My folks worked hard, saved & were able to so they did.
Given the same, wouldn't you?

It never crosses my mind that I went to a boarding school (in Yorkshire) where 1/3 of my fellow inmates were padbrats (Armed Forces kids), as at that time the Armed Forces gave an £ allowance to those who wanted their kids schooled in the UK rather than moving them from school to school every 2-3 years around the globe.

It was 1982, I was 18, collectively we as a nation were drip-fed the Falklands Conflict, so I abandoned my plans after A levels to read Geography at Plymouth (?) and enroled into the Army instead. Fun times!

A common issue with private school kids that is less comon with state school kids

My experience suggests it's more to do with kids whose parents were very controlling then running wild once they get the freedom of uni… Maybe kids at public schools have more controlling parents?

My folks worked hard and saved. They sent me to the school where they knew I would get the best education not the best exam results. It helps that they were both in Education thus knew what was real and what was bullshine

You send your kids to boarding school you have no control!

Having parents in Education might have been something of a hindrance. Would they have seen such a move as almost unacceptable, even hypocritical in sending little Jonny to a State School if they could have afforded a private education but were they themselves in the States school system?

Druidh

I would not of applied myself at my local school. I probably wouldn't have got the support, plus with my mother being ill I wouldn't of concentrated on my studies.

Obviously non of this can be proved without going and living the other path, but I look at some of the righter kids I was with a primary school and look at where they are today and I'm pleased with my decision to go.

Ti29er

I chose to go to my school, my reasons may of been wrong but my mother still left it up to me.

How did you feel about the fact your education cost a lot more than most people? Proud, superior, ashamed?

Certainly none of those feelings. I went to boarding school from the age of 8 because my Dad was in the Forces (discount!). It's not something I had any control over.

I think that self-confidence you refer to comes from the attitude of those doing the educating, rather than the fees being paid. It was impressed upon us that nothing was impossible if you put your mind to it – most of the teachers were passionate about pushing us, physically (cross-country runs at 6am – yay!) and mentally. I still remember teachers who changed the course of my life.

I was state educated from 16-18 and the difference was palpable. Most of the teachers really couldn't be bothered: I was actively discouraged from applying for Oxbridge because nobody did had done that sort of thing before. So I had to apply by myself.

Given the same, wouldn't you?

No.

I would not of applied myself at my local school.

my reasons may of been wrong

Would you have learned correct English though?

Ian.
Did you not select your school based on other criteria other than what was best for you in the long run?
Maybe your pals were going to school A, so you naturally chose school A perhaps?

I'd like to believe that aged 13 I was in no way mature enough to select which school was best for my own education else I'd have selected one with girls in the dorm and beer on tap!

My folks worked hard, saved and were able to so they did.
Given the same, wouldn't you?

No mate – why would you think that? Comprehensive is my choice, went to one myself, so did my wife, and it was great education for both of us. I'd only consider private school for my lad (currently 2 yo) if he turned out to be really slow. It does seem obvious that the teachers and class sizes in private schools are generally far better, which is especially good for the thick kids.

Having been one of few that's done BOTH I'd say there is no right or wrong and it depends on your local area schools.

One thing I would NEVER do is send our little one to boarding school – almost everyone I know who has been to one from an early age is messed up in some way.

I think it private or state school choice depends on the child – some will thrive anywhere.

One thing private schools can do (having been to one and got a Bro in law that teaches at Milfield) is make kids completely lose any sense of perspective. They need to realise that while their parent(s) are well off, they still rely on them. To me having rich parents does not entitle anyone to think they are superior – sadly this happens all too often. I know because I nearly went down that route and am ashamed I got so close to being a complete ar5e. My school (RGS Guildford) was fee paying AND selective -you can imagine the sort of kid that you can become with that double hit of elitism?!

+1 TJ.
Both parents work in education, my preference would be for a society where money can't buy privilege in such a necessary commodity.

It's not all about education though.

I've ended up living 5 miles from my old Prep school and it really is a fantastic place – an old Manor House with incredible grounds and sporting facilities. Not sure it's worth the cost but still.

The interesting thing about teachers in private schools is that they need not be qualified teachers where as in state schools they must. In the now increasing unlikely event that I have any kids a private education would not be something that I would choose for them. All the independent research that I've read points to the fact that state schools provide a better education and the experience from within my extended family certainly bears this out.

Such small minded views.

NEITHER is right or wrong. To call private schools a "waste of money" is just daft but to try and use a private school education as a form of oneupmanship is also wrong.

Life is about balance – try and bear that in mind when slating something you haven't experienced.

