To think there is very little benefit in earning more than 50k

[ReallyTired]

Loss of child benefit and now reduction in pension tax relief makes hardly worth bursting a gut to earn over 50k. People who earn just over 50k are generally the work horses in skilled jobs that ecomony needs to grow. Given that such people will be saddled with high student loans in the future, what will senior teachers, doctors gain from all their hard work?

There are people who do well for themselves who have come from modest backgrounds, all over the country. The ablity to think laterally is not just limited to the super rich or those who have attended private school. Being able to make the best of your environment and the opportunities available is more important than singing in Latin at the age of eight or even GCSE qualifications. People like Richard Branson or Alan Sugar we're not privately educated or from a wealthy background.

Just coming from the council estate is not a guarantee if failure, attending a private school or university is not a guarantee of a privileged adult life. You can have all the opportunities in the world, but it means nothing unless you have the get up and go to make something of life.

Branson

Ok Branson did attend private school, but he left at 16 with no qualifications due to dyslexia. He still had to think laterally.

Yanbu if you mean between say 45k and 55k if you are not likely to go much higher, you have to travel much further and if you have more than one dc who requires childcare

Quick wiki check also shows that Branson's father was a barrister & grandfather a high court judge.

Hardly the child of an unemployed coal miner or similar.

I never said there were guarentees in anything, but there are the data that shows that a huge percentage of those in top jobs were privately educated can't be wrong. We know they are not there because they are inherently better than anyone else, a study pubished yesterday showed that executive pay is way out of kilter with the returns, and that in fact the "talent" isnt' all that uncommon.

So it must be something else, ah yes, back to the advantages of opportunity and a greater safety net.

Branson btw had failed businesses, and was able to borrow from his mother to get started. How many council estate children could do that, or just have the connections to get a lease on a shop in London etc.

I'm not diminishing hard work, repeatedly said that, but I'm saying that hard work isn't just all it takes. Luck and circumstance play as big a role.

72% of uk millionaires attended state school.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8818023/Millionaires-more-likely-to-have-gone-to-state-school.html

Self-made millionaires.

Presuming this doesn't include inherited wealth?

Self-made millionaires are more likely to have gone to state school and the University of London than private school and Oxford or Cambridge, new research has found.
That's the direct quote from your link.

I would expect 'self-made' are more likely to have gone to state school tbh.

I also expect that a very tiny % of 'inherited millionaires' went to state school though.

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/feb/24/privately-educated-elite-continues-to-take-top-jobs-finds-survey

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35641061

Top jobs go to private school pupils. Never said anything about millionares.

It also conviniently discusses net investible assetts, so rules out anyone who has trust funds/holds real estate in trusts etc.

Also in 2010 there were 508,000 millionaires in the country, your survey anaysed 549, too small a pool to be conclusive at its only 0.01 % of total millionaires.

Too easy.

The article is actually misleading, the statistics prove otherwise even with this poor data.

Almost 72 per cent of millionaires attended state schools "

93% of secondary school pupils are in the State sector.

Proportionate to their total number, therefore, privately educated kids are statistically more likely to become millionaires than kids from the State sector

Private school does give an advantage, but state school kids are not doomed to failure either. Coming from a better off background certainly gives advantages, but it is not impossible for the council estate kid to make good either. London state schools are full of kids who achieve inspite of social deprivation. To know what caused the London affect would be interesting. It's not just immigration as white working class boys do better in London then other parts of the country.

If you want to be in Oily Dave's cabinet, what are the chances if you didn't go to Eton?

Maybe it's an argument for bringing back grammars. John Major, Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock and many others were grammar school kids. I am struggling to think of a high ranking politician who attended a comprehensive inspite of the fact that most grammars were abolished 30 years ago.

The thing is lurked your argument about attending private school doesn't hold water in my case. I joined the big 4 accounting firm as an experienced hire. My investment banking experience wasn't even on my resume as I didn't want them to know my age. I was hired because they were desperate and they didn't clock that I was 6 months pregnant. That wasn't luck. I had done my research and knew to apply for the position as well as others.

I started 7 months pregnant, taking 10 weeks of leave when DS was born and my relationship partner told me I had blown them away with the quality of my work. They were shocked that someone from community college, with no degree in accounting, bachelor or masters, was able to handle the work.

They let me transfer to one of their most prestigious groups and I'm doing well there too. No one knows I went to private school. No one knows the university I graduated from. What they do know is that they want me on their team if they want a project delivered on time and within budget.

I guess coming from an immigrant family my mindset is very different. I don't sit there looking or thinking about what I dont have. My thoughts follow a path of, what do I need to accomplish my goal and who can help me. I've always had goals and when young my parents helped set the process.

The reality is that no matter what school I went to I was going to end up doing well because of my parents. The school and their wealth had little to do with it. They both valued education. Today, DH is getting more and more involved in supporting the educational goals. His parents didn't care about education and it was a huge accomplishment for him to complete his MBA having never studied past 17.

In most jobs it is more subtle than nepotism. That is why i want state school teachers to improve the way they speak and force their children in schools to speak in a particular way. It is why my mother with her 40 class sizes in 1950s NE of England did the children a favour by correcting their grammar and how they spoke. Of course you might be aiming to work in a job where your social capital, your general knowledge, your accent and how you dress does not matter which is fine. However if you want those higher paid jobs you have to learn the rules and play by them. A few people get by without but it is harder.

