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.

Its.Not.Policy

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

However as you and others keep going on about it as if Lab were in Govt and the policy is to be announced tomorrow with immediate effect... the conclusion that some are dimwits is hard to avoid.

I have linked to Labour official education policy and its been ignored, in favour of more right wing shit stirring.

So then it wouldn't be applicable to you then. You couldn't move to France or Spain in order to put your child in private school because the only way you can afford it now is by having extremely low cost housing here

Actually with house prices in France and Spain we would have no housing costs as we could afford to buy a large house and still have money over for a pied a terre in London for Dp.

I also don’t think I am misreading statistics.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/english-teenagers-are-the-most-illiterate-in-the-developed-world-report-reveals-a6841166.html%3famp

Which does make depressing reading.

Right so you live on the amount you stated and could afford a house in france and a london pad?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

@Unfinishedkitchen I do see changes in the workplace from even 10 years ago when it was a job for the boys culture. There is a huge awakening I see in the Technology Sector, lead by organisations such as Microsoft who absolutely insist on hiring a diverse workforce, and this is filtering across the sector. The Civil Service - I am not talking about Politicians but the major Government Depts - are also putting underrepresented groups into top jobs wherever possible. There is definitely hope, and these changes in the workplace will enable the social mobility of the next generation.

@jasjas1973 You are correct that it isn't policy. I have read through the manifesto for Labour’s National Education Service, and I take on board the fact that the abolishment of independent schools isn’t included - and is limited to the VAT to fund free school meals. However the group is circulating a motion for the party’s conference in September that would commit a Labour government to stripping fee-paying schools of their privileges and integrating them into the state system. I can only assume by virtue of the fact it is called a Labour Campaign, and has support from Labour MP’s that it meets with their pre-approval?

sionnachbeag

Yes why so disbelieving.

We are moving soon and will be buying a bigger place and a holiday home and getting rid of the mortgage.

cause from your income levels that you stated I don't believe.

But then again when you make things up on the internet...

I don't like private education. If it must exist at least treat it like the business it is rather than pretending it is charitable.

BusyMum

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

Does it? why aren't other more successful economies copying our world winning formula?

We are spending £3.5billion at least, on a very small and unrepresentative section of society, instead of nurturing all our children's talents.
We need workers with a vast array of learnt skills..

Adoption of Lab manifesto commitments is a long and drawn out procedure, this policy is a million miles away from being an official policy.... your saving on school fee vat is safe for a few more years.

The discussion is now 29 pages and I don't have time to read all the way back to where I was previously.

On the affordability issue, most private schools allow payment in installments to help those in a tight budget.

In any case, to those who doubt that those with £50k can afford private school, can continue to doubt. The reality is that many do sacrifice and make it work.

And remember lots of school fees aren't boarding and aren't in inner London so a bit cheaper than some prices often quoted. £10k a child might mean a non working wife currently could go back to work full time when the child is 5 working at the minimum wage and would earn enough for one set of school fees for example.

Yes the mythical aversge family that can afford private schools just by good choices. If only others would put their children first eh?

10k is low for London schools and ecen lower than the North of England average.

Oh and 50k net income, means that you have nearly double the household average.

There's also another aspect to this. What about preschools and nurseries that charge fees? Are they private schools? What about child minders that follow early years educational principles?

There are thousands of preschools and nurseries that provide an experience that means children essentially spend three years, prior to starting school at 5, in a reception class environment. The benefits of this are noticeable.

Are such schools and nurseries private schools? Should they be nationalised? Abolished? After all, they also feed into educational inequality.

I doubt there is the money to nationalise all these organisations and businesses, but abolishing them would mean women couldn't go back to work because there would be no childcare providers for the under-5s.

I agree with you OP that I don’t think abolishing private schools will help.

DD is at a very well known private school and we are in a grammar school area. I went to the local grammar - my parents bought a house as near as possible to the best primary, and hothoused me with tutors for a good year before the 11+. If it were secondary only they would’ve moved yet again to be as close as possible to the best secondary. The best schools here push up house prices. We live in a moderately priced house and pay school fees but we could move, take on a significantly larger mortgage and be in catchment for one of the top 10 primaries in the country.

