Would a public/private school have put you in better stead?

I firmly believe an education at a good comprehensive school is the best option. The problem is that the best comprehensive schools themselves in effect become selective as the catchment property prices increase.
 
I guess I went to the wrong private school, my connections have done nothing for me!

I do think it gave me a confidence and structure that I would not have got in a state school.

I would say it saved me from a very different life though. That I am very glad of.
 
My last 2 years of school, the important ones, were absolute crap. My classes except for the ones I picked, media studies, business studies and geography had the same students who were proper disruptive ***** and the teacher would spend 30mins of an hour lesson just dealing with them.

A private school no doubt would have been more beneficial but it still goes against my opinion that GCSE's are worthless.

College and Uni is what is important for it's focused learning, and even better then that are apprenticeships.

Experience trumps certificates.
 
I went to a good state school but I wish I was better at maths and english language. I have to work hard at the written word and I admire anyone who is a good wordsmith. It is our native tongue for goodness sake.

Those teachers had me from 5 to 18 and only two teachers stood out as being any good. Once in science and one in english.

At uni I met folk who had been to boarding school and private school and they knew so much more. They had a better education.
 
DIABLO said:
Think someone would have a better chance if they went private, not necessarily because they would end up with better grades but it allows them to make friends with people who are more likely to be in positions of power.
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I think the idea of people who go to private school having better chances because they mix with people who are more likely to end up in positions of power is only true in a very small number of private schools.

Like that example above with the boys from Eton meeting Putin. The vast majority of pupils in the vast majority of private schools are a world away from that kind of position. Sure, they have better chances, on average, than kids in state schools, but only because their parents are wealthier and can afford a private education. The kids who go to Eton are on another planet altogether.
 
The networking thing is something lots of people fail at in general tbh.. (though I'm not surprised to read that private school pupils are more likely to do it).

There are plenty of opportunities at university and early on in a career for it - especially these days with things like meetup.com and linkedin in addition to the traditional approaches via clubs, societies etc...
 
With only around a third of pupils getting 5 A*-C grades at GCSE, my state school was not good. It was put in to special measures around 2 years after I left.

I think if I had gone to an academically better school it might have changed my career path and most likely would have resulted in me doing something more conventional (graduate job, then working through the ranks etc). As it was, I started my own business and instead that has been more successful than I could have wished and wouldn't want to change that.

With all that in mind, I am pretty sure I will send my children to private school, at least for Primary. We are lucky enough in the area to have Grammar schools which have results at least as good as an average private school, if not better.
 
My sister went to Lonsdale School in Norwich, whilst I went to fairly standard state schools. I can't say it put her in any better position in life. She was never particularly studious, and that school never really changed that.

Oddly I suspect I might have benefited from attending a boarding school, but thats purely because it may have given more stability to my upbringing, rather than attending 10 different schools in as many years. Overall I think its the temperament and having the right environment for the individual that produces the better outcome rather than public schools just being better.
 
I went to a public school from age 10 due to my father working abroad almost constantly during my school years. It was not a top tier one and they had good scholarships for single parent 'deprived' family background with 100% bursaries for a good few students each year, this was in the nineteen-sixties.

I met a broad section of society from the obviously wealthy, sons of diplomats, to a good many with very ordinary backgrounds. My best friend until he died recently was at school with me and went on to become a police sergeant in the met. He was one of the bursary pupils. It meant that I went to school with people from all over the country and indeed the world.

I did not use school contacts for work and went on to start work on a construction site at the very bottom. I did not go to University. It did make me very independent though and built confidence so that I could move anywhere and fit in with most people that I met.
 
Probably a little, but not a lot. Things panned out pretty well for me - I went to an 'elite' university, I have a grad job, I'm not lacking in confidence and I'm told fairly often I have a 'posh' Scottish accent despite my relatively humble upbringing.

The connections would be nice, but I'm sure as I rack up experience in my job my professional network will grow.
 
I doubt it, it may well have put me in a worse position.

I work with a lot people who come from far more privileged backgrounds than me, some of whom went to expensive private schools. I sense from many of them a sense of entitlement, which doesn't help them at all, and can often be a hindrance.
 
Moses said:
My old grammar school outperforms the local private school,
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Interesting, I wonder if some parents put their kids in for both exams (with a preference for the grammar school, but the private school as a back up) thus exposing the private school to some adverse selection.
 
Most definitely, I re-took my exams 2 years after I finished school and am now doing really well for myself now but the teachers in my secondary school were racist as hell and as I'm half Irish half German born in Germany that gave them plenty of ammunition and I'm not saying just a little bit of prejudice which is easy to ignore but full on bullying from the start of secondary school right through to 6th form.

We had a few kids from Africa, Iran, Turkey, South Africa and Russia, All got the exact same treatment which didn't help with learning for any of us with a few kids actually leaving school.

For example my English teacher doing a "Sieg Heil" when I entered the class or my maths teacher calling me his little nazi youth and numerous different names and I wouldn't have minded but it's not like any of us were going round spreading hate or pushing ideologies onto people, We were just kids.

Complaints were put in but the school board didn't do a damn thing.

Private schooling would definitely have helped with the initial years of education.
 
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