got kids? sending them to a public or private school?

[Dutchy]

I just opened my glossy old scholars magazine / monthly pledge drive (yes, I was unfortunate enough to be privately indoctrinated for a spell) and underneath a call to raise $600k for a new IT wing - which I am happy for them to do, though I wish the cnuts would stop calling me - they are gloating about how they are building a new multi purpose hall and library (replacing existing ones that public schools could only dream of) with $3 million awarded to them by the Feds.

Sounds like we went to the same school Zippy, I got the same this week, and I agree with you 100%

[Pseudo]

I just opened my glossy old scholars magazine / monthly pledge drive (yes, I was unfortunate enough to be privately indoctrinated for a spell) and underneath a call to raise $600k for a new IT wing - which I am happy for them to do, though I wish the cnuts would stop calling me - they are gloating about how they are building a new multi purpose hall and library (replacing existing ones that public schools could only dream of) with $3 million awarded to them by the Feds.

Had a call from a chirpy old scholar a couple of weeks ago suggesting it 'would be really great' if I wouldn't mind giving them $45 a month to fund new scholarships aimed at a broader cross section of the community. She didn't actually say, Jaime-style, 'we're gonna let some poor, ugly people in' but she may as well have. Anyway, as I picked my jaw off the ground being actually impressed by such a seemingly noble sentiment, she then shattered the illusion by adding, 'Oh yeah, and for a new multi-purpose undercover Hockey / tennis stadium'. Hmmm....you would have thought their new Olympic sized swimming pool would have been enough?

I should mention that I think the school referred to by zipper in the above text is the same "knobby elitist private school within walking distance" that I referred to in my initial post on this thread. This is also an example of the "different class of garbage" I referred to in that post.

Incidentally I went to the public primary school across the road, before being whisked away to the catholic system for my secondary education. Yes, I live within 10 minutes' walk of my primary school. I've gone far in the world....

[Psyber]

While watching TV recently an advertisement caught my eye and reminded me we had held this debate a little while ago, and the issue of whether private schools [and private health care] serve to take pressure off publicly funded facilities, or whether that was just right wing propaganda, had come up in this and one or two other threads in various forms.

Obviously, the SA government thinks private services do save the state money, because the advertisement that caught my eye was the one from SA Health which basically says, in paraphrase....
"Don't clutter up our struggling emergency services with your coughs and colds, but stay home and go to your [private] GP in the morning. And ring the Commonwealth funded Nurse run advisory line if you need reassurance.."

[dedja]

bump ... after starting this thread 3 years ago.

My eldest daughter is in her 2nd year at a public school and the experience has been nothing short of shambolic. She is a straight A student with a great work ethic, has lots of friends and plays sport, but the school lives and breathes on mediocrity.

I don't expect anything special ... all I expect is that the school will attempt to equally assist students who are struggling as well as those that are advanced.

This school seems hell bent on passing all their students, regardless of performance. There is no emphasis on student self management or discipline, rather deadlines are continually extended to cater for the lowest common denominator.

So my daughter sat a scholarship exam and has been accepted on a scholarship with a private school next year (for years 10-12). Whilst there will be a hole in our pockets, we are confident this school will extend and provide the environment to ensure that our daughter achieves her best.

My 2nd daughter starts high school next year, whilst no. 3 daughter will be in year 6.

The biggest issue now is to ensure that we are consistent and fair with all the girls ... so for the moment, no. 2 & 3 will be going to a public school for at least years 8 & 9, and will probably go to a private school for years 10-12, depending on how it goes with no.1

This will burn some serious holes in the bank balance, but there aren't any easy answers unfortunately.

[Jimmy_041]

You should comply with the Labor movement dogma and only allow your children to be as good as everyone else, otherwise it creates disparity in the community.
To excel is not acceptable - everyone should be kept down to the same level.
And, God forbid, if you did want to send your kids to a private school, you must forgo any contribution from the government because you have abandoned the communal system.
We will still tax you as much though, because that wouldn't be fair on everyone else.

