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?

"A private school near to me offers bursaries to some top performing students in a state school in a very poor area"

It's always worth looking at which kids and how much.

Although I do slightly resent the suggestion that state schools do no charitable or community work.....

Well i certainly don't think that. My oldest DS attends a state special school for PMLD pupils and they are absolutely charitable in every sense. They are charitable for both their own students and for other (usually children's) charities. I support all their fundraising efforts as the work they do is fantastic.

This LSE study is an interesting counterpoint to the suggestion that there is a net public good from independent schools. It found that earnings and education differentials have risen significantly over time for private v state pupils.

Taken alongside the differences in access to HE, the work by the Social Market Foudnation on inequality of outcome, etc, it paints a picture where independent school pupils get a distinct leg up in life compared to their state school counterparts.

So if private schools are doing all these wonderful things for state pupils, it's clearly having fuck all impact.

Who are your competitors, in an NHS sense?

I think all fields benefit from learning from best practice and the experience of others; I don't think that's really competition, itsba culture of continuous improvement.

"some clever-despite-the-odds students who will get good exam results."

The 'clever against the odds' child is the one who had fuck all support at home, uneducated and uninvolved parents, the one who isn't read to, the one whose parents don't help with homework or care whether it's done or not. These children DO NOT GET BURSARIES or sit the 11+ because their parents don't pursue it and because the child's intelligence may not manifest as high academic attainment because of a lack of focus on education at home.

All the children I know who have bursaries are disadvantaged in one way: they come from homes without the cash for private school fees, but in EVERY other respect these children are well supported. Many if not most come from graduate families, and have parents who are wholly committed to their child's educational success.

Private schools genuinely have no interest in poor children who are not already achieving highly. Their charity is completely misplaced. Why focus educational charity on those who are succeeding, when so many are failing in the state sector because of social deprivation and unsupportive families.

In the case I'm referring to the private school actively pursued the children, and we have no 11+ here.
I am completely against such cherry picking if my post did not make that clear. Pointing out that what might seem a helpful thing to do is of no help to the school the child is removed from.

The few who might otherwise have gone to our state school would not have made any difference. There would still be no orchestra, and the lessons would still go at a pace which reflects the average. The vast majority of lessons being mixed ability.

I don't think my child helped any pupil do any better by the fact she was there.

jassy we have internal competitions and other hospitals nearby which people could equally choose. We also have a private firm running some nhs care, so we are aware we are in competition with that.

Head, your state school sounds quite sad. No streaming, no orchestra, no community involvement. The distinctly average one nearest us manages to provide all those things.

On competition - you say that your patients could equally choose other hospitals nearby. That's a big difference from the idea of effective competition between private and state schools - the majority of people at a state school can't choose the private one if they don't like the state option. Often they can't choose another school at all.

But the fact that the majority of people can't choose a school is not the fault of the private schools. There simply is a shortage of school places in some regions and that is due to poor planning by the govt. I live in an area where most Holstein only have 1 option and in my at cent that option isn't great. It does have streaming but results are quite poor and there is certainly no orchestra and extra curricular activities are very thin on the ground (unless you are a boy who likes football). My son was extremely lucky that he was capable of passing the 11+ and was offered a place at the grammar in a neighbouring local authority as well as being offered places at two independent schools with 100% bursaries. I do feel some guilt for taking him out of the state system but if I had more choice over local state schools I might not have been so willing to jump ship and accept one of the bursary offers.
Research has shown that having bright children in mixed ability environments is good for all students and improves results - with the exception of the brightest children who do less well in mixed ability schools, even with streaming. For those children who come under 'the brightest' I don't really think it is their responsibility to be in a mixed ability group in order to help the learning of others to their own detriment and if those children are able to secure an alternative offer - through 11+, bursary or parental
Finances then I don't see any reason that they should not take up that offer.

No one is saying it's the fault of the private schools. Simply that the idea that the majority have true choice, or that there is efective competition in this market thanks to private schools which is automatically driving improvements in state schools, isn't a sensible one.

Six, our high school has mixed ability classes apart from maths. Most kids who get very good exam results use tutors or have well educated parents who coach them. Going private is far from the only form of privilege.

Stories, everyone knows that life isn't fair and that some inequalities are impossible to balance out. However when we are talking about institutions and the overall structure of educational provision, it's worth remembering that schools are communities and that a huge part of their impact on attitudes and learning comes from the children and the parents themselves. Private schools are elite communities whose doors are entirely closed to the vast majority of children, and they are deliberately designed to be this way. IMO they create a system of social apartheid which is divisive and harmful to society.

What really affects the character and provision at state schools where I live is the existence of some very large private schools with generous bursary schemes and (in a neighbouring borough) a clutch of grammars, which between them skim off the top 15% of children. All of the best music provision is concentrated in the private schools (and one highly selective state church school) so that any child who is playing an instrument at a high level in a state school is going to be a bit of a lone wolf. Nationally only 7% of children are at private schools but in some areas it's much much higher. In my dc's school pretty much the whole of the top table in their class was 'creamed off' into the private sector at the end of primary.

