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Brezzo , think its bit unfair to say facts are getting in way of a good story As actually I get that many people have strong opinions on the value or not of private education but actually much of this opinion ( on this string on the forum or in real life) is actually borne from people's own experience of schools or their childrens' or anecdotal evidence rather than from any firm facts I agree it is probably almost impossible to compare like with like as league tables simply listing academic grades are nonsense if they compare selective with non selective schools , so that is why i think the closest fact we can use is the group at the charter who had they taken the entrance exams to dulwich college/jags /alleyns etc prob would have been offered a place - of course yes this is a small group - but its a much better comparison than a regular league table and of course I dont know how academic you have to be to pass an entrance exam to the independent schools in dulwich but I very much doubt there are academically "average' Pupils , in the times report in feb headteacher at dulwich college said they'd taken 17% of those who sat exam this year which would suggest if they are taking " average " kids then the vast majority who applied are actually below academic average ? Anyhow I would be interested to see if there are any "facts" that support a theory that bright children in dulwich would do better academically at an independent school in dulwich than at the charter

Re Londonmix post Sorry but this is just not true, where is the research to back this up, if we go back to the original title of this thread about the charter school , actually as i posted earlier if you compare like with like ( which is hard to do as independent schools do not publish value added data ) but if you look specifically at the charter versus private schools locally then the bright kids at the charter get better exam results than those at the independent schools And on the economic advantage , yes you are right that the sutton trust report says there is an economic benefit to being educated privately - but as i mentioned their research shows it is 57,000 over a lifetime earnings so what Im saying is it doesnt sound like an economic benefit if you have forked out ?100,000 + and get about half back

It is wrong to say private education confers an economic advantage on its pupils as the only research I can find into this is from the Sutton Trust, their report last July , Their report says that for the first time they have calculated the ?wage premium? experienced by those attending independent schools and it states that when you take into account social background and early ability the amount someone whose gone to a private school will earn extra in total is ?57,653 . That probably equates to about 4 years fees in many local private schools so actually on average ?economically? the research suggests independent education on average does not even pay back what has been paid out in the first place. Plus there is a lot of talk about class sizes I would be interested if anyone has any real research on class sizes because the only research I have seen ( Sutton trust report again) suggests that educational outcome is dependent on quality of teacher rather than class size and actually countries that do well in international education league tables ( not that should necessarily be how we judge education) often have bigger class sizes than UK I would suggest that the fact that state school educated do better at Uni than private school educated is because of a better quality of teaching and that bigger class sizes have meant they are more able at 18 to learn things independently when they get to uni and aren?t spoon fed anymore !

brezzo I agree it is difficult to directly compare private schools academic results data with state schools results as the private schools do not publish value added data. But I think you are wrong to say comparing the data from the gifted and talented group at charter to the whole year group for the independent schools in this area is skewiff. If anything it is more likely to be the other way round as the independent schools are selecting a small group on a mainly academic basis from an area comprising at least the whole of South London if not further ( See TImes report in Feb saying this year Dulwich College took 17% of those who applied and kids are travelling from up to 90 minutes away!) Plus of course this is a self selecting group who apply and are more likely than not to be academically above average. The gifted and talented group is about 10% of the year group at Charter , and of course the Charter is selecting not by academic ability but by those live nearest.

If you look at the results on the charter school website for those who are in "gifted and talented" bracket at the Charter school ( who would compare with the high achievers who would pass entrance examinations for dulwich independent schools), then that group at the charter get each year at least 8 A*/A GCSES and in 2011 everyone in that group got at least 10A*/A . Looking at the results for the independent schools I cant find a year where everyone got at least 10 A*/A . Also the value added data is very good for the charter , but that data is not available for the independent schools so not possible to compare. And of course the league tables do not make a useful comparison as the independent schools select by academic ability and therefore only take the high achievers in the first place. But I would suggest that if the high achievers are doing better at the charter and the value added score puts the charter in the top 4% of schools nationwide, then the 'middle of the road' kids would do better there as well .

Yes agreed , and if you compare like with like ( with the few stats available) then the high achieving children who go to the charter rather than private schools get better academic results

Agree with earlier post that actually if you are within charter catchment this year then probably in 6 years time you would be more likely to still be so as there would be the new charter school up and running by then And I think this year the catchment was particularly tight as there were a lot of siblings apparently I completely agree that I would love my kids to all be able to walk to local schools , especially as we are lucky enough to have brilliant schools locally , Of course lots of secondary school kids across the country do have to travel by train/bus to get to school but if that is not to your "local" secondary then others are also coming from all different directions ( particularly private schools which don't have a catchment area ) and therefore school friends can live hours away

Hi we got stuff from Mimosa in Herne Hill for a christening party a couple of years ago and it was great