AIBU to feel that the ‘Labour against Private Schools’ campaign is a scapegoat for a lack of vision for educational reform?

[BusyMum1978]

2500 UK independent schools with 615K children attending which is 7% of the population of children in FT education up to the age of 16. A number of articles published this week have highlighted the campaign supported by Labour MP’s, who are calling for a number of measures impacting Independent Schools including their complete abolishment, and for these schools to become part of the state school system. A real hatred seems to be forming, and it feels to me like an easy smoke screen to put up rather than the Labour Party providing very specific policies to show how state funded education will be reformed.

I completely understand the feeling behind the imminent appointment of our 20th Etonian PM - there is urgent reform required in politics to have equal representation which I wholeheartedly agree with. I also understand the recently published stats showing accelerated social mobility for those attending top independent schools. I am not saying that there aren’t areas for improvement- but is the objective to bring more children up, or to bring the independently educated 7% down to make it ‘fair’?

My children both attend a prep school, and they are the first generation in both mine and my husband’s family to do so. We aren’t rich, neither of us have a degree, we own one property. We have -and continue to- work hard and made a choice to invest in our children’s education. We know we are privileged to be able to do so. To hear that MP’s want to wage a ‘class war’ with a family like mine feels inflammatory and yet more decisiveness in an already fractured country.

My children started their education in a state primary school but quite honestly it wasn’t good enough, and our heads were turned by what the private sector had to offer.

It equally broke my heart and inspired me to read The Times article on The Willow in Broadwater Farm school. Schools like this desperately need funding and further support, as do a range of children’s services which were cut during austerity. However will abolishing independent schools help a school like this? Parents who have money will still gravitate to the best areas / schools, and get tutors etc. There are a large number of selective state secondary schools that require heavy tutoring to access.

We need to nurture brilliant young minds in this country, to plug the UK skills gap, and compete in a global market. The independent sector has a valuable role to play.

Progress and globalisation is happening at such a rate that it’s becoming a bit uncomfortable. Many jobs our children will do haven’t even been invented yet.

The independent schools could work more closely with the state sector, but it concerns me that this campaign is chasing an ideal, and if successful would just shift the problem elsewhere.

Abra1de, oh lordy, not aspiration again. Aspiration is the opium for the poor.

Rich people and 'elites' will always find a way to get the 'best' education for their children and to believe otherwise is extremely naive.

I don’t agree with negative campaigning. How will denying 7% of children a good education benefit those languishing in inadequate schools?

The problem isn’t private schools. It is (in many cases) lack of funding, class sizes, quality of teachers, poor facilities and lack of ambition. This needs to be addressed.

If private school pupils are dominating politics and top professions, they are doing something right. Labour should not be looking to abolish it, but rather provide a quality education to ALL children.

HorridHenrysNits, I am sorry, but all your arguments are just excuses for continuing with the current completely ineffective policies at best or for doing nothing at worst. What are you proposing to do that has not been tried a million times before?

Round here quite a few would rather have the opium. And I am not being flippant.

I'm privately educating my child to benefit her (and us - better wraparound for working parents) but the fact remains there is now one more child in the excellent local primary who would not otherwise be there.

It's not a zero sum game.

But I am stepping away from the debate now after reading that comment that the UK's private schools are like the USA's gun problem.

Er. Right.

States schools will up their game by abolishing private schools? Really, that simple?

What exactly is the chain of events that would lead to this outcome? From an economics perspective that will never happen. Only a new socio-political construct can achieve that. Only a very socialist / communist system will achieve this.

Can you show me one democratic system where private education, healthcare, etc does not exist?

Once people are free to achieve whatever they want, use their brain and means to advance themselves, companies are free to employ and pay how they want (within the confines of the law), etc, etc, then forcing people to only use state provided services will only lead to major problems and will not work.

The state must provide services and must strive to do so at a high quality and efficient cost. However, forcing every one to only use state funded services is just plain ridiculous and undemocratic.

Pleasebequietnow, yes, my heart really bleeds for the 7% the majority of whom are already immensely privileged with or without their private education (some people on this thread keep saying that their mummies and daddies will find a way to get them a great education without private schools, if you have not noticed!).

Let's prioritise the needs of the 7% and not those of the other 93%. That's certainly the correct thing to do.

Phineyj - it is a zero-sum game.The fact there is only one excellent primary in you area is partly the private school that your child goes to. Because people whose children go to private schools have been decimating state school budgets for the past ten years.

Aspiration is the opium for the poor.

Aspiration is the polite way of saying "what the hell do we do about teaching the children of parents that come into school and threaten to rearrange a teacher's face because she's said little Johnny needs to learn to read and sent him home with a book."

