To be annoyed at The Guardian largely because it is such a dump solution - private schools

[Dlwch276]

So as part of their recent excessive coverage of a book which attacked the private school system (written by someone who went to private school) The Guardian has suggested adding VAT to school fees.

Asides raising more money via tax i don't see how this would make the system fairer? From what I've seen the logic is that parents who are motivated to pay £20k+ on fees would force state schools to improve if their children attended them. Mumsnet is full of posters at their wits ends trying to affect change at their local state schools. No-one that I've met at our small private is wringing their hands that the local state schools are terrible and that this gives their children extra advantage.

Surely to improve educational equality either we all need to pay more tax to change class sizes or poorer students need better access to private education. In NZ private schools receive the same student allowance as state schools - wouldn't this be a better solution for students not able to access private education? For everyone to sit the entrance exam and then private schools to have to accept the student allowance as fees for those who can't afford it?

I think we all know that society is unequal. Some of us actively work to change that in the broadest sense (my own job for eg involves this) and would also support a specific change to the specific type of inequality perpetuated by public schools.

And the maj Yabbers would stay there. Only a tiny number can afford to pay fees that equate to many salaries, a bit of VAT would be neither here nor there for most invthat bracket. It might price a few out.C’est la vie. The state would cope. Some schools are already shunning their charitable status.

Even though those handful of elite establishments provide 70% of top political, judicial, and fiscal personnel in the UK? While being accessed by 6% of the population?
This is the crux of the question. Is it that 70% of the top professions get there because they've gone to private schools or is it that because they had parents as role models, they were brought up with principles of aiming the best and were expected to achieve high that these people ended up in these professions?

What would happen if 100 random 9th grades comp pupils were traded with 9th grade privates pupils. Would those who moved to private education become the top professionals?

What annoyed me with our local comp and colleges was the lack of gcses and A levels subjects that private pupils would have had access to. Besides the top 8/10 common gcses, the rest were low paid careers/jobs minded. No Politics, Economics, not even psychology, sociology or business studies. You could however do photography, dance or media, studies.

Has anyone posted this yet, and "the list"?

www.google.ie/url?sa=i&source=undefined&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwixx4CB6cDgAhVmSxUIHQYiD5gQzPwBCAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fblogs.spectator.co.uk%2F2015%2F06%2Fif-the-guardian-dislikes-the-privately-educated-why-does-it-hire-so-many-of-them%2F&psig=AOvVaw34jwE8ujF_pD-nM2fu4snj&ust=1550425983363401

“What annoyed me with our local comp and colleges was the lack of gcses and A levels subjects that private pupils would have had access to. Besides the top 8/10 common gcses, the rest were low paid careers/jobs minded. No Politics, Economics, not even psychology, sociology or business studies. You could however do photography, dance or media, studies.”
I honestly don’t want to sound patronising. But can you not think of any reason why a comprehensive school might do this? And also, I cannot think of a single profession barred to a candidate lacking in GCSE Politics, Economics or Sociology.......

This list I mean, about where Guardian journalists were educated

pachyderm don’t be daft. No one thinks we should go around punishing individuals because of where their parents sent them to school it’s not their fault.

Swingofthings you only have to take a cursory glance at our parliament to see that the best and brightest most certainly do not rise to the top as a result of natural ability.

And they're stuffing things up, these public schoolboys. Just to take one pressing contemporary example, would brexit have happened if we hadn't had a political class made up of public school alumni? I very much doubt it. It, and other political clusterfucks, are brought into being by a class of people who do not have to work for a living but who nonetheless hold positions of great power. This then creates the situation where they have influence but don't take their jobs seriously. Look at the HoC - most of the people in there see it as an extension of jolly old debates around the society table at school. And they will never see it differently because they are insulated from the consequences of any decision, pretty much. These are the very last people who should be making decisions. But there they are, in abundance. I really do think we need a shake up of our attitudes to this class of people, because acquiescing and accepting that they are the best for the job is doing us no favours.

BertrandRussell most politicians study PPE.

You don’t need GCSE Politics or Economics to study PPE.

Yeah that's true.

As Alan Bennett pointed out -If you emerge from a private education not believing that private schools should be abolished then you education has been a failure.

Really diverse set of schools there ! Not.

As Alan Bennett pointed out -If you emerge from a private education not believing that private schools should be abolished then you education has been a failure.

In that case there are an awful lot of failed educations.

Well, they probably all got there on merit. 😶

In that case there are an awful lot of failed educations.

Again, I point you to the House of Commons.

“In that case there are an awful lot of failed educations.”

Not sure-but I think that might have been part of his point.....

15 pages in so I am sure someone will have already made this point. Pretty much everyone at DD school says the same thing. If for whatever reason they couldn’t afford private schooling for their child(ren) they would use the money they saved to either buy a house close to a well run state school (therefore probably increasing the price of houses in that area or they would use the money they save to fund private tuition to ensure their child(ren) got into the best gramma schools. They only people that would benefit would be estate agents and private tutors.

Yeah you're right. What we really need to do is to scrap them altogether or, alternatively, have a revolution.

In the meantime, removing this particular tax break will do.

And the maj Yabbers would stay there. Only a tiny number can afford to pay fees that equate to many salaries, a bit of VAT would be neither here nor there for most invthat bracket

That's a rather sweeping statement. Adding 20% to the fees would price a whole lot out of schools. But let's say it's 25% of parents who need to leave, that makes the school unprofitable which inevitably leads to closure.

The state system does not have capacity and is creaking to support the children already in it.

gamerwidow I don't actually have strong feelings about private schools but if the Guardian wants to attack private education maybe it shouldn't employ the vast majority of its journalists from the same wealthy privately educated backgrounds, it contributes to the narrowness of perspective and disconnection from reality that's been turning off readers for years.

Well we can all pull whatever percentage we like out of our arse but it hardly makes for a valid argument.

My own pulled out of my arse number would posit that fewer than 25% of the part of the population who have got a spare £18k a year (bearing in mind this is significantly more than a year's minimum wage) is unlikely to be tipped over the edge and abandon all that private school represents for the sake of another few grand.

*are unlikely

FFS *are likely

It's all very well wanting to abolish private schools but it completely ignores the fact that we have a staggeringly unequal state system.

Even if we disregard grammar schools, the fact remains that a middle class child going to a state school in a nice country town is still vastly more likely to have a better education than a child from a tower block on a sink estate.

It doesn't matter that state schools are free; those with money will move into the areas in which the poor are priced out as a good school will raise house prices. There is huge financial selection in the state system.

And that's before we start to consider the issues of parental engagement with the educational system.

If you really want to get rid of the private sector then you need to invest heavily in the state system and make all state schools equally brilliant. The demand for private education will plummet.