Private schools, times a changing?

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It’s hard to get expelled in a state school. I was suspended a few times for things I’d imagine would have got me expelled in a private school, and others were also. I don’t think anyone was ever expelled despite there being some pretty terrible behaviour on show.

My wife’s brother was expelled multiple times from private schools for things that wouldn’t have even got you suspended in my school.

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chip* said:

Email confirm it's 8% annual fee increase in Sep for my girls school.
Adding VAT on top will definitely make me reassess my option....

How are they rationalising 8%? I’d have expected such a rise perhaps last year and the one before but seems punchy given inflation has dropped considerably…

I hadn’t looked at prices of the schools we looked at since I did my initial research into them about 2 years ago, looks like a solid 10-14% increase across the board.

Interestingly though the day fees of £24.5k per annum still trail nursery fees by some margin!

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True enough but they’re mostly paying the staff supermarket wages at a nursery. Always baffles me how much it costs.

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Assuming the grammar system isn’t going anywhere it would just become the new gold standard and kids would be tutored above those who couldn’t afford to have the same.

Or the house prices around the best state schools would keep all but the wealthy away - which already happens to an extent in some places (South Farnham School a good example).

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Well, there’s a great many things that don’t affect the vast majority of people but are important politically. Pension LTA being another example..

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ooid said:

Well, there is only one delusional in this thread who has no children but has all the best opinions and ideas () about education.

Don’t forget that he went to a selective school too so undoubtedly benefited.

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Anyway.

I’ve noticed when looking at past results quite a variance in the last couple of years in GSCE and A Levels from the private schools we looked at - is this the Covid issue coming to bear fruit? I’m away that mocks were given as reality for GSCE, what happened with A Levels?

The school we are sending our son to has a huge discrepancy between its ranking for GSCE and A Level.

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M1AGM said:

Discrepancy in what way? A levels were on predicted grades iirc.

As in the school had exceptionally highly ranked GSCE results, their ranking relative to other schools was miles away for A Levels.

Obviously I’m aware that the percentage of top grades at A Level falls vs GSCE hence using the ranking as a normaliser for performance.

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This has all become exceptionally dull.

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7% rise in fees from our prospective school. Also mention of the Labour policy, didn’t sound like they’d be passing the 20% on as they’d look at other areas to reduce the hit. Time will tell.

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I’ve seen the lengths the schools (and their external agency) go to when deciding on bursary, I’m sure it could be gamed but they were HUGELY in the weeds with my sister in law, who has a son at a fairly expensive school now, she is not well off.

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One interesting thing I have thought about and wonder if anyone else has, and is a big reason we are pushing ahead with private is the personality type of myself and my wife showing in our young kid. We were both fairly bright in early years but easily led astray - we both have an almost identical track record of this (though she did get a degree from somewhere OK), class clown behaviour, mixing with the wrong kids, getting up to no good etc. My wife was diagnosed with ADHD and given whatever drugs they give, that was 25 years ago, so was probably fairly disruptive for her.
I’ve never had any diagnosis of anything but suspect there’s similar themes there. People are much more vocal about how these things present in adults and I can identify with a lot of it.


I’m already noticing in my nearly 4 year old that he will try and coerce the other children at parties etc into doing things they shouldn’t be (nothing too bad, but you know, being little terrors and generally getting carried away - the other children are mostly not like this) - he’s showing signs already of having inherited a fair bit of what we had/have. For me it resulted in barely getting any GSCE’s and being asked to leave 6th form, my wife was asked to leave one private school and went to a grammar (went back to the private for a levels mind you) - arguably for whatever reasons we didn’t have the most attentive parents which was a factor, but I’m absolutely sure a more ‘positive’ environment would have got a lot more out of me, and is part of the reason I think my son will do better in that sort place. The state system has no room for managing that sort of personality or energy in a positive way I would guess and is what I felt. Certainly not academically, sporting wise was my only outlet, and even that was nothing vs what the kids up the road in the private got.

So, has anyone else seen their personalities in their children and didn’t influence your decision?