Fed up with the education divide ?

Oh, and one more thing I notice about families I know that use private schools - they're more likely to have an only-child. All their eggs are in one basket, and again they're determined to give their child "the best". Often they're older parents too. Those correlations are much stronger than any class correlation.

In most walks of life social mobility relates to aspiration, not the type of school you go to. (So long as your teachers don't squash your aspirations of course).

And many builders own better houses than highly academically educated folk too. They do them up themselves and climb the housing ladder much more quickly.

Many of the families I know that use private schools have made their money through relatively manual jobs or through starting their own businesses. They want (and can afford) to give their kids "the best" and assume that means they need to pay. They're not necessarily very well educated themselves.

And good plumbers now make more money than very many low-paid highly academically educated mc folk. THAT is a contemporary social mobility, and as such, all fine.

"and the other 2/3 of their year settling down into bog-standard middle classness and being grateful for good comps"

My plumber went to Eton. He's a very good plumber.

I think there's a similar sense of social mobility now to that of the 60s (my parents' generation) - it's just that the mobility is now downwards instead of up.

School friends (first or second generation of private education, lots of parents from grammars) can't afford to send their children to private schools, nor the types of houses their parents brought them up in. A degree doesn't let you access the jobs that A-levels did 25 years ago. The only ones who are.considering private education are the ones where their parents and grandparents have enough spare cash to pay for it or else a house for their children - a much smaller subset.

Basically you have a third of Etonians etc running the country and the other 2/3 of their year settling down into bog-standard middle classness and being grateful for good comps.

Oh, actually I have just checked and the fees to the relatively local Independent that would be a natural for us to consider if we were going to consider it is a lot more than I thought. So I couldn't afford it. But that's OK

And I said what I said from the perspective of having been at a private primary and a Direct Grant secondary.

And if I were to, you know, swap my second hand hatchback for a beaten up ancient Volvo, and downgrade my camping hols to...shorter camping hols, and make other sacrifices, it's possible I could scrape together the fees for Independent school, so I'm not bitter or jealous, either.

(but lucky, in our unleafy unfashionable area of s London, to actually have a choice of good comps. I realise that isn't the case everywhere. But reliable provision of good comps should surely alleviate all this angst, shouldn't it?)

I went to selective private schools

my kids are at a non selective comp and are getting a much broader and deeper education with much less bullying and better opportunities

and I have money to spare for interesting holidays

Also I cannot help feeling that a bunch of people who run fee-paying schools are inevitably going to want someone - probably me - to be lured in to pay fees. There is a terrific vested interest in wanting us to find our children's state education lacking.

Yep, wot Blu said.

I actually asked my lovely 13 year old a couple of days ago if she and more particularly some of her high-flying friends, who include some distinctly geeky girls, were bullied and picked on and left to weep unseen for their love of literacy in their large SarfLunnon comp. Er no, she said. That would be a no. And then she did her Latin homework

during the 1950's and 1960's the world was in an incredible flux due to two generations of men being decimated in World Wars,
unequalled levels of change in women's rights,
technological change
and optimism

those decades were the freak
please do not hark back to them without comparatives from elsewhere in history
as they were not, and never should be regarded as representative

if nothing else, the "grammar school" generation did a bloody good job of pulling up the drawbridge behind themselves in the 1970's

Nice one Blu.

I was educated at a comprehensive in the 80s, got good exam results, degree, post-grad degree, good job etc etc. Many of my current colleagues in similar roles went to private schools. It didn't give them any advantage in the long run.

I know many educated parents in a similar position - we're not scared of comprehensives, unlike many parents from a grammar/private school background. We know our kids will work hard and shine.

Blu- I suspect that there are more like you than the papers or mumset would have us believe. Lots of children getting good educations in state schools all over the country. There are horror stories- but they get far more publicity than the far more common happy endings.

What "national group of independent day schools" by the way? (PM me if you want).

