Thought I repost the OP although the debate has
moved on a little 
.
It's going to be hard to avoid this becoming another
state v private thread, but what I'm interested in is a slightly
different take on that debate. It's not "which is better?" but "if
you think state school is better even though you could afford
private education, then why is that?"
The question is based on the assumptions that the DC
in question is/are reasonably bright (so might benefit academically
from academically selective education), that the state school is
non-selective (as most people don't have access to grammar
schools), and that you hope for your DC to go to a good university
(to make the £££££ fees worthwhile!)
I've been mulling this over ever since I heard some
maths professor from Cambridge talking on the radio about the
age-old private v state inequality of Oxbridge admissions. He was
all for improving access for state school applicants but said that
the simple fact was that for maths, even the best state schools
generally teach only to the A-level syllabus, whereas the best
private schools take their maths/further maths A-level candidates
well beyond the syllabus and so the state school applicants are at
a huge disadvantage - they simply don't have the starting level of
knowledge required for the
course.
This made me wonder: with this sort of unequal
playing field, if you have the choice of private education, what
reasons might you have not to take it?
Would be interested to hear from those who've made
this choice - how it's working out, or if your DC have finished
school now, how did it work out? Did they go to good
universities/get good jobs, etc? On the other side of things, if
you paid for private schooling but now regret it,
why?
My DC go to a state school by the way.