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.

Blamesfarts - I have no idea how you think things are going to improve with fully state determined education? Despite lots of highly educated parents at our local state I know at least 5 families who have significant problems with the school. Many have lobbied and fell out with the school. Some can only have their children in the school part-time due to medical issues that the school won't accommodate.

Universities were not and are not controlled by the state.
This is truly ... I don’t know what the word is.
Have you googled the treehouse school? Please do. Please try and understand why sometimes it really makes a difference to education when non state actors step in. Autistic kids wouldn’t have a hope in hell if this didn’t happen.

Trouble is, I guess, that left just interested in kids with SN, until they are handy sticks to beat their opponents with. Sick really.

I don't know if things would be better. I do think that the current systemic inequalities are iniquitous and deeply socially harmful and I'm willing to consider alternatives.

Universities have selective entry, @BlamesFartsOnTheNeighbour does this mean I can have the same with my forced state education?

Its.Not.Policy.

You keep repeating this as though you're speaking to a room full of dimwits.

We know this. It's a leftist aspiration.

There have only been private universities in the UK since the 1970s, and they're a tiny minority now. Was university education totalitarian before then?

Depends on whether private institutions were shut down/suppressed because they were private.

If they were, then yes.

Why can't the state provide suitable education for kids with autism? It does where I live. Not in the UK.

@TheBigBallOfOil if it's any consolation, I googled it! What a great resource to so many children.

Does it? Good, if so. It doesn’t here. The only innovations in ASD education here have been driven by parents and other private actors.
Please do read about the treehouse and educate ate yourself before making silly, sweeping prescriptions based on utter ignorance. I know it’s only a website but people might read your posts and imagine you know what you’re on about.

Thank you panda. There are other similar schools elsewhere, not nearly enough however. And if some here get their way,there will be none.
What sort of person could think that was good? Beggars belief.

BlamesFartsOnTheNeighbour - its not so much that they cant. Its more that they havent. Some areas and locations worse than others. Locally authorities regularly place children in independent special schools. Autistic children with the ability to work at an average or above level are particularly badly served by the state.

@TheBigBallOfOil a family member goes to a private school which specialises for children with dyslexia. The state system was a total nightmare, despite having 'private school type' parents. Not only now is she receiving an education but now has friends which we are all most pleased about.

As for Germany and Greece not being fascist.

What you think about a state forcibly removing a child from his home, where his parents are trying to deliver an education above and beyond the local provision, and jettisoning him into a state institution?

Specifically, how is this not fascist?

Maybe these parents are drug addicts who can't get their children to school. Fine. Make them subject to inspection.

Maybe they're historians/mathematicians/scientists who can't countenance an education anything short of par excellence for their child.

Maybe they think the local school is just childcare for terribly behaved children. Maybe their child was bullied; maybe he has ASD, maybe he's trans, maybe he has a life-threatening allergy, whatever.

Why do you think it's OK to overrule them?

My son was binned by the state age two.
I found other providers who would help him.
Next year he is expected to move to a selective independent school on a music scholarship.
My way was better than mother state’s. The state doesn’t care about kids like mine. It proves it over and over again.

This has ‘Culture Wars’ written all over it.

Another way to divide us and make the population argue amongst themselves.

It is also a pointless diversion from the fact that Labour education policy is feeble. An I say this a teacher and former Labour member.

Fund state schools. That is all they need to do. And abolish SATs. The only way to make things equal is to raise people up from the bottom not squash them from the top.

I don't think I'm being ignorant. I'm bringing an international perspective to a thread where people seem to be incapable of imagining that things happen differently elsewhere. And frankly, comparing modern-day Germany to a fascist state is pretty insulting.

And I find your ignorance about, and refusal to engage with information about, the problems of state education for kids like mine pretty insulting too. But I guess they don’t really matter, eh?
So typical of the left.

And frankly, comparing modern-day Germany to a fascist state is pretty insulting.

You’re hiding behind this to avoid the point I raised in my last post, but it’s fine.

actually I've been cooking and eating dinner so no time to look into your suggestions. I will when I have more than a minute to reply. I don"t think uk state education's woeful record on SN education means no state sn provision could ever be adequate, though.

Good luck to your son next year, Oil.

But you managed to come back and whine about other people being insulting.
So much more important to defend your own ignorance than challenge it with facts, eh?

Thank you Alaskan.

Re: private universities.

I was under the impression that, prior to the First World War, both Oxford and Cambridge were essentially private institutions.

I seem to remember that both institutions had to approach the British government for support after the war because their European investments, particularly in Germany, had been annihilated by the conflict. And that was the point of "nationalisation", so to speak.

I can't remember much more than that, and I may have some details wrong, but the broad picture is roughly accurate.

I’m loving the suggestion that were I to parachute my kids into the local state school I would magically be able to improve it.

Nope. Not going to happen. That ship is going to take about a decade to turn itself around, probably longer given there’s no money (or perhaps I’m also expected to donate all my money to the cause?), and I’m not sacrificing my children’s future to that mess.

If labour fancies getting rid of state school, it needs to properly fund them and ensure standards so that the state schools can compete with what the private schools offer. If my local state school was pretty much on par with the private, my kids would be at state school. There would be no need for me to shell out hundreds of thousands of pounds.

"its a leftist aspiration"

Its a small group of people.

Sweeping generalisation.