Many many private school pupils from the more academic private schools do as well and in many cases better than the chidlren from the posh grammars and posh area comps where houses cost a fortune and selection is by house price (which are private anyway in all but name really). However those of us who earn enough to pay school fees are happy and those who don't or who do but choose not o use state schools are happy with their state schools so let us all go off into the sunset being happy bunnies content with our choices. Lucky us.

If we had to pay 20% more for school fees if VAT were added we could stop offering places to the less fortunate and opening schools to the poor at weekends and the like and arrangements with local state schools. It would free the schools from the political bias of the Charity Commission too. I don't think it really matters too much if we have charitable status although it's appropriate because just about all the ogod private schools don't have shareholders and 80% of what they get from school fees goes on teacher /staff salaries and the rest on keeping the buildings going. Very few of the good ones make profits in any traditional sense - instead they just save the state a fortune on education 500,000 children a year something some rich parents instead choose to burden the state with - shame on them for not using private schools and taking food from the mouth of the poor.

(On the classical music singing - a subject very dear to my heart - why would it be ridiculous that children in private schools would sing latin church music in the school choir but state primary children have to dumb down and sing wheels on a bus? It genuinely does not cost anythig to sing good music. I have my mother's song books from the 1950s. That was just about the poorest school you could find and those children were given the huge gift of the social capital of the singing you get in private schools).

I'm not sure either of you super achievers understand the argument I've made. Repeat, S.L.O.W.Y, success is not just down to hard work and good life choices there are other elements. When you make disparaging remarks about lower earners or people in unfortunate situations you ignore the elements of circumstance and the equality of opportunity.

Want2b, my "mindset" is that you should work hard its a necessity to get on, there is no "woe is me" here. However you don't seem to get the fact that: "they didn't clock that I was 6 months pregnant" is down to luck, you may not have been offered the job. The fact that you got offered a job as an experienced member of staff yet had no formal qualification in the area is luck too, had there been as suitable a candidate with the formal qualification they may have got the job. Its not just down to your hard work.

Deo, oh dear, the social capital you discuss is why you send your children to private school, yet you want the much lower funded state schools to address this too along with all the other social elements we are asked to address but not provided funding for? I

"something some rich parents instead choose to burden the state with - shame on them for not using private schools and taking food from the mouth of the poor." Sorry if I don't bow down to your munificence. If the wealthiest in the country, and the corporations they run actually paid their fair share of tax we may not have to have austerity which effects the opportunities offered by state schools.

Really tired: Ed and David Milliband, Oona King, Sadiq Kahn all comprehensives, that's just from the top of my head.

lurked you are posting the most sense on this thread.

In the short term, perhaps no. More work for little discernible difference. In the long term, of course, it's a stepping stone to more pay rises. If you don't want to put in the time and work to get those rises because you are happy as you are, that's entirely your prerogative.

Most people who are higher income earners had some privilege somewhere. Not all by any stretch, but most. But then they capitalised on that. I went to private school - more on that below - and I earn what most people would consider to be a very high salary. But I also work very very long hours, sacrifice many nights out and holidays, am having to go back to work when DD is only 6 months old, and paid a lot of money to study for my qualifications. My colleagues are mostly very similar, but there are plenty of them from state backgrounds (it's a big company with thousands of people working there).

There do seem to be lots of people who are quick to make assumptions about higher income earners and what they "should be able" to live on. The harsh bottom line is that the tax paid by the higher earners is of more practical benefit than any ideas or assumptions. Being a high earner shouldn't automatically expose you to criticism.

I went to a state primary but then won a scholarship that paid for private fees until I was 18. The difference in attitude was unreal. It was deeply uncool to be clever at the state school, and indeed my very clever friend who stayed there ended up pulling out all her own hair with stress from bullying by the age of 15. Whereas at the private school the kids wanted to do well. I don't know enough about it to know where this culture comes from, but I do know that my state primary was far from unique - and I say that as someone with a parent, a sibling and 3 grandparents who were/are teachers.

Deo, I am in favour of children been taught to sing with good diction. My son sang a lot of church music in Latin at the local church. It had improved the clarity of his speech no end. A good singing voice helps create a good speaking voice. It's not about removing regional accents, but speaking with clear diction and knowing his to project your voice without shouting. Some state school kids speak with a nasal twang that makes their speaking voice unpleasant.

I feel the loss of music, drama, art, dance and lack if decent PE is a disadvantage for state schools. However it is not insurmountable. The children of poor immigrants often find a way.

Dh earns a fair bit over. He's away 3 nights a week every week, if back, he usually is out from 645am-845pm. So not much fsmily time, not much sharing of childcare. Also means I have to compromise hugely on my career so someone is here for Dec.

Some state school kids speak with a nasal twang that makes their speaking voice unpleasant.

ReallyTired, it's not enough that you have repeatedly been called out on random incorrect 'facts' that you have posted, you are now resorting to a broad sweep of a huge percentage of the population 'speaking with an unpleasant nasal twang'.

You really are deluded!

Some state school kids speak with a nasal twang that makes their speaking voice unpleasant.

"Some apples are red" shocker.

Equally, some apples are green.