yeah, pretty much this. I went to a terrible school for my first year of secondary, and it made me feel really miserable and just hopeless really. The teaching and facilities were terrible and it just made going to school depressing. I changed schools to a better comp and had a great time at school after that, but I wouldn’t want to put my kid through something similar if I could afford to.
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Entirely depends on their needs, where I’m living, whether I have the money.
Ideally would only ever need to consider an international school if I had the money, but there would be other considerations for special needs schools, for instance.
Honestly, i’d definitely consider it if I had the money.
My son is now 16 and obviously didn’t go to private school. The education system in the UK isn’t great, teachers are over-stretched and over-worked. There are too many kids in classes, and there is too much focus on making kids fit into certain boxes, pass this assessment and that assessment. Bullying is a whole other problem that from my experience schools don’t have the resources to adequately deal with; whether this would be any better at private school I have no idea.
I would consider private schools because the class sizes tend to be smaller with better teacher-to-class ratios (obvs) and i think this is vital for kids that aren’t naturally academic. Although I wouldn’t consider a Steiner school or anything like that, I would want to find a school that is equally concerned with kids being happy and not under pressure, as much as they are their academic development.
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I would say teaching subjects that don’t interest children, in ways they don’t like, exposing them to violence/bullying, focusing on assessment etc are all problems due to pressures of capitalism on education tbh. Undoubtedly small classes have a positive effect on how able children are to pass those exams, but really the core problems remain.
adding to this, I’d love to think that I wouldn’t compromise on my views on private education - its a terrible idea. But given the potential happiness of my child in and of itself, I’m fully confident that I’d throw them out the window.
Don’t think they’d be happy with that tbf but worth a go I suppose.
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I would put ‘absolutely no’ but for the fact that my uni housemate was horribly bullied at her comprehensive and was traumatised by it (like, even at uni a few years later she wouldn’t speak to anyone outside our house really, the personification of ‘painfully shy’) and her parents were able to put her in a private school for a few years to remove her from the situation. (There wasn’t really another comprehensive option in the vicinity.) Obviously that depends on having the financial means to do so but in that situation if you had the means, would you really not do what her parents did on a purely ideological basis? (I don’t even want children so this is all totally pointless for me 
)
I think that what I’m trying to get at is that I’d definitely compromise on my own beliefs if it meant making my kid happier, if that makes sense.
I’d be interested to know how many people in the ‘definitely no’ camp went to private schools.
I was apparently unsuccessfully trying to make out you were chucking your children out the window.
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The grammar I went to was pretty close
I’d bin off grammar schools too, fwiw
As with all meritocratic institutions absolutely bogged down by classism, racism, all the rest of it.
actualol.
I went and fuck no.
Ugh, secondary schools can be horrendous places 
maybe I should have added an “almost certainly not” option which I’d have ticked: I can’t conceive a situation where I’d send my children to private school but I couldn’t say I’d wholly rule it out.
If you’d asked me when I was 20 how I’d feel about my mates sending their kids private I’d probably have said I’d have cut them dead. Now loads of them have, for various reasons, and I keep my mouth shut, because what sort of turd looks down on their mates. One of my oldest friends is the Head of Maths at a pretty posh private school, and his wife teaches at Westminster. They took those jobs for the same reason anyone takes a job: decent pay, good working conditions and the feeling that you’re making a difference because you’re adequately resourced for your job and the kids you’re teaching are motivated. I’m not happy with any of it, and I’m glad I’ll never have to make the decision for myself, but life just goes the way it does doesn’t it.
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For what it’s worth, I started secondary school at a very well-regarded grammar school. Hated every minute and moved to a comp where I thrived academically. Every coin has two sides I guess.
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I don’t disagree. It’s more of a ‘lesser of two evils’ decision tbh.
In reality if I do have any more children (probably wont) I’d probably move abroad (which is something I’m considering anyway) to a country with a better education system.
I was at a private school for four years from when I was 12-16. Not being hyperbolic at all - I don’t think I can forgive my parents for it. Even though they had some valid reasons, and it was partly caused because of me having to move around every three or four years. It was an awful, awful time and I strongly associate it with the start of some serious mental health issues. Probably made worse because I was too posh to be considered working class, but definitely too working class to be considered posh, and struggled to fit in anywhere. Though my parents could afford it, it stretched them really thin at the time and other kids would make a point of that. The irony of it all being my surname is Royle!
Didn’t help that the private school I went to was OVERBEARINGLY white, and because of my background I’ve got light-brown skin. So that caused a few… issues.
Would rather lose a limb than send one of my own children through private education. If I’m concerned about their grades and stuff, there’s other ways to help other than wasting thousands of pounds and in doing so, increasing their chances of having a very warped view of life. That and some parents did it purely to show off their own prestige, it was kind of vile. The whole thing, vile. The teaching I had wasn’t that good either, in fact I’d say compared to the teaching I had at college it was really shoddy.