[dedja]

all that plus my girls will be getting edumacated at the same place as the Poodle did!

[Jimmy_041]

and FC..

[Footy Chick]

Huh?

[Jase]

We've got both boys are private school, Year 4 and 2. It's an R-13 school, so we're in for the long haul.

Both Mrs Jase and I work at the school (now) so we get a healthy fee discount, and it is one of the low fee paying private schools about so it's not to bad. Though before we both worked here it was a struggle even to afford the fees for Older Son Jase...

[once_were_warriors]

You should comply with the Labor movement dogma and only allow your children to be as good as everyone else, otherwise it creates disparity in the community.
To excel is not acceptable - everyone should be kept down to the same level.
And, God forbid, if you did want to send your kids to a private school, you must forgo any contribution from the government because you have abandoned the communal system.
We will still tax you as much though, because that wouldn't be fair on everyone else.

mmm, perhaps if you don't have any children then you shouldn't have to contribute at all to any education system via your taxes. User pay and all that.

[Jimmy_041]

You are right - they wont give you a discount either

[fisho mcspaz]

I went to a public high school - it wasn't terrific but it hasn't put me off sending my kids to a public school (just not THAT school).

My eldest is in a public primary school and I'll consider his preference when choosing a high school for him. If I sent him to a private school it would be Cardijn; otherwise it'd be a public high school in the area (not Wirreanda or Christies though). Probably Reynella East if we stay where we are now. My dad suggested that I send my kids to Cabra, where he's been teaching for the last 35 years, but I'll say no to that for the same reason I refused to go there myself - I don't want him checking up on them. My sister went there and he checked the roll for every class she was in, and when she went to the school counsellor once he went to the counsellor himself and browbeat her until she told him why my sister had gone there.

The issues of private vs public don't bother me so much - I think that a good education can be obtained from either. That being said, Wirreanda's a hole; Christies is a hole. I went to Glenunga and it was also rather holesworthy. Reynella East was a terrible place when I was growing up around there, but I've heard some good things about it over the last couple of years, and a good mate of mine teaches there and raves about it, and I'm prepared to trust his judgment.

I can't consider private schools for the most part because we can't afford them. By the time the kids are in high school I may be earning a fair bit as a writer but then again, I may not be. I wouldn't send my kids to one of the top-notch private schools unless we existed in a similar social milieu to the other students attending. Mr McSpaz won a scholarship to Pembroke and he was just about the only kid there from a low-income family. He said it was like he'd entered a whole other world, although he ended up getting along OK because he's always been immune to personal attacks and he's the sort of person people look up to (plus he was better at tennis than all the kids with private tennis coaches). But if that had been me, I'd have been completely out of my depth. I only survived high school because I was a clown. I don't want my kids ever to be the odd ones out.

[Pag]

I only just found this topic, three years after it started.

I went to a public primary school in the north, and the local public high school after that. My parents tried to convince me to take a football scholarship at the same school independent school DW and others went to, but a 30-min bus ride, plus wearing a tie every day and leaving my mates from primary school (and footy mates who were heading to local high school), meant there was no way I was going there and my parents gave up. I was fairly mature and independent as a teenager and knew what I wanted to do with myself from a fairly young age so going to the public high school didn't have a negative effect at all as far as grades or scores went, still got into the Uni course and career I wanted.

Now as a teacher in the public system, seeing things from a different point of view, there are three or four major things to look at that dedja has covered mostly for that particular system (secondary school mostly, I don't think the primary is that different, #2 is the most important part for primary, and possibly #4 depending on your area):.

1) The type of personality of the kid. If he/she is not as confident/independent, and is likely to be led astray by peers, public high schools may not be the best choice.
2) The leadership of the school. Schools are only as good as the people who run them. Meet the principal and find out what they value, what they do/don't accept, and how issues get dealt with.
3) Your child's academic/vocational strengths. Some public high schools no longer offer some of the 'higher end' subjects in Year 11/12 anymore (Physics, Chemistry, Specialist Maths etc) as they don't have enough students enrol to run a class, and often 2 or 3 students are sent elsewhere if the want to study them. Some places (St Patricks Technical College for example) are excellent if kids are interested in trades.
4) Your location. Sometimes its worth a 10-15 minute drive to a different area (Elizabeth-Golden Grove as an example). So much teacher time is taken up with behaviour of 3-4 students in a class, and every extra minute spent with these 3-4 is a minute taken away from another student (yours?). Over 12-13 years, those minutes add up.

