To be annoyed that private schools have charity funding.

[Olympiathequeen]

They are not charities, they are businesses.

They do little or nothing for the local community.

They benefit by about £750 mil. They part fund bursaries for around half that amount.

Leaving them with a tidy little £300+ million profit at the expense of the taxpayers.

That money is desperately needed for public schools.

WTAF is the government doing?

Mainstream private schools don't care about advantaged children who can't contribute to their reputation either mini. A child who is a middle achiever and has super rich parents would not be given a place at my sons school. My son is not more deserving than yours but the school has decided that he is thensortnof child that they are prepared to give a place to. And you probably noticed that my son is a young carer. He has had a pretty dire time. Living with a sibling who is in the top 3 most challenging at his SN (PMLD) school and having a parent with a long term health condition and having been so traumatised that he is under the category of camhs has been no fun for him just as I am sure your son has found times equally challenging. I don't decide who gets he places at private schools but I am damn glad that my son has been given the opportunity he has because his life has been pretty shit at times and he bloody deserves a chance.

To finish my thought and bring it back to the thread's starting point, I don't think those immigrants gave a thought to the charitable status of the schools. They looked around, asked which schools were best, and paid if it was necessary, then got on with earning the money they needed to find. (I am fairly sure there were no bursaries, no scholarships, nothing more than sibling discount.

And I do feel guilty mini that my son has the opportunity that he has. I feel embarrassed telling people IRL which school he attends. But I tried not to let that guilt prevent my son from taking up the school place he has because he can do extra curricular that we can't provide for him outside of school. The school even offered funding for a foreign languages trip so my son could go. I don't imagine he would get that at a state school. Would you have turned down a school offer of that nature for your ds?

mini,

I do not understand your beef with the private education system. It is not the largest contributor to the gap in educational attainment - the family situation the child just happened to be born into is. I'd take a good read of the most recent PISA findings for the UK - it makes an interesting read. pertinent to this conversation:

• The biggest difference in results were not between school, but actually within school
• when socioeconomic factors were taken into account, there was no difference in result between sectors
• whilst the top achieving groups of English (the results were different for the different countries making up the UK) were about average for the OECD percentage for top achieving and sometimes better (science) there were a larger percentage than average in the lowest achieving groups
• grammars scored the highest followed by independents. However, the independent schools included both selective and non-selective

My read of the data presented was that the most important factor to success for any child is the family he or she is born into and which school they are then sent to matters not. I also think that the data shows that just having high achieving children with involved parents in it is not the recipe to greater success for all as the biggest differences were not between schools but within the schools. I also took from the report that the greatest failing is the education of the lower achieving children as the UK has a greater percentage of those than would be expected for a country of it's economic stature.

Saying that high achieving private schools like the Eton and Westminsters must use their bursaries to accept low achieving children is farcical - these are schools which are suited to only a particular kind of child regardless of means and are miserable places for those who cannot academically cope. To what end would you make a child who is not academically able to cope with the pace and rigour of those types of schools be forced to attend them? How odd! Of course they want bright children - it is what they expect of those they accept who pay full whack!

sixis I agree. From twin studies raised apart it has been found that they achieve similarly.

these are schools which are suited to only a particular kind of child regardless of means and are miserable places for those who cannot academically cope

Very true. It would be the same as giving state grammar places to poor low achieving kids as a token gesture. Those kids would not thrive in that environment.

Mon In, the problem with PISA is that it doesn't focus on outcomes.

From what you've quoted, you'd expect a higher proportion of grammar school children to go to Oxbridge than independent school children. The opposite is true according to the Sutton Trust. This holds true for other highly selective universities. The Sutton Trust also found that differences in admission rates to the 30 most selective universities can't be solely attributed to A-level results.

Here'a one quote:

58% of HE applicants from the 30 highest progression comprehensive schools (with average scores for students exceeding 3As grades at A-level) were accepted into the 30 most highly selective universities; this compares with 87.1% of applicants from the 30 highest progression independent schools and 74.1% from the 30 highest progression grammar schools.

Let's be honest. The reason some people choose independents isn't just for the teaching or the likelihood of less behaviourally challenging peers for their children.

Jassy maybe independent schools are better at guiding applicants to the universities that are right for them.
Unless we look at post results data (which does not exist because we apply pre-results) we have no idea how much is guidance/support/application advice.

I suspect the same families that follow good prenatal nutrition, an enriched childhood environment and active support of education don't stop at 17 and continue their support into university.

Odd how it seems very difficult to defend charitable status for private schools without resorting to straw men.

"I think private schools should not be treated as charities for tax purposes"

"OMG- let's ban parents from reading to their children!!!!!!"

That's simply because discussion has wandered from it's starting point.