Yes, that happened to a colleague of mine. The parent yelled that the child didn't need to learn to read because it was all a load of posh bullshit. The police had to be called.

Pissed off, you have no idea.

The solution is about a better funded and more efficiently run state system. State run services are almost always less efficiently run that those provided by private enterprises.

Every couple of years, the Department of Education tinkers with the system. It's a political football. Things are never given a chance to work. There's always a raft of new rules to implement. Teachers are paid enormous sums even when the schools are poorly run. I could go on. A lot needs to be fixed and none of these are the fault of the 700,000 kids whose parents have chosen private education.

Lifeandjoy, yes, of course you are right, everybody in the UK is currently free to achieve that they want. The only thing that is keeping them back is laziness, lack of aspiration and a penchant for fags and large tellies. I presume your new "socio-political construct" involves abolishing these things. I wonder why we have not tried it before? Oh wait, maybe we have......?

Should tutoring also be abolished? Parents with money pay for tutoring. This is equivalent to private education
Yes! I'd say even more, educated parents should be strictly supervised, as they can accidentally explain a natural phenomenon during a park walk, or, god forbid, discuss a book with their children and therefore give them an unfair advantage.

Round here there are some children who don’t get reading books sent home because we find them discarded in the ditches. Lots of the dads are sons of former heavy industrial workers and they just don’t think formal education is worth the effort. They can just about find work as lorry drivers and in the remaining car factories. Their sons may find these jobs are harder to come by. They need to have good literacy and numeracy but their fathers (and to a lesser degree mothers) don’t support them. This is a problem that abolishing Eton will not redress.

If state schools provided excellent education the need for the private sector wouldn't exist.
Germany for example does not have such a highly expensive private sector and they appear to do very well, private schools there tend to be for religious or language reasons.

Its down to funding and as most people in positions of power have been privately educated, they don't give a fuck about the state sector where the plebs have to go, like health, education receives the bare minimum.

Yes! I'd say even more, educated parents should be strictly supervised, as they can accidentally explain a natural phenomenon during a park walk, or, god forbid, discuss a book with their children and therefore give them an unfair advantage.

It would be more cost-efficient to place all newborns in state-run nurseries. There they can all have exactly the same care and educational provision. Their parents can have them back when they turn 18. Sure, the first generation will complain, but the second will understand exactly how good and fair this system is, because we'll teach them to.

@PissedOffProf
Have you only read about the Soviet school system or have you been through it personally?

Lifeandjoy, oh yes, the likes of the Northern Rain and G4S really demonstrate the superior efficiency of the private sector. There is nothing like unbridled pursuit of monetary profit that motivates people to serve their fellow human beings. Invisible hand and all that. Works so well for the world.

silvercuckoo, I don't know, have I? :)

State run services are almost always less efficiently run that those provided by private enterprises

Can we have some backup for this statement? The trains, probation service, and government IT projects (off the top of my head) beg to differ.

If state schools provided excellent education the need for the private sector wouldn't exist.

The problem is that you only need to scan the education boards for a short while to realise it isn't as simple as this. There are widespread assumptions about the state sector, that it's full of violent and underachieving kids, that the parent's experience of a poor state school thirty years ago somehow represents the state of things today.

We can look at ways of improving our state schools (I'd like to see us raising the school starting age and investing heavily in early years support similar to the Finnish system) but we shouldn't be placing impossible expectations on them. I live near a major public school, the facilities are out of this world - people aren't choosing to go there simply because the state alternative is poor.

So many innaccurate points made here by the pro private school team that it shows private education doesn't actually improve intelligence.

"If state schools provided excellent education the need for the private sector wouldn't exist."

The state sector of course in many places does provide excellent education, in many places better than the local private.

The point about "State schools don't prepare you for top jobs" utter bunkum.

It isn't the education that private schools provide that makes the difference, its a whole host of other factors.

If it was education alone we wouldn't have the fact that even with the same degree classification, from the same university, private school pupils out earn their state sector peers after 3 years.

"State run services are almost always less efficiently run that those provided by private enterprises."

Ahahahahaha.

Yes Capita and Carillion? How about how efficient the banking system was?

Going to have to provide proper evidence for your claims there, otherwise its just rote learned soundbites

HPFA, I'm not referring to the kids and their ability nor to most teachers. It's the running of the system. The constant changes, the way in which school performance is rewarded, the political football that the education system is, etc, etc

Saying that of state school provided a great education that private schooling would not be needed shows a fundamental lack of understanding of human behaviour.

So if it’s not education anyway what’s the point of abolishing the private schools?