Private vs Public

[Numberate]

Curious to know if anyone has switched their child from private to public due to more available resources and accommodations? I have two boys in private. The older does very well despite having ADHD and being on the spectrum. His dr actually said him being on the spectrum adds some balance to his adhd in his case. My 8 year old was just diagnosed with ADHD. He does well academically but his impulsiveness, lack of focus and tendency to talk is quite the challenge. It has been since kinder and he is in 2nd. I don't know if it's because private school is too much for him but I am considering switching him to public. I really have to weigh the pros and cons because I know he will want to continue on at the same school as his brother, but right now school is just not fun for him and I'm afraid of what it will do to his confidence. I do have a meeting with his teacher and principal to go over a possible 504 plan. I'm not sure what the meeting will bring since I had tried to get one for my older son and was talked out of it.

[Brightside99]

We did. As much as we liked the private school and the teachers, they were pretty upfront about not having the resources our kiddo needed. We made it through most of the school year but ended up pulling our child out early. The next fall we started with public and have been amazed at the amount of help and encouragement we receive from them. There are two social workers housed out of the elementary school who have been a tremendous asset for us. Having the 504 is so beneficial for us and our child is absolutely thriving and loves school. Best of luck to you!

[katcald]

even before his diagnosis when he was about to turn 5, we took our son out of private school where at his conference they said “in order for your son to succeed next year, he will need to do …..” to pubic school where they said “to help your child succeed, we will…” The public school has really worked with him over the years. Now 15, he started high school in the fall. I thought about switching him to a private school, but his psychiatrist recommended against it as the public schools have so many more resources.

[Numberate in reply to katcald]

Your experience is what I am afraid of. The teacher said the school implements "Smart Goals" and to me, goals and accommodations are two very different things.

[MaudQ]

We did. Our child had a negative experience with private school. They didn’t have the resources to support her and frankly, just didn’t get it. At public school, the teachers and staff are better trained and the school is much better positioned to implement her 504. I wanted my child to have rights: you can be asked to leave private school at any time, and they are under no obligation to uphold a 504 or IEP - or to do anything, really. But your public school district has to educate your kid. Also, I feel like public school teachers and staff have seen it all. They’re not all saints but so far we haven’t seen anything like the level of judgement we saw at our private school. That said, we’re incredibly lucky to have access to a good public middle school. There are also excellent, caring private schools - you have to judge them on a case by case basis.

[plantlovingmom]

I think it depends on the public and private schools. Our son sounds like your younger son. He is currently in public school and is not having success. The school really does not have the tools to help him succeed. His self esteem has gone in the toilet, and he no longer seems to have any friends because the school/teacher has othered him. He doesn't sit with his classmates in the classroom but sits next to the teacher. He often is kept in during recess to finish work. We have a STEAM school in town that was opened a few years ago. The owner worked with developmentally delayed adults for 30+ years. She also owns a day care where she hires some of the developmentally delayed adults. (Our son went to her day care from birth to 3 years old so we already have a relationship with her.) She understands students who are neurodivergent. Our son spent a day at the STEAM school. He loved it and felt good about himself. He said "Miss Erica loves me!" He would never say that about the public school. We have a 504 meeting next week at the public school (the principal and school counselor were sure to tell us at our last meeting that a 504 wouldn't fix our son). Once the 504 is written our plan is to pull our son from the public school and send him to the STEAM school. We are sure that he will be empowered there and that his self esteem will soar.

[Lanego]

I was set on private school and we did that for kindergarten but then switched to our excellent public school for 1st grade. Our son is now in 5th grade. I didn't know he had ADHD in kindergarten but from my perspective he was struggling in school academically. His private school teachers kept saying he was fine. In 1st grade his teacher within 2 months asked to meet because she saw that he was not succeeding. He was diagnosed with ADHD, given an IEP and so much extra help that would have not been possible at the private school. Now in 5th grade he is no longer pulled out of class for additional help, and is doing well academically and socially. Depending on your location it seems like public schools have the resources and experience of working with kids with unique needs.

[Hidden]

I’d say that the right private will always be better than a state school ! So if your kids are happy in their private school- keep them there because class size is smaller, there are more resources, better sports facilities and better sports provision and also (but I might generalise and maybe it’s my wishful thinking😄) teachers who are in general less overworked and less burntout, they earn a bit more than in state schools and they have (maybe?) better work conditions.

I have currently both my children- ADHD son (who is also a low achiever and scored low average on most cognition tests although I was explained by the educational psychologist that his scores are lower than they really are as he doesn’t even try and when the question is asked he just says immediately ‘I don’t know’ if it’s a bit more complex and requires multi steps and him making some effort to answer it- he has a severe ADHD) and my younger son who is totally fine (no neurodiversity of any sort) and also in a top 10% of achievers in his year group (he is only 7 and we don’t do any extra school work with him at home, it’s just what he takes in at school in a class of 30 kids- when school does tests to check kids progress he’s always top marks both for maths and English even though he’s a summer baby so he’s one of the youngest in his year group).