Whether parents are allowed to choose how their DC are educated, including what activities in addition to school (or indeed spinsters of school) becomes anything but straw once a debate turns that way.

If you want threads that stick narrowly to what is in the title, you might need to be on another site where deviations are Not On, or else watch this thread be post after past, telling zoo the title is wrong and that they don't receive charity funding.

On threads such as this BTW, I regularly post about how there is no means in law for charitable assets to be converted to private ones, and asking what a proposal to change the law to permit that might look like. And if some a proposal exists, what stakeholder support does it have? And by stakeholder I don't mean the schools, rather the charity commission, relevant government ministers and representatives of charities (both large and small) who offer education as one or sole aim.

Because no-one seems to have one.

We're in a situation which has grown up since Tudor times (and earlier), and which was unproblematic until about the 1940s (when the state first took a hand in running schools) and largely unproblematic until the fee inflation of the Blair years (in terms of how expensive the charities fees were to users relative to incomes). I do wonder whether affordability is considered a short-term blip (because it's probably varied to a certain extent over the centuries) and it'll all settle.

"That's simply because discussion has wandered from it's starting point."

Of course discussion wanders from its starting point. I am just pointing out that there is no justification at all for private schools being treated as charities for tax purposes except "that's how it's always been" so the only response is to throw hyperbolic dust in the questioners eyes.

On threads such as this BTW, I regularly post about how there is no means in law for charitable assets to be converted to private ones, and asking what a proposal to change the law to permit that might look like.

I made a few suggestions upthread.

And if some a proposal exists, what stakeholder support does it have?

Which stakeholders would need to support it for it to be ok by you? Lots of petitions on this issue. And lots of laws get made/changed without the support of the affected stakeholders.

Like meditrina I don't think you can pick out one issue easily to unpick as it has a lot of consequences that may not be desirable and raise up a lot more injustices / perceived unfairness elsewhere.

There are some interesting graphs from the Sutton trust which show ed that it was more the subject at uni that was relevant rather than the school attended which determined later income.

sending a less academically able child to a private school will not in al, likelihood make them get the grades for Oxbridge. In fact pupils in private schools possibly succeed in spite of having that education rather than because of it. Don't forget, teachers do not have to be qualified to teach there.

"Like meditrina I don't think you can pick out one issue easily to unpick as it has a lot of consequences that may not be desirable and raise up a lot more injustices / perceived unfairness elsewhere."

Really? What injustices elsewhere would be revealed by removing charitable status from private schools?

We know that kids from state schools with the same grades as those from private schools, do better at university.

And I suspect most on here underestimate what it takes for a child from a very poor background, to get to university and have a successful career. That is why the percentage of children on FSM who go to university, is low. I suspect a tiny number of children on FSM go to private schools.

Actually, it would be interesting to know what the% of children from families on FSM type incomes go to private school. My experience of bursaries is that they tend to go to what used to be called "distressed gentlefolk"........

I can find no statistics on the number of pupils on FSM who go to private schools. This school states that it has no children on FSM.
www.hillingdonmanorschool.org.uk/about/pupil-premium/

"The latest research from the Sutton Trust calculates that less than one student in a hundred admitted to Oxbridge between 2005 and 2007 had been an FSM pupil. There were only 130 FSM pupils out of 16,110 students in total – whereas nearly half the intake came from independent schools."

wonkhe.com/blogs/oxbridge-access-private-school-v-free-school-meals/

"I can find no statistics on the number of pupils on FSM who go to private schools"

There are very few to none in the vast majority of the remaining grammar schools. I would imagine even fewer in private schools.

Yes I suspect it is virtually none. Which rather shows that even though bursaries exist, the schools are not open to the poorest children.

I actually have a personal interest in this. When I was 5 from a very poor family, my mum actually looked into bursaries at nearby private schools for me. All required additional expense that she could have never afforded. So she didn't apply.

But the bursary thing is often quoted as a justification for charitable status. Considering that there are only 5000 full bursaries across the sector, and one or two schools commendably offer quite a few it seems a rather weak argument.

615,000 children approximately, are educated in the independent sector. So less than 1% of places are full bursaries.

My son is aware of a couple of children just in his class who get a full bursary and fsm provided by the school as well as travel grants. The schools criteria for fsm is that the child would have needed to be entitled to fsm at a state school. My son doesn't get fsm but he does get a full bursary and travel grant as our income is low. To get a full bursary household income needs to be below £26k and there is a sliding scale after that. Anyone with a household income over £44k won't get a bursary at all. Around 20% of students are currently in receipt of a bursary and I believe that latest figures were half of those were full bursaries. You have to do a yearly financial review and the bursary is adjusted accordingly so you can't just earn loads more after Getting a place at the school and still get a bursary. So the bursaries there are not going to kids from wealthy families.