Abolishing private schools - how would it work in practice?

[Dongdingdong]

Labour has voted to abolish private schools:

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-public-private-school-abolish-eton-vote-conference-corbyn-education-policy-a9115766.html

Whether you agree with this or not, I don’t understand how the logistics would work. Would private schools suddenly cease to exist from say, summer 2023, with all pupils forced to find a place at the local state school for the autumn term onwards? What would happen to the buildings and facilities - would they remain as state schools or be sold off to developers for example?

milvey this is Corbyn we’re talking about, do you really need to ask if he’ll be including Jewish schools? He’ll be driving the demolition truck himself with his red army followers saluting watching as he destroys them.

Why - if this happens now, today, it won’t be the best students will it?

My dad managed to get his arse into Glasgow uni from a small, overcrowded council house in the arse end of the city from a crap state school. His parents worked hard to get him there - and so did he. I went to a shit state and didn’t bother my arse so ended up in a mediocre uni (and rightly so).

We need school standards to rise and kids encouraged to strive.

granny24- all the good students from private schoold will simply wait till clearing, or leave private school before their exams and enrol in a comprehensive, sixth form college or private FE college so that they look like "miscellaneous" or mature students. And you know what? The universities and private schools will support them. Forcing Russell Group institutions (which include Oxbridge) to accept D grade calibre students from state schools in your "ration" instead of A grade calibre ones won't work. Such students themselves will drop out when they are repeatedly failing tests and exams and can't work out what's going on in the course. University places - like nurseries and state schools - are subsidised by the taxpayer too, and having places wasted due to a hi dropout rate is bad for taxpayers.
Newsflash: Oxbridge and other Russell Group ALREADY give preferential bias to state school and comprehensive school applicants - for courses that would normally require grades of 3 As from a private school applicant, they have been known to drop requirements to AAB or even BBB for comprehensive school applicants (I know many who have received such offers). So state applicants are already bring given help, if they have the ability and the motivation. But guess what- not everybody wants to go to Oxbridge/Russell Group universities and not everyone wants to be in politics.

WTF Jas what are you talking about? The UK came 15th out of 70 in the 2015 PISA league tables for science. In the twenties for Maths and Reading

Oh yes shocking isn't it?
How many of those 70 are developed and mature economies i.e. our immediate international competitors.

A country like the UK with its so called world beating Uni's should be top five, not languishing in the teens and mid 20s.

Its not because it has v poor state education, Labour are trying to address this.... unlike the Tories who wish to keep the state sector under funded.

How would it work in practice?

The teachers there would still be able to teach, they're not going to get sacked.

So to make the maths easy, around 7% of children go to private schools.
So if you took 200 children, 14 of them could be in a private school class, and the other 186 in state schools.
14 have one teacher.
The others would be in classes of 30+, so that's 6 classes of 31 - as an example.

Altogether there are 7 teachers. so the new schools would all have classes of 27 (or occasionally 28) instead of 31 without employing anyone else or changing any setups (bar moving a few chairs and desks into the previously private school classes).

The facilities would be shared between all of the pupils, so every one of those 7 classes would have access to the private schools gigantic playing fields, full range of sports equipment, up-to-date computing equipment, music facilities - many have art studios with kilns, proper theatre spaces, recording studios, large libraries, SEN departments etc. Some of those things could be moved around to the other schools, or pupils could travel to the private school (using their minibuses/coaches) to use them regularly.

Parents currently paying school fees would no longer have to, yet their children would still have full access to all of those facilities (just have to share them a bit more).

Parents previously paying school fees would suddenly be aware of things like the narrow nature of the national curriculum, would make a fuss to ensure that languages, arts, public speaking, lateral thinking and subjects like psychology or philosophy A-levels are still available to what will now be the whole of the nation.

Statistically, children with the potential to cure cancers are more likely to come from that 93% previously underfunded than a narrow 7%, so it's more likely that society will benefit. Some future genius in science or technology, or a great musician or even politician will no longer be hampered by having to share a textbook between 3, with not enough equipment or supervision to do more than the absolute necessary to pass an exam.

It is monstrous that children are not all given equal access to equipment, resources, teachers' attention etc. Can you imagine going to a playgroup where some toddlers were given only a few chipped bricks and a couple of toys to be shared between a large group of them, while the others were fenced off into a large space with tables filled with jigsaws, clay, brand new bricks, were surrounded by staff to sing songs and learn the alphabet?
It would feel wrong.
And it is still wrong, until a person has become an adult, to limit their education based on whether their parents can (no matter with what sacrifices) afford to send them somewhere radically better-funded.

93% of the population should be behind this idea, and as they'll be saving a load of money every year for the same facilities, so should most of the 7% too.

@duffeldaisy

Agree with everything you said.

But it takes away choice. Government should not be in a position to dictate where we live, where we work or how we educate our kids.

But it takes away choice. Government should not be in a position to dictate where we live, where we work or how we educate our kids.

Yes, you're right, money should buy you more options. It'd be horrendous to only have the choices available to you that the poorer people have.

You could still live where you wanted , work where you wanted and educate your child either at state school or at home. Same as everyone else.

duffle

Please explain how the state is going to fund the going concern of private schools? You do realise that the only reason that the private schools have the facilities they do is because parents pay for them? With current funding levels (and don’t forget you’ll need to absorb another 600,000 children) it would be impossible to even maintain current facilities.

