to want to abolish private schools' charitable status?

[minifingers]

Which costs the tax payer 100 million squids a year.

Schools justify having charitable status by saying they offer financial help to 'disadvantaged' children.

The 'disadvantaged' children they refer to are actually, almost to a boy/girl, highly intelligent, academically successful children who have outstandingly supportive parents (otherwise they wouldn't be researching bursaries/applying for schools/preparing their children for exams). In other words, not at all disadvantaged. These are the children who generally succeed very highly in the state sector too.

I personally think that tax-payers money should go towards supporting those children who are failing in education, not to those children who are already succeeding. Surely it's more beneficial for the children who are currently failing most severely in the state sector to have tax payers money spent on them, as these are the children who the tax payer ends up supporting through benefits/the prison system.

In addition, 'skimming off' this top layer of very clever children and sending them to be educated separately from other ordinary kids impacts on the learning of all the other children in the state sector - any of us who have done a degree/been in education know what a difference it makes to be in a class where there are a lot of clever/motivated people, how much more enjoyable and productive learning is.

Just to draw a mumsnet analogy - imagine if all the funniest and most interesting posters here were offered their own site - 'mumsnet gold', where they could be funny and interesting all day long and those of us who are not as funny and clever would be excluded. Imagine how much of a loss that would be to everyone here? we could rename the new non-gold site 'netmums2'

So, AIBU?

Take the £100000000 currently given to private schools and give it to state schools with the largest number of underachieving students to spend on supporting their education instead?

Depends on the school I suppose. I know some do exactly as you suggest in terms of local partnerships which include local councils. Others work with national bodies (especially for sports/music), half a dozen or so sponsor academies.

All will submit accounts to the Charity Commission, so it would be easy to research any you particularly wanted to check up on, or indeed any charity in any sector which you think is not fulfilling its aims. Are there any specific ones you are concerned about?

I'm not sure who to complain to if you think the CC is itself weak in supervision of charities in general.

Barbierella will have all the accounts at her fingertips. She is able to say with absolute certainty that all private schools spend their tax savings on the local community, so I presume she checked.

My understanding was that it was up to the individual school to determine what they contribute to the local community, and that the a charity a commission no longer had a role in the process. But I must have misunderstood.

Yes, I think you have. The CC still inspects charities and the accounts have to show, amongst other things, their charitable income/spending.

Schools are not exempt from normal oversight of charities. So unless you think the CC is failing and is not picking up abuses (whether in schools or other charities, for potential for fraud is nigh on ubiquitous) then Barbierella's assertion is right.

To my mind, there is a larger context to this issue. I believe you'd have to look at the whole educational system and not private schools in isolation.

If it is simply about the charitable status of private schools, if the community benefits to the level of savings by the school,then it is dues paid. There will always be disagreements about where the money is directed, of course.

The trouble with this is you can drag other economics into this picture, for example the savings to the state by the families paying tax into the system and then not using the state school places.

If the private school is regarded as having charitable status by dint of being an educational establishment, then if it ceases, should all educational establishments be looked at the same way (even state) and taxed normally on their funding irrespective of whether it is from the state or from parents earnings. Especially if they select in any way whatsoever, religious schools, single gender schools, grammar entrance tests, even disadvantaged children being given preference. These are selections as much as selection based on fees.

Why did private schools fail Jayden and Tanique? Did their family, the state welfare system and state school not fail them? I am not being facetious, but I don't see how the blame for their outcomes is laid at the door of private schools or their charitable status.

I think some people are angry with the state funded sector and this is being directed towards the private sector. Not all of course, there are people who would be against the idea of private schooling. Maybe the selectivity of lots of supposedly equal state schooling is an issue too.

Haklyut

Please check their accounts Haklyut because they do spend their tax break on community work.

In addition, many non charity private schools also give a lot to the community (albeit not as much as a charitable school) having received no tax break.

My DS's school supplies many full bursaries for children which could otherwise not afford to go to the school. Even if you assume this benefits the school 'creaming off the brightest' you cannot deny this also benefits a child from a poorer family (many of these children are not middle class BTW). They offer their sports facilities free of charge to local schools and do a huge amount of fundraising for less financially fortunate families/children in the UK. I can't mention more specific details for outing the school.

Parents who send their children there are unburdening the state of the cost of educating their child, they also contribute additionally voluntarily through time and money. From the simplest tasks of parents reading at local state schools to raising huge funds for children not at the school. All very rewarding for all concerned.

They do not require any congratulatory noise about this but they also do not expect people to wrongly assume they receive additional tax breaks and be slated for something they do not receive.

You cannot answer this question in isolation. Why should parents in some areas have access to free grammar schools whereas I would have to pay for the same selective education? Who is costing the tax payer more to provide an education only available to a minority?

State education fails many people. By the time I was 17 I was teaching my A level English class T S Elliot and running extension classes for children lower down the school. Did this benefit anyone? Categorically not. Merely being clever does not make you an able teacher and I doubt anyone learned anything from the cocky insights of an arrogant 17 year old. I myself learned little either but ended up with a chronic lack of self confidence because I grew to be unable to relate to the other kids.

Educating all children in the same environment does not benefit them all and, in my view, does great harm to some.

When ds was younger he was assessed by and ed pysch because of the difficulties he had with other children. The outcome was that he was functioning many years ahead of his peers and had no understanding of what motivated them or they him. Niether enjoyed or benefited from the presence of the other. Ds cried himself to sleep every night. The ed pysch's recommendation? To put him in for scholarships to the most selective schools we could find. We did this and ds is immeasurably happier - he and is cohort have a much greater understanding of each other.

