Access to private schools/Can you buy a place?

MsAverage as an academic who studies other cultures I think empathy and the ability to understand other people's perspectives and see beyond the stereotypes is one of the most valuable qualities we can develop in our children. Those are the qualities that will enable our children to contribute to solving the problems facing society and the world, not to mention put the Daily Mail out of business. My DC s did get fed up with encountering narrow minded attitudes in their peers, that for instance couldn't appreciate that their private school gave them an advantage over their peers in a failing school down the road. Thankfully their school that as an issue too, and had strategies to address it, mentoring schemes, shared activities, training, revision classes etc. DDs both learnt a lot from these activities. I have no idea how you live but if it is in a selfmade bubble I suggest you get out more, you might find the rest of the world are not as unpleasant as you think.

Copthall, in real life people build up relationships based on common interests and general similarities. If you are a programmer, probably, you will have more in common with people in IT department rather than with a flamboyant sales team. If not, it means that CTO and HR officers did not do their job right at the recruiting. If you are working hard, it is unlikely that you will have loads of long-term unemployed friends.

School is a unique institution which gathers people involuntarily on the basis of a very formal and non-personal criteria: age and place of living. I do not see why social mix (which I am avoiding by seeking for friends like me and working for companies I like) should be pleasant and benefiting for my child if it is not pleasant or benefiting for me.

The St Hughs case was a postgrad course, and not funded by government. It was unfair but then a lot of postgrad students do drop out because they struggle to pay fees and living costs. I don't personally think that a postgrads financial planning should be subject to scrutiny by the university but at the end of the day it is a private contract between student and university.

Where government funding is involved then universities are held accountable for admissions policies that are fair and for having in place strategies for widening access . I am an academic and we know that where we have taken contextual information into account to allow for deprivation, and other setbacks that students perform or have had effective outreach to encourage applications from candidates who might not otherwise apply that they do outperform other students so there is still a way to go but it is not for want of effort to try and overcome the complex reasons why some parts of our society are underrepresented in our universities. There is certainly no part of the ucas admissions process that would give us any indication of whether a candidate came from a wealthy family.

I wouldn't have the slightest problem with my DCs being educated with thick chavs/ the rest of the society that they are going to live and work amongst. I actually see that lack of social mix in their school as the gap in their education. Of course we should have an education system where every DC gets a place in a school that is rated good by Ofsted and provides an acceptable level of education, I am angry that our local politicians have failed to provide that and that is why I am an active member of a local pressure group that seeks to highlight their poor planning and strategies, which frankly have fallen short ethically. No part of society should be exempt from acting ethically, especially as private schools do benefit from privileges granted them by the rest of society .

My ethics are not the issue, my earning potential utterly rules out fee paying school.
And those who feel affronted by the uber rich nicking their good education (I'm afraid) are just getting a teeny dose of what the other 90% feel.
I'd LOVE to have my kids not educated with thick chavs, but its not an option.

Yes, schools look at the size of wallets, as do Universities
www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jan/19/oxford-university-st-hughs-sued-student-fees

Talkinpeace2 Would have loved to send my DDs to a comp with colour and fun but the only place locally with places for DDs was definitely not described in those terms by Ofsted, whilst the private options most definitely do have colour and fun and stimulation. I would say around a third of parents at DDs' school were there because there wasn't a state alternative that Ofsted rated even satisfactory, certainly they are not in the richest 10%, a lot have really stretched themselves because they have clever DCs and 10 % are on bursaries anyway. There is also a wide ethnic mix and plenty of DCs from / raised in other cultures. You make your choice of school based on what best suits your DC and your family and for many of us ethics are important, so it does matter.

Sorry, but why does it matter?
You are paying a fortune to give your kids isolated schooling that is only available to the richest 10%
so if the richest 1% push in front of you but your kids still get in what is the fuss?

one of DDs friends has moved from the comp to private and describes it as boring and narrow. She says there is no colour and fun and hopes that her parents will let her move back to the comp.
Whichever school she goes to her path is towards a PhD

Sounds as if, like all businesses, some are more ethical than others. Certainly at DDs the underachievers were not especially the wealthy. In fact only moan I heard was a girl who annoyingly dominated classes asking for repeated explanations that the rest didn't need, but then she was a national team player. DD most put out another GB team member got into Yale, though far from top of class, but then I pointed out she too could have sacrificed the rest of her life to training.