I would never send my future kids to the school I currently teach at due to reason #4. I see kids who deserve so much more than they get, due to the behaviour of others, and it frustrates me more than almost anything about my job,and breaks a lot of teachers hearts.

The Heights, Wynn Vale Primary and Golden Grove Lutheran are my local schools, and although I won't have to make a decision for a while, I don't think there will be much between all three. High school will be between The Heights, Golden Grove High, Kings Baptist, Pedare and Gleeson.

[fisho mcspaz]

.

[Squids]

You have to send your kids to a public primary school, you got to toughen your kids up. You don't want your kids to be nancy boys do you? You then send them to a private secondary school to give them a bit of class.

[kickinit]

I went to a private school, it was also my first choice as most my mates where going there, my brother had been there, and mates I had through football and basketball where there too. I think it comes down to 2 area's. The first being is the school any good, obviously you don't want to send your kids to a school that is going to send them backwards. The second being what do they have to offer, if your kids is the type of kid that wants to do a trade then there's no point sending them to a school that doesn't offer anything for trades or vice verser. I would have to say I wouldn't be doing the job i'm doing now if I didn't go to that school. They offered a course which was the first in the state to do so, which I found out to love and will be doing for the rest of my life. And seriously talk to your kids to look at jobs needed in the mines, it's one of Australia's biggest industry and it will be for a long time coming. Take a engineer for example earns around 60,000 to 70,000 here in adelaide and works 52 weeks of the year, and works roughly 40 years. A engineer in the mines earns in the 150,000 plus region and only works for 6 months of the year. So basically they are earning more then double, so straight away you bring that 40 years down to 20, and there only actually working half a year which brings it down to 10 years. So if you enter the workforce when 23 by the time you hit 33 in the mines you would of earned equivalent to someone working until there 63 in adelaide.

[Jase]

The Heights, Wynn Vale Primary and Golden Grove Lutheran are my local schools, and although I won't have to make a decision for a while, I don't think there will be much between all three. High school will be between The Heights, Golden Grove High, Kings Baptist, Pedare and Gleeson.

Good school that one ...

The Jases think so anyway...

[Squawk]

Ahhh, this discussion is an oldie but a goodie.

Me - public primary, private secondary.
Juniors? Probably the same.

I have to say, there are lots of private schools I wouldn't send my kids too, and a very short list of ones I would. As for public schools - there aren't a lot of quality ones there either, I don't think. Sadly.

On the funding of private schools, Jimmy41 is spot on. A lot of the facilities are often paid for by the school, not through govt funding. I know of one school close to Jimmy's heart that had new laboratories built, largely funded by Clipsal. The same school has raised money through a bank sponsorship for a new sports complex, with gap funding raised by the old scholars association and other fundraising. Bequests are another traditional income stream.

Kids at these private schools still have to pay for a lot of extra curricular activities, like overseas travel, ski trips, etc.

When I was at senior school, it was largely WASP - white anglo saxon protestant. Now, it is very diverse, almost to the point it is a shock to me. They offer scholarships for indigenous students, disadvantaged kids, disadvantaged kids with a rural background and so forth. There are heaps of overseas students. There are new sports being played.

I cant believe that these days, my school now offers more than just sporting colours - they give colours for academic achievement and other "modern happy world' things. The school has seemingly become so warm and fluffy that it concerns me that its aim to churn out well-rounded, community minded students of the world, will now be churning out soft kids who want to dig wells in sub-saharan Africa, play Olympic Chess, and speak 4 useless languages.

