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.

And a PP brings up the point about SEN schools. I have one boy in the non-maintained sector and one in the state sector. Both being extremely well served in relation to their specific needs. DS2's state school is excellent (actually better on paper, in OFSTED's eyes than DS1's) but entirely inappropriate for DS1. There is absolutely nothing for DS1's particular needs in the state sector.

We need proper investment in state schools, and engagment for all students, not just for the ones with parents who care.

Unless you get all students engaged then no amount of money will make a difference. You can also never reduce the number of apathetic parents although I can accept apathetic, it's the aggressive ones who think that the fruit of their loins can do no wrong. There is a real link between poor parental attitude and attainment. They're generally the type with too much time on their hands through not working.

This ridiculous proposal is purely because the Labour party hate Boris Johnson. They are prepared to punish thousands of children because they are annoyed that Boris Johnson went to Eton. If I had a tiny shred of respect for Labour left, it's now completely gone.

People don’t like to admit that the quality of education in state schools is woefully inadequate. If you remove the private sector (and therefore the well educated and highly competent individuals they produce who dominate the upper echelons of our society) the inadequacy becomes less visible. The majority of the population get to feel better about themselves because there are even fewer people significantly better than them and the government is no longer under pressure to improve the services they provide. It’s a win win until people like me leave and taking taxable income with me. Lazy idiots.

The state sector does not equip people for top jobs.

Could I point out that the country would not be in the mess it's if we'd chosen state-educated Ed Miliband instead of the very expensively-educated David Cameron as PM? And we're about to have foisted upon us a privately-educated PM who is manifestly not up to the job.

Perhaps the problem is prejudice like this not the state schools themselves?

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.

Well, of course if state schools could pick only those pupils likely to do well their results would be great! What happens to those not picked? They don't just go away.

HPFA, Ed Miliband did not have the foresight to predict that changing the parameters of membership in the Labour Party could led to wholesale entrism, a phenomenon that is now destroying the party, so I wouldn't suggest he would have been a better option for Prime Minister.

It's not so much academic achievement that private schools promote (though many excel in this area), but rather that private schools focus on promoting the overall development of a pupil. They provide encouragement and recognition for sports, music, drama, IT and leadership in a way that most state schools could never manage.

The question is why? I look at a very successful private prep in my area and a state primary, and wonder why the model of that private school cannot be replicated in the state sector.

And it's not such a ridiculous notion. The difference in fees/finding per child is only about £2k a year, and the private school has to run its own properties and offers free breakfast and after school clubs. The teachers are pretty much the same. Inclusion is actually better at the private: they take SEN children as regular intake. The private takes more BAME pupils on average.

The only differences are 1) ethos, 2) parents and 3) behaviour.

And those are the three things that teachers in the state sector say, time and again, that are the causes of most problems they face. They are also the issues that politicians categorically refuse to address.

It works for Finland.
There are private schools in Finland. My colleague was sending his children to one as his local government comprehensive was attended by children from quite rough families.

Private schools have become relatively so much more expensive in the past few decades, far fewer parents can afford them. I read just the other day of a lot of prep schools forced to close for lack of pupils.

When I was a child, parents on very moderate incomes could afford the fees, even if it meant being seriously skint most of the time. My own parents were fairly typical. Now, what with the vastly increased cost of housing, and the huge relative increase in fees, it's just not an option for so many.

Personally I think it a good thing that the sort of parents who'd have gone private in the past, who won't put up with poor standards, who expect their children to work and do well, will be putting pressure on the state system.

Our dds attended a selective and very academic independent secondary school, but neither they nor more than a tiny fraction of their ex schoolfriends can afford to send their own children to private schools. And there must be so many similar. In the long run, IMO, this can only mean improvement to the state system generally.

There are private schools in Finland, but crucially they're funded publicly by the same criteria as public schools.

There are private schools in Finland, but crucially they're funded publicly by the same criteria as public schools.
Yes - but parents can also top up the government funding for extra frills or non-core subjects.

Once again, has anyone thought of banning the use of private tutors by state -school parents for their children? I am thinking of a well-off family I know who uses the local lacklustre comprehensive plus tutors as required and got a child into Bristol with lower grades because of the school postcode? This is a skiing/every hobby going/ very engaged middle class family. Good for them, I would have done the same, but how is it ethically better than using a private school?

Once again, has anyone thought of banning the use of private tutors by state -school parents for their children?
You can't be serious. I have a tutor for my 4 y.o. as I don't speak English very well myself, but still want DC to fit in with their English speaking peers.
What is the harm happening here, to the extent that you are suggesting to ban it?

Not quite the same as using a tutor to boost A level results! That’s not a level playing field.

