My older sister and I are the same in many ways. I am 29 and she is 39, but despite the 10-year gap, we have followed very similar paths. We both went to London universities and (successfully) pursued creative careers in media. We both own homes and earn a comfortable salary. The only difference? She went to the local state school 10 minutes down the road from our home in Yorkshire, and I went to a private girls’ school.
If private school propaganda is to be believed, my education should make me the more successful sibling. I should be the one with all the confidence, connections, a thriving career and higher salary to boot. A 2025 study by the Sutton Trust found that the privately educated still have a “vice-like grip” on the top FTSE 100 jobs, with 47 per cent of top business chaired by private school alumni. A 2022 study found that by age 42, privately educated men earn up to 34 per cent more (and women up to 21 per cent more) than state-educated counterparts.
But now – both far enough into our careers to claim some level of stability – it’s hard to see a real difference in our outcomes. Although this is an anecdotal difference, as opposed to the data which shows otherwise, it begs the question – did my parents waste their money on my private schooling? Within the same family, would I have had the same outcomes in state education?
My sister started primary school in 1991, I started in 2000. My dad, who didn’t grow up with much and dropped out of his state school at 15, always had private school ambitions for his children. He was a teacher – after doing his A-levels in his thirties – and he and my mother loved the small classes of 10 where staff could keep an eye on each student. They also loved the facilities: the sports halls and the swimming pools. They hoped a private education would mean we would exceed all their expectations. But my sister did not want to go to private school.
Like most 11-year-olds, Megan* just wanted to go to the school that all her friends went to. And since she had been to the local state primary, that meant all her friends naturally fed into the state secondary. And so my parents allowed her to do the same. They conceded on their well-laid plans because she wanted to pursue a different route.
Unfortunately, she had a bad experience. Throughout her time there, she struggled with undiagnosed ADHD, was bullied for years and so hated school. So when it came to my schooling, my parents had made up their mind: I would go private. And in order to avoid any disagreements about following my friends at 11, they put me straight into a fee-paying preparatory school from the age of four, costing £6,000 a year.
It was a very different experience to my sister’s. For starters, I did all the posh school things; synchronised swimming, hockey, Latin. There was more homework from the age of seven – several hours a night – and from the age of four, I got the bus every day at 6.45am and didn’t get home until 5pm. The teachers were very hands-on in the prep school, but this changed as I moved to the secondary. I don’t remember the teachers having much time for 1:1s; the focus for teachers was science and sport. I had zero interest in either.
The expectations were intense too. I remember on one occasion, aged 13, being asked to make a life plan with all the things we wanted to achieve. A big ask for a 13-year-old. They told us about the alumni from the region: David Hockney, Barbara Castle, Alistair Campbell. They gave us a sense of self-belief (or arrogance) that my sister didn’t share.
As a teenager, I was certainly the confident, extroverted sister. Megan hid away from social events and hated her part-time job where she had to attempt small talk. In contrast, I loved meeting new people and begged my parents to let me get a job at 15. I was much more sure of myself, which I put down to my same-sex education and tiny classes, which meant I was completely comfortable with speaking up and less self-conscious about making mistakes. As well as the confidence, the small classes also meant I came away with better GCSEs than my sister – several Bs, As and a few A*s.
And at the time, this difference in schooling didn’t cause any friction between us. By then, my sister was thriving in London, enjoying her mid-twenties. The age gap was too wide for any sort of resentment or direct comparisons. I was just her posh teenage sister who played hockey and went on school trips to the Normandy battlefields. We used to laugh about it a lot.
While I enjoyed school – unlike my sister – this wasn’t the case for all my private school friends.
Just as many dropped out as they did at my sister’s state school. Two of my best friends were convinced they didn’t need A-Levels. One, Rachel* didn’t even bother to revise. I remember sitting together 30 minutes before our GCSE physics exam, anxiously flipping through flash cards trying to help her memorise even just five equations. I was worried that she wasn’t going to pass, but she didn’t care. They went on to apprenticeships and begin careers in childcare, partly, I suspect, because of how intense they had found the pressure at the private school. They wanted to get out as soon as they could. Their parents encouraged this; mine did not.
Since most of my friends were not staying on until sixth form, I also decided to leave. I picked a state school, not the same as my sister, to do my A-Levels. My private school teachers told me I wouldn’t do as well; my grades would suffer and I would be too distracted by boys and a new social life. I took the risk anyway – and my parents allowed it.
In this new environment, where I was indeed distracted by the boys and the social life, my grades surprisingly improved. I got on much better with the teachers and had close support and frequent 1:1s. I went from mid-level GCSEs to straight As and A*s. After years at a private school, I was ironically suddenly doing much better.
I would never send my future child to a private school
Now, decades on, and well into adulthood, I can see some differences: I enjoyed school more than my sister, for example. But I also think it’s nearly impossible to see the impact of our different schooling on our lives now. Although Megan was unhappier at school, thanks to pressure from my parents, she completed her A-Levels and went on to study art at university (I studied history). If you were to ask my parents, they would probably say that we turned out the same. Both happy, functioning adults, with good careers and shared ambition.
Megan is a confident and self-assured adult. She set up her own successful business at 30 and now employs 15 members of staff. I have a great career as a journalist but we both share many of the traits associated with a privileged education: bags of self-confidence and self-belief.
Where did this come from? Megan and I often talk about the drive instilled into us by our parents. The stories we were brought up on; the anecdotes they shared about their interesting lives and the implicit messaging that we could have an interesting life too.
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It is obviously ridiculous to say that private school doesn’t give a huge leg up, but in the case of siblings I don’t think the gap is so wide. When I compare my life with my sister’s, I don’t see the result of private schooling. I instead see the effect of our shared upbringing; our middle-class life in a middle-class area with pushy parents who worked nine-to-five. I see how this has made us both career-driven and comfortable.
After seeing this play out in my own life, I would never send my future child to a private school. Megan’s life trajectory, and my own path, has been shaped much more by the values and influence of our parents than the thousands of pounds spent on me learning Latin.
*Name changed
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