State schools seem to get very bad press. The lastest concern is that within London a lot of schools contain a majority of children that don't speak English and what effect this may or may not have on the children who do.
Anyway I was wondering which school you went to, state or private/grammar?
If you went to state do you feel you got as good an education as possible? If you went private do you feel it was a better choice than going to a local comp/academy? Are you thankful your parents paid for your education/ would others that didn't have liked to have gone private feeling you may have got a better education, came out with better prospects etc?
How do you feel about the situation that arises where in some classrooms English is a second language?
On the radio today someone rang in to say their kid was complaining that the work being given out was too easy due to the amount of kids in class who didn't understand basic English.
I went to an inner city comprehensive and we had sets but they weren't regularly tested so while every kid in class at some point showed the potential to do well, a lot were extremely disruptive. We'd go through hour lessons where nothing had been learnt or the teacher was obstructed from giving the lesson. Doing well wasn't seen as the thing at my school either. I guess I'd like my kid to not go through the same eventually.
i went to a fee paying school.
as otherwise, i'd have had to go to a CONVENT *PUKE*
my thoughts are this. i would like my kids to go to the best school possible within my means. if this meant, locally, that the school was a comp - they'd go there. if, locally, it was a private school, if i could afford it, they'd go there.
however, i have been considering the fact that i'd like my kids to go to the school i went to - - which might mean they'd have to board. i'd deal with that when it came to it.
.
Parents used to send their kids to private schools because the teaching was better; now, they send them there because the teaching isn't shit - not the same thing
I had an exam at 11 and went to a sate grammar school
Private schooling every time.
If nothing else, smaller class sizes.
which did you go to GGuevara?
I was privately educated.
by Kilroy
Hahahahahaha.
Where do you think i fot my perma-tan from?
*got
I figure you spend a lot of time on the beach
chasing foreginers into the sea
Just as long as it's better than the school I went to
we barely even had subjects
*chairs
you're not far off
I went to a state school
and am confident the teaching I received there was better than I'd have received at most fee-paying schools but we were in a good area.
In a way I feel it was more rounded than going to a private school. Some people I know who went to private schools had a fairly narrow view of the world in so far as that they didn't really know anyone outside of people who are wealthy enough to pay for private education and in a way I feel this is a shame.
I wouldn't send my children to a private school under any circumstances as it'd clash with my largely socialist political beliefs. My Dad's exactly the same (hence us going to a comprhnsive school)
I think I'd find it hard to say where
a child would be happiest but judging by the way comprehensive in less than great areas (which is where I have lived) are I'd prefer to send my child to a fee paying school/grammar, somewhere where a larger number of children are there to learn because their parents will come down on them if they waste their money and the teaching standards are high quality because an hour isn't spent trying to tame the class.
I go to state school
im not being all "oh you snobs dat go to posh private school are ghey" but i think state school is better. It sort of beats you down at a young age, which is probably a good thing. All the people i've met from private schools have a sense of "i can achieve anything" and a confidence that state school people dont have. Whilst this isnt neccisarily a bad thing, it seems that their aspirations are purely academic and comparative (i.e i want the best job, best house etc)
I can tell private school people a mile off. Theyre usually just pretty dull. Very few of them have a sense of humour and im not sure whether its better to go through education with a sense of jaded bitterness (i.e me) or conceitedness (i.e them)
Thats all in my experiences anyway...
^
i know lots of 'private' school kids who have great senses of humour and are far from dull.
Grammar school for me
it was quite good. Still a state school though.
also
i hate people saying 'i wouldn't send them ____' - - what bullshit. you should want to give your children the best education that you can. saying you wouldn't send them to a certain place is completely limiting your options and you're not doing your children any favours.
I don't think id send my kids to a private school
You can still get a perfectly good education at a state school if the individual is willing to put in some work. Which is up to the parents to instill in their kids, not the teachers beating it in to them with competition.
right. so...... this is your complete generalisation on the public school system...
Yes.
Here are some more generalisations, based on my experiences:
Privately schooled people are boring.
Privately schooled people are conceited
Privately schooled people are uninteresting
My parents wanted me to go to a private school a while back. I spent about two days there and it was horrible
Though my cousins went to private school and theyre both well cool, but they have the same air of confidence that i think is kind of damaging.
some of my best friends went to english private schools
and none of them are any of the above.
Well you would, you went to a "fee paying school"
what, would know people like that?
and if i do, and you don't - i'd say i'm more informed on the subject then, and you're speaking out of your prejudiced ass? (lightheartedly)
I don't plan to have children anyway.
I agree with you. But I don't believe a private school would give my children the best education.