I can’t see a way that stops middle class parents paying for schooling either through location or fees.

I’m pregnant with another and dream about moving to a small village further north with an outstanding primary and one secondary where all kids go, but then again wouldn’t we just be hated for pushing up prices and squeezing out a place for “locals”?

I actually vote further left than Labour so private schooling is incongruent with my beliefs. We are currently considering moving to France in four or five years for better free education (DH needs to be near a big French city, or London, for work). Many of the schools here are just not good enough - massive classes, foreign languages not taught early enough and poor ofsted ratings. Have no idea what the solution is.

The solution is to increase progressive taxation and make education a priority.

Instead we have those who were privately educated, and privately educate their children, offering tax cuts to the already well off.

Priorities see.

I actually vote further left than Labour so private schooling is incongruent with my beliefs
‘Incongruent’ is one way of putting it. I’d call it extremely hypocritical. Why not put your political principals into practice?

why aren't other more successful economies copying our world winning formula?

You really want to open that box?

More successful economies? You mean, like China? Or South Korea where school days can last thirteen hours and include evening sessions at private crammers?

I've taught across Europe and the Middle East in cultures very different to British culture. Private tutoring is rife, even where illegal. Parents move heaven and earth to get their children into good schools, more so in countries where it is vital to pass the FCE or IELTs to have a chance at a reasonable job or going to university. I've known sessional agricultural workers pay for their children to have private lessons.

Even in an ex-Soviet satellite, the pressure on children to study in order to have a reasonable chance at getting a good secondary school through the state lottery system of allocating places means children study all hours of the day and night. I taught Romanian kids who, at 14, had a better grasp of the English language than many British undergraduates - - and it was their third language.

It is Britain's historical economic wealth and stability that has allowed us, as a country, to be so lenient and wishy washy about state education between 5-18. The predicament for children in other countries is nowhere near as relaxed.

@sionnahbeag

I wish they would do that, but I realistically don’t see it happening any time soon because even the Labour Party is full of rich twats with rich twat friends - they didn’t even oppose the raise in the threshold for 40% taxation. They’re just not going to do anything that makes them too unpopular.

Unless there is huge educational reform throughout the system, removing independent schools will do nothing but create greater rifts in house prices between postcodes.

sionnachbeag

I don’t get why you are so did believing

We bought our house 22 years ago.

With work we have done on it turning it from a 2 bed 1 bath with a detached outbuilding to a 4 bed 2 bath with a 1 bedroom annexe it has gone up 5 fold.

We are moving to a cheaper area that is still perfectly commutable to London and buying a bigger place and then a holiday home.

I don’t see what our income levels have to do with how we have added value to our property or the rise in property prices

@Dapplegrey because I had DD when I was 17 and didn’t make any big decisions about her life (including whether or not to keep the pregnancy) until she was about 5 and I left university and got my first job. By that point she was settled at a school she adored, and still does, and the only other option was to pull her out and put her into a school rated as Poor and where she would be an extreme ethnic minority. I don’t know why I need to justify it to internet strangers. I love her and she’s been so nurtured and cared for and educated in ways I just didn’t have energy to support between university, work and being a single parent so I don’t regret my decision at all. As I said if we lived in a naice village it would be a non issue and much easier to live my principles

Are such schools and nurseries private schools? Should they be nationalised?

France has just made school obligatory from age three, free of course, so if the political will is there it can be done.

BTW I looked up the Treehouse school. It looks lovely and I hope whoever's child it was is very happy there. At the risk of labouring the point, there is a similar small, nurturing class for children with autism at my son's state school (not in the UK).

the Labour Party is full of rich twats with rich twat friends

Poowilly you can’t be on your uppers either if you’re sending you dc to private school.

it is Britain's historical economic wealth and stability that has allowed us, as a country, to be so lenient and wishy washy about state education between 5-18

Better to be wishy washy than having 5 year olds committing suicide because they got a B instead of an A in a test.

Do we really want to go down that route?

why aren't other more successful economies copying our world winning formula

Perhaps other countries have a better state education sector?