To think private schooling should be abolished

[year5teacher]

Just to preface, I’m not criticising individual parents. You have to do what you consider best for your child - for example if the choice was a private school with excellent dyslexia support and a state school that was notoriously bad, for example, you must make the correct judgement for your child.

Just to get that out the way so the thread isn’t flooded with “well I sent DC to private school because...”. I’m not talking about individuals, I’m talking about the system as a whole.

AIBU to believe it’s morally wrong for us as a society to allow children of higher earners to access a generally better level of education, which in turn can affect their trajectories for the rest of their lives?

Yes agree re charitable status.
Definitely need more scholarship and advantages for other dc in the area.

@SengaStrawberry

I wouldn’t abolish private schools as it’s personal choice. What I would like to see done away with is the lack of social mobility elsewhere in society that disadvantages state school kids. There’s no will for that with all the private school types we have in government and their cronies through who have benefitted handsomely from this

Great point

Nope yabu.
I would consider sending my dd to private school, I would also consider sending her to public schools. There are benefits to both types of schooling.
Would you ask to abolish faith schools? Boarding schools?

I think maybe your biggest mistake, OP, was seeking and expecting a rational debate on Mumsnet.

And I'm not trying to be flippant when I say that. I genuinely don't think it's a worthwhile pursuit.

@Swelteringmeltering

Yes agree re charitable status. Definitely need more scholarship and advantages for other dc in the area.

40% of places in most independent schools are for children with bursaries

Not sure they should do more than that tbh otherwise how do they stay afloat?

Schools and NHS should be taken out of politics and have a special team devoted to them, cross party and other experts.

I don't believe Labour did much for education either and I don't trust any party with it.
The Irony is our head is very obviously far left and we have to listen to her spout out all the time. She champions the failing secondary she used to teach at, which has been failing pupils for decades. Etc etc. Seems to think she is pushing equality in various strange strategies and totally left us parents in the lurch over lockdown.

The Irony is that her school is propped up by invested parents who pay for the gaps.
The Irony is a few parents currently and in the past feel her school is totally letting down our dc with other learning needs.

How is that creating a fair and equal society? They don't seem to be in the slightest bit interested.
My own dds experience has been shocking. For the sake of very, very small tweaks, and tips given to me by outsiders, in some basic areas she's gone from 3 years of total failure ie 0 or 1 to 10/10 or 9/10.

How can any school defend this or justify this?
What will happen to similar pupils like my daughter who don't have the back up mine has?
Literally the most simple tweak has given her a way into learning.
But not provided oral suggested by her school, under our great socialist leader.
The hypocrisy makes me want to vomit.

Ohh good topic OP, you know when a thread has so many comments in a short space of time it’s a decent debate.
I wouldn’t abolish private schools - people should choose to educate their children as they like and can afford. But I get the point, the inequality is hard to stomach and state schools should have more funding. The school I attended had great teachers but it was in a tough area and we never got much attention, teachers were (sometimes literally) firefighting. I didn’t realise until I was well past school age that I hadn’t really achieved my full potential. I still did well, my family were very pro education,but I know I’d have done even better if in a different environment.
Someone else mentioned faith schools. I would abolish those actually. Based purely on personal experience. I attended catholic schools in the west of Scotland that bred sectarianism and encouraged divides. When I was 16 a pro life champion visited us and told us never to use contraception but trust out cycles as it was a sin. We were shown a video of an abortion as well. This was almost 20 years ago so perhaps old practice but it’s always stuck with me.

@RedtreesRedtrees

It starts with the right macrostrategy - big thinking that abstracts out complexities that can be resolved if the social and political will is there.

Sarralim - “The inequality of the UK will remain it’s downfall” Sadly I think you are correct.

Are there any European counties that have a good state system and not much in the way of private education?

@Devlesko Your experience is familiar. When my son was in Y2 he had a meltdown because the teacher told him he got the answer to a Maths question wrong. The meltdown was because my son was right and the teacher was wrong and the teacher wouldn't let him explain why he knew this. He could already solve a rubiks cube and was reading Trachtenberg's book on speed mathematics which he found so hilarious that it would cause him to laugh out loud. He isn't a harden worker. He just has an encyclopaedic memory for things that interest him (Maths and Science) and absolutely no ability to pretend he is interested in things he finds boring. He is also massively confrontation averse. Some private schools that are big on rugby etc would have been more of a disaster for him than the local comprehensive.

@Purpleice many European countries have maintained the grammar system, with some countries having three tiers of schools. This is as politically controversial in the UK as private education. Also, in many countries the private schools have much lower fees. Eg in Ireland (and Australia I think) the teachers' salaries are paid by the state. I have a friend whose kids go to a private school in France and the set up sounds similar there.

@Justjoshin22

Ohh good topic OP, you know when a thread has so many comments in a short space of time it’s a decent debate. I wouldn’t abolish private schools - people should choose to educate their children as they like and can afford. But I get the point, the inequality is hard to stomach and state schools should have more funding. The school I attended had great teachers but it was in a tough area and we never got much attention, teachers were (sometimes literally) firefighting. I didn’t realise until I was well past school age that I hadn’t really achieved my full potential. I still did well, my family were very pro education,but I know I’d have done even better if in a different environment. Someone else mentioned faith schools. I would abolish those actually. Based purely on personal experience. I attended catholic schools in the west of Scotland that bred sectarianism and encouraged divides. When I was 16 a pro life champion visited us and told us never to use contraception but trust out cycles as it was a sin. We were shown a video of an abortion as well. This was almost 20 years ago so perhaps old practice but it’s always stuck with me.

