Should private schools be abolished?

[JoshLymanIsHotterThanSam]

Link.

I found this an interesting article. I did not realise that we now have one of the worst social mobility records in developed countries. I find this concerning. I am a fan of the grammar school system having been educated in one myself and having a DC who attends one. I have little experience of private schools though. If I'm honest if I had the money I wouldn't hesitate to use a private school, but that is down to the fact that I realise that it gives a leg up to the students attending, however I realise that this should not be the case.

Should we abolish private schools in the interest of fairness?

surreygirl1987 I don't see it much in terms of research or interventions. But it's not a quick fix or politically attractive.

I rest my case

@kofiday

Peiple are talking as if the current catchment sysrem is set in stone. It is not. There are several ways you can avoid the house price effect.

@KeflavikAirport

Peiple are talking as if the current catchment sysrem is set in stone. It is not. There are several ways you can avoid the house price effect.

The main one being having all schools of a good enough standard that parents are happy to use them.

Lotteries and bus-ing would both fail environmental audit

Dh and I were talking about this last night. I think they will die out gradually and naturally or at least become less popular as fees continue to rise. Gradually less and less will become able to use them particularly if state secondaries improve and offer longer days so can be used for childcare as more women work full time (I know Schools Are Not Childcare is always said on here but it's a reason why some choose private)

Alternatively private preps are now moving away from the hothouse model and offering more of a climbing trees holistic approach (as favoured by the much lauded Finns!) and of course are immune to SATS so may become more popular

@theworldisfullofgs yes, it's well documented in reams of research. I've just completed a doctorate in education based in the independent sector.

I do agree though, that it's not a quick fix. You are right there.

No, but they should be more honest about who they are and have their charity statuses abolished and start paying vat. Use the vat bonus to improve state schools.

Interesting thread.
DS's last annual fees in about 2014 were £19k. The state pays about £2.5k per child.
It's hardly surprising there are quality differences.

Interestingly DS commented when he went to Uni, and had 4 hours of contact time "it makes school look like it was really good value for money ! He meant the £19k.

Lotteries and bus-ing would both fail environmental audit

I am big on environmental causes but honestly I think this is a bit of a red herring, it's not like anyone gives a fuck about the environmental cost of school runs now is it? And if they did you could easily set up mitigation schemes, and the social benefits would outweigh the cost. Anyway, there are other schemes that wouldn't even have an environmental cost in urban areas, such as alternating catchments year on year between richer and poorer zones.

@CruCru

These threads really annoy me - mainly because I am a pedant. I get the impression that when people talk about banning private school, they mean banning schools like Eton. Most private schools aren’t anything like Eton.

So, if it means all paid for education must be banned, what does that mean? The nursery school I sent my children to was paid for. So is the ballet school held in a church hall behind my house.

A friend gets a student to come once a week to sit in on her children’s music practice, supervise homework and make dinner. Would this be outlawed? Bit of a shame for that student making some extra spending money.

Exactly My DCs Private school costs £10k a year and offers quite a few scholarships each year ranging from 50-10%. It’s not a charity so doesn’t benefit from charitable status either. Not all Private schools are for super rich toffs. I acknowledge that you still need to earn quite well to afford it the majority of the kids there have Doctors, Accountants or middle management parents rather than Bankers etc. Yes, they are privileged but not all Private schools are Eton

In fact if anything laying on a school bus to take 40 kids 10 km would be greener than 30 parents dropping their kids off at a school 1 km away on the way to work, surely?

@RosesAndHellebores

People talk about the impact of parents on educational outcomes all the time. This thread is a perfect example of it.

People talk a lot about how parents can raise attainment, but are often reluctant (esp politicians) to talk about they bring it down, lest they be lambasted for blaming people in poor circumstances etc.

So I want to start by saying that the parents who DGAF don't do all they might can be found in all income brackets (hence the comment from one child, 'Mummy doesn't have time to read with me, she has to go to tennis.' Daddy didn't have time either. The child wasn't doing as well as she could have done, by a significant margin, and seemed to find learning a bit of a chore).

Some parents were themselves poorly served by the education system and don't see why they should bother. Some are themselves only semi-literate and lack confidence. Some think all education is the school's job (I've come across that in the middle-class income bracket too, with degree-educated parents). Some don't see widening their DCs' horizons as their job, so you have parents who will go for a week to Ibiza, leaving the kids with granny - and these kids have never been on a train despite the proximity of the station, or to the zoo ten miles away even though the family has access to a car.

