your input is vital to give them the enthusiasm to learn. They will be fine. I went to a girls' grammar school which I really hated - 7 years of bullying (by teachers I mean).

Mr_Thrifty

Do people on benefits really get paid so much by the state these days that they can afford to send their kids to private schools?

If so, this country really has gone beyond being a joke.