My phone is so hot because it keeps pinging with emails 😂 You make really good points and a balanced comment. It is shit when you have state schools like that and I don’t blame people for thinking “well it’s a no brainer, I’m not sending my kid there”. I actually don’t think there’s a totally simple answer. I still believe IANBU but I also see it’s more nuanced than I thought. Faith schools are definitely something else though. Someone right at the start of the thread asked me about it and I didn’t really get what they meant. Hearing your experience is very shocking

@fsklgf

I think maybe your biggest mistake, OP, was seeking and expecting a rational debate on Mumsnet.

And I'm not trying to be flippant when I say that. I genuinely don't think it's a worthwhile pursuit.

It’s been largely ok other than the same repeated poor arguments and one person calling me a dickhead 😂

I’ve definitely heard some good viewpoints here. I know what you mean though.

Where I live, the gap is not between those children at the private schools and those children at the state schools. It’s between those kids at state schools like my son is at compared to state schools in other parts of our city. We live in an expensive, affluent catchment. Kids at our school do all the extra curricular stuff such as piano, rugby, horse riding etc same as the kids at the private school. Very different experience got the kids also from a state school but one 4 miles up the road with extremely high levels of FSM.

Well in France and Switzerland there are plenty of fee paying schools and nobody makes such a huge fuss about the difference between state vs independent. That is because the quality of state education is good and it is just seen as personal choice. In fact, in Switzerland you can pay to go to a state grammar in another district for about 14k a year if you don’t like your local state grammar option (I don’t know if that means the cantons have that much funding per child). For example, some districts now offer bilingual programmes. The state vs independent debate is far too politicised in the U.K. probably because a number of politicians went to the same independent institutions in the past and it is seen as birth privilege etc. Rich people will just go elsewhere and sadly the U.K. is currently a bit of a sinking ship already so if you want to get rid of those top independents/other independents for which the U.K. is well known worldwide I think it would be a mistake. It is one of the things the U.K. is good at, teaching independent thought in excellent fee paying schools. State schools just need more funding. Unfortunately the Nhs is a fantastic institution in theory (aka free health care for all) but the way it works in practice can be very inefficient. You just need to read the threads of certain people on here going to various health care professionals with the same problem multiple times - the communications within the nhs can be very inefficient due to how the system operates. Something has got to give in terms of funding and sadly here it seems to be state schools, but to make independent schools the scape goat doesn’t make sense.

40% of places in most independent schools are for children with bursaries

But the value of a bursary varies hugely, some as little as 10% isn't going to be much good to those from poorer backgrounds.

'Private school bursaries are being used to top up fees of middle class children, leading head says.'
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2019/01/25/private-school-bursaries-used-top-fees-middleclass-children/

Schools and NHS should be taken out of politics and have a special team devoted to them, cross party and other experts.

I think I agree with this. Especially because when the government are the ones planning the national curriculum it can be a disaster - look at Margaret thatcher’s stuff about not “promoting” homosexuality in schools

You can't dictate to anyone how they spend their money.

YABU. What about the cost to the state of educating an extra 5-10% of pupils if private schools were abolished? What about the overseas income to boarding school that would be lost? Over 25% of the pupils are from other countries.

My dc go to state school. They are quite average, behave well, under the radar because not SEN or very bright. I can't afford private school so I pay a school teacher to tutor them. Since being tutored they have excelled. Would you ban that too? But it helps my state school children learn and teachers can earn good money tutoring on the side?

What successive governments have failed to address is class sizes in state schools (Labour included). My children did so much better in the small classes during lockdown (I was working).

Why not campaign for smaller classes rather than abolishing private schools?

@Single2catsand1daughter

You can't dictate to anyone how they spend their money.

I’ve responded to this many times.

Regarding 'generous' bursaries...
let's not forget the schools get something out of this too. For a 10 per cent or so discount on fees they get perhaps a gifted mathematician or musician or sportsperson. Which bolsters their results (and takes the concurrent good exam results out of the state system).

Re Germany their education system isn't anything to copy. They have a type of 11 + cut off but earlier where your sent to a type of school.
Grades across Germany are not regulated either so top marks in one state mean nothing in another.
They have technical schools.
It's a shame that instead of wiping out grammars Labour didn't instead concentrate that time and money in simply making other schools better.
My high achieving dd is in a supposedly great comp. I had all good faith initially but after only 1 year and again total let down over lock down, I'm also sceptical.
Her bf went to the grammar, I couldn't get her in due to distance.
The way the grammar handled lock down was amazing. The basic communication and indeed full time table still offered.
Even before lock down they were well into Shakespeare etc, my dd was in top sets but still going over verbs etc. She got all that year's ago. The pace is slow.

My advice to any one, whether they are in private or not is, never take your eye off the ball. You cannot trust the state to educate your child. Learn the curriculum needs and get to know your child's learning style.

@Suk44 That’s why bursaries are means tested if you only need a 10% top up that’s what you get, equally if you can only scrape together a few hundred a term they’ll bridge the gap. Very few fully funded places are out there but they do exist, the school likes to see parents are making sacrifices and paying what they can.

Also I know from friends who are teachers at the very top independent schools that a huge amount of emphasis is put on social responsibility these days, far more than some of the rich kids would experience if they went to their local schools be it here or abroad. The top schools would just set up shop internationally if they were abolished here. The international elite have their own playground. It is actually quite conducive to world peace in some ways that they meet up in younger years, school days and university, often in the US. I know the Op isn’t just talking about the liked of Eton, Winchester, Westminster etc but also less known local independent schools. As regards the latter I would say it is admirable that certain people value the education of their children so much to pay that kind of money for a service that could be free. It creates employment and surely education is a good thing. I know a few people who do this and forego holidays abroad and nice foreign cars and I would argue they are supporting a “local industry” that the U.K. is famous for.