Are private schools better than public schools in your country?

23 comments

1. Let me try and answer the question without making a definitive statement on the quality of either public or private education, as it does vary widely depending on the specific school.

   What it is important to know is that public schools in Denmark are severely underfunded, understaffed and overcrowded. Those located in rural areas are often closed, leading to pupils having to travel further, and those in the urban areas often lack the resources to properly provide education. This is not even touching on the terrible conditions for teachers and pedagogues.

   This dire situation of the school system is the direct consequence of deliberate liberal and social democratic policies.

   It also means that there is a flight of middle class parents, taking their children out of public schools and into private schools. Especially in rural areas, where many private schools historically have been a working class, left-wing cooperative institutions, meant to provide a progressive alternative to public education, this has ruined these schools, and made them into middle class institutions, in direct contradiction to their historical intent.

   Meanwhile the traditional upper class private schools aren’t touched by this flight, as their prices are often too high for middle class parents to afford.

2. Usually the opposite. Public schools are ran by the municipality, the most common private school is the Catholic school group. Because of some laws here there’s a cap on the max amount schools are allowed to bill parents. So any extra stuff must come from elsewhere. Municipalities usually fund their schools pretty well

3. Asking for tuition in Finland is forbidden. There are some private schools, but they get their money from the state anyway so the difference is pretty minuscule. To be honest, I don’t understand very well how private schools in Finland are operating. Some private schools have a special pedagogy they are following, I think many have just been founded mainly for historical reasons.

4. I wouldn’t know. Private vs. Public isn’t a big conversation topic here, and I don’t think I’ve ever thought or heard of private schools aside from the weird ones that are trying to prove that their pet theory about pedagogy is correct.
   I certainly wouldn’t assume a private school education was any better, though.

5. Here in my city, usually not.

   Or at least, they are only ‘better’ in the sense that they have more facilities and more social prestige.

   In terms of teaching standards and academic achievements of pupils,the better state schools produce much better results.Of course there are also less good state schools.

   Most people who are academically solid or interested in actually studying attend state schools… classical high school, scientific high school and so on.

   Private schools .. especially high schools…are more used by parents with plenty of money but not particularly academically gifted children.

6. Eta: my flair is scotland because that’s where I live, but I’m french, grew up and went to school there.
   In france we have 3 types of private schools:
   – the ones that are “sous-contrat”, have a deal with the state, the teachers are paid by the state but employed by the school, they teach the same as public schools and have the same exams, the fees are usually based on how much your parents earn.
   – the ones “sous contrat simple”, they’re really rare and I think they still follow the public curriculum but receive a lot less financial support from the state.
   – the one who aren’t (hors-contrat) and can basically do what they want, the teachers don’t need to have a teaching degree, the fees are fixed (and high) and whilst most teach the usual public stuff some don’t (the alternative schools).

   Because it’s illegal for public school to be religious all the religious schools are private. You don’t need to be of that religion to get in, but most you’ll have some religious celebrations through the year, usually have religion class during the week (at least in primary and college) and sometimes have to attend regular mass and things like that.

   Private schools usually do have better results, but, the kids who attend them are usually middle class or higher (only about 11% of lower class kids go to private school vs 28% in public) so that makes a massive difference overall in performance.
   According to stats I’ve found about 1 kid out of 6 in france goes to a private school, and there’s loads of them everywhere.

   Fwiw i went to a private catholic sous-contrat school. I’m not catholic (not baptised or anything), because I started at 15 (lycée) i never had any religious teaching, or mass, (but all the way till the end of college, around 14yo, they had weekly mass and religion classes) the only religious aspect was that there were monks working the grounds. It helped me because it was a really small school, with small classes where the teachers had the time to work with all of us individually, in some language classes there were 5 of us for example. In public i never had a class with less than 30 kids in it at a time.

7. Yes by far.

   It’s so bad, that it has actually inspired a parents’ movement in favour of homeschooling. There are plenty of people that defend it but truth be told, the curriculum is in dire need of updating and the teachers are held at an almost god-like status. There have been cases of a male teacher caught sexually harassing female students not being fired for his highly inappropriate actions but instead being transferred to another school as an act of placation.

8. In most cases, the public schools are better. There’s an exception – PORG gymnasium has a very solid reputation, so it attracts ambitious and talented (rich) kids. Otherwise, most private schools are miserable.