Music provision is never going to be a high priority in the state system whatever other schools there are. Learning an instrument ito any level let alone high s a sign of huge privilege and involves thousands over the years spent on lessons/ instrument hire and hugely supportive and musically educated parents in order to get kids through the exams, facilitate practise etc. To be fair having kids coached to a high level is going to be a rarity in any non affluent school that isn't stuffed with mc parents and cash to spare.

mini i imagine in some area there is less need for private schools to 'cream off' the brightest students. In affluent areas with very good state comprehensives less parents will feel the need to pay for a private education. Of course if you can afford a house in the catchment of the best state schools there is less need to consider going private if you want what you consider o be a decent option for an academically able child. I know in Trafford lots of parents purposefully move into the catchment of Wellington school so that their child will sever a place there. For most people, living in that catchment is beyond their financial
Means so although the school is a state non selective it is effectively selecting only wealthy pupils. People that live in a modestly priced house in another part of Trafford would find it cheaper to go private than to move close to Wellington school if they only have one or even two children. There are even parents shunning the 11+ to get into trafford grammars in favour of a place at Wellington school.
Whether parents move to pricey catchments, employ tutors or go private the fact remains that money can often buy an advantage (and not just in education). I have more than one child, the academically able one has choices over where to go to school despite our poor financial situation but my other children don't have such choices. I don't however feel that it is my able sons responsibility to attend the local state school to improve its results or the learning of others. A school should be able to provide adequately to ensure that each pupil is able to meet his full potential. Unfortunately schools are woefully underfunded so we are looking to blame other inequalities in the education system instead of recognising that some schools are simply failing some children because they don't have the necessary resources. Every school should be ensuring that each pupil meets his full potential. Nobody should need to pay for tuition or move to a pricey area etc to plug gaps.

I think actually you get an abundance of private schools in affluent areas as you need ridiculously high wages to find them and keep them going. Education beyond London and the Home Counties and is often very different to the rest of the country. The gap and wages are a world apart yet these threads always seem to focus on them.

Where I grew up, there were very few private schools, and so no real creaming off of able students. Simply a creaming off of the rich.

The private schools in my region are not in affluent areas green but some of them are very highly regarded and pupils come from a wide geographical area to attend (up to 40 miles at my sons school)!

Do the pupils come from affluent areas though?

Where I am most people go to catchment comprehensives and we have few privates (Scotland). I think we have a very bad record on inequality despite the Scottish national self image!

The only chance of changing it here imo is baby and toddler age family interventions. And not taking poverty as an excuse once children are at school. Private schools are not causing the inequality here.

Not all pupils Come from affluent areas bratsy. Some do, which is inevitable at a private school but of the 20% on bursaries I think a lot come from very modest areas and of those paying full fees I know quite a few also come from modest areas. As the pupils come from up to 40 miles away I can't say how many come from affluent areas vs poorer areas but i do know that lots of middle and higher income families turned places down in favour of free places at the grammar schools in a neighbouring LA.

And he area I used to live in is an interesting one because virtually nobody goes to a private school and there are no grammars. Despite virtually no pupils being creamed off into selective education the schools are still pretty shit and still get dreadful results. I don't for one minute believe that all pupils in that area are academically struggling so clearly the picture is a lot bigger than these dreadful private schools taking the most able students and damaging the local schools as a result.

Like Six, I live in a LA with no private schools and no grammars, and despite virtually nobody getting creamed off the local schools are terrible. It may be inconvenient for people to hear it, but poverty is not as closely related to poor life chances as poverty of ambition is. Within public sector commissioning - whether of education, social services, or health - there is an entire sub-industry devoted to 'solving inequalities' and they fail miserably at almost everything they touch.

This thread's OP was about "charity funding" - the economic case, albeit one built on inaccurate understanding about what independent schools' charitable statuses means. When facts and truth got in the way of that it somehow became a moral or ethical issue for debate.

It is NOT an ethical issue. Ethics suggest a critical mass of consensus in respect of an agreed moral code. Seven percent of children are educated privately in the UK, and I suspect that a great many more consciously aspire to it if they cannot afford it. I suspect that there is probably also a significant number of parents who have never had to face the question seriously because it has always been beyond reach, but might find private education agreeable in the right circumstances. There are parts of the world where it is very mainstream. I repeat: private education is not some immoral, unethical activity monopolised by some sort of undeserving elite on the lunatic fringe for the purposes of protecting their privilege. It is a valid part of life and predates state education by centuries, and in many parts of the UK it is the only option for those with ambition to achieve social mobility.

What private education patently is, however, is an ideological issue and the keyboard communists on here really do themselves few favours hiding the one behind the other. We've been over the jealousy issue upthread but there is another, more poisonous tone of thinking which permeates many of the posts: inverse snobbery. Combined with ignorance about some of the truths of private education, which many seem determined not to hear or believe, it really is very worrying.

Private schools are not causing the inequality here

Stovies, I think they can exacerbate it though. The LSE rearech I linked to earlier controlled for socioeconomic factors and still found a gap.