The main advantage of public school that I have noticed amongst people I know is the self-confidence thing – being confident of succeeding in life is to some extent a self-fulfilling prophecy imo.

That's exactly what I was getting at. Good point about it being self-fulfilling.

I was offered a part-scholarship to a private school at 11 – didn't go for it as we'd only just moved in, and I'd just had to make new friends. So I went to relatively quiet rural comprehensive (relatively good apparently) I do sometimes wonder how differently I'd have turned out. I was quite quiet, but academic, so did OK got 8As at GCSE. But would I have been more self-confident? Hmmmm

Me – prep school, public school (the latter FOC as I was on a scholarship). I'm bright, but lazy, so have always coasted. Played lots of sport at school, drank lots of beer, chased the girls in the 6th form, could have had a, ahem, "class A" education if I'd wanted.

Mrs North – state primary, state comprehensive secondary, state 6th form college. She is hard working, also bright, and is one of 6 (I think) from her year (of only 60ish) at secondary school to have a PhD.

We met at university (one of the decent ones).

What does all that tell us, people? Precisely f*** all, I think.

😀

This follows on partly from a previous thread that asked something along the lines of "if you had the funds, would you send your kids into private education?".

The overwhelming majority came out in favour of just that, given the funds they'd send their kids to private school, and hang the self-styled socialism and ideal-world clap-trap.

This thread also pre-supposes those who did go to private schools were bright enough to have passed 11 Plus or Common Entrance.

A common issue with private school kids that is less comon with state school kids

anything to back this up?

anyway.

i went private, to a good school in york. i loved the school, it operated in a way which suited the way i work, made me feel valued and gave me some (but not a huge amount) of confidence – something i had a lot less of before i went.

i got good grades, and got into a very good university.

i very much appreciate the money my parents invested in my education. even if academically i could have done as well at the local state school, the facilities, opportunities and environment i was in was such a valuable and interesting experience.

if i have enough money, i'd send my kids to a private school, and if i ended up in york, i'd send them to the same one. however, i'd not send them to boarding school.

I have enough money and my daughter goes to state school.

Hungry monkey – only that it was my dads view – and he is a real expert on education

My mum wanted me to apply for a scholarship at Queens in Taunton in Somerset but she asked my opinion and I didn't want to so I didn't. Agree with ooOOoo – got 8 GCSE's too, wanted to know everything about everything so that helped. In my 30's now and glad I didn't go, self confidence is not something I'm known for, but it's come in its own time. What you'd call a late starter, probably. Temped for years. Only recently worked out that if I work hard enough & try hard enough, anything might actually be possible.
Private school might have taught me that at 16, but I doubt it, I'd have been too busy fretting about everyone else having more of everything than I did.

I think it depends, for me at least, how good the local comprehensive is. I took the route of moving house to a much more expensive area to be in the catchment of a very good school. The additional mortgage was still less than private fees, so the fact that my daughter received a 1st class education and contact with kids from widely differing backgrounds was very positive.

I passed the entrance exam to go to a private school (Robert Gordons in Aberdeen) but for some reason, which escapes me I decided to go to a new comprehensive in Cults. No regrets really and I still received an excellent education…….I think!

I went to Bolton School (in Bolton suprisingly enough). Fee paying.

I'd send my kids to private school if I thought it would give them more oportunity. It's not always the case though, depends on what the local shools are like. I'm proud of my school and I think it had a major positive impact on my life. Not sure how the local comp. would have faired might have been ok but you can't live both to compare.

Talk of toffs says more about the person talking than the subject of the conversation. IME most people are fine once you know them, they may appear to be different because of the way they behave but its not better or worse, just different. I know plenty who went to prestigious bording schools and they are all good people. To call someone a Toff is no better than calling someone "common" who went to a comprehensive. It's an opionion formed on prejudice rather than fact.

The big difference between state and private education is the attitudes of pupils I reckon.

I spent the first 2 years of high school at a particularly poor state school – think chairs being thrown at teachers during lessons, that sort of thing. To do well at that school meant persecution from fellow students – basically if you were doing well you were bullied.

Which didn't bother me that much as I was a sort of middle-acheiver anyway.

My parents got pissed off with my serial under-acheiving and sent me to private school for 3rd-5th year. The attitude was totally different there – almost everyone wanted to do well and was driven to do so. This has nothing to do with the teaching (though class sizes were smaller) and everything to do with the sort of people who were sent there.

Most people who went to my state school would have been lucky to bag a couple of highers, I got 5. Probably worth it.

jonb – it was a joke – bit sensitive aren't we?

I do think though, that I find it easier to get on with people from all sorts of different backgrounds than some others I know – lots of very unpleasant judgemental snobbishness about (and fear of) 'chavs' on here for instance. Whether that is a result of going to a state school I don't know.

