My son is due to sit 11+ in a week and I'm so sick of what he and we have gone through to give him the best chance that I feel that I just have to say something. The 11+ pass bar is ludicrously high which means the usual story of paying for private tuition, while facing the postcode lottery but ultimately it's way too much pressure especially on the child and a lost summer holiday. How can this madness persist? There's got to be another way.
As a parent with children at state primary school, it drives me crazy that the education system in the UK has always been so polarised. On the one hand you have very expensive private schools and on the other hand free, but struggling state schools. As a result UK society reflects the polarisation in the education system. There are one or two state funded grammar schools, which many parents aspire to for their children because they just want their children to have the best opportunities in life, but these are the exception.
The gap between rich and poor just widens, and the education system continues to reinforce the divide, as continuously reported in the media. The UK lacks social mobility so much.
The new Free Schools although free appear to have got off to a stuttering start and academies have their own issues. What is for sure is that class sizes of 30 or more children (34 in my child's case) in state schools is a major reason for state school poor performance. If rather than having 1 teacher + 1 or more teaching assistants in a class, 2 teachers could be paid for (i.e. 15 children per teacher) then no doubt state school education would improve. This obviously requires more money hence the following part-pay idea.
The part-pay formula
My wife and I cannot afford to pay for private education for our kids but we could afford to pay a supplement for better education - say half the cost of private fees.
Parents would sign up to paying the amount of fees that they could afford at the start of the school year. There would be allowances however, so that parents who could not afford to pay the fees would not have to pay anything. Parents would commit to paying the amount they wish to from 0-100%, or more, and the state would provide the balance of the fees. Also large housing developers would have to directly support the building, renovation and maintenance of local school buildings, and local communities would be able to freely donate funds to the school to the benefit of that school.
If for any reason the level of funding committed at the start of the year fell below an economically viable level (class size >15 per teacher) then the overall funding gap would be broadcast to parents, the local community and the government who would be asked to commit to paying a certain amount more.
In general the system would be very transparent, but the system would ensure that schools in poorer areas would not suffer v schools in richer areas due to subsidisation, and indeed schools in poorer areas would have more funds available than local authority schools currently do.
There could be additional benefits too. For example rather than the ludicrous necessity of affording extra tuition fees and time for your child to sit 11+, the tuition could be delivered as part of normal schooling as it should already be. Also I can see from my own kids' local authority schools that if only the head governor's role in the school was a well paid one then it would attract a strong leader and the whole school would benefit as a result.
It would be great if one day the state schools could outmatch the private schools and reduce the inequality across the UK.