To think private schools should be banned?

[BethanyBoobs]

Why should someone have a better education just because their parents have money? Why should someone have a better chance of getting into university because their parents paid for their education? It makes me feel uncomfortable that people can buy their kids an upper hand when it comes to education.

I feel the same way about private health care too.

IMO private schools should be banned. Everyone should have the same chances when it comes to their education.

monkeymamma, that's simply not true about standards. As I posted last night, the enormous gap is not between private and state but between state in one area and state in another.
As I said, houses in the catchment we used to live in cost upwards of 500k so a sizable majority of parents dying that state primary could have paid for school and many did at secondary. They used to do the school run in the 40k cars and really were no different from the fee paying parents. Their children may have been in a class of 30 but the enrichment activities afforded by the PTA was staggering. Christmas fayres would raise 15k. Those kids still had horse riding and skiing. Hardly disadvantaged.
Contrast to other state primaries in more disadvantaged areas locally was vast! Teachers paying for breakfast cereal out of their own money as the kids were often dropped, hungry, in the playground half hour before Sch started.

So, if private schools were banned all that would happen is that you'd see much more of the above. The real is due is the disparity within the state system.

I agree. I know fantastic teachers that would never teach in private schools out of sheer principle.

Just because other things are unfair, doesnt mean this isnt - or should not be abolished. What a silly way of reasoning PP. Very bizarre.

All the money thrown at these private schools could be endorsed into lots more state schools/ improving current state schools. If someone is exceptionally clever , then fair enough- reward them of their brains and their hard work with Grammer schools. But exceptionally wealthy? No. That is acclaimed, not an inherent attribute.

YANBU.

There are often threads about religious schools selecting a small proportion of pupils on religious grounds, and everyone's up in arms.

And yet, selection via money is a far more widespread problem.

I wonder how many of the same people condemn the first and not the second.

using that state primary

Yo..

Well said.

If someone is exceptionally clever , then fair enough - reward them of their brains and their hard work with Grammer schools.

I agree. But grammars have been abolished in many counties. I'd like to see them brought back, so that if there's selection it will be on ability not money.

Massive chip on your shoulder op.

Get over it.

The private school system is divisive and unfair to the majority of children who can't access a privileged education. It sucks in the brightest children and many excellent teachers whose training is paid for by the tax payer.

I disagree that it's the "brightest children" who go to private schools. There are many, many children who are equally (or more) bright but their parents can't afford private education.

It's absolutely a parents right to pay for a private education, sometimes the state system is just not good enough

If the state system is not good enough, that applies just as much to pupils whose parents can't afford private education too. Why should only 7 per cent of children escape what is "not good enough"?

Contrarian - I suspect your children's new school isn't as
socially, errr, challenging as London state schools.

I think when parents say refer to a state school as a 'good school' they don't mean just that it's a school with a stable staff of talented and hard working teachers, good management and a visionary head. They mean it has these things PLUS an intake of middle-class, high achieving children and minimum numbers of 'rif raff'.

My dd's state school has all the qualities of a great school mentioned above, and girls that start the school as high achievers leave with excellent results. Doesn't stop the local well-to-do rejecting it in favour of the local private girls school, which is devoid of rough and poor kids.

It is about social selection.

Most people with money wouldn't consider sending their dc to a state school which was low in the local league tables for 5 GCSE's A to C, no matter how good the teaching or the leadership, and no matter how well such a school catered for high achieving children. The reality is that league tables primarily reflect intake, not standards of education in the school except in the case of H arris Academies where they reflect diligent manipulation and cheating on the part of the academy management

All that would happen would be the wealthy parents would buy up the houses closet the good state schools pushing people like me out of the catchment area

and of be honest op it simply sounds like sour grapes on your end if you take away every privilege of doing well then what would be the point of any one doing well in life if being wealthy doesn't bring you some advantage then what would be the point of working hard

The grammar system was hardly fair. The clever kids got a social/economic leg up whilst the rest were often left to languish depending on what local provision was like.

So what about all the nice, deserving, motivated kids who just happen not to be bright? I know this couldn't possibly apply to the children of MNetters but still!

Can I add - the fact that the focus on this thread is about the rights of adults to spend their money how they wish, and not about the right of children to fairness and equality of provision is very, very telling.

Very few people here are willing to accept fairness towards all children and equality of opportunity for children as the guiding principle in relation to the issue of policy direction in education.

It's all about the rights of well off adults to do what they please.

Also sending your children to private school is not just about the education it's about having your children mixing with others with the same values

I send my children to private school. It isn't very good compared to many other private schools in nearby towns. Its significantly better than the local state school in our catchment area.

If the local state school offered what I can buy privately my children would be going to it. I really don't like the school fee bills I pay. Many parents at our childrens' school are killing themselves to pay the fees and grandparents pay a lot of fees where parents cant.

I went to state primary and private secondary. My wife went to a state Grammar which went Comprehensive. We really have experience of all forms of education.

Our only criteria is a half decent education for our children. Private school offers the best of a bad set of choices in our town.

The key here is not ban the private schools but upgrade state schools.

Re catchment areas - as more and more schools are using a lottery system to allocate places, hopefully this will soon be a thing of the past.

poster Minifingers

Yawn

I moved home to a poorer area to get my child into the best state school in the are my oh works from 6 till gone 10 most days to supplement with a tutor

And I sleep very well and night others make different choices to us some people would never downsize to a rough area in order for there children to go to a better school others would rather have nice holidays and a better car than pay £25 a hour for a tutor that's there look out

you talk about every one being equal how that working out in Cuba and China

Also, we will definitely be paying at secondary for social reasons. But not to avoid poorer kids but rather to avoid the fact that the state schools in my area considered 'good' are all single sex which I would always pay to avoid in the same way that I pay at primary to avoid church schools (my 2 nearest)

I think the idea that those of us who pay do so to avoid the hoi paloi is what people against private edcation like to think. It fits with their fixed paradigm. The truth is more nuanced.

Why should someone live in a bigger house/ drive a bigger car just because they have more money? Its capitalism, innit.

More - the only way to 'upgrade' state schools is to make them more representative of society as a whole.

A school is not just the staff, the management and the buildings. It's a community - largely made up of children.

Remove all the most talented, clever and well supported children from this community and you bring the while community down. we see this in socially deprived communities outside of the area of education too.

Schools which contain a disproportionate number of hard to educate children become challenging places to teach and to learn.

It's no point standing on the outside in your socially exclusive group saying 'if only state education was better I'd be willing for my children to attend state schools'. Come on in with your hard working and bright kids, and help MAKE it better.

If it's any comfort, the evidence suggests that committed parents who do this don't end up with children who fail - the children of supportive middle-class parents do very well in the state sector and achieve more highly at university than similarly well-qualified peers who have been educated in the private sector.

What's so unfair about the clever kids getting a leg up?!

Why wouldn't we as a society want to develop brains.

Word - if your children's school contained the same proportion of disadvantaged children as my dc's school, it would feel like, and be, a completely different school and I very much doubt you'd be willing to pay for your children to be educated there.

mini if you read the report on degree grades closely, it doesn't actually support youRlr statement. Again, its much more nuanced.