I think it very much depends on which school, not state/private, my mum got me into a comp that wasn't fed from my primary school which was very good (the local one was the chair throwing kind mentioned above). i left with 11 gcse's while friends of mine who went to the 'rougher' school failed entirely despite being as intelligent/motivated. there is a private school locally where one of my friends went and he is now an estate agent – cant say that was worth the money! It would be easy to say that was me, not the school but i insisted on leaving to do my a' levels elsewhere and failed completely at college

Ti29er – Member
Ian.
Did you not select your school based on other criteria other than what was best for you in the long run?
Maybe your pals were going to school A, so you naturally chose school A perhaps?

I'd like to believe that aged 13 I was in no way mature enough to select which school was best for my own education else I'd have selected one with girls in the dorm and beer on tap!

I was 10 at the time, my friends went to the local school, I chose the boarding school 250miles away from home.

I understood several reasons why I wanted to go. In my eyes the school was better (not educationally) but it hads its own professional theater, marching band, sports centre, its buildings were massive etc, in my eyes theses things were cool, plus it was different.

However I also understood the importence of learning and thought that i would get a good education here, but I didn't compare it to the education I would get here.

The biggest reason I went there was because my mum was I'll and constantly in and out of hospital and I wanted stability rather then in and out of foster care.

In the end, I failed the English entrance exam and had to choose between going to school home, or having an hours private tutoring after school in english everyday for 4 months which I hated and redoing the exam.

In the end I got in and I've turned out ok.

I think it very much depends on which school, not state/private

Yeah I reckon so – mine was a good comp – I know people who went to a local fee paying school which was renowned for being pretty rubbish and has now closed down. They didn't do very well academically.

One more here for a prep and public school education, boarding from 10. The educational alternatives in Nigeria and Egypt (where my dad was working in IT) weren't too appealing… I loved it both academically and in sport.

When they did come back to work in the UK my parents gave me the option to go to the local state school but, unsurprisingly, all my mates were at Marlborough so being a selfish mid-teen why would I have opted out to make my parents' lives easier?

Interesting comments above about public school being very organised and subsequently people struggling with life at university. My experience was the opposite, as it was very autonomous at school in how you structured your work so long as you delivered it on time (bit like my current workplace). Having taken a year out and worked on building sites and the like, to me many of the freshers seemed very lost to be out on their own and in some cases (understandably) homesick, while others really didn't seem to understand that being at university really doesn't entitle you to anything other than what you earn.

Our daughter now goes to a small, independent, non-selective school as a day pupil and it has had a dramatic effect on her confidence since, as others have commented, she's surrounded by peers with similar attitudes to being academically successful i.e. being clever doesn't mean you're a geek. She is still trying to shake off that perception from her previous (state primary) schools and she's getting there, it's great to see it happening. She researched all the various schools that she wanted to have a look at and opted for this one, as she was clearly not happy about moving up to the large secondary school in our area which had been high profile in the news about violence.

My in-laws were both teachers in the state system so my wife has taken some flak from her dad for our decision, but neither of us are prepared to sacrifice our daughter's future opportunities on some ideological altar. It's up to us to give her the best set of options we can and (in our opinion) it's what we're doing. We know we're privileged to have that choice open to us.

There does seem to be a bit of an assumption from some people that academic success and a financially rewarding career are the be-all and end-all – being a well-rounded person is just as important surely?

Ah I remember the days playing the kids from boarding school at rugby and hurling. They had the silky skills, but we beat seven colours of shit out of them all the same…I used to love doing it when their parents were watching. We'd tease mummy and daddy about how awful it was that the one weekend this month they'd come to see their lad, they had to watch him get his arse kicked sideways. A right bunch of noncey softies.

There does seem to be a bit of an assumption from some people that academic success and a financially rewarding career are the be-all and end-all – being a well-rounded person is just as important surely? /quote]

Sort of where I was going. I'm happy. Maybe really not being means you value it more, but happiness is my top indicator when deciding jobs, houses, friendships, relationships. But if I don't dread Monday morning come Sunday night, I've won. And sod the pay packet.

I did: went through 2-3 of them and three different curricula, in fact. In every respect apart from exam results, it was a complete ripoff and I certainly would never send my own kids there. A quarter of the teachers were great, a quarter were just about OK and half of them were hopeless – alcoholics, lazy, no formal pedagogical education at all. Oh, and a genuine child sex abuser, too.

