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Comment by arethuza | Hacker News Reader

One way of avoiding any exams or interviews is to have your child start at a private school at nursery level - it's only if you transfer in later that they do the interviews/exams (NB not all public schools work like that though).

Mind you my son transferred between private schools at age 16 and the interview was mainly about rugby...

[NB Both my wife and I went to very humble state schools but we could afford private schools and, to be honest, the quality of teaching and facilities at private schools is vastly better to state schools so I've never regretted it].

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Your own experience may be of better quality teaching in the private schools but that's not borne out by the evidence, what little there is. For reference, there's the recent publication of "Posh Boys: How the English Public Schools Ruin Britain" by Robert Verkaik, which explicitly states there is no demonstrably better teaching.

My own personal experience is of State, Grammar (selective) and Private. It's all about the intake, I feel. The quality of teaching isn't really different. If anything the Private school teachers are lazier because they don't have to try as hard. They also seemed more arrogant to me.

Intake is key. I positively hated school through to 16 when I then went to a separate Sixth Form College to do my A-Levels - and suddenly all the knobheads were gone and I could actually enjoy myself for the first time.

You always get knobheads, no matter the intake. If 3% of people are knobheads, with a class of 30 there's a 60% chance of having at least one knobhead. With a class of 20 it's 46%, with a class of 15 it's 37%.

You seem to be assuming that admissions is based on a lottery and expulsion cannot occur.

You might note that at what are considered "good schools", not only are neither of those things true, but trying to implement either would cause the school to be quickly abandoned.

you get knobheads whatever the admission policy. And the number of expulsions from schools is pretty much zero

One thing that stood out to me, I went from a private school with a class of 16 to a state (grammar) school with a class of 28. That does have an affect on teaching.

However also anecdotally a friend taught at a private school for a couple of years. Parents made it quite clear that it was his responsibility to ensure their angels passed the exams, no matter how thick they were. He didn't stay for long due to that attitude.

I went to private school for a couple of years from age 9 to 11, we all had to take and pass the exam to get into the senior division

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