But it takes away choice

For 7% of children.

The other 93% have no choice. So it isn't a choice

Private school is not a choice for the majority of people.

We're constantly told about families who go without holidays, meals out, drive an old car and live of the proverbial Mumsnet chicken so as to send their kids to private school.

A huge chunk of the population lives like anyway, without even paying school fees. It is no choice for them.

It is monstrous that children are not all given equal access to equipment, resources, teachers' attention etc

They aren’t given equal access to these things in the state sector now, and still wouldn’t be if private schools were to be abolished.

How on earth do you think the government would actually afford to maintain these facilities? They can barely manage basic maintenance on the shitty facilities they already have - how are they going to manage to cover the cost of educating the extra 7% of children, plus pay all the extra costs of maintaining and running the facilities they've pinched redistributed? That'll be on top of the enormous legal fees they'd run up in the process of trying to actually do this as they'd be fought every step of the way.

How about if they can afford that much extra investment in education they just invest it in the state schools we already have?

bar moving a few chairs and desks into the previously private school classes).

Except that at our school you can’t fit 27 in the classrooms...

How on earth do you think the government would actually afford to maintain these facilities?

I imagine the schools would become academies which would then start selling off their assets bit by bit to pay for the day to day running of the school. Like state schools are doing.

Aloadoftwaddle. Ah, that makes perfect financial sense....so just run them into the ground too? 🙄

Aloadoftwaddle. Ah, that makes perfect financial sense....so just run them into the ground too?

Yep, I'd imagine so. After all, the schools are privately owned so I can't see how the government would have any claim to them. I'd imagine the schools would also be able to choose to close their doors and sell off their assets for their own benefit.

So people can only spend their money the way the government says? So no holidays then - none needs a holiday so they?

selling off their assets bit by bit to pay for the day to day running of the school. Like state schools are doing.

End result - after a few years (number varies by facilities/land available for flogging) the awesome extra facilities are all gone, and the so called improvement as a result of putting the private school facilities in to the state sector is non existent. It doesn't pull the state schools up, just pulls the previously private schools down.

We don't have academies up here (thank fuck, they sound like a disaster going by threads on here!) so if this happened the land/assets would be owned by the local council. Who would have them sold off in about 3 seconds flat, it wouldn't even be a case of gradual attrition over years - they'd just sell them straight to the nearest developer.

So people can only spend their money the way the government says?

Yep, there are quite a few things we're not permitted to spend it on. You also can't pass all of it onto your kids when you die.

However, it's not spending it on education that would be outlawed- presumably, tennis and swimming lessons etc would be still ok- it's charging it for attendance at a primary or secondary school that would be banned.

End result - after a few years (number varies by facilities/land available for flogging) the awesome extra facilities are all gone, and the so called improvement as a result of putting the private school facilities in to the state sector is non existent. It doesn't pull the state schools up, just pulls the previously private schools down

No, there is a benefit. But it's not about stuff or class sizes. It's about putting more middle and high attainers with involved parents into state schools. There's a similar logic behind getting rid of grammars.

daisy your numbers don't work. They can only afford 5 teachers now because the cost of maintaining the buildings and facilities are in multiples of that spent maintaining the state school. Same for running the minibuses and coaches. Or perhaps they sell most of the facilities and only sacrifice one of the teachers.

Some of the private school teachers leave, for the same reason they left state education originally, they want the freedom to actually teach, not kowtow to bureaucracy and whatever the current DofE vogue is. Some of the more experienced state teachers leave for the same reason, the added workload is the final straw.

So now you have 5/6 teachers with a large proportion of those nqt, none specialists etc. Nobody has the time or money for the extra curricular.

The sen room is standing room only, with even more clashing needs because the state schools can't afford to keep on the support staff and small ratios anymore than they could afford them before the private was closed.

So zero improvement.

Your playgroup analogy is incorrect. The council fund free playgroups. Some have amazing toys, and some reasonably good. To get in you need to show your mortgage statement, or commit to volunteering every week. Or you could be lucky and get in anyway. Other playgroups just get some broken bricks, and are mainly in deprived areas or for dc deemed to be less able than peers. All three types are very hit and miss about dc with sn.

Someone sets up a private playgroup, charges to get in, and naturally has great toys. Sometimes loads better than the best council group, sometimes ok and the cheaper groups just have toys on a par with the reasonable council groups. Some have toys specifically for dc with sn.

The council, and some of their playgroup users promote the ridiculous idea the private groups are to blame for the unfairness, and should share their toys.

Our friends kids go to an amazing (catholic) state school - they have sports grounds that would put a sports academy to shame, science labs, theatre, auditorium... maybe they ought to share and share alike with the not so good state schools down the roads. And those schools could share with the really crap ones?

Aloadoftwaddle. Sorry, explain again how you believe this will be funded, bearing in mind the massive current underfunding in state education?

Whilst you’re at it, please also explain how Labour plan to abolish some key aspects of employment legislation, eg TUPE or are they also planning to find additional money to fund the higher salaries and benefits of independent sector teachers? 🤔🤦‍♀️

My experience is that it simply doesn't work ALoadOfTwaddle. Maybe it does in some places, but no amount of actively engaged parents were improving our catchment school. Their results - yeah, the engaged parents were improving those by teaching their children or getting them tutored, but they weren't actually improving the school or the educational standards.