If you are anti private school are you also anti tutoring?

[WWGD]

Putting aside the obvious - that a tutor is about £2k a year and private school about £25k a year…

My kids are state educated. Many of our friends are surprised by this as they go private, but our objection is political as much as financial. We just don’t believe it is right to buy that level of privilege and opportunity. We’d also rather spend that money on holidays etc.

dd has asked for a tutor in subjects she is struggling with. I have arranged this. But this too is buying privilege and opportunity. Though not the networking and prestige.

I am comfortable with my decisions. I am just wondering whether people who are anti private school for political reasons also think tutoring is beyond the pale?

I was going to put this in aibu but actually am interested in people’s views rather than being flamed.

Do you realise that Eton et al only make up 1% of independent schools though and the vast majority are nothing like them?

Also there are more wealthy parents using state schools and that the Sutton Trust says that the top 200 state schools confer as much "privilege" as independent schools based on the cohorts who use them?
Some state schools have horses + swimming pools. THAT'S the issue ie the existing huge wealth inequality in the state system.

However I know it's just easier to blame independent schools rather than address the inequality issues in the state sector. Must easier to just shout "privilege" at a group of schools which are "other", rather than sort out state education sector.

The "buy house in a great catchment" strategy involves spending potentially as much extra money as private school, at least in London where I live, but has the advantage of preserving capital - you still have the £1M+ house at the end of it all but you get to feel smug about how you're still part of the proletariat...

People who genuinely have a political belief that inequality is too high should be in favour of private schools. If parents want a better education for their children they should HAVE to lay out cash that they will never see again for it, i.e., they should be forced to part with wealth in exchange.

They shouldn't get to participate in what is in effect a personal property investment scheme with a bonus top-ranked school supplied for free by the government on the side.

the unis my son got contextual offers from looked at your 11-16 school. There's no set criteria for context so different unis will look at different things.

🎯

‘(I went to private high school myself and think it set me up for a massive crash later in life)‘

In what way?

The "buy house in a great catchment" strategy involves spending potentially as much extra money as private school, at least in London where I live, but has the advantage of preserving capital - you still have the £1M+ house at the end of it all but you get to feel smug about how you're still part of the proletariat...

But in London you don't need to spend 1m to get into a good state.

Also this ignores the fact that plenty of private school parents pay a lot of money to live in the catchment of good states but still chose private.

I’ve quoted your post because you were the first person to make the point. And it’s obviously right.

So many people - including on MN - vocally oppose private schooling while spending a lot of money buying property in catchments of good state schools. It’s massive, nauseating hypocrisy.

Paying for tutors is just a sort of cherry on the hypocrisy cake.

Because London is privileged to have best state schools in the country. Some of us live in areas which have the worst state schools and yes, houses are £1m+ in catchments of the good ones.

Yep!

What is meant by a ‘good education’ is obviously subjective. Does it include Latin? What about skills teaching like woodwork and home economics? What about class size? How to teach literacy etc etc we could argue about all day. However there is no doubt that elite private schools give children facilities and opportunities that are mostly not available in the state sector, and that SEN children are massively under provided for across the board. If everybody’s children had to attend local provision my view is that the facilities, standards and quality would rise across the board as there would
be the political will and lobbying to make this happen. But our country does not function in this way. We live in a. Very hierarchical and uneven society which the education system was designed to reproduce. Anyway, if you are genuinely interested in this I recommend Diane Reay’s book Miseducation.

Because London is privileged to have best state schools in the country. Some of us live in areas which have the worst state schools and yes, houses are £1m+ in catchments of the good ones.

I'm a Londoner, born & raised. The above is not true. For a start the highest ranking London schools are grammars...

Elite private schools only make up 1% of independent schools so the majority aren't.
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"If everybody’s children had to attend local provision my view is that the facilities, standards and quality would rise across the board". This is just bollocks trope - 9 million DC go to state schools Vs 550K in independent. So how can those 550K make such a fundamental difference where the 9 million can't? It's statistically impossible unless the 550K in independent schools are innately superior? Which I don't believe they are. So how would they improve things?

