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?

Should we all drive the same car, live in the same size homes, eat the same food?

That’s a complete red herring. None of those things affect long term life chances.

@milveycrohn

You would also need to abolish extra tutoring after school. Abolish parents (many of whom may also be teachers, themselves) from giving their children extra lessons at home. Ban interested parents from taking their children to museums and art galleries, holidays abroad, etc You would aso have to prevent home schooling, prevent the good independent schools (Eton, etc), from moving to Ireland, etc So, not possible, in my view. The real aim should be to improve state education, so that no one wants to privatedly educate their children.

Of course you can't ban parental input - that's ridiculous! State education will not be improved when parents have the option to buy privalege for their children by sending them private. The rich and powerful simply have no skin in the game and no incentive to see things improve for everyone.

@year5teacher private schools aren't just for rich parents.

I went to a private secondary school, my mum earns £15k a year, i got a full bursary.

There is a choice for parents to make for schoola for their kids, its no different choosing one state school over another because one is great and the other is crap

After today's fiasco, I agree. Shameful that people can buy results.

And why exactly do you think it's ok for you to tell me how to spend my money? @year5teacher

Some children with sen attend independent schools because there is no state school place for those children.

Yanbu at all. Private education is not morally justifiable. I say that having been to private school. Just because reforming this system wouldn't solve every aspect of inequality doesn't mean it wouldn't solve some aspects of it. If everyone used the state system there would be a lot more incentive for powerful people to push the government to improve it, rather than just buying their way out of it.

@Irreversible

I knew it would only be a matter of time before the old trope about rich people being hard-working and wholly deserving of all of their wealth and poor people being responsible for their own poverty was brought out. Does your cleaner work hard? Do care workers not work hard? What about those who have inherited their wealth - what 'hard work' have they done to warrant their wealth? Hard work is not a ticket to wealth, and the reverse is certainly not true either.

People seem determined to blame the poor, if only to assuage their own guilty conscience.

I know, it’s mad isn’t it. To believe that “hard work and a good attitude” unlocks all the same doors, depending on if you go to eton or if you