Kids with what in retrospect were very obvious learning disabilities and emotional difficulties were not diagnosed or given extra support, were allowed to get buried. There was a huge amount of bullying (physical certainly but mental was much worse – honestly, the **** trauma that these children went through at other kids' hands and with no escape to family or parents).

There was zero interest in dietary or mental health, and there was vast amounts of time wasted doing pointless, Victorian nonsense. There was no interest in creating useful or rounded people, and there were no academic/intellectual extra-curricular trips or activities (apart from the occasional play). But if you wanted to play rugby or hockey fifteen hours a day, you'd be bussed all over Western Europe for it.

All of this particularly ironic considering the kids' parents were mostly focaccia-eating lawyers, management consultants, architects etc that would never have treated their employees like this or run a business in the same way.

Problem is it's almost impossible to say you wouldn't have had the same grades/uni etc that you got at private school. It's nice to think you wouldn't as then the cash wasn't wasted, but ultimately if you bother to try you can achieve exactly the same ends from either start point.

I don't think that's true at all – I agree that how much the child (or, perhaps even more importantly, the parents) puts into the education is important, if you believe what you're saying, it's like saying the kid has an inbuilt ability and they'll even succeed or fail regardless of what school they go to.

But that ignores the differences in style and purpose of education, pupil:teacher ratios, materials availability etc etc which in every way private schools achieve better on, with a knock-on impact for exam/uni achievement. There's nothing special about the kids that are going through the system, it's mostly the system that makes the difference – and that much is demonstrated by the kids who get scholariships to private schools, who all get the same results as their paying peers. Throw the same resources at any average kid and they'll do as well.

Look at this way: the results that I got leaving school were relatively uncommon and when they occur, the vast majority of kids that get them are at private schools, despite those kids making up a small minority of total schoolkids. So the reason I got those results is either that I'm a natural-born smartypants or because I had more resources ploughed into my education than the average kid. I'd love to think it's the first – but really it's the second.

Interested subject I think.

Persoannly I went to a good state school in North East Nottingham, ability wise i'd say i'm slightly above average, got good GCSE's (12 A-C)
Did my A-Levels at the same school and got ok grades (BB…D)
Went to Sheffield Hallam uni.

In contrast my friend at University went to Stowe private school: http://www.stowe.co.uk/
Boarded from around 8 till 18 @ £10k a term, with 3 terms a year…
Thats right…he's was studying with me at Sheffield Hallam!

I had a good upbringing, however I think that a state school is just the best option, not only will you get good grades if you apply yourself, you also experience a great social spectrum, and don;t just meet rich folk. Now I know now all private schools ate £10k a term, but even so. I also know that my State school was not a inner city hole. If it was I suspect I may have a very different view.

Sort of yes and no: http://www.doyrms.com/index.html

At the time I was there it was a MoD funded selective boarding school for kids of soldiers. The main entry requirement was that one of your parents had been in the army for more than three years. The parental contribution was very low, £500 a term or so. As for posh, army brats in general are not known for being too well bred 😉 Let's say there was a range of characters there.

After reading this thread I looked at the wiki article to find out what the current situation is ('cos wiki is always right!) only to find that civvy kids are allowed in now for fees of £10,500 a year! Gobsmacked. Yes, I was lucky to go there and not just because of the education, which was reasonable, but more for the great facilities and range of activities which we had on offer.

The thought of Sunday morning cross-country still terrifies me though!

I was state school educated myself, but in a boys grammar school so not exactly mainstream. Well educated staff but a very competitive environment – you sank or swam under your own steam with little help offered. Surrounded by the brightest youfs of the area was very motivating – it simply was not cool amongst your peers to fail so you worked hard to keep up. Strangely we got called "snobs" by kids from one of the local fee paying schools – maybe we were, but from an academic perspective rather than fiscal superiority.

I taught for 8yrs in the state sector before moving to run a department in one of the UK's most expensive (£28K pa), but highly alternative schools based in Hampshire. Those who know their schools can probably work out where. Whilst I had colleagues in my previous schools that were on the top of their game, the ability, commitment and sheer professionalism of my current colleagues taken as a whole is beyond compare. Staff are well provided for and don't tend to burn out through some of the excess and conflict experienced in the state sector so the staff has a great mix of long standing experienced colleagues and new, highly qualified, blood. Combine that with great facilities, reduced class sizes and a cohort of generally motivated peers and a child has everything available to them to have the best start in life. What they bring to the experience in terms of attitude, values and parental support will make as big a difference as anything the school could provide however.

If I had had kids would I have sent them here? Before I came here probably not, but now I'm not so sure. It would depend on the quality of the state provided alternatives available.

convert – does it begin with a B… 😉

might do….

thought so. so do the kids address you by your first name?