So the way I think about the next educational steps for our kids is that the younger one who is super bright and super sporty and keen to do many different things- we know that for a secondary school we want him to go to a highly academic private school (with the proper entrance exams so only the best kids are selected) because we want him to be around like minded young people so he pushes himself to be the best version of himself. We want him to have an opportunity to thrive and be able to try and learn whatever he wants- drama, all sorts of sports such as rowing, rugby and cricket (which in the UK aren’t done at the state schools), we want him to have best science lab, best music teachers so he can learn any instrument he would wish to learn to play, good arts provision where if he wants to do photography etc he will have facilities and teachers able to guide him, we want him to have a range of languages including Latin and Greek available at the school - state secondary schools in the UK do not have this unless they are selective grammar schools (and there are very few of those around and we’d have to live in a catchment to even be allowed to apply and to be honest we like where we live and we don’t want to be selling the house and moving just to be in the right postcode for the right state secondary school for our super bright son, because this selective state school will still have a class of 30 kids and not as good resources as an equivalent private selective school). Our non ADHD son plays piano, does acting classes, is in a local junior football team and also in a local junior cricket team, he loves all sports and activities - but now we have to do it as after school and weekend clubs because state school does not provide it as standard. So basically we have to give our weekends and after school time to do all those clubs to fill the gaps for what state school does not provide.

As for our ADHD son- since he started being bullied at the state school we did look at moving him to a private school. He’s got Educational Health Care Plan which means his school gets a little bit extra money per year to ‘meet his needs’ but in reality his state school takes this money and doesn’t do any of the things they say they will so- so let’s say facilitating small group work for maths and English - during the reviews the state school always says ‘yes we will do all this’ and then they they just don’t do it because they know that we as parents will not challenge them about it because we have 2 kids at the school and we don’t want to be ‘complaining parents’.

However in the UK- private schools will run a mile if they see the child has Educational Health Care plan and ADHD (as stereotypically they imagine disruptive kid who will be reactive and causing trouble). So basically if the kid has been at the private school since the beginning then of course they’ll keep him if he’s fine academically and doesn’t cause too much disruption, no aggression etc , especially if let’s say this family has another kid also at the school so basically school knows if they would ask the ‘special’ kid to leave then they’ll lose custom on 2 students.

However in case of my ADHD son- we tried to move him to a private school (mainstream but non selective, so basically for kids of all abilities) now in year 5 and this private school even have done a full taster day for him (we were honest and told them he has ADHD and is on medication, we also showed his scores card for maths and English and they said that’s fine, he’d be in their lowest set for maths) and he loved it there and the school told us ‘yes we can have him, he’d fit here nicely’.

However the private school changed their tune once we as parents disclosed that our son has Educational Health Care plan- they looked at it and said ‘oh, this changes everything, we can’t meet these needs, we would be legally responsible to meet these needs and we already have too many kids with Educational Health Care Plan and we can’t take another one on’. So basically private school takes it very seriously and whatever is written there in the Plan they actually do it and they just don’t want a faff of having to do it for a kid who hasn’t been at their school from the beginning.

We then tried yet another private school (a larger size one) for our ADHD kid and this was a selective school but they described themselves in between the lines as ‘not highly selective’ but they want to see that the kid has IQ to progress well in their secondary school). And so our son did the ‘assessment day’ and he didn’t do well in that group assessment day. He had to do CAT4 computer test (I am not sure but it’s some kind of IQ test that tests verbal and non verbal reasoning etc)- our son has never done any test like this in his life as state schools in the UK don’t do such tests.

We never got feedback what he scored on this CAT4 test at the private school but I suspect he scored very low. He also did badly in ‘presentation about your achievement’ where he didn’t present anything (he had stuff written up and was practicing presenting it at home) , he told us he didn’t take the paper out of the bag because ‘he didn’t want to talk about it’ and instead he said one sentence that he ‘likes sports’. I’d say he was anxious and overwhelmed with 16 other kids there. He also did badly in a written test- he told us he wrote 1 paragraph on a given topic but when I probed him he confessed that this was more like 1 sentence. So considering that on assessment day there were 16 children, no wander this private school said ‘no’ to our ADHD son.

So for our ADHD son it has to be state education…

[ELucas13]

So this is very dependent on the individual private school. Our private Catholic school happens to have a very good special education program for kids with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. This is not the norm. Another private Catholic school nearby has almost no resources for learning disabilities but they have great sport teams! If you go private school, you may need to shop around and even expand your boundaries. Our children travel to their school quite a distance even though our neighborhood school is less than a mile from our house. Our local public school system has some resources--depending on the school--but none of them use Orton-Gillingham for dyslexia (which we need for our child) nor do they have small class sizes, so we are very happy to have a school that gives us what we need and you may find that too!