Having worked in the admissions office of arguable the most difficult school to get a place at, I can tell you that money for bursaries does not grow on trees. Building expansions and improvements have to be funded. Therefore, all classes are structured to include parents who will help fund this. If it can usually be done without compromising academic standards. Rich people may have smart children and if not they can hire lots of tutors!

pithy - it's a private school. Why do they have to be scrupulously fair and transparent? It's a business and if they are oversubscribed then surely they can pick on any basis they damned well like, however arbitrary?

I'm not getting what your problem is, pithy.

William and Harry? I may be being facetious, but did they really have to take Eton's entrance test?

A couple of boys with very rich parents (one with royal connections) recently tried and failed to get into the top couple of London day schools, plus Eton and Harrow, so I doubt you can "buy" a place at these.

Lainiekazan, you do know that money and brains are not mutually exclusive. Those rich Chinese and Russians just might also be very bright. There are many very wealthy boys at my sons's school. Believe it or not, they are also extremely able academically as well as in other things.

horsemadmom She was there with her daughter looking round at the sixth form open evening. I don't doubt she is nice but both Mary and daughter were walking around and interacting with staff as if their presence was a privilege. We weren't the only ones to comment. With 500 applications for 50 places I just wondered if they had ended up there.

Decent very academic schools don't do this. It is horrible being at a school like this if you are not bright and in lower sets for everything, very stressful and soul-destroying. Often children who just aren't able to keep going at the pace drop out a few years in. I don't think my children's schools would do this and to be honest, they don't need to. There are enough bright children out there and with a few good bursaries they can offer places to some pupils who wouldn't otherwise be there. I know several like this in each of my kids' years.

Surely a private school can amdit whomever they choose for whatever reasons they choose and similarly turn away anyone they don't want.

I know the schools local to me don't publish any kind of admission rules and tbh I don't see why they should, they are self funding and can set their own criteria.

OP - are you trying to buy a place or are you objecting to others who do so?

Correction- Forgot that Mary Portas has a boy too. Coulda been her.

Pithy I think that for the very selective private schools it is rarely a horse race with first past the post IYSWIM. They want to find the most able but ability is multi dimensional and they wouldn't go to the trouble of having an admissions process that tries to give them a picture of the whole child; with questions designed to test ability as well as attainment, literacy and numeracy, references and interviews to give them an idea of personality, interests etc. even auditions to identify musical talent. When both my daughters got into a very academic school I rang up to make sure they hadn't "just scraped in" and on both occasions it was made clear to me that that wasn't how they assessed a child and in fact my DDs had got in on the basis of entirely different talents, they had built up an accurate picture of them both, and of their strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day they were seeking to identify who would best take advantage of what they had to offer and succeed at the school.

They have a level of attainment they feel is the minimum they can build on. St Pauls admitted to me that they set that bar quite high because they don't want to have to waste time bringing girls up to speed. which is why they tend to get girls from a similar background, since that discriminates against state and overseas schools, it's a few years ago now but they showed no qualms about it. However over and above that level of attainment it is a much more subjective process.

Some schools, such as the Harrodian, are quite open that they have a standard pass mark for entry (I'm thinking CE), but will accept lower for children they really want (sporty types, from the context). So I think there are schools that might decide to exercise flexibility.

Highly unlikely for the very academic schools, though.

Schools have to tread a very fine line. The ones with the best reputations can afford to turn down anyone who doesn't meet the high academic standards, but others further down the pecking order may be tempted to lower their standards to keep the school full.

But that can have repercussions: if they take too many rich children whose academic performance is likely to be low, their exam results go down and they get fewer applications from bright families, so have to take more rich, unacademic kids etc in a downwards spiral. And eventually their results go down so far that the rich families wonder what they are paying for and pull out too. I've seen that happen with a few schools near me.