   How? On high school level, usually they attract kids who failed entry exams to state gymnasiums. Stereotypical student is lazy/stupid kid of successful parents who want to force him to education.

   On university level, they have a reputation of not so good education who might easily get bribed to allow you to pass, ideal for lazy people or someone who want to graduate FAST. They sure have some shady elements, they are known to prey on students financially – for example they have mandatory math on last semester before the bachelor’s exam. And failing it for the first time is borderline certain, and it means prolonging the studies -> more money for the college.

9. Swiss here. Absolutely not. Private school are seen as schools for people who failed public school or people with special needs / backgrounds that warrant a different approach. But virtually nobody wants their kids to attend a private school.

10. Public schools in Greece look and feel like prisons. Most teachers are old and can’t wait to retire so they do their lesson very badly. That’s why everyone wants to go to a private school but most people can’t afford it.

11. No. The only private schools in my area are for high schoolers who lost a year and chose a less demanding school or sometimes a 2in1 formula. I mean, you failed your 2nd year, instead of repeating it you change school, you do 2nd and 3rd year there while your class is in 3rd year, and you go back to your old class the next year to do your 4th year together. This kind of school isn’t a real school, i mean it doesn’t allow you to sustain your final exams in the school, so you need an admission exam to have those years recognised and to be admitted to a public or private equalised school. Same for your final exams, those schools don’t allow you to sustain it and you have to go as an external candidate to a different school. Otherwise, the school can’t give you a diploma.

    A boy in my neighborhood was sent to a private boarding school in the alps, focused on teens with weight disorders, and it offers extensive classes on health eating habits, psychological support and gym lessons. I don’t know if it is an equalised school or not…

    Some private schools are run by catholics, especially in Rome. Parents with not particularly problematic kids choose them to keep them apart from bad gangs or for prestige, but academic programs are no better than a public school. Those are usually equalised schools, so they have to respect certain standards and study requirements imposed by ministerial decree and can host final exams. A diploma in this school is equivalent to a public one.

12. This is a complicated question as I went to private school, so I’m slightly biased by the fact that I don’t want to feel like my parents paid all that money for nothing.

    In my parents’ generation, there was a two-tier state system kind of similar to Germany today I guess. At 11 you would do an exam known as the 11+. If you did well, you would be able to get into “grammar school” (*Gymnasium* in Germany) which would prepare you for university, while if you didn’t you’d go to a “secondary modern” (*Hauptschule*) where you’d be prepared for the trades. Various governments later decided to phase out this albeit very elitist system, so that all children would instead go to “comprehensives” in which everyone would get the same quality of education. In practice, what happened in much of the country is that middle-class people who could afford it (or in many cases, who couldn’t really but did anyway) instead decided to send their kids to private schools, so essentially it recreated the same system, just that children were selected directly by money instead of how well they were prepared for an exam when they were 12. So there’s an entire generation of grammar school children (like my parents) who rail about the fact that they were able to get the education we got entirely for free, and my dad especially probably wouldn’t have been able to go to university otherwise. These are generally the people who strongly advocate for bringing back the grammar school system (including former PM Theresa May). The other side of the argument is that only a very small minority of people would have benefitted from this system, in practice it would do little for social mobility.

    In the national league tables, the vast majority of the top schools are either private schools or the handful of heavily oversubscribed grammar schools that remain. Private school children are very overrepresented among the best universities and jobs in the country, including MPs, journalists, CEOs etc.

13. I went to a private school in Sweden from 11-16, public in Norway from 6-11, and I can say that the private school was much better. More professional teachers, better education, less bullying, very good order in the classrooms, and better activities during f.eks recess.

    I don’t have personal experiences of Swedish public schools, but I have heard that many are chaotic with a lot of bullying, little order in classrooms and generally being neglected. I currently go to a public high school, and it is really good, so I would really say that it depends.

    Some private schools are really only profit machines with little care for education, while others like mine want to make a profit (they have been pretty well known because of that) but the quality of education was still good, while some public schools especially in more richer areas are really good as well.

14. On average, yes. Private schools are better funded and if you go there it means your parents have made a conscious choice about your education instead of going with the flow.

    Of course there are elite public schools that beat most private schools with ease, but your neigbourhood public school will probably be worse than the closest private school.

