To wonder if you are against private schools…

Surely everything is predicated on the family and parents you are born to and that is purely chance. No-one chooses this.

I would have no objection to VAT on private school fees if all private enterprises in education were treated in the same way; meaning everything that was privately supplied attracted VAT. This would include private nurseries, universities and Academies.
Additionally I would also want to see VAT on private health-care, as this also allows the rich to access better care and queue jump.

In my view, the problem with being ideologically driven is that nuance and what's the best thing for an individual are often left by the wayside, in service to an idea.

Can’t you just read the million other threads on this OP.

AIBU is going to get rebranding to the private school debate if this goes on much longer.

What do you propose should be done about the fact that the vast majority can't afford to move into the catchment areas of a well-performing state school?

Same question to @housemaus .

Sums it up.

Of course you are correct but since when is it sensible to legislate on the assumption that the system is or ever could be perfect?

The system is so far from perfect it's ridiculous to attack the (sadly not accessible to everyone) safetynet/liferaft that some are able to access. I totally agree that no one should have to go private. This is like a situation where a city needs to be evacuated and the state efforts are failing badly but instead of doing more to increase their rescue efforts, the authorities start shooting down the helicopters that are providing an (expensive) shuttle service to evacuate those who can afford it. It's not that it isn't repugnant that the wealthy can access better options, but if the state was doing its job properly it wouldn't be necessary and bombing the alternative isn't going to make things better for anyone.

YABU to say "two tiers" given that the state system contains more than seven tiers:

• Grammars
• Leafy suburb comps with a privileged and wealthy catchment area
• Specialist academies that are allowed to select on the basis of eg musical aptitude
• Schools that select on religious observance
• "ordinary" comprehensives with a genuinely diverse intake
• "grim area" comprehensives with excessive proportions of highly disadvantaged pupils due to the demographic profile of their catchment
• "secondary modern" places that are inaccurately called comprehensive but are in areas where the able pupils are in a grammar so they don't have enough critical mass of able pupils to offer a genuinely comprehensive education.

Given the huge differences between the best and worst if these tiers when huge numbers can't access a place in the acceptable options, the existence of private schools is not the only or main cause of inequality in educational opportunities.

Everyone assumes that all private schools have charitable status, a fair proportion actually don’t but still provide bursaries, run events for local state schools and let them use their facilities for free. So how does that fit with what you have stated?

I Keep hearing the argument about postcodes and variation between state schools being unfair anyway on this thread

I do not understand this argument

Yes there is inequality. Life is inherently unfair
That does not mean we need to go out of our way to make it even more unfair!

Rather we should be doing everything we can to mitigate the disadvantage.

Just because you can't get rid of every way in which life chances are unfair it doesn't mean that you should just surrender to it and add even more disadvantage

If everyone was in the state system then in fact there could be financial compensation and extra support for schools with more challenging catchments. There is an attempt to do this already via the funding formula.

"We can afford private and choose instead to send our child to an underperforming school"

Classic MN

Oh dear, how adorable that you think like that.

I’d have no issue with them if it wasn’t for the fact that the 7% who go make up the overwhelming majority of those who go to the best universities. Given that class or wealth have little or no effect on IQ, private schools are a way for the sharp of elbow to get to the front of the queue.

If oxbridge applied some form of social algorithm to its entry criteria then I suspect private schools wouldn’t be half so popular.

So tarquin who was tutored to an inch of his life and ended up at Eton gets Three A*’s is as likely to get a place in kings college Oxford as Tracey who came from a broken home, had to work to support her single mum and got 2 A’s and a B.

There are multiple examples in public life of the thick as mince who have been through the private school system and who have advanced as to positions way beyond their competence . Boris, JRM and even Cameron weren’t what you would call bright but two of them got to prime minister and JRM who is arguably the dimmest of dim bulbs got cabinet office. They had to yank him out of the spotlight because his views were either repellent (old etonians would have survived Grenfell) or stupid beyond belief (happy fish).

As a society we should be providing a great eduction for all young people, with an equality of opportunity

This is the crux of the issue isn’t it? This is not being achieved for the 93% in the state sector and doesn’t look it will be for some time.

This is just bollocks. The system does not work like that. No one gets a place at a top university or a pupillage through an old boy network.

yet private children are cosseted and coached, bussed into school in private minibuses, kept away from any real competition with local state schools, handheld through everything

Where do you get this from?
The pupils do have to do the work, the teachers are not doing it for them. They are not being cosseted, coached and handheld unless you are misunderstanding that they go to school to learn and be challenged (whatever their level may be).
The ones that are “bussed” are usually travelling some distance where public transport is not practical. Plenty walk or take public transport.
What’s the “real competition with local state schools” that you are referring to? What are pupils at state schools in competition with each other for or over?

Against. Private schools perpetuate and entrench inequality.