I should add that I would do the same thing if my children were at our local comprehensive. But my child would then be unfairly advantaged over a child whose parents couldn’t or wouldn’t do that.

@packingsoapandwater

I didn't particularly want to suggest that Ed Miliband was perfect but I find it hard to believe that he would not have been slightly less self-regarding than either Cameron or Johnson. But clearly it's too small a sample to suggest any inherent superiority for state- school educated!! There is surely a problem though with people making blanket statements like "state schools don't equip people for top jobs". If this attitude occurs in even a minority of those people currently in "top jobs" then anyone can see that's a problem.

Personally I think it's a complex issue and I can actually see both sides of the argument - I think a lot of the reasoning on both sides is very simplistic. The main problem is we have such an unequal society in the first place - schools can only do so much to counteract this. On the other hand I just don't believe the "people wouldn't use private schools if state schools were better" argument. I've known too many people who chose private even though the state schools available to them were perfectly good to think that that is true in all cases.

Well, of course if state schools could pick only those pupils likely to do well their results would be great! What happens to those not picked? They don't just go away

DD’s prep was not academically selective. They also had well over the average number of children with SEN (over 50% in DD’s class alone). They’re also a top performing school. The tired stereotype that private schools only do well because they’re selective on an academic basis isn’t always correct.

Not quite the same as using a tutor to boost A level results!
Why not? People have money, and decide to spend it to benefit their children according to their own values.
Other parents choose to spend similar money on playstations or £500 birthday parties - which all seem to be the norm in the local primary school.

I agree, and the point is that Labour will never be able to stop some inequity in education. Targeting private schools is just an easy one.

I am left wing. My son went to state primary and has managed 2 years at state secondary - an Ofstead outstanding one at that. Academically he is doing well, but he has ASD and, like a previous poster, the school is too much for him and his mental healh and wellbeing are suffering as did his sister's who completely school refused from age 12 and, at 18, is still suffering from the fallout of that.

So what should I do? Ignore his mental health and hope he doesnt top himself in order to carry on in a system that isnt suitable for him and in which he feels increasingly worthless? Or sell everything that isnt nailed down, apply for scholarships/bursaries (Im a non home owning social housing tenant on a low income due to being a carer for DD who has a progressive degenerative disease) and apportion his DLA payments to get him into a small private nurturing school for 3 years.
I chose the latter.

If it's a problem that so many Prime Ministers went to Eton, it's the political system that needs change. Changing education is pushing on a string.

There's lots we could do different. I once imagined how I would design democracy from scratch in the 21st century, I came up with a system in which there was no physical parliament, no general elections and no political parties. (But with hindsight I would go the other way on political parties, instead of making them redundant I would institutionalise them.)

We all use the NHS and look how amazing that is

Rich poshos haven't managed to drag that up by it's bootstraps, in fact they are increasingly going private which most people would agree lessens the strain on the NHS. Not sure why we think that's fine and education isn't, after all, your bog standard NHS consultant spends some of his time doing private work when he could be treating the masses.

Maybe so many PMs went to Eton because Eton produces the kind of people who want to be politicians? Perhaps they are good at it? Everyone bangs on about state educated Mhairi Black and how refreshingly real she is, but christ, she's chaos walking and never turns up!!

There is surely a problem though with people making blanket statements like "state schools don't equip people for top jobs". If this attitude occurs in even a minority of those people currently in "top jobs" then anyone can see that's a problem.

The thing is, and I say this as someone who went to a state comprehensive, I don't think they do.

It's taken me until middle age to achieve the presence of mind and personal belief in my abilities to take a leadership role in my life. The same is true for my DH.

Mind you, we both went to horrendous comps.

Private schools, by contrast, do seem to produce 18 year olds that can operate in the real world.

Of course, this is not true for every school, but there does seem to be an issue in the state system of not quite knowing exactly what a school is supposed to do. Does it transfer knowledge? Prepare pupils for work? Funnel pupils into careers? Tutor them to pass exams? Encourage their talents?

Because all these things are really quite different, and state schools don't particularly succeed at any of them at present.

I imagine that abolishing private schools would lead to those who are wealthy enough to do so educating their children at home with a private tutor, the way they used to centuries ago. I can't see them saying 'oh well, guess Tarquin and Jemima are going to the local failing comp now.'

Or they'll look at international boarding schools for secondary.

Targeting private schools seems like a horrible combination of authoritarianism and envy to me, and I say that as someone who definitely couldn't afford one.

I imagine that abolishing private schools would lead to those who are wealthy enough to do so educating their children at home with a private tutor, the way they used to centuries ago

If we hadn't been able to use a private school for DD when she was offered a primary place, I would have home-schooled her. My mother, who was a teacher throughout her life and was head-hunted to various schools because of her excellence at SEN provision, would have given up work to tutor DD.