To think you can’t take the moral high ground on private schools if….

No one is saying the system isn’t unfair. Yes it is but ultimately parents have a right to decide how they want to educate their children. Remember the cost of private education is the same as raising a child from 0-18 so some people choose to have another child and some people choose to spend those funds of private school and not have another child. 100% the choice of the parent.

the issue is there is no solution unless you go down some country’s routes of very very strict controls of what parents can provide for their children.

until then-

1. regardless of the system, most parents will put their own children first above all others it is human nature. So tutoring, extra curriculars etc. and circling back to the OP, buying a house in a nice area and making that state school a ‘nice’ school. Parents will always find a way to give their own child the edge over others. To get into university you have to ‘beat’ others to get the place. No getting around that. Unless you mark yourselves to the most underprivileged of children, how can everyone be truly equal?

2. private schools provide things that no state system ever would such as sports. No amount of middle class lobbying would convince a government to give an extra £3k per pupil only to go on sports teachers and sports fields. So ultimately the argument comes down to well if state school children can’t have it then no one should. A race to the bottom. Without private schools we would have zero people who do rowing for instance and rugby would all but die out. Heck, I know someone who has just moved from state to private in year 10 because the state school stopped playing netball at that age. Basically high level sport is considered ‘privileged ’. There is no way around that. Should all children have that opportunity- 100% but who should pay for it? I have no solution that would make it equal for everyone.

I find you insulting. Why would my children (one private, one state grammar), not “become resilient, hard-working people who respect and know people from all sorts of backgrounds”, just because they don’t go to the local comp?

As a working class, free school meals comprehensive educated person myself, the people that I have encountered with the greatest prejudice are not privately educated. They are the people that I went to school with. They are the ones that judge people for their accent, their race, where they went to school, what jobs they do, even what part of the country they come from. My brother and his friends turned their back on my DH as soon as I left the room because he is a southerner. My brother is a state school teacher (a head of year in fact). I’m bloody glad he isn’t teaching my kids.

Thank you, I wish you the same

I really don't know what else to say besides my too many posts on this. I do not prioritise the same things you do and that is fine. I accept that people have different things they value and I am glad we are both in a position to make choices in our lives - many millions do not have the privilege of choice. I am very happy with the life I provide for my children and I hope that they fulfill my hopes for them in the future. I hope your children are happy at their school too.

Your daughter sounds amazing, you must be so proud
I am not sure you could say she could only have done those things because she went to a State school though.

@PurpleThistle7

Good post. My children went to a London comprehensive. My daughter left school at 18 and was working in a men's remand prison by 19. At 25 she now works with category 1 ex offenders, including murderers and people guilty of terrible offences towards children. I'm so proud that she's trying to reduce reoffending in our communities through her work, particularly as she herself was the victim of serious offences as a child and as a young adult. Her educational background has given her insight into the reality of people's lives who are at the bottom of the social heap, and an ability to connect sincerely with people from all backgrounds. She's compassionate and so brave. I myself went to a private school. I sound confident and articulate but I don't have half the social nous or the courage my daughter has.

Of course Private school is unfair, I have never claimed its not
Most things that give an advantage are unfair and most parents would choose to give their child an advantage if they could.
For me its like giving my DC a car - any car will get them from A to B and with lessons and involved parents they will get there faster and safely BUT if I can buy them a nicer car that gets them there much more quickly, takes them further and had added safety features why the hell would I not do that?

. I am not excited about the opportunity for my children to experience violence or witness it... but I still maintain that the good sides to choosing this life far outweigh the bad.

Genuinely what are the good sides to choosing this, apart from saving a load of money?
I imagine what your answer would be very insulting to Private School kids.
Not all Private School kids are wrapped in cotton wool, mine know that there is violence out there and have witnessed it and other criminal behaviour, they know how to keep themselves safe but NO CHILD should witness that at school and have it impact their learning.
Putting up with violence/disruption in a school and managing to achieve well despite it is great but why would any parent actually choose that for their child?

@Hoppinggreen

"Yes, they would not be quite so egalitarian if their DC risked getting stabbed on a daily basis."

