FAQs: School Advice
State or private? How do we choose?
To pay or not to pay? That’s the real question. It’s a dilemma many parents find more problematic than any of Hamlet’s trivial musings. For, if it costs £100,000 plus to educate a child privately from nursery to university, it doesn’t take a financial genius to work out that considerable sacrifices may have to be made if school fees are on the agenda.
In Britain, those with surplus wealth or aristocratic lineage have always paid for schooling, as much to ensure their child makes the right social connections as the right exam grades. In a New Labour world, however, the Old Boy network is not as powerful as it once was and, if all you’re after is a place at a good university, the state system can generally serve pretty well.
Sensible consumers of private schooling should be objective about their aims (and their means) before rushing into the purchase of this very expensive product. Many buyers would be well advised to adapt according to the local facilities and the varying needs of their children.
If mix and match is what you’re after, when to pay will depend on where you live (are there league-table topping primaries, comprehensives, grammar schools?); the sex of your child (in general pay for boys before girls, they need all the help they can get); the religion you practise (become a Catholic and go straight to education heaven); and of course upon your child’s personality and ability.
Private education, like the best hotels, offers a quality of service that can rarely be matched by the state. The facilities are generally outstanding, the tailor-made attention reassuring. But the teaching in state schools is frequently as good (if not better) and some nice-to-have extras, fencing lessons or foreign trips, can always be paid for separately to enhance a no-frills curriculum.
Since the introduction of the National Curriculum and the competitive energy put into SATS a good local primary school is no longer a rarity. You should, without too much difficulty, be able find one that will teach your child to read and write fluently and achieve a sound level of verbal and numerical understanding by the age of 11. (Look out in particular for those where a sizeable chunk of Year 6s achieve Level 5 in their Key Stage 2 SATS). Music, drama and sport are also all now incorporated in the government’s prescription for a successful education, and the best schools will approach these creatively and imaginatively.
State primaries usually work best if you have a child who finds little difficulty with the three Rs . And those with serious learning difficulties, too, particularly if they are ‘statemented’ (officially recognised as needing support), can be well catered for with focused attention at no extra charge.
Children in the middle, however, can be the most problematic. A hard-pressed teacher with a mixed-ability class of 30 may not have the time to concentrate on those who are doing ‘fine’, and if you’ve got an under-confident, just-getting-by child, a private school can certainly add an extra fillip in the early years, both academically and socially.
In the past many users left the state system at 7, but nowadays if you want to make that particular exit, you should bear in mind that, particularly in London, the leap from local primary to over-subscribed prep is one of the most difficult to execute. Even the brightest will usually need some form of specialist preparation.
Today, the most common transition is at 11, where good comprehensives and grammar schools are more of a rarity. Independent urban day schools, ever mindful of their League Table position, go out of their way to attract the brightest and the best and put a significant emphasis on IQ, allowing some leeway in exam technique to state-school candidates to ensure they’re not ignoring unpolished diamonds for well-coached mediocrities.
But IQ is certainly not the only factor and parents keen to leap this hurdle would be well advised to hire a tutor (or tutor themselves) from the middle of Year Five, not only to prepare their child for the idiosyncratic, time-pressured verbal and non-verbal reasoning tests, but also to ensure their maths and literacy are competition fit.
For those with a particularly able child and a well-placed house there are also the country’s 164 remaining grammar schools to consider and some people choose to pay at primary hoping to ensure a child is ahead in the race for a selective-school place.
If this is your intended strategy be aware that grammar schools,who are not allowed to interview, are even more dependent on IQ scores than the independent sector, and if you feel your child doesn’t have the raw material to compete in these amazingly cut-throat exams, then be sure you’re armed with a strong alternative.
If money is tight, the years after GCSE can be a good time to return to the state, since there’s considerably more flexibility than at eleven. Catchment areas are not so regimented, grown children can travel further, and a well-prepared private-school candidate with a clutch of A* stars stands an excellent chance in the race for a grammar-school place.
A Levels, however, are also the make-and-break years as far as university is concerned and an immature child in a big state sixth form could perform significantly less well than in the carefully monitored environment of a private school. If Oxbridge, too, is your goal, you’re still far more likely to reach those dreaming spires from an independent than from a ‘bog-standard’ comprehensive.
For those with a gifted child, the independent sixth form offers some enticing transfer deals and, if your son or daughter has outstanding musical or academic ability , sporting or artistic flare, it’s at this point you’re most likely to find someone to pay the fees.
Whatever way you choose to play the education game you must always remember that no move is final. If something’s not working for you or your child, at any point, it’s almost always possible to change schools, and can sometimes be easier to do so when everyone else is already in place.