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.

As the parent of s child with ASD, I found it very telling, when I read about this campaign, that the campaigners have nothing to say about the numerous independent schools set up to cater to different special needs. I suspect it literally hasn’t occurred to them that such places exist. That’s how much they care about education for disadvantaged kids.
It’s not about that. It’s about hate. And the feeling is mutual so far as I am concerned. These people should go and fuck themselves.

If you try to abolish private schools in UK they will move abroad and take their UK and international students with them. Most already have overseas franchises.

The UK needs to make the state system so good that private schools become a destination for only a handful of students. France, Belgium, and Germany all seem to manage this. Why can‘t we.

In an ideal world all state schools would be just as good as private schools but that would take a huge increase in funding which no government are prepared to do.

If private schools are forced to close, the education system would get far worse not better. Private schools would not just become state, the funding would not be there to buy the buildings, maintain facilities, and thousands of teachers would leave the profession, we would have a crisis. On top of that an extra £3 billion would need to be found to educate all these children and that doesn’t include cost of extra infrastructure so taxes would be raised and class sizes would have to increase, meaning more teachers leaving. We would have pockets of better schools surrounded by very expensive housing, and the worse schools would get even worse, again a two-tier system. Grammar schools would be predominantly full of children from richer families as they would pay to have their kids tutored (already happening but would get far worse).

Getting rid of private schools would make life worse for everyone particularly for poorer people.

This idea is like Brexit. Lies peddled by politicians for their own agenda. People sign up becuase they resent and hate a certain type of person. Then the reality bites and the anti private school voters realise they've made things worse for thenselves

Getting rid of private schools would make life worse for everyone particularly for poorer people

Bull

Shit.

So who is going to fund the education of all these extra children flooding into the state system? The system which can't cope with the numbers it currently has....

I am 'against' private school in that I wouldn't choose to send my child to one even if I could easily afford it. However, that does not mean that I should take the choice away from other parents. We need to properly fund state schools, increase the choices offered to parents (eg limit the number of schools in an area run by the same Mat) and encourage collaboration. I am in favour of grammar schools for similar reasons - I want the best education for my child and I want a genuine choice of schools. I don't want to be forced to send her to an increasingly overcrowded and underfunded school because the system is too rigid.

I don’t see how, in a free and democratic society, you can legislate to prevent people educating their kids outside the state system. All that they can do is impose punitive financial measures. I’m sorry to disappoint the frothing lefties but that will not put Eton out of business. What will go under are smaller schools without the international pull. The resulting influx of middle class kids will do nothing to improve state education. State education does not improve because it does not have to. Its clientele has nowhere else to go.

iggly - do you really not see that people who can afford private education will spend that money on houses in catchments for excellent state schools? That's what I'd do. Then I'd employ a tutor. So my kids are ok, but the house prices are driven so high that lower paid families simply cant afford to live there and tutoring means that teaching doesnt gave to be amazing as the school still gets good results.

IF the huge inequality in the state school system is removed and IF there is significant investment in state schools to bring them all up to the same standard as each other, and IF that standard is high enough so that every child gets the same excellent education regardless, then I completely agree that private schools should be abolished (although if you did the above, most private schools would be out-competed and would quietly fail and disappear).

However, I don't think that's going to happen.

The state school system is already financially discriminatory - house prices near excellent state schools are already too expensive for most. If you ban private schools without fixing state schools all you'll do is exacerbate that problem.

@Iggly

Can you expand on your point?

It is not helpful to respond to the points people have made with the word (s) ‘ bull shit’ . It does not add anything to the debate.

Abolishing private schools would make zero difference because the cost would just be added to the houses surrounding the best schools. Poor people would still not be able to access the best schools.

It’s the tight networks and nepotism that gets you in to many of the top jobs in this country. We call ourselves fair and laugh at other countries like America where Trump has his whole family on the payroll but although we might not be as blatant in our corruption we are just as corrupt. Dom Smithlington-Longbottom probably wouldn’t make his son associate director of his own firm but he would get him a good role at his mate Gideon’s top firm. Social mobility has all but stopped.

There is also too much deference towards rich people with posh accents to the point it’s embarrassing. In what way is Boris Johnson someone to admire with enough gravitas to be leader of our country? How did PR man David Cameron make it to the top? We over promote those who’ve already had every advantage as though they should be rewarded for just being born lucky. We kick down and under promote those who’ve had to claw their way up and don’t know ‘their place’. Watch how the media tears apart anyone from a non advantageous background who’s done well for even the slightest mistake but rushes to make excuses for those who were born lucky. They hate any threat in change to the status quo so fight to keep it and the useful idiots help them.

