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.

YANBU it'd just put more strain on an already overstretched system. They should be thinking about proper funding for education, not more policies dreamed up in the student union bar. I think most people want better education for everyone so that people use the state system rather than the private sector willingly, rather than because they're forced to?

Private schools are not a guarantee of social mobility. People like Boris Johnson were born into families with connections, moving them into the state sector won’t achieve anything. They will still do better than the rest. Children from middle and upper class families will still do better on average, unless you will also ban museums, libraries, traveling, healthy food, private cars, etc. etc. To be honest I won’t be too surprised if Labour will try to ban it all 🤣

I don't think it would do much for inequality.

I went to a comp and there was still a clear social divide. Kids from the local council estate were in the bottom sets and none of them went on to uni. The doctors' kids all did well.

I don't think nepotism is such a big factor anymore, it is more about the exposure to things kids get.

If two 18 year olds interview for work experience at a law firm, a kid from a nice part of London with two parents in the industry is going to sound more impressive than someone from a deprived seaside town who has never met a solicitor.

They would probably say the second kid hadn't done their research but there is only so much you can find out from Google.

Also, the 7% statistics are only true for younger students. For sixth form it’s closer to 20%, and some areas of London it’s closer to 25%. So how is labour planning to accommodate all the sixth formers and hire stuff/find buildings for all of them? Are they going to buy buildings and grounds from the private schools? Who is paying for that exactly?

Honestly, the people who want this to happen are motivated by the same imaginary fears that Brexiteers had. With Brexiteers it was immigrants, with this Labour initiative it's private school pupils.

YABU. Private schooling distorts it for the rest of us

My gripe with private schools is that they still receive government subsidies, money and support which could be given to low and under performing schools

@animaginativeusername What do you mean?

What government subsidies?

THe problem with Corbyn is that he likes to say what is wrong but never has a plan for sorting it out. What would actually happen if they did attack private schools? The most likely scenario is that they take away their charitable status. That means that the school will put its fees up so that it becomes even more elitist. It might also cut some of the work that it did from a charitable point of view - eg fewer bursaries/less community use of facilities (which are rented out commercially to fill the income gap instead). The parents who are squeezed out financially then look to the state sector to educate their children and put the money they could have spent on school fees before they went up into tutoring. Net effect of tutoring - the local state school gets better results (that may well shelter some poor teaching) thereby continuing to shaft the pupils whose parents can't afford tutors.

The alternative scenario that private schools are abolished. Some of the better known private schools with international branches will sell up and emigrate to the locations of their international schools. Schools with beautiful buildings are going to be developed into luxury flats - probably bought up by international buy to let landlords - Eton isn't going to suddenly become a comprehensive for local kids. Some schools will presumably convert to academies - and the better ones will no doubt push up house prices in their catchment areas. The cost of these new academies will need to be met by the taxpayer. Other schools, closed and the assets sold off, will release a flood of pupils needing a school place - its fine to say its only 7% of the total population but no LEA is going to be happy to suddenly have to find places for 250-800 new secondary pupils. Finally, many of the parents no longer in the private system will tutor their children, either on top of their state funded education or as "home schooling". None of this will help put resources into schools in the most deprived areas.

How to instantly reform education and render the private schools redundant in two moves:

1. Have a Common/National Entrance exam at the end of year 7 based on the KS2 curriculum

1. Allow secondary schools the right to select (and expel) their own pupils using the results of said Common/National Entrance Exam.

After that? Primary Schools can teach the curriculum however they want to. As a school governor I was completely shocked at how the government interfered in education. There is no other professional that is told how to do their jobs, except teachers.

On the other side of the coin, the teachers union needs to be sorted out. This is why there is this power struggle between the Minister of Educaton and the schools. Useless and lazy teachers are almost unsackable, and the schools have no power over getting rid of disruptive pupils.

If teachers rose and fell on the results of their pupils exams, and if secondary schools could pick and choose, education would instantly improve. And the whole point of private schools (who pick and choose and expel their pupils, and rise and fall on their results) would fade away.

And if you really wanted to revolutionise?

Give parents termly vouchers so that they, not the government, are paying schools. That would really make the teachers trade union hop about and respond!

There are plenty of Labour voters working in independent schools, trust me. They're hardly going to support this campaign to put them out of a job.

DC school has an intake of 146 pupils with 50 pupils being on full bursaries. If the charitable status taken away, the school would not have the need to accommodate bursary applicants to fulfil the conditions for the tax relief. It won’t affect the paying students, only the poorer ones.. I agree, it’s politics of envy, nothing else...

How are you going to prevent the parents who can afford private pushing up house prices in the catchments for the better state schools

There have been interesting experiments elsewhere in the world with abolishing catchments and allotting schools within a given radius by lottery.

There have been interesting experiments elsewhere in the world with abolishing catchments and allotting schools within a given radius by lottery

That would be interesting. I presume they’d also have to abolish selection on faith for it to work fairly.

yep, no faith schools in the country in question (it was in Paris).

@JoJoSM2 @Fibbke will try and find the link

yep, no faith schools in the country in question (it was in Paris)

Very interesting, thanks!

www.theguardian.com/education/2019/feb/05/critics-take-aim-at-subsidies-given-to-private-schools

The really famous public schools , Elton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, Cheltenham Ladies etc will largely be unaffected by VAT on school fees. As it stands at the moment charging. VAT will enable them to also recover huge amounts of VAT on capital projects and trading activities . The schools which will be affected will be the small independent preps and less wealthy local independent day schools

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.

This.

imaginative so the govt paid for private school teachers to teach in state schools? Isn't that what you want to happen anyway? Don't see an issue there at all.

If they abolished all private schools and all those pupils had to go to their local state school then state schools would surely become even more under funded and under resourced?

I think things in healthcare and education have got so bad that some people feel they have no choice. And it's not fair. But to me, people going private for their education or hip replacement is a symptom of how bad the state systems have become through chronic underfunding, rather than a cause of it. So forcing private schools to close or change wont solve anything