15. Usually not. Parents usually send their children in private schools because of social prestige, or because they don’t want their kids to be in the same place of difficult children, migrants or certain special needs kids. Sometimes students go there because it’s easier to get a degree.
    As for the education programs…. More or less they follow what public schools do (they have to), but not necessarily they are better: many years ago a private school of my area closed, so the students had to go to our public school and struggled a lot at the beginning.

    In the past some of my students didn’t have a good opinion of their peers who went to one of the private schools of our area: they saw them as snobbish.

    I know that teachers are paid less. In some private schools they are not even paid.

16. Private schools in the Netherlands are basically special education for rich kids who couldn’t make it at a normal school, but their parents demand them to go to university, so now they go to a 14hr/day remedial teaching school to get them the ‘proper’ high school diploma that qualifies them for university education.

    So I guess they are better, since they can get rich kids to university despite lacking the skills necessary to do it normally, but it’s not a benefit on your resumé.

17. In Ireland according to the stats, students from private schools do go onto university and into more prestigious course at a higher rate. But maybe the type of parent who sends their kids to a private school would have pushed them to do well anyway in a public school.
    I’ve also heard some say that one of the better benefits is that they’re good for networking particularly in the Dublin private schools but I wouldn’t know how true that is.

18. Depends what you consider “better”. I sent my kid to a pretty prestigious private school first (because it was close to where we live, looked nice, etc.), but I took her out again after primary school. It was way too elitist, and the education wasn’t better than elsewhere. Now, she’s happy at a public highschool.

19. For higher education it’s kinda weird, because they rank higher but are regarded way worse. Generally they’re more appearance-oriented, which includes fulfilling certain goals so they have an artificially high place on various rankings. In real life it’s seen as the last option for people who can’t make it into normal school.

    For high school it’s looked at as any other school I guess. They’ll often offer alternative approaches to the curriculum or place higher emphasis on certain aspects of the education, so if you prefer a certain way you’ll often be able to find a private school that can meet your preference. These schools being private is irrelevant, they’re seen as any other school regardless (ime).

    Although private elementary schools function similarly to private high schools, they’re generally seen as a bad and kinda cultish. I think the difference is that putting a child through something like that will for certain make them stand out later in life, which is a big no-no in Norwegian culture. Many “higher ups” tend to send their children to these schools though, as they have a high emphasis on multilingualism and art. So in certain circles they’re seen as better, but in general they’re regarded as worse.

    As for religious schools in all stages, they’re generally seen as the worst. Although a Christian college is doing its best to change that these days by spending a lot of money on research.

    So whether private schools are better depends entirely on your preferences, but for most Norwegians the answer is no.

20. Netherlands. I’m not actually sure what is defined as public and private here. We have super expensive schools such as the international schools which are typically for expats. So I have no idea about them as I am just a common immigrant.

    ‘Private’ would be religious or ‘special’ such as waldorf or montessori schools. Christian (protestant or catholic) schools are abundant despite it being a secular country and they do have a slightly better reputation (and often results) as public schools, in general. There probably are some really bad Christian schools and some really good public schools. Usually Christian schools are not very religious at all, and the hard-core Church gang often choose extra special Christian schools like reformed schools or school-with-the-bible.
    As for the waldorf and montessori and the like: depends on the individual schools.

    My non-believing husband chose a Christian school for our children, while I, the Christian mum, actually was considering the secular Dalton school. We went with the regular Christian school because we felt it would give them more balanced options.

21. Not all private schools are bad and not all public schools are great, but generally speaking private schools in PL are often seen as a place for rich, spoiled kids who don’t have to put much effort into their education because their parents essentially pay for their degree. In public schools you need to put effort into your education if you want to graduate.
    I feel like kindergartens are an exception to this “rule”. Private kindergartens often offer a wider range of activities and their teachers are often better prepared to do their job and pay more attention to the kids because the groups are smaller.

22. No. Private education is usually for rich parents that want their kids to attend a school that has a reputation, I had a lot of classmates that moved from private school to my public high school and they went from having 10s in everything to failing 4 – 5 subjects, and private universities are seeing as a place you go to get get your degree without having to do the work since you’re paying a lot of money.

23. Private schools usually have some religious or quasi-religious (Waldorf) spin to them. There are very few private schools just for rich kids and the field is heavily regulated. The only ones that are even recognized by the wider public are the ones based on alternative schooling movements (Waldorf and Montessori), with Waldorf usually seen as extra whacky.