Private school extras fee dilemma

pimento

fred246 wrote: »

For example one of my work colleagues worked every weekend to pay for private school. He never saw his own children! He lived in an area with great state schools.

You also run the risk that your privately educated offspring will look down on you when they've spent 10 years with children whose parents can afford it all.

pearl123

pimento wrote: »

You also run the risk that your privately educated offspring will look down on you when they've spent 10 years with children whose parents can afford it all.

That's nonsense. To the contrary when you are less privileged than others at a private school, you tend to get rather repulsed by the show offs.

Tabbytabitha

Sarastro wrote: »

I think this sounds a bit crazy. I'd get out of it. Send your daughter to state school - sorry but most of us went there and we did okay. Spend the money you're currently paying on some additional tuition or activities if you think it needs it.

I don't agree that most people do "okay" and, anyway, most interested parents want their children to do rather better than "okay"!

maman

pimento wrote: »

You also run the risk that your privately educated offspring will look down on you when they've spent 10 years with children whose parents can afford it all.

pearl123 wrote: »

That's nonsense. To the contrary when you are less privileged than others at a private school, you tend to get rather repulsed by the show offs.

I think pimento has a point. Even in state school there's a lot of peer envy over designer gear, phones etc. As an adult I know what you mean about repulsive, privately educated show offs (the government is full of them:D) but I'm not sure the majority of teenagers think that way.

BucksLady

I must say that I feel a little sad about some of the comments directed at parents who decide to educate their children privately, and additionally towards those who may have received a private education.

Children who attend private schools are not always from affluent families - and my husband is a good example. His parents worked exceedingly hard to send both him and his brother to a good school. A school which they felt would meet their needs. The local state school was in a run down part of London and it wasn't a school in which they would thrive. That was their decision to make - no one else's. It was the right decision as both my husband and his brother gained a great deal from attending this particular school. They haven't turned out 'a couple of toffs' who look down upon those who didn't attend their 'posh' school. On the contrary, they are both hard working doctors who understand that life is never easy and it certainly isn't always fair.

ViolaLass

pimento wrote: »

You also run the risk that your privately educated offspring will look down on you when they've spent 10 years with children whose parents can afford it all.

If you were going to raise unpleasant children, you were probably going to manage it either way.

fred246

ManofLeisure wrote: »

Fred, it isn't a case of whether you can 'imagine' what private schools do or not. If you can't offer an opinion based on fact, what use is it to the OP or anyone? The fact is, if a pupil within the private system wishes to study a subject, eg Dutch, and there is a low take-up, schools often team up with another school to enable this. This was cetainly the case for one of my son's, who wished to study Dutch. Obviously, this doesn't always happen, but personally I've known it happen quite a lot.

State schools will always try and accommodate a pupil's request in the same way as a private school. Would Buckingham University be able to provide a course that Oxford or Cambridge couldn't? Theoretically a high charging private school COULD employ a new teacher from a foreign country whenever a pupil thought they might like to learn an uncommon language. I would question whether that pupil was making a good choice and it wouldn't make private education any more attractive to me. It would just make it seem an even bigger waste of money.

fred246

I am lucky that I live in an area with a good state school. If it was bad I might think of paying privately or I would move to a better area. What exasperates me is that my colleagues send their children to private schools based mainly on league tables. They look at percentage of children getting 5 GCSEs. It's not really very difficult to achieve that standard. Our state school gets around 80% while the private school achieves very close to 100%. The private school is SELECTIVE though. If you refuse entry to the less able pupils you should easily achieve 100%. So my colleagues are going private just to exclude less able children from the school. The state school has got eight classes in each year. They stay in class for all lessons. So the presence of the less able pupils has no effect. The top classes achieve the same or better than the private school. The private school limits them to 10 GCSEs for some unkown reason.

Tabbytabitha

fred246 wrote: »

I am lucky that I live in an area with a good state school. If it was bad I might think of paying privately or I would move to a better area. What exasperates me is that my colleagues send their children to private schools based mainly on league tables. They look at percentage of children getting 5 GCSEs. It's not really very difficult to achieve that standard. Our state school gets around 80% while the private school achieves very close to 100%. The private school is SELECTIVE though. If you refuse entry to the less able pupils you should easily achieve 100%. So my colleagues are going private just to exclude less able children from the school. The state school has got eight classes in each year. They stay in class for all lessons. So the presence of the less able pupils has no effect. The top classes achieve the same or better than the private school. The private school limits them to 10 GCSEs for some unkown reason.

I would hope that a decent private school (or state school for that matter) was trying to educate the child by covering subjects in a greater depth than is needed for the exams rather than trying to cram them into getting as many bits of paper as possible.

silvercar

fred246 wrote: »

So my colleagues are going private just to exclude less able children from the school. The state school has got eight classes in each year. They stay in class for all lessons. So the presence of the less able pupils has no effect.

The presence of disruptive pupils will have an effect. Teaching a very wide range of ability in the same lesson will also have an effect.