Private schooling

pinkclouds

Person_one wrote: »

Its a principle for some of us, we don't believe that money makes you a more important or more deserving person and that all children should get an equal start in life.

That's great but kids will never get an equal start in life and education is the least of it. For some kids, 4 years old is too late for others to make a difference. Poverty doesn't relate solely to money. If every child had a place at an identical school, it still wouldn't fix things. Perhaps the principle is sound but in practice there is no utopia.

Person_one

pinkclouds wrote: »

That's great but kids will never get an equal start in life and education is the least of it. For some kids, 4 years old is too late for others to make a difference. Poverty doesn't relate solely to money. If every child had a place at an identical school, it still wouldn't fix things. Perhaps the principle is sound but in practice there is no utopia.

You don't just give up and accept every inequality because some are harder to put right than others!

loobs40

My son went to a private school from the age of 9 because we could afford it and the smaller classes appealed to me. At that time his state primary school was having to merge a year3 and year 4 class together because of lack of resources and I was not happy with that.

He thrived in the privae school environment and got straight A*s in all his exams. He has just received a first class honours degree from Durham. What I will never know is whether he would have achieved the same results and developed as he has , had he attended a state school.

My daughter due to our financial circumstance, has attended the local state comprehensive and just done her GCSE's. She also loves her school and rejected any attempts to try to get her into a local grammar school for 6th form (she was awarded a place).

Would I do anything different ? I probably would have kept my daughter in private school if I could have.

GobbledyGook

One of the things I disliked the most about the only private school I sort of liked when we went looking was the amount of time they spent in school. They are in school for 8.30am, they don't finish until 6pm and the are in on a Saturday morning.

Now education is undoubtedly massively important, but so is being a child and having time to play with friends or go swimming or whatever. I think only having a Sunday to do family things was far too restrictive. I don't want my children's entire childhood to be consumed by formal education.

Person_one

loobs40 wrote: »

My son went to a private school from the age of 9 because we could afford it and the smaller classes appealed to me. At that time his state primary school was having to merge a year3 and year 4 class together because of lack of resources and I was not happy with that.

He thrived in the privae school environment and got straight A*s in all his exams. He has just received a first class honours degree from Durham. What I will never know is whether he would have achieved the same results and developed as he has , had he attended a state school.

My daughter due to our financial circumstance, has attended the local state comprehensive and just done her GCSE's. She also loves her school and rejected any attempts to try to get her into a local grammar school for 6th form (she was awarded a place).

Would I do anything different ? I probably would have kept my daughter in private school if I could have.

This is interesting, have there been any issues between the children related to favouritism?

cheepskate_2

So surely then it should be independent kids that people should feel sorry for, with parents forking out all this money for nothing......or am i missing something.

Person_one

cheepskate wrote: »

I find this strange........................

From what i am reading:

Independent schools dont need to employ qualified teachers
They dont send kids out into the world prepared
good state schools are so much better
They basically spoon feed the exams, thus when they get to uni have no idea how to do it themselves

The list could go on.

So surely then it should be independent kids that people should feel sorry for, with parents forking out all this money for nothing......or am i missing something.

The fact remains though that private schools do tend to get better exam results and get more of their pupils into top universities and to the top of the professional tree.

That their methods are often questionable and that there are definite downsides to the type of education they provide doesn't change that.

Itismehonest

GobbledyGook wrote: »

One of the things I disliked the most about the only private school I sort of liked when we went looking was the amount of time they spent in school. They are in school for 8.30am, they don't finish until 6pm and the are in on a Saturday morning.

Now education is undoubtedly massively important, but so is being a child and having time to play with friends or go swimming or whatever. I think only having a Sunday to do family things was far too restrictive. I don't want my children's entire childhood to be consumed by formal education.

That is usually because at least one or two weekday afternoons are spent doing some form of sport or activity other than academic lessons.
It also offsets the much longer holidays when children from abroad fly home.

loobs40

Person_one wrote: »

This is interesting, have there been any issues between the children related to favouritism?

No, not at all. There is six years between them which may be part of the reason. My daughter is genuinely happy at her school both academically and socially and has never brought it up.

She understands the financial reasons why she could not stay at private school (she left age 7) and she also knows my son received a 50% bursary during his time in 6th form

miss_independent

pinkclouds wrote: »

That's great but kids will never get an equal start in life and education is the least of it. For some kids, 4 years old is too late for others to make a difference. Poverty doesn't relate solely to money. If every child had a place at an identical school, it still wouldn't fix things. Perhaps the principle is sound but in practice there is no utopia.

Indeed, the reason my parents sent me to private school was because by the time I was 4 years old at the best local state school I was in a class with children from extremely deprived backgrounds, financially, socially, emotionally and it was having a knock on effect on the rest of us. A 7 year old girl told me she was so unhappy so was going to stab herself in the stomach with the knife. One of my classmate's had a father who died after choking on his vomit through abusing alcohol and drugs. I hugged my friend and came home to ask "Mummy what does lesbo mean?" after being called it by another child. Children were re-enacting sex in the playground (a boy forcefully slammed me into the ground whilst doing this despite me not wanting to play "the game"), pretending to take drugs as "play", talking about seeing extremely graphic 18 films (in reception class :eek:) and I could go on and on. The teachers did try to intervene but once that childhood innocence is gone, its gone even if you are banned from playing certain games. This was a good state school in my area but the children were from backgrounds where their parents were just "dragging them up" and didn't seem to care about them at all. My parents were choosing to bring me up differently and yes, maybe they wanted to shelter me a bit. So they sent me to private school where the majority of parents were more invested in their children's futures and lives. That's not to say bad things don't happen behind closed doors (lots of the parents at private schools took drugs, were alcoholics, had affairs etc) and that we were all sitting around singing KumBaYa My Lord but there was a big difference in what I was exposed to at state school. Parents were genuinely worried if their child got into trouble.

Maybe if my parents had moved to a different area the state schools would have been different, but the way I see it the choice to send me to private school was more one about safeguarding me than making sure I had a head start educationally on children from a poorer background. My mum, like person one, was against private schools for the same reasons but soon changed her mind when she saw what I was getting "educated" about in reception class.