I think the educational divide is exaggerated in many cases. Yes, if you're talking about highly-selective HMC schools, they get better results, higher RG and Oxbridge entries, etc - for a variety of reasons. But so they should. Many of the top selective grammars get similarly excellent results.

But your bog standard, small independent school doesn't hold all the cards and doesn't necessarily convey great advantages. There are far more important factors at play, and all the research says this time and again. (eg parental education level and parental engagement.)

I've heard staff from inde schools waxing lyrical about all that they do for their pupils, "that they don't get in the state schools" and it's complete bollocks.

My son got exceptionally good GCSE results at his state school; and his school now (yr12) are providing excellent careers support for students and HE support and advice, practice interviews, etc etc.

I don't really care about any perceived divide between independent and state education, I just care about my child getting a good education in a state school. Whether other people choose / can afford to pay for alternative education ranging from cult-like woo to military style boarding has no bearing on my need for a good state education for my child.

I don't want to have to have them transported across sectors on some travelator of glory to a private school that will be assumed to have a better offer to support bright kids. I don't want them to be segregated at 11 according to an hour long test in a grammar system. I want good teaching in a proper comp led by people who believe that children should be facilitated to find learning fun and trying hard worthwhile.

It is possible. DS is in a thoroughly inclusive proper comp with a representative mix of rich and poor. It gets excellent results - much better than many private schools. So what divide?

The real divide, as ever, is between rich and poor. Rich people can always get a good education, whether it's private, moving to the catchment of a good state school or staying where you are and filling in any gaps. Rich people- or even moderately well off people are fine. It's the education available to the poor that needs looking at, if anything does.

Oh, and I don't think the divide is particularly wide. The top performing state schools get better results than many private schools.

We just need more good school Heads and teachers to spread good practice from the high performing schools to the low performing schools. The London/City Challenge showed what can be done with the right resources.

"1950s and 1960s"

Back then it was acceptable to select a few bright kids from the "working classes" and give them a superior education, because there were plenty of labouring jobs for the majority left behind. It's a different world now. These days we all need to be educated, because we're competing with cheap labour from abroad. All schools need to be improved, and resources need to be concentrated on the ones that need most help to do that. Any kind of selection, whether by bursary scheme, exam or whatever is just froth. Every child deserves an outstanding education (outstanding in the Ofsted sense, rather than in the literal sense, before anyone points out the obvious misnomer).

Agree with African. I think that there is currently some sort of bridge.

Do you not think that there is social mobility? I think that the 50% going to uni has at least done quite a lot about that.

TBH, I think private schools are a small redish herring when it comes to educational divide in the UK. Not enough pupils to make a difference.

The real divide is between those with access to good state schools and those without.

There used to be a lot of MNers who strongly endorsed grammar school system for social mobility. I didn't get the nostalgia at all, since the whole idea always horrified me (I am foreign, and from a family of late bloomers).

Now we read lots of horror stories on MN about the modern grammar school system; and even some actual research to show that in its heyday that it heavily catered to the Middle classes.

Maybe 6 yrs ago the conservatives proposed a lottery for school places; so then we'd have massively more school run traffic and a stampede to the private sector. Nobody really liked the idea. I don't think you can turn back the clock.

It seems to me like schools are one of the least useful places to close social divides; schools already being asked to do too much.

I never get why people think abolishing private education will lessen the divide. I'd wager money on it that it will only make it even worse. There will always be those that educate privately and they will continue to do so regardless, even is it meant sending their kids abroad. So all doing away with private education would achieve would be to remove the middle tier.. thereby impacting the middle classes who are desperately trying to do the right thing for their children and making huge sacrifices to do so. It will have zero impact on the top. We would be widening the divide, there would be no 'bridge' and that would be that.

I cannot see how anyone thinks that would be good. ..

I dont know much about it all nowadays. But I am , perhaps wrongly, slightly uncomfortable with you starting a campaign on mumsnet. I think that it is fair to say that the demographic of mumsnet is such that it is quite skewed towards women obviously, and women who are educated and have money.
A lot of them may well be more than happy with the education divide.