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.

Sorry but to genuinely claim that those who are less well off would be disadvantaged is claptrap

So you don’t think house prices around desirable state schools would increase yet further?

The difference between the cost of my house, and a smaller house nearer to the school we didn’t get into (distance is 0.7 miles) is more than we spent for 9 years at prep school.

I really can’t understand how we have let this debate become polarised along private/state lines when it is about the end result.

If we looked at why private schools pupils are dominating jobs then we might start to see the difference in the cultures between the two and how one leads to success and the other, less so.

I have taught in both and attended both. There is a fundamental difference in how private schools are organised compared to state schools and until this is acknowledged, we won’t see the results state school pupils are capable of achieving. It is little to do with ability but so much about good quality resources, good teaching, positive, open philosophy about education, finding something for every pupil to succeed in sports/music/art wise and a calm, happy environment. Children on the whole want to succeed and do the right thing.

I cannot fathom the state schools I have worked in that allow chaotic behaviour to dominate. Seriously, damaging and often inaccurate beliefs are perpetuated that distort how things actually work.

The antagonism of faith schools under Labour, because finally, decrepit buildings that weren’t insurable half the time to hold pupils but were finally getting some money is a complete misnomer. There are generations of families who held those schools together out of a shared belief system who missed out on an equal education because of their belief. It wasn’t so long ago some religious communities, even though the children were born here, weren’t wanted in the state system and comments like ‘could catch popery’ from them were used. So, I question the criticism of them when posters use the term ‘sky fairy’.

Obv, my comments on state schools do not include the successful state schools who prob do use successful strategies.

So you don’t think house prices around desirable state schools would increase yet further?

And how does that make any difference to a family who couldn’t afford them in the first place..... they’re still unaffordable.

It’s like saying the price of champagne doubles in a poor harvest year. People still can’t afford champagne.

I don’t see how, in a free and democratic society, you can legislate to prevent people educating their kids outside the state system

It works for Finland.

And how does that make any difference to a family who couldn’t afford them in the first place..... they’re still unaffordable

And don’t you think there’ll be more of those families? Especially as house prices rise?

We need to stop fetishising Finland. There are plenty of internal criticisms of their system and we do not come from the same historical landscape as Finnish society (not as Utopian as everyone seems to think).

And don’t you think there’ll be more of those families? Especially as house prices rise?

Not sure how that supports the argument that the poor will be disadvantaged....

They still won’t be able to afford to move.

Do you think there will be a rise in house prices around the best state schools?

I mean if someone could give me an actual plan of how those kids currently in private schools are going to be catered for then I’d be really interested.

Do you think there will be a rise in house prices around the best state schools?

No idea 🤷🏻‍♀️

How do you think that makes any difference to how those who cannot afford to move already?

How do you think that makes any difference to how those who cannot afford to move already?

Less chance of then achieving it? House prices increasing faster than national average?

I also doubt that the private schools would actually be abolished but if they were, the schools wouldn’t be swallowed whole into the ground and disappear.

I assume they’d be legislatively taken over by the state....

But, as I’ve said up thread, I think this is a divisive argument. Better to increase funding to state schools.

I assume they’d be legislatively taken over by the state

How? Compulsory purchase order?

Better to increase funding to state schools

I totally agree.

Less chance of then achieving it? House prices increasing faster than national average?

They can’t afford it, many people cannot afford to buy a home.....

Makes little difference to them. It’s a stupid argument to claim that abolishing private schools will disadvantage the poor.

Which someone did up thread, and that’s what I called bullshit on.

I also think state schools are focusing too much on the methodology of education as a discipline at the expense of the methodology of the subject - something private schools deliberately avoid (and are allowed to).

I’m not going to make policy up on a MN thread.

I’d leave that to qualified policy experts.

I’m also not going to make silly statements about the poor and removing private schools either.

I’m not going to make policy up on a MN thread

I’d leave that to qualified policy experts

Funny. Nobody with an interest in these schemes ever does want to hazard a suggestion as to how it might work.

Not hard to see why....

Let's be honest, one advantage of private schools is that they can easily expel wee shites (see the other thread on behaviour in schools), leaving the rest of the pupils with a better learning environment. I fail to see how moving the 7% of pupils currently in the independent sector into state schools would fix this. Nor would more funding.

This was part of the end of year letter from one of the London independent schools we use.

If independent schools in our area close (there are a lot of them)! there would be absolutely nowhere for the thousands of pupils to go. Over-subscribed is an understatement in areas such as ours.

Oh so you think the current system is working.....

Of course it is

And that those lowly poor types would be shafted if we got rid of private schools.

While failing to acknowledge that it’s well out of their reach anyway.

I’ve actually checked what this Labour policy is all about. It’s not policy - it’s going to be put to the Labour Party conference. It’s about removing their privileges and integrating them into the state system.

They managed to do it with failing banks, so I’m it’s not beyond the whit of man to manage it with schools.

But as I’ve already said, it’s just avoiding the issue of underfunding in the state sector.

Our society is incredibly unequal and private education is part of that

Sorry I didn’t mean that private schools are the only option to nurture, but they do an exceptional job in many cases because they have advantages that state don’t such as smaller class sizes and fundamentally being accountable to paying customers. This seems to be the crux of the issue, that they are too successful? My point is that it independent schools should be allowed to play their part, rather than Labour dismantling an education system that works really well. From my personal experience, my local primary option was poor, a class size of 33 for an introvert child who wants to hide was a disaster- he was not being nurtured there.

@Zaeem5 always was known to be a good school in London

Agree OP. (And I'm a teacher who has taught in both). Independent schools are not the issue. In fact, 7% of children not being in state schools saved 7% funding. This is a distraction tactic. The issue is that state schools are chronically underfunded and over legislated and that's why they can't compete in what they offer. Some state schools are amazing, but still struggle for funds. Some private schools manage to be dire anyway. But the issue isnt with private schools existing, the issue is that politicians don't care about state schools. I dont buy that politicians would start caring if their children went to them - you would just get more elitism within the state sector with private donations to schools in wealthy areas.

As long as we have a catchment system, hatred of private schools is hypocritical - we have a social divide in our state system in exactly the way we do between state and independent. Closing independent schools would widen that gap (and remember most big independent schools have 25-30% of pupils on bursaries, so that would also vanish and the gap would widen further through a purely catchment system).

What needs to happen is reform of the state sector - without the added complication and distraction of adding that extra 7% of pupils in. The government needs to put aside the red herring of private schools and actually do something. That means funding and an entire change in the system. It does not mean academies, which were meant to mimic private school set ups but entirely dont because independent schools almost always run as not for profit - so all money goes into the school. Academies are run as businesses with executive leaders who have inflated salaries which are effectively profit. Obviously that is an entirely different ethos and was never going to work.

I'd call it rank hypocrisy.

order-order.com/2019/07/12/anti-private-school-labour-mp-founded-private-school-tutoring-company/

www.brightonandhovenews.org/2019/07/12/anti-private-education-brighton-schools-chief-criticised-for-sending-daughter-to-roedean/

www.politicshome.com/news/uk/education/schools/news/84479/theresa-may-attacks-labour-frontbenchers-sending-their-kids

I think smaller schools esp at sec would be a brilliant move. Would really help with creating a better environment.