Like I said, the Sutton Trust says that top 200 state schools are as privileged as top independent schools. I don't hear you trying to address that though? I also don't hear you trying to address the huge North/South divide eg schools in NE consistently get worse outcomes at GCSE + Alevels each year. Why aren't you opposed to that?

The logical fallacy here is assuming that posters who disagree with private education are also supportive of the post code lottery for school quality.

Er grammars are state schools

The data shows that London has the largest concentration of the top performing state schools in England. The data also shows that the NE have the worst outcomes in England.

Well I don't hear the parents who are privileged to access the best state schools, argue against the current postcode lottery. I don't hear any state parents in London campaigning against the state of schools in the NE which have lowest outcomes in England.

You literally said that all Labour voters want everyone to have the lowest common denominator.

Do you stand by this position? Because it's a dehumanising and stupid thing to say.

I am aware that there is a post code lottery and that it's a negative thing. I also think that private schools make the problem worse because people have no incentive to improve the basic state school offering if they can simply opt out.

Er grammars are state schools

Well some are but that wasn't the point I was making.

The top states in London tend to be grammars, why are you saying they have 1m catchments? @twistyizzy

Are we posting in the same thread?

I did whatever I could to give my kids the best start. The area we lived in went downhill rapidly and by the time the children were school age we knew we had to move or go private. It was cheaper to move and it also meant their time out of school was in a pleasant environment. Both did extra curricular activities, they had tutors at gcse got the subjects they struggled in, they went on all the school trips they wanted to. They were incredibly lucky and it came from DH having 3 different jobs at one point and me having a main job and side hustle. I am under no illusions at how fortunate my kids have been even without a private education. I don’t get the hate for private schools - there are so many small independent schools that are so very different to Eton and if we hadn’t moved house, my dc would have gone. Our mortgage was so low as it was such a bad area we lived in. We just chose to spend the money getting a house in the catchment area for an outstanding state school and provided tutors when needed. Thousands of people do the same but then morally object to private school. Why? You are buying privilege either way.

"people have no incentive to improve the basic state school offering if they can simply opt out" how can 1 or 2 parents improve a school? That's a serious Q.

Why haven't the 18 million parents who use state schools currently, improved those schools? How can the 1 million parents who use independent schools magically make a difference where 18 million have failed? That just doesn't make sense

This is how I feel

I'm sure they have a vague, heartwarming sense that they would love all DC to have a wonderful state education just like theirs did.

The logical fallacy here is assuming that the postcode lottery for schools is a "lottery" (i.e. totally random) rather than a direct consequence of lots of middle class & adjacent people consciously deciding to spend their money to live in the same "good" (leafy, low crime, lovely neighbours...) areas. It did not happen at random.

What does it mean to "not support this lottery"? Are they going out and buying houses in non-leafy high-crime areas to deliberately dilute this effect? Offering to have some of the disruptive DC in other schools bussed in to theirs so they're not all concentrated in one school? Or vaguely sending good thoughts in the direction of deprived schools and praying they'll be able to get a science teacher again someday?

I mean it was your point and no, the top ones aren't exclusively grammars. Have you read the data?

I clearly said that outside of London, where people don't have the privilege of all living near the best state schools, that houses in the catchments of good ones can easily cost £1m. In that situation it can be cheaper to send DC to an independent school than pay the property premium of being in a good catchment

Once you go down this rabbit hole you realise that absolutely everything is unfair. Before you even get to tutoring you have parents that make their kids do homework vs ones that don’t.

Then you end at parents that drink a litre of vodka or do drugs throughout pregnancy vs parents that don’t. So those kids already are held back by brain damage.

Absolutely everything is a privilege when you think about it

Exactly 🎯 Once you start talking about "privilege" it's a rabbit hole. It's just that some forms are acceptable and others aren't.