What advantage do you think having ds in a class with your child would have provided either?

The failure when it comes to Jayden and Tanique was complex but I think it's not correct to say:

"Private schools are charities for clever children"

"Except those clever children."

The question which the private school supporters in this thread have danced round is background. Brainella shouldn't have to sit next to a Jayden whose mum was sectioned and whose dad was (well we're not sure which one he was). Or a Tanique whose mum was addicted to drugs. You do not want your nice middle class children mixing with them. Be honest.

It doesn't matter how clever or artistic or sporty they are (Jayden had behaviour issues, but Tanique didn't - she was sweet but distracted) They are not The Right Kind. It's not fair for Brainella to put up with them.

If state schooling deprived Jayden of the extra support he needed and then expelled him with the outcome he ended up in a YOI, then state schooling and it's failure needs to be explored in relation to his case. You said he just needed a bit more time on a one to one basis. Why didn't he get it in the school he was at? If it was that simple, i wonder why he was expelled.

If he had behavioural problems with potential violence, how would (or should) a private educational establishment be any more able to accommodate or rehabilitate him than a state funded educational establishment? Why would their classes deserve to be disrupted (or accept potential violent behaviour) more than his state school classes which would not accept it and indeed expelled him from their premises? I still don't see how this has anything to do with private schools and their charitable status.

Jayden obviously needed an institution that dealt with these issues. Of course this is just in relation to schooling. His family and the Welfare system are in the mix too.

In short, his state school decided 'state pupil' shouldn't have to sit next to 'a Jayden' and expelled him. You don't need look elsewhere to lambast a school that hypothetically wouldn't accept him. He wasn't accepted in his state school.

Exactly, so why is private schools helping bright children who have family support and have been taught how to behave but who are in bad areas with no spare cash for school fees not viewed as charitable?

Those kids are the ones they can help and the ones they do help.

The question which the private school supporters in this thread have danced round is background. Brainella shouldn't have to sit next to a Jayden whose mum was sectioned and whose dad was (well we're not sure which one he was). Or a Tanique whose mum was addicted to drugs. You do not want your nice middle class children mixing with them. Be honest.

What nonsense. I can without effort think of quite a number of middle class families with a family member who has been sectioned or who has substance abuse problems, and that includes lots with children in fee-paying schools.

It isn't just private schools who don't want Jayden and Tanique, sadly.

What very few parents want, whether their children are in state-funded or fee-paying schools, is for their children to have their education disrupted because there are children in the class with complex emotional problems that cause them to behave disruptively and violently.

10-15 years ago when I was a school governor it seemd that many local heads did their level best to avoid taking a child who had been permanently excluded from another school. Sometimes their view was that they already had enough to deal with and sometimes they just didn't want them in the school pulling down the SATs results.

Of course you are right mimsy.

So wealthy and educated people make sure their children are educated as far away as possible from these sorts of children by sending their own to church/private/grammar/comprehensives with wealthy catchments, leaving all the most difficult children clustered into a small number of schools.

"Exactly, so why is private schools helping bright children who have family support and have been taught how to behave but who are in bad areas with no spare cash for school fees not viewed as charitable?

Those kids are the ones they can help and the ones they do help."

Pomme - the children who sink like stones in the state sector are not the intelligent, well behaved ones with highly supported and motivated parents. It's the average or below average pupils who get fuck all support from home.

Minifingers

No they may not sink like stones but they very well might not meet their potential.

Why is it ok to ignore the needs of the bright kids or the kids with home support?

The issue is not private schools.

It's so unjust isn't it, Barbie? All this angst over children with troubled and troublesome backgrounds - won't someone please think of the bright children with the supportive parents: the forgotten minority

Oh sorry Nit I didn't realise they were mutually exclusive issues.

Must remember that to offer one child what they need it must negatively effect the other. So long as I know!

The reverse snobbery in your post makes my blood boil Nit.

Minifingers - do you think universities should be charities?

Reverse snobbery? Eh? I think that TOSN, like me, wod consider our children to be in the doing very well, bright well supported category, and

Neither of has a horse in tthe race.

bright children with the supportive parents: the forgotten minority

Most amusing. How about 'bright children with the supportive parents: the forgotten minority attending not very good taxpayer-funded schools, not enjoying school much and not doing nearly as well as they could'? Doesn't exactly trip off the tongue but there are plenty of parents up and down the land worried sick about children like that.

That's the great scandal here, that the school system doesn't work as well as it should. Until it does there will be no reduction in the percentage of children going to fee-paying schools.

"How about 'bright children with the supportive parents: the forgotten minority attending not very good taxpayer-funded schools, not enjoying school much and not doing nearly as well as they could'"

Are there? Are there lots of children like that? Well, I know there are lots that don't enjoy school-but I don't think that's the preserve of state schools.

My children are at university now but my son is only just 20. I knew of quite a few of his contemporaries whose schools were really not great and whose parents were worried about how things would turn out. That might be a very local thing, though.

But the point is good schools and bad schools surely? The private =good, state = bad is a very blunt instrument.

Well maybe, and maybe it is a local thing, I don't know.

What I was responding to was the idea that somehow bright children with supportive parents were being hard done to in the same ways as children with frankly crap parents and less potential. barbie I'm afraid your posts don't make a lot of sense to me. It's a bit like 'what about reverse racism' and 'what about the menz', really.

Must remember that to offer one child what they need it must negatively effect the other. So long as I know!

Even apart from the effect/affect confusion here, I'm not sure what this is intended to actually mean.