Drama much. The children who actually are most likely to be on the receiving end of peer to peer violence are the kind of kids ruthlessly excluded by the private education system. Not middle class kids at state schools. And the vast majority of peer to peer violence has nothing to do with schools.

Private school confers massive privilege on an already ridiculously privileged group. And that's the way privately educating parents want to keep it. While also claiming 'it's not really unfair to children'. The entitlement is exhausting.

This thread is getting really insulting now. My children 'mix with a wide range of people' which includes the violence, disruption and other challenges everyone keeps mentioning. There are knives and vaping and bullying and all sorts of things happening. I am not excited about the opportunity for my children to experience violence or witness it... but I still maintain that the good sides to choosing this life far outweigh the bad. There's a chance my children might have something terrible happen and there's also a chance that they will become resilient, hard-working people who respect and know people from all sorts of backgrounds and who are firmly rooted in community service and dedicated to helping to improve education for all children - not just the children who already have lots of advantage (which isn't just financial as many have mentioned). For me that gamble is worth it and I stand by that decision. I am not alone in this as I have many, many friends who send their children to school with mine who have other options and are choosing not to take them. I don't have to live where I do and I don't have to choose the local school but I see just as many positives as negatives in this choice.

Yes, they would not be quite so egalitarian if their DC risked getting stabbed on a daily basis.

Agree. The advice I’d give anyone choosing between schools is go for the most middle class school possible. It may sound harsh but there is a higher incidence of classroom disruption in an area where children come from a deprived background. I know that there are a lot of haughty private school hater parents who want their child to ‘mix with a wide range of people’ but I can bet those sort of people have not really met children traumatised by growing up in deprivation.

So private school kids get a better education and getting a better education leads to better uni / job opportunities. Is this a reason why private schools are bad? Why doesn’t the state system improve? Why is that such a pie-in-the-sky suggestion? Why can’t state schools remove aggressive, disruptive children that ruin the educations of those who want to learn? Why can’t we fund state schools adequately to ensure state school kids have happy, engaged, qualified teachers for every subject? It seems like the thinking is that private schools should reduce the educational experiences they provide so that state school pupils can keep up. Let’s raise the basic rate of tax instead to make the state system better.

That is so bizarre as at my private school everyone’s parents were teachers and middle managers. All of us lived in suburban semis! I went camping in France every year for my holiday and when my best friend went to Disneyland in the US we all thought that was incredible as no one did that in the 1990s! there were also quite a few children on the assisted places scheme and no one cared. I don’t relate at all with the idea anyone was being mocked.

even now, yes we live in a nice area but the houses are terraced or semis. Most of my friends parents are again, middle mangers, doctors, lawyers etc. certainly I know of no one super rich- don’t get me wrong, certainly very well off to afford the fees but the idea that all private school children are swanking around with designer handbags and holidaying on private beaches is ridiculous! not my experience of the attitude of the people I went to school with and certainly not the attitude of the parents and children I have met at my children’s school.

No holidays to the Caribbean or designer handbags. Those kids used to call ordinary people “plebs”. No joke. They used to mock especially working class people - the way they spoke, dressed and the things they liked. It made me feel so ashamed and sad.

Thats horrible, I am sorry that happened to you. However, I was a scholarship kid at a Private school and I had nothing like that at all and my DC's current school is also not like the one you describe
Some private schools are snobby and some kids/parents will have the attitudes you describe but fortunately its not all of them.

@leftorrightnow That's not my experience at all. My own goes to my school, lots of the teachers have their kids there. They do not get called plebs or looked down or are left out of anything.

It IS the way the world is that some are richer than others. The lessons you want taught ARE taught in schools. What gets taught at home we have no control over and kids are with their parents far more than they are with their teachers so if the message they get from home is that a school and rules and playing the game is for mugs then that's what they'll take on. There is only so much a state can do to counter those attitudes.

Again, you seem to be suggesting that I think poor people don't deserve a good education. Of course they do. But it is a fact that state provision is woefully underfunded and needs a huge overhaul from the top down. Tinkering around the edges and fining people for holidays solves nothing but looks good. It's a distraction from the real issues of billions of under investment and social deprivation. People moving house or opting out is really irrelevant. And it may be that those anti education anti social views and behaviours are from a "lower" class of society but it's correlation not causation and people move away from it because of the behaviour, not the class.

