Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain

I agree the politicians are a different matter. But most people in state paid positions of power and influence are not elected. They are unelected employees. The Government, or more to the point the last Government who claimed to care about social mobility, could fill Whitehall and all the other top jobs in public institutions with state educated people if it really wanted to.

We need Grammar schools back. They provided a springboard for people. Working within a group of similarly talented people, you all benefit - driving each other forward, competitiveness, higher expectations generally. And you continue to know those people as you develop into a career, which is where the benefits come in as you strive and expect to keep to the same standards as the rest of your group.

If you are sticking out as the brightest, there is a pressure to undersell and underestimate your skills, and try to become more average to fit in with the group you are surrounded with. This leads to lower expectations and lower achievement.

You need money to run as an MP, because if you can commit all your time to getting elected (rather than to a job), and you have money to hire others/send leaflets/generally schmooze people you have a better chance of getting elected.

Also, people like dave cam use their money to gain power and influence over others. I understand he was regarded as being one of the richest in his political circle. That certainly is something that impresses tories anyway.

While I think quality of state education is an important issue, it isn't actually the straightforward answer to why ex-public school boys run the country. The straightforward answer is that ex-public school boys dominate high level public sector positions of influence because the Government has chosen to employ them.

At every point in the state school system there are going to be children who are let down, but that does not change the fact that some children do get through the state school system.

The former Government was constantly on about quotas and getting more children from state school into university. Now, no doubt there aren't enough children from state school at the best universities, but it is still the case that every university in the country has more state school students than independent school students.

Even on the Oxford PPE course, most (but only just) students are from state schools. Cambridge has decided that these students are competent to do this course and accepted them. Even with the huge wastage of state school talent before university, we still have enough state school pupils entering top universities to fill every high level public sector job in the country ten times over.

They don't have those jobs though. The senior civil service is dominated by people from public school, as are many other public sector institutions. 85% of High court judges are from independent schools. Cambridge, Oxford and the rest are educating state schools students but they are not getting a fair share of the jobs.

So why do ex-public school boys dominate? Because our elected government keeps giving them the jobs with power and influence.

They don't have to. The people we elect could put quotas on government employees to ensure that state school pupils have 90% of the top jobs. It is utter hypocrisy for Governments keep blaming the education system and universities and yet keep on employing ex-public school boys when enough state educated people are already getting through the system and could take those influential jobs.

What money? You mean the tax money that flowed into the coffers during the economic boom from 1996-2007? We spent it, or rather the government did- they spent all they got in taxes and borrowed more and spent that, and then borrowed some more and spent that. Then they said to the tax payer "Hey tax payer, why don't you also borrow some money- look, your house has gone up x3 so remortgage it and you can get your clothes from Gucci." Free money everybody! yay!

Arguably what we should have done between 96-2007 was say "ok, we're in an unprecedented global economic boom supported by the industrialisation of the two most populous countries in the world. This is a one time offer and probably wont last, plus we need to start worrying about the competition from the two countries that are currently giving us a windfall. We should squirrel some cash for a rainy day"

However, not sure a revolution really solves anything. Once all the rich have been guillotined, we still have the massive problems of lack of global competitiveness and no natural resources.

Back to the run by the elite bit.

I think this country is more close to revolution than I've ever known.

Once the masses realise that we didn't make this fuck up and realise why on earth we are paying for it?

And when the job losses and cuts kick in hopefully we'll be a bit more French and start kicking off.

Britain is being too tolerant. Where's the money gone?and why are we being screwed into the ground to pay it back.

Vive le revolution.

Is the increasing gap between rich and poor the result of the abolition of many grammar schools, or more the increasing distance between now and the Second World War? In other words, as the ruling elite feel in their cosy little bubbles that they have less and less to owe to the masses, and more and more alternative cheap labour and goods from overseas, maybe they just feel more confident to leave a larger proportion of the population high and dry?

P.S. how many Baronets daughters do you know?

Samatha Camerons mother is still lady Astor.

I have no grammar school axe to grind as both my DCs are at independent schools. I'm just observing that abolishing the grammar schools hasn't done anything for social inequality. It just means that unless you can afford to pay, you can't benefit from an academic education (IMO)

Phoey - do you have a link for that research?