Plus I also think you should teach your children values and I don't think "people who are rich deserve better than those who are poor" is a value I won't to instil. Education, like health, is a fundamental right and the idea that one child should get better than another 'cos their parents have more money is utterly abhorrent to me.
*want, not won't.
^this
I wouldnt send them to private school also out of that principle.
So you won't try and give your kids anything better than "poor people" have?
Is that just in education and health or in other areas too? I bet you'd pay for private medical care for your child if they were suffering/ dying and you could afford it.
I'm not convinced private education makes things worse for state school kids, so I don't have a problem with it.
It's difficult to say until your in the situation
but if the treatment were offered on the NHS and they were prepared to treat my child then I would not go private.
*you're
Me neither
but I disagree with the idea that sending your kids to private school is supporting the principle that rich people "deserve" more than poor people. We all spend the money we have to increase the quality of our lives, and those of our offspring, in many other ways, so I don't see why people should be expected to make an exception for education.
If I was to send my kid to private school I'd be more bothered that he might turn into an overconfident swaggering type who I would find it hard to relate to.
Education is about more than
just exam results. I went to a state school, but in a pretty middle class almost rural area. Anecdotal evidence suggests to me that if you're not in London, or in/near a rougher part of another city, or pretty unlucky, then state schools are more or less alright.
I wouldn't want to send my kids anywhere excessively elitist (whether in terms of fee paying or even in terms of entrance exams or whatever) and I don't think I'd be keen on making/letting them board, other than that it'd depend on the circumstances. Obviously.
as i say below
there's fierce competition to get your kids into the best comprehensive schools. Parents have moved, lied about where they lived etc. I'm not interested in going to those lengths. If like me the comprehensive school choices where you grew up were to go to bad school or less worse school then you wouldn't exactly have faith in comprehensives and academies regardless of your child's academic prowess.
I went to a state school
and I've done alright for myself - but I reckon a big part of that was my parents influence.
If I have the opportunity, my kids will get private schooling.
state schools in leafy suburbs are
the schools that parents are fighting to get their kids into. It's become a competition to place kids in the best school regardless of whether you pay or not. I don't want my kid to end up in one of those large academies. I'm aware that you can still do well within a state school. I did fine but I think I'd have done better outside of that system. Horses for courses or something.
I went to private school.
I honestly don't know if I would have been better served personally by a state school. My school just assumed we were clever and I didn't feel motivated enough to revise. But then I'm an arogant shit.
I'm an arogant shit.
even with one R that is still true :)
i got scholarships and bursaries to private schools
my prep school was very good, but my secondary school was shit.
state school, in a quite bad place
I was lucky enough to have good teachers, parents who care and courage to stay away from bad people.
Now, as a state teacher, I'm putting my kid in private school because what was bad in my time would look now very easy and I've seen what happens in the school near my house. It certainly isn't by pleasure that I do that...
why what is wrong with the school you teach at?
I'm school is a hard place
but there's much worse in Paris.
And I'm talking about école maternelle ( 3-6 years ) and primaire ( 6-11 years ). Some kids came out of rpimaire havong no idea of how you bahave in school !
That's very true of state schools here
I don't have many good things to say about my school. It went like this:
If you were smart and good at a subject the teacher spent more time with you enraptured with the idea that they were a great teacher and turning kids on to learning.
If you were not good at a subject the teacher had little time to spend on helping you understand it better
You could leave my school without basic literacy or numeracy skills as a result of the above
Kids were separated into lax sets that did not reflect ability, this was done once so if people had slipped due to disruptive behaviour they could still remain in the top set. Hence the class was full and anyone in a lower set doing better than before could not move up.
Learning amongst even reasonably good pupils was not seen as something positive so if one set of kids disrupted our English class eventually everyone did and an hour was spent with the teacher kicking kids out of class, going to get the head teacher or shouting. The lesson would then end.
The best classes were the ones with the zero tolerance teachers
or things like art which everyone loved.
zero tolerance is hard
when you have the parents, the administration and the State against you.
Authority, work and learning are considered like things of the past...
That's so sad
I'd never be a teacher i'd rather do something that paid less because many people seem to leave the profession because of stress.
Yes it is.
At least the parents who put their kids in private school ( which are much cheaper in France than in the UK ), know why they're here.
If they come complaining about too uch work or disicpline ( which they are doing in state schools ), administration will gently show them the door...
..