Abolishing private schools will do nothing, it’s our whole culture which is the problem.

Zero difference. That’s what this scheme would make.

Except house prices would get higher in the catchment for desirable state schools - selection by stealth.

A better policy would be to stop schools that receive state funding selecting on faith grounds.

Abolishing private schools will do nothing, it’s our whole culture which is the problem.

I agree with this.

Politically it's an irrelevance what Cirbyns labour says about private schools. There can only be a handful of private school oraspiring private school parents who would vote labour whilst he's the leader? Imho both major parties have a distinct lack of vision and leadership about everything. Responding to focus groups and polling has taken over from real leadership.

It’s a terrible idea, as already mentioned by other posters - state schools won’t improve, rich people will pay for housing near the outstanding schools (pricing lower income families out) and will also pay for tutors so the ‘rich kids’ will carry on getting the top marks.
I can’t get my head round this idea that to improve something for all we take away from some- I can’t afford to send my kids to private school but I don’t begrudge those that can! In order to try and improve things in my own way I’m a school governor.

And what of the special needs schools? There are many kids that can’t access learning in mainstream schools- what will be the provisions for these children ?

The only way to genuinely improve schools (for all) is to make schools and class sizes smaller.

the Govt would make a pig’s ear of abolishing private schools - they couldn’t get a unified computer record system for nhs and universal credit roll out has not gone well.

There is huge variation in state schools too - superselective results can be better than some private. Given that private education is a UK export (people from abroad pay money into our economy to send their kids here) and we are undergoing turbulence due to Brexit, it would seem better to start small and show that you can get ‘equality’ in the state sector before you try and take over the private.

I’m sceptical you can get ‘equality’ anyway because people will buy expensive houses near good schools and get tutors for their kids.

YANBU.

There are massive failings in the state system. Unfortunately, the Labour Party would rather educate to the lowest common denominator than admit that those failings exist or to aim to bring state education in line with the independent sector.

My DH has a friend who was privately educated at a top boarding school.(i don't know which one) and then went to Cambridge. He now works for a top global investment bank. Apparently the first (of v few) questions he was asked at interview was what school he went to....

@Skinnychip there's discrimination the other way as well. I know of people blatantly told in job interviews that hey wouldn't fit into the company due to the school they went to.

Part of the problem is the idea that Private schools are inhabited by the overindulged offspring of the very rich Privately educated for generations who then go to Elite universities and onto jobs in banking provided purely by people they/their parents know
Might be the case in London but it’s not something I recognise from either my Private school ( full scholarship) or my daughters.
Maybe it’s different oop North ?

The 'flood' of children from independent schools would be a 7% increase. Lots of schools are undercapacity with one of two spaces in each class. Its only some areas with not enough spaces. The country could deal with that. Its just like some years are boom years with more births. Our LA had yo increase capacity by a lot more than 7% 5 years ago but the birth rate has dipped again and a lot of schools woukd welcome the extra pupils.

However i dont think prohibiting private schools would end privildge and i think the establishment would still exist. Im also a bit dubious about the state being the sole provider of education. And the independent sector has a lot of SEN schools.

I am left wing but I can’t bring myself to suggest that you should be disallowed from paying directly to educate your child, as well as paying your taxes. Yes, the privileges conferred by a private school education are unfair and exclusionary, but so are all the privileges of money.

I don’t think it would be possible to implement most of the suggested policies, politically, legally, cost wise or practically.

For example, VAT on school fees could lead to a large number of families seeking state places for their DC, when there isn’t capacity in state schools with current funding.

People who privately educate their kids are doing society a favour, by paying for their children's education they free up extra income which can be spent on the education of everyone else. How do you think schools will fare with 7% more children, and less income per head to go round.

Getting rid of private schools will just create much more intense competition for the best state schools, meaning fewer places for poorer kids in those schools (I gave up a place at an outstanding, very sought after state school to send my dc to a private school, which freed up a place for a kid to get a better education whose parents don't have our means).

Kids in privately education won't end up going to the undesirable schools (as parents can afford the cost of moving closest to the best schools), they'll just take more of the places in outstanding ones, meaning 7% of state school kids in outstanding schools will just go to worse schools.