Of course they should. But that should come along with an enlightened conversation about how private education and the destruction of public education is perpetuating class society.

send your kids to private school or buy in a good catchment all you like. Just teach them gratitude and humility and do what you can to invest in and support the wider community.

of course it’s a bad thing that deprived kids are having sub standard education on top of being deprived while affluent kids have top tier education.

no it’s not a problem that a Chinese or Arabic or whatever community are close knit and celebrate Eid or Chinese new year.

teaching kids that Muslims celebrate Eid and Chinese celebrate Chinese new year while most Christians celebrate Christmas is a good thing.

culture and class is not the same.

teaching kids that some are rich and some are poor and that’s just the way it is is most certainly a bad thing. Unless what you mean is teaching poor kids that some have more than them and then giving them an education and resources that enable them to improve their lot. And teaching affluent kids how lucky they are and instilling humility and a desire to help those less fortunate. That would be fine, yes! But in my experience that’s not exactly the moral lessons being passed on in private education. Rather it’s about being proud of being middle class (see all the reactions on here if I worked by way up and no reason to “admit” privilege) and striving to amass even more wealth and become even more successful. I’ll never forget the private college I went to following state school for primary and secondary. I felt so “less than”
all the time because my parents were teachers and we lived in an average medium sized home. No holidays to the Caribbean or designer handbags. Those kids used to call ordinary people “plebs”. No joke. They used to mock especially working class people - the way they spoke, dressed and the things they liked. It made me feel so ashamed and sad.

My parents have friends who are very scathing of my folks having educated us privately, but they used their extensive industry knowledge, contacts, and some of their wealth to set up one of their children in an independent business, and now one of their family is on long-term medical treatment that's not available on the NHS (too expensive) which is being funded by their private medical insurance. I have no criticism of any of that, but it makes their moral superiority about private schooling a bit silly. Everyone should do what they think is best for their own family.

There is a lot to be said for the results of stable homes, which does not have to mean 2 parents of the opposite sex married to eachother BUT when I sit on PX Panels the kids rarely have even 1 parent who is interested in them.
Its not down to class it tends to be generations of depravation and poverty and bad choices (largely because they have no idea there are better ones)
There are more DC with Stable family backgrounds at Private school, thats a fact. It does not mean ALL PS kids have that and NO SS kids do but its certainly skewed that way.
My Dc are lucky enough to have it and so probably would have been ok at the frankly dire State school that they would have gone to but if we have the money to de risk it why wouldn't we?

But is the solution to use well behaved children who have learnt that from their parents as involuntary tools in schools?

as someone else mentioned earlier, my DD used to get very annoyed in primary school as she never got to sit and work with her friends as she was (as were all the quiet studious children) always paired with the naughty boy in class so that she would bring his attainment up. She used to come home upset and frustrated at times.

do you understand that working hard, being polite and following the rules has everything to do w class?

surely you must be aware those are all behaviors it takes a stable home to teach children. Stable homes that the majority of deprived children do not have.

“antisocial behavior” is most often a result of deprivation. Poor people aren’t inherently bad, you do realize that, don’t you? If you were living in overcrowded housing and was unemployed you’d be a lot less stable and have a lot less energy and money to take your kid to piano lessons and teach them Latin and just remind them to follow the rules and work hard. Gee, if you weren’t yourself working hard you’d likely not be an example of your kids to do so either. Not ever the kids fault if their parents are failing. But this system punishes the kids of deprived families.

I agree. I think there may be a tiny slice of people who don't want their child mixing with "riff raff' but most of us just don't our kids to be an environment where working hard, being polite, following the rules is to be mocked. It's nothing to do with class, but it's a much easier position to take than the nuanced, truthful one.

There is a weird narrative on MNs that all the private school parents are poor and living in small houses in bad areas whereas the rich state school parents have access to the nice state schools and best areas. Where I live the private school parent also want to live in the nice parts.

….. you moved to a particular area for good schools, and paid a premium on the property price to do so?

But what about people who do this & go private?