I went private for the first eight years of my education, and didn't take any certificated exams there, which is probably the wrong way round. I agree with what theguy said about privately schooled kids often having a narrow world view. I remember when I was eleven or so, the age kids tend to go out on their own, and a group of girls basically discovered that wow people drop their Ts and use youth speak, they were impersonating 'commoners' or what have you for months, a little cringeworthy. In terms of education it's hard to say whether it helped since I have nothing concrete to show for the time I spent there... A lot of people found that the competitive hard working atmosphere in private school pushed them far more than the quality or otherwise of the teaching. We covered material in year seven that when I went to a state school we were just starting to learn in year nine. I suppose it also raised my standards slightly, B grades and even A grades were seen as a failure of sorts and a source of disappointment. In terms of my own personal development, I am so, so happy that I moved to a state school, but I wonder sometimes how I would have done if I stayed.
I helped out in a school in Euston recently with a high percentage of children with English as a second language. Whereas I wouldn't say the work set for the class was made easier to accommodate them, the difficulties they faced with it in the lesson did hold the class back a bit. Children with bad English seem to be in high concentration in schools with low academic results, which is a shame.
I know one person who was in private school
he has no complaints about the education he got which is the matter at hand here but he did dislike his fellow students. I think people get caught up in the minuses of the social side of private school and what people have or do not have. I only care about the education because state or private there will always be social problems at schools.
a shame? not linked maybe?
i was state school all my life although i suppose a private education would have pused me more and made me less lazy.
anyway, shouldn't you be writing essays?
yes.
*logs out*
went to state school,
thrown out, went to private school, taught in both, including a state school where 54% did not have English as a first language.
The current educational system is as bad for the non-English-speaking kids as it is for the English-speaking ones. The teaching of kids with English as an Additional Language (EAL as it's shortened to) is grossly underfunded and they are left to sink or swim.
Still, if the teacher is adopting a 'one size fits all' approach which involves giving out undifferentiated EAL work to English-speaking kids, there ARE fairly clear question marks over that teacher's professional competence.
At the moment I would educate my kid at home.
At the moment I would educate my kid at home.
that's extreme. You're that put off by the education system?
and doom them to a life of social ineptitude?
there are other ways for kids to socialise
I recognise the need not to wrap them up in cotton wool.
true, but
kids are fickle fickle creatures. anything out of the norm.... you're fucked. sending them to school, to socialise and interact with kids of other ages/races/religions/etc is just a vital a part of schooling as the actual education part itself.
Yes I am.
State education honks, but I don't have £20k kicking around and I resent the idea of mummy and daddy having to be company directors just, as Traynor said, to pay for education that isn't shit. I decided to teach Latin in a state school for a reason, and that was to open up a subject to everyone that previously was only really available to the elite.
But having been at the other side of a school which got an 'Outstanding' OFSTED report when it deserved no such thing, I can safely say that state education honks.
...
You don't think that your kids would miss out on vital formative experiences and perhaps have difficulties when going out into the Big Wide World? I'm not necessarily agreeing with that, I've met some well rounded home-schooled kids, but also some who are less so.
i'll add also
that.... i think that feepaying schools here and in Ireland are completely different. the people that went to my school weren't insanely rich - it cost about £1000 per year to go. people weren't stuck up. at all.
i think people on here saying that 'public school educated people are stuck up etc etc.....' pot kettle black?
Some here are relatively inexpensive
and there are tax breaks.
But it is still incorrect
what is incorrect... to pay to go to school?
State schools should be good enough
It is incorrect to have a scenario where a child's potential is realised dependent on their parents' income
^
you're right.
The problem isn't the quality of state school, but the population...
there are scholarships though?
i do agree with you however, but - that's the way the world is, i'm afraid. and you have to accept it. any child with the drive/ambition should/will succeed no matter where they were schooled.
.
"any child with the drive/ambition should/will succeed no matter where they were schooled."
Maybe - many business people are poorly-educated.
But what about those children who are clever but not driven - they need good teaching
...
"many business people are poorly-educated"
why do you say that? Most directors of large companies are extremely well educated.
yes, they do.
but surely that's ALSO a different argument. to do with the education and placement of teachers? i don't know.
same argument
this thread wasn't specific
not enough scholarships
i wasnt offered one despite gaining the best grades out of anyone in my junior school...
this is a different fiscussion possibly
It seems there is a difference!
I think at the time, my school cost about £12,000 a year to go to. Then of course you have to buy uniforms and all that jazz. It's not that much in perspective, somewhere like Eton charges around £25,000 a year.
not that much
if you have the money
Yeah
but that's the same for anything though.
what a non-reply.
most people don't have that money, so your claim that 'it's not that much compared to 25,000' is irrelevant.
Yeah
but it really isn't that much compared to the top flight schools.
£12,000 a year between two working parents (or one rich daddy), isn't a stupid amount.