So gone are the days of having to write "Lines" at lunch time - the line being "few things are more distressing to a well educated mind, than to see a boy, who ought to know better, disporting himself at improper moments." I doubt they still have school duties or Saturdays either - and those forms of discipline were the ones that scared me the most. I remember having heaps of Lines and a number of (after hours) school duties, and being told I was on my way towards getting a "Saturday". I went home and advised my mother in advance that if I was given a Saturday, she would need to drive me to school because you had to attend in full school uniform and there was no way I could catch two buses there, and back again, on a Saturday in full uniform. Her answer was that this would be exactly what I would have to do. The prospect of humiliation on a bus in full school uniform on a Saturday was enough to scare me out of pushing the enveleope too far and getting such a punishment.

[HH3]

I went to public school all the way thought R-12. I graduated with my SACE certificate in 2005.

I hear stories about other peoples experiences through high school that I never encountered. Violence and drugs were never a part of my school life. Sure there were people that would smoke dope and stuff, but there wasnt many of them. I guess I had a pretty good class, because almost all of the people in our year got along and hung out. Literally the whole grade would be together in the breaks. Our school had a pretty bad rep before I started, but I think a change in personel and identity really helped dispell all of the negativity. (the school merged with a few primary schools to form an R-12). The people that werent interested in school mostly left around the end of year 10/start of year 11. That took care of most of the distractions of the people that wanted to do well.

I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to do when I finished school, so passing SACE was really my only goal, which I accomplished. I had teachers that were really actually amazing. My year 11 and 12 biology teacher had a class that took a while to get their heads around the DNA part of the curriculum, and when he identified a problem in our learning, he sat us down as a group and went through it again and again until we got it. Almost the whole class was destined for failure half way through the year and most, if not all, passed the final exam.

People from my class are now 24-25 and are teachers themselves, work in government positions, own there own homes, etc.

In my experience, school is what the student makes it.

[Jimmy_041]

Ahhh, this discussion is an oldie but a goodie.

Me - public primary, private secondary.
Juniors? Probably the same.

I have to say, there are lots of private schools I wouldn't send my kids too, and a very short list of ones I would. As for public schools - there aren't a lot of quality ones there either, I don't think. Sadly.

On the funding of private schools, Jimmy41 is spot on. A lot of the facilities are often paid for by the school, not through govt funding. I know of one school close to Jimmy's heart that had new laboratories built, largely funded by Clipsal. The same school has raised money through a bank sponsorship for a new sports complex, with gap funding raised by the old scholars association and other fundraising. Bequests are another traditional income stream.

Kids at these private schools still have to pay for a lot of extra curricular activities, like overseas travel, ski trips, etc.

When I was at senior school, it was largely WASP - white anglo saxon protestant. Now, it is very diverse, almost to the point it is a shock to me. They offer scholarships for indigenous students, disadvantaged kids, disadvantaged kids with a rural background and so forth. There are heaps of overseas students. There are new sports being played.

I cant believe that these days, my school now offers more than just sporting colours - they give colours for academic achievement and other "modern happy world' things. The school has seemingly become so warm and fluffy that it concerns me that its aim to churn out well-rounded, community minded students of the world, will now be churning out soft kids who want to dig wells in sub-saharan Africa, play Olympic Chess, and speak 4 useless languages.

So gone are the days of having to write "Lines" at lunch time - the line being "few things are more distressing to a well educated mind, than to see a boy, who ought to know better, disporting himself at improper moments." I doubt they still have school duties or Saturdays either - and those forms of discipline were the ones that scared me the most. I remember having heaps of Lines and a number of (after hours) school duties, and being told I was on my way towards getting a "Saturday". I went home and advised my mother in advance that if I was given a Saturday, she would need to drive me to school because you had to attend in full school uniform and there was no way I could catch two buses there, and back again, on a Saturday in full uniform. Her answer was that this would be exactly what I would have to do. The prospect of humiliation on a bus in full school uniform on a Saturday was enough to scare me out of pushing the enveleope too far and getting such a punishment.

As my son will attest, they still do a Saturday in full school uniform, and, unlike during the week, I made him catch the bus.