And some of them have really chaotic home lives - and I'm not getting at anyone for splitting up with a partner, what matters is how it's done and the frequency with which it happens. Three daddies by 8, and the last one engaging in a custody battle about the baby half-sibling which was played out in front of the child... Not good. Some DC in those situations regard school as a bolthole and get on with their work, but many of them are too unsettled, distracted and upset to focus. In the modern parlance, 'they can't access the curriculum'.

Rather than banning private schools, we should be looking at the dynamics of families like these. I don't like the idea of intensive social engineering, and I don't have the answers, but we need to educate parents in basic child psychology.

@eternalopt

No, but they should be more honest about who they are and have their charity statuses abolished and start paying vat. Use the vat bonus to improve state schools.

@eternalopt how many more times THEY DO PAY VAT on practically every thing they buy. I presume you mean that parents should pay VAT on the fees. ( which would incidentally mean the schools would pay less VAT as it’s a tax on the end user )

[quote RosesAndHellebores]@Andante57
Because when politician's children go to state schools they tend to be the very best ones. Blair sent his children to The Oratory; Cameron to Greycoat (wonder if she's still there), Gove to Greycoat. The former Kingston and Surbiton MP's DC went to Tiffin.[/quote]
Do you know which schools the children of every MP in England go to?
For example, there are 54 constituencies in Yorkshire - do you know where their MPs children go to school and the standard of these schools?

I don’t and I guess you don’t either so how do you know that ‘they tend to be the best ones’?

No one I personally know who went to private and had £50k plus paid out for their education ever ended up in a job worthy of that level of cost investment. One is a supermarket manager (perfectly achievable by non-privately educated people), one is a tree surgeon, one is in admin, one manages a bar, one works as a health and safety officer, and one sells insurance. Thousands upon thousands of pounds spent on their education, when a "normal" school would've served exactly the same purpose. Several of the parents have said how much they regreted it.

@YouJustDoYou

No one I personally know who went to private and had £50k plus paid out for their education ever ended up in a job worthy of that level of cost investment. One is a supermarket manager (perfectly achievable by non-privately educated people), one is a tree surgeon, one is in admin, one manages a bar, one works as a health and safety officer, and one sells insurance. Thousands upon thousands of pounds spent on their education, when a "normal" school would've served exactly the same purpose. Several of the parents have said how much they regreted it.

Sounds like they didn't choose a very good school!

The regret, not the jobs which are fine.

@CruCru

These threads really annoy me - mainly because I am a pedant. I get the impression that when people talk about banning private school, they mean banning schools like Eton. Most private schools aren’t anything like Eton.

So, if it means all paid for education must be banned, what does that mean? The nursery school I sent my children to was paid for. So is the ballet school held in a church hall behind my house.

A friend gets a student to come once a week to sit in on her children’s music practice, supervise homework and make dinner. Would this be outlawed? Bit of a shame for that student making some extra spending money.

This is a bit silly. I think we all know what a private school is really, and don't think they're all the same at Eton. Does your friend claim that her children go to private school because that student comes round? WOuld anybody be anything other than completely baffled if you said your child goes to private school when you actually they do ballet once a week?

My parents attend many dinner parties where the parents who paid for private bemoan what a waste of money it was as all of us now adults and there is no discernible difference in achievement or happiness in fact weirdly the state “children” now late 40s have done “better” career wise

I really have a problem with the 'make all schools so good nobody will want to go private' - I strongly suspect that no matter how 'good' all state schools were, there would always be a market for the option that cost money! Of course there would be a tranche of parents who, if the school near them met their preferred standards in terms of intake, behaviour, uniform, facilities, exam results, whatever, would happily stop paying fees. But particularly in terms of the most expensive public schools, I suspect that a lot of fee-paying parents actually tend to live in the catchments of pretty good state options anyway!

No I wouldn't ban them but I would remove their Charity status so that they have to be run as businesses not charities and pay tax accordingly.

Education cannot be valued in what job you do, I certainly haven’t paid for my children to have a good education because they will get a ‘better’ ( how do you even define that ) job. I did it because it gives them choices and it enhances their lives.

Education is something that can never be taken away from you; someone famous once said that they can take your home and the clothes off your back but they can’t take away your ability to read and to reason.

I had an expensive and very good education( despite the fact that my parents both left school at 16) , in recent years I spent some time working for a charity probably for less than I could earn in some other settings . I don’t think my job is less worth it because I earn less than I could do and my parents certainly don’t feel their money was wasted.

Of course many would still want to send their children to private schools

I believe that would be the majority that all ready do

Should we abolish private healthcare?