Please help - I need your opinion. Fee paying private vs free Westminster state schools?

Hi - Do I scrimp and save and spend all of my salary on school fees for a private secondary school education for my two children (weekly board). Giving up holidays and lots of treats, reducing drastically cinema days and restaurant meals, struggling with birthdays and christmas, new clothes, my personal social lifestyle. Or do I send them to one of the horrid Westminster state schools, where headmasters get stabbed, children are bullied and killed and female teachers get raped. Results are among the worst in the country and my son (11 next year) would have to travel on public transport by himself.





Can a school destroy a childs chances or will good parenting win out? Will my children dislike me more for taking away their lifestyle/treats, etc or for sending them to a hard knock school??

Please help - I need your opinion. Fee paying private vs free Westminster state schools?
As an ex-teacher at one of those 'horrid' Westminster schools, I can honestly say YES - scrimp and save for your kinds and go private. I cannot begin to tell you about the examples of individually horrendous behaviour I had to put up with on a daily basis - It just angers me. But I can tell you I spent between twenty and thirty percent of my contact time dealing with discipline. Many of the students were persistently late, many highly disruptive, and a few downright dangerous. But because of Westminster's policy of 'inclusion', these students simply could not be removed from the school. So the good kids suffered, having some completely feral kids sharing, and ruining their learning. And don't get me started on the parents. I discipline a child. Next thing, parent is in my face "Did you give my child a ******* detention?" And worse.





Your children - all children - need strict discipline and behavioural boundaries - and, In my educated view, only private education can give this.





The 20-30% I mention above means that while you're disciplining some of the class, the rest of the students - usually the good ones - are simply not learning. State comprehensives aim at the broad middle section of kids, not those who may be able; requiring more specilaised instruction and more challenging work.





Go private - it will be years of hardship, and you will need to budget tightly, but you will give your children the best start in their working - or post-secondary lives.





And believe you me - they will thank you for it in years to come.





PS: I'd investigate the Oratory School in Fulham for boys (although it is Catholic), and Tiffin for boys or girls in the same part of town. Two excellent schools.
Reply:I said exactly this in the other question you asked about this (duplicate). It's the absolute mayhem in class that will stop them learning. If they're not driven they'll fall into the trap and act like the unruly kids.





I would move to where there's a good state school. I went to Tiffins' for a while, I thought it was good.





This is one of the reasons I'm not going to have kids unless and until I can afford private school. There's a confidence that you get from it. Unfortunately that may be a while.

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