Some posters have said that they had a choice between staying in an undesirable catchment area and paying for private school, or moving to a more expensive house near a good state school and sending their children there.

If that's the choice, it seems to me that the more expensive home in the better area would be the best option, because your home is a reliable financial investment in the long run, unlike school fees.

"that's what grammar schools did in the old days, they gave people a chance to succeed on the same level as old type private educated people.

No they didn't.

Very against them - university places, jobs etc are fundamentally competitive. It’s easier to get good grades at a private school, therefore those who have been to one are more likely to be awards places above equally or more capable state school kids. Advantaging some directly disadvantaged others

Completely agree - we found exactly the same thing with blind CVs - we put through more state school / average uni kids when we had the full details, because we made allowances for background.

I used to be very anti them. Went to state school myself (as did most of my friends) and did fine, went to uni, and now have a great career. I'd be the vocal one about how they were for the privileged only.
Then I had kids. And one of them struggled at his state school and all of a sudden I realised how much I cared about prioritising his education and happiness before anything else. And I researched independent schools and found out that they're not all Eton. I know MN hates to hear about families scrimping to afford school frees but we do. I have one at private and one at state. Best decision we made.

Agree Noisy. Don't think there is a way to achieve absolute equality either. Educated, intelligent (emotionally and intellectually), involved tertiary educated parents with funds is what confers advantage irrespective of school. Some children will be cleverer/more charming and attractive/luckier etc than others and they will go further in life.

I do take issue with the view of some private school parents that parents at the better state schools are somehow sneaking a massive advantage. Even the best state schools have the same disadvantages of all states - they have to take all pupils in the catchment which in most places includes areas of deprivation/teacher shortages/difficult to expel nightmare pupils. Arguably the better state schools have the worst of all worlds, all of the above disadvantages and no contextual offers!

Also think the "connections" angle is getting less and less relevant. In DH firm and most others they fall over themselves to get away from that.

Regarding your last line - I accept this isn’t at all scientific - we introduced blind CV and applications for trainees where I work. So redacted names, references to sex, names of all educational establishments. We found the candidates selected for interview were overwhelmingly from private schools/grammar schools or educated abroad as they had best grades, better extra curricula activity and more work experience. Prior to making the process “blind” we had put through state school educated candidates and looked favourably on weekend job at supermarket as were able to work out from CV they had to work to fund studies. We have stopped doing redacted applications. I went to a terrible state school but had educated immigrant parents who helped me with homework, paid for tutors and encouraged me. So although school was poor I had an advantage over my classmates who had uneducated immigrant parents. Whatever you do life is unequal and you can’t change that. My mother grew up in a communist country she had a good education but it didn’t stop inequality and there being haves and have nots. Such a world of equality does not exist.

Anyone who thinks that Labour are adding VAT to get money for the state sector is extremely shortsighted. They are doing this to try to move kids out of the private sector completely and shrink it down in the belief that this will open more opportunities up for the rest of the kids in this country. Their whole philosophy is around reducing social inequality and unfair privilege.

Oh ha, ha, ha.

I’m not against private education in principle but the issue I have with the current private school system in Britain is that they don’t just give kids an education, they set them up for a lifetime of privilege. 6% of children have a private education yet this sector is vastly overrepresented at top universities, in professions such as law and medicine, in politics and in many other areas.

Private schools teach kids how to work the system, help them make contacts, get them into the old boys networks etc. But they are ridiculously expensive and out of reach for the vast majority of parents. It’s wrong that people with wealth should be able to buy their kids a much better chance to get into Oxbridge, or medical school, or a successful political career.

Yes there will be parents on here saying “oh I’m not wealthy, I paid for my kids to go to private school by saving every penny and not going on holiday and driving a ten year old BMW blah blah blah” but these make up the minority of private school kids and £15-20K pa per child is unaffordable for the majority of the population.

Anyone who thinks that Labour are adding VAT to get money for the state sector is extremely shortsighted. They are doing this to try to move kids out of the private sector completely and shrink it down in the belief that this will open more opportunities up for the rest of the kids in this country. Their whole philosophy is around reducing social inequality and unfair privilege.

I don't think it's the same thing. Parents will always invest in their children within what they can afford, such as books, good food, a house in a good catchment area, tutoring, or whatever. Some children will always be luckier than others in a myriad of small, medium, and large ways.

But when you pay for private school, you're buying access to an entire machinery that gives lots of advantages: Better teachers all day, good facilities, fewer troublesome children, and huge networks of alumni and the other children's parents. And often brighter peers as well, since many private schools are selective.

I think there's much more inequality in state v private than there is in good catchment/bad catchment. A good catchment area still doesn't confer anything approaching the huge advantages that most private schools confer.

It is very unfair indeed, but at the same time, I certainly can't blame parents who go private for wanting the best they can afford for their children.