But those with children clever enough to get into grammar schools tend to think that what is better for a minority which includes them is also better for Society in general. They change their tunes, of course, when they turn out to be in the majority - you don't often hear people whose children went to Secondary Moderns praising the fact that they could relax in the knowledge at such a young age that their children were never likely to amount to much.

Counties in the UK which still use the divisive grammar system have overall worse results than counties who educate comprehensively. So the many posters who think grammars are better - for whom exactly? They have worse 'value-added' scores too, which means they take bright kids aged 11 and don't push them to the max. Results may look good, but those kids may well have done better in a non-grammar.

I've taught in grammar and non-grammars in the same borough, and I hate the system. It's very unfair to the 80% of kids who are told they are failures aged 11

Ironic indeed, Quattro. But now bound into the mindset of a whole generation, or more, of teachers.

When I explained to the head of our state primary that we would be using private secondary schools as they had more rigorous curricula and we wanted them to be nudged towards sciences and languages and history and English, she told me that 'old fashioned' A levels weren't appropriate for modern society. She is a lovely, intelligent person but has not a clue about what employers would like to see. She is stuck in a seventies frame. Everything has to be inclusive and accessible. The idea of telling a pupil that it's rewarding to study something hard and stretch yourself seems alien in areas of the state sector.

Oh, most definitely public schools and Oxbridge encourage a sense of belonging and wish their alumni to go out and achieve in their name. I love my old College. Some State schools do the same, probably most don't. Many parents of State educated children foster the desire to do well and contribute something to Society in their children, as do many parents of privately educated children - to contribute something because it is the right way to behave and the right thing to do. Some State schools also try to foster this aspiration, without doing it by trying to get their students to "do it for the school" rather than because it is simply right. Some State schools just flounder in the wilderness, not knowing how to impart the right message to the children they supposedly serve.

Sometimes there is a misguided loyalty to the institution, rather than the principles it supposedly fostered, and the danger of this is that it produces the wrong sorts of loyalties later in life - to support your own sort, rather than the right principles.

Traditionally, the route out of poverty was education. So able children could go to grammar schools, receive an academic education (for free) and go to university (ditto).

It's ironic that policies designed to eradicate social inequality - such as abolishing grammar schools and widening access to university - seem to have entrenched social inequality.

Complimentary - Samantha Cameron is the daughter of a baronet. Her maiden name was Sheffield. Her mother is now married to Lord Astor. She is not Lady anything, still less Right Honourable anything.

academically!

Rabbitstew. By the same token do you believe that state schools, produce the same amount of 'dossers'? As public schools produce arrogance.

As said my DH went to public school and is 'quitely confident'. The public schools IMO encourage pupils to 'speak out' and the state schools do not. Public schools expect that 'their' boys will be the leaders of tommorow, whilst many of the state schools, expect the boys to do manual work.

Perhaps it was my 'imagination' but the public schools, seemed to encourage the boys to feel part of the school 'family', and as such should not let the school down in any way, academicallly or otherwise. I did not get this impression with the state schools.

I think that is a huge difference.

Having recently visited both public schools and state schools, they appeared polls apart.

I havent read all of this thread but some years ago we lived in a country village and the lady next door had been a teacher at a top public school,dh and her were discussing the merits of private education.....dh said surely not all the children of the upper classes could be super intelligent?? ....my dear boy you dont really believe they send them to xxxx to learn do you? they send them there to make contacts.

I was a bit but am beginning to see her point now.

You could say, given the tiny proportion of people who go to the top public schools, they produce more than their fair share of arrogant people. That's not the same as them all being arrogant. And if your dh isn't the arrogant sort, then I doubt he made friends with that sort, either, so limiting your experience.

But apart from the fact you know I've met quite a few people from Eton and Harrow and am married to someone who went to public school, himself, how do you know what my experience actually is? I don't remember saying that everyone from Eton or Harrow is arrogant, just that it's the perfect breeding ground for arrogance. I don't remember suggesting my own dh was arrogant, either.

smallwhitecat - I met quite a few at Oxford, particularly at the Oxford Union. And one or two in the City.