Overheard at the LFGSS golf club bar

I suppose I'm only trying to illustrate that a lot is down to you and your own personality/wants/needs rather than the school you go to.

Bullshit.

more memes pls!

Oh wrong thread, normally that one getting derailed..

opinion is divided on the matter

But not the statistics, surely.

would rep

I suppose I'm only trying to illustrate that a lot is down to you and your own personality/wants/needs rather than the school you go to.

Bullshit.

Fairly sure there's a good bit of research indicating that the single most important factor in kids' educational attainment is how engaged their parents are.

Obviously that's 'single most,' with many competing, there are confounding factors and plenty of outliers, and it's educational attainment rather than future progression, so it adds little more than 'it's complicated ...' to the discussion.

👌

Long time ago now I went to a minor public day school up north. Seems to have given me something that helps. Not an old-school network, I'm crap at keeping in touch and the losing-your-surname thing makes it harder for girls to make connections of the "Jones-Lee? Goodness me you don't mean old Oggie Jones-Lee do you?" type, but a bit of confidence maybe. I think I have as much right to step up as anyone else.

Things that seemed to be different between my experience of school and my non-private friends':

Single sex. BIG one for female achievement, at least back then. Science teachers? All women. Maths teachers? (Almost) all women. Highest grades? All girls. Group of nerds in computer club? All girls. The idea of something being "not for girls" just didn't exist for us, other than football because we only did the girls' school sports. And of course we weren't running an inescapable gauntlet of teenage boys all day. I read shit like this and it's a million miles away from my school life.

Expectations. My friends in the top local state schools were told they were doing well if they got Bs and Cs at GCSE (this was back in the 90s when the top grade was A). In my school a C was treated like a failure, it would be all "oh what went wrong". My friends were just as smart as me, but the bar they were being given to meet was lower. (To be fair, one retired in his 30s after selling his business and one ended up working for Google in the early 00s so I'm not sure I won the long game here!)

mrs upsidedown went to a state school and is wants little upsidedowns will go to a state school. I went to a grammar, but she did lots better than me at school, university and arguably life (aside from marrying me), so it's a compelling argument.

I went to an Independent school that had been recently started by a group of parents, my parents came in at weekends to help paint the classrooms. At the time it had no status and its image was a bit severe. I have received no leg up from any old boys network and really never mention where I went.
It’s now become a a Public School and is very posh for the area. Recently I’ve mentioned it to a couple of people (both rowers) who were sort of impressed, which felt weird. I didn’t mention when I was there the heating broke in the middle of winter and they couldn’t afford to fix it so we wore coats in class.

Mind you when I was 14 my school trip was overland to India in the schools old minibus.

I never realised your username was upsidedown until you posted that. Doh.

I hesitate to get involved in this but...

Both of my daughters went to very good public schools. We could barely afford it, but we did it.

For what it's worth, both schools - despite their very strong academic results - had facilities that would probably be described as sub-par in many state schools.

Neither of my daughters have made friends who are likely to 'open doors' for them in the future. One is studying art, the other music, so its difficult to see what advantage any 'old school network' might give them.

Whilst both the girls attained very good grades, I'm pretty sure (as are they) that they would have attained similar grades had they been educated in the state sector. Both me and Mrs JJ were council kids who went to state school and did well academically.

Finally, as a result of my childrens wierdly privaledged education, a good number of my friends (other parents) are now what would be considered wealthy and have very well paid jobs. That doesn't make them cunts. The ones I have befriended are very decent ordinary people who work hard and look after their kids - they should't be demonised for being successful.

Some of my family were privately educated, some went to Grammars. I don’t have a huge problem with private education per-se it’s more about the fact that our country is ruled by privately educated people and there is no state equivalent to challenge this as there was in the days of real grammar schools.

private schools should be abolished. just my opinion simple as end of

I went to a grammar school and I’m a bike mechanic. Just saying.

I might be a cunt though.

Always assumed a lot of people on here went to private schools.

Not exactly a fan but not sure if you went to one should be made to feel guilty about it.

Not exactly a fan but not sure if you went to one should be made to feel guilty about it.

But if you sent your own kids to one you’re a Tory cunt, obvs.

Such lazy prejudice...

Csb: Completely unrelated, I only just noticed that the i in your username is technically the wrong way up.

/ csb.

!

Would be perfect.