Private education for lower/middle income families.

daisiegg

zagfles wrote: »

This may be obvious, but when you compare the performance of schools you need to take into account whether the school is selective or not. Most private schools are selective at secondary level ie you need to pass an entrance exam to get in, clearly it would be ridiculous to compare their raw results with those of a non selective state school.

There are other measures such as CVA (contextual value added) scores which give an indication of how much the school adds given the starting ability of the pupils, but most private schools don't seem to publish these figures so it's hard to compare.

When we looked into this, a local selective private school had an entrance exam similar to the old 11+, ie pupils had to be in the top 25% or so academically to get in. But if you compared their results to the state schools in the area taking out the lowest 75% of grades, their results were worse. Not a completely scientific comparison, but it gives a far better indication than comparing raw results.

Very good points, plus it will be interesting to see how private schools do now that all GCSEs are going to have to be linear - I know of a number of private schools that get their results by taking modules as early as they can (i.e. when pupils have just covered the work in class so it will be fresh in their minds, rather than doing all exams at the end of two years as will soon be the rule) and then encouraging (forcing!) pupils to resit, resit and resit as many times as it takes to get the top grades - something state schools can't do as much because each exam resit costs money (yes I know now lots of people will post that their child is at a private school and every pupil at that school got a million A*s and never did a single resit, but I'm just speaking about the schools I know...) Plus, a number of the private schools I know blatantly cheat on the controlled assessments that have recently been brought in, and probably always did so on coursework as well - I know a teacher who has recently resigned from a private school because she felt it was compromising her morals to do the things they were demanding of her. Of course, state schools can cheat on these too, but they are slightly more accountable what with OFSTED visits etc. Of course as a disclaimer I'm sure there are also loads of great private schools that are squeaky clean! Again just speaking from my own experiences and those of the many teachers I know.

(although when I mention the linear exams thing to OH he just says "well the private schools always used to get the best results when the exams used to be linear so they will again" which is also true of course and I don't really have an argument against that!)

LEJC

Spendless wrote: »

I'm always amazed people can afford it. £11k per year is over £900 per month. We don't have that sort of 'disposable' income once mortgage and bills are paid. And that's with a low mortage and hubby a HR tax payer.

We too have a very low mortgage....and my husband just falls into that "middle class salary bracket" that keeps being mentioned by the politicians....so I dont consider us well off but I know we are a lot more fortunate than those who work on minimum wage....and am thankful that we have the choice.

I guess it boils down to how you live and how you choose to spend your money....money can be tight at times and in true MSE style we strive to get the best out of our money but I dont regret making the decision to privately educate our child..

fabforty

Spendless wrote: »

I'm always amazed people can afford it. £11k per year is over £900 per month. We don't have that sort of 'disposable' income once mortgage and bills are paid. And that's with a low mortage and hubby a HR tax payer.

Also, in London, you could easily spend that much on childcare i.e. a full-time nursery place. So in a way, it's just continuing with the same really.

emsywoo123

LEJC wrote: »

Class sizes are around 24 in each group and they are of similar ability,.

I am quite surprised by that too. DD is in a class of 8 for core subjects.

Savvy_Sue

On the 'mixing with the rich' issue, you do realise that once they get to Uni they'll face a wide range of 'classes' and family income levels? So I'd say that at some stage your children are going to be exposed to families with larger houses / more money than sense / 'staff' etc.

And as someone's already said (or something like it) 'nice' children don't make a big thing about this.

When DS1 first went to secondary, all his friends seemed to live in much 'naicer' areas than we did, but that didn't seem to bother anyone. Then we moved, and suddenly we were the ones in the 'naice' area with the large house.

If you are going to be stretching yourselves to do this, then I'd say it's a question worth asking at the school: what % of children never go on the 'extra' trips, what help is there for x, y and z.

emsywoo123

onlyroz wrote: »

I'd suggest either moving out of London to the commuter belt (there are plenty of towns within a 30 min train journey of central London) or sticking it out with the local state schools and paying for extra private tuition if they don't think the school is providing the best education.

Why do you suggest this?

zagfles

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

On the 'mixing with the rich' issue, you do realise that once they get to Uni they'll face a wide range of 'classes' and family income levels? So I'd say that at some stage your children are going to be exposed to families with larger houses / more money than sense / 'staff' etc.

Indeed, but by that stage they are young adults who are more mature, also the private school pupils will be in the minority (usually) anyway.

I went to university with some very rich privately educated people, and am still good friends with one of them now - he will freely admit to being complete snob while at school, it was only when he went to university that he mixed to any extent with people from more "oridinary" backgrounds.

Secondary school years tend to be the worst for people who are "different" being picked on, and as others have said this can work both ways, a "posh" kid in a state school could be picked on just as a "poor" kid in the private school.

And as someone's already said (or something like it) 'nice' children don't make a big thing about this.

I think even "nice" children can be swept along with trying to get in with the in-crowd, and making fun of the "nerds", "oiks" or "la-di-das" or whatever, certainly remember that sort of thing from my school days

Savvy_Sue

zagfles wrote: »

Indeed, but by that stage they are young adults who are more mature, also the private school pupils will be in the minority (usually) anyway.

I think that very much depends on the University! :rotfl:

I agree that secondary is a difficult age, btw. Primary they're usually too young to care.

ThinkingOfLinking

daisiegg wrote: »

Very good points, plus it will be interesting to see how private schools do now that all GCSEs are going to have to be linear - I know of a number of private schools that get their results by taking modules as early as they can (i.e. when pupils have just covered the work in class so it will be fresh in their minds, rather than doing all exams at the end of two years as will soon be the rule) and then encouraging (forcing!) pupils to resit, resit and resit as many times as it takes to get the top grades - something state schools can't do as much because each exam resit costs money (yes I know now lots of people will post that their child is at a private school and every pupil at that school got a million A*s and never did a single resit, but I'm just speaking about the schools I know...) Plus, a number of the private schools I know blatantly cheat on the controlled assessments that have recently been brought in, and probably always did so on coursework as well - I know a teacher who has recently resigned from a private school because she felt it was compromising her morals to do the things they were demanding of her. Of course, state schools can cheat on these too, but they are slightly more accountable what with OFSTED visits etc. Of course as a disclaimer I'm sure there are also loads of great private schools that are squeaky clean! Again just speaking from my own experiences and those of the many teachers I know.

(although when I mention the linear exams thing to OH he just says "well the private schools always used to get the best results when the exams used to be linear so they will again" which is also true of course and I don't really have an argument against that!)

My school charged for resits...about £20 per module, which got added to the termly bill.

Spendless

LEJC wrote: »

We too have a very low mortgage....and my husband just falls into that "middle class salary bracket" that keeps being mentioned by the politicians....so I dont consider us well off but I know we are a lot more fortunate than those who work on minimum wage....and am thankful that we have the choice.

I guess it boils down to how you live and how you choose to spend your money....money can be tight at times and in true MSE style we strive to get the best out of our money but I dont regret making the decision to privately educate our child..

We still couldn't manage £900 a month school fees. around £1k goes on mortgage, CT, gas, water, tv, phone, internet. Leaving just over another £1k for other bills including grocery shopping. Someone going through our bills with a fine toothcomb would certainly find areas where we could cut down probably to the tune of £100 a month. I doubt they could make £200 a month savings though, so a £900+monthly school bills fee would just not be sustainable- not without a 2nd source of income into the house, which we don't currently have as I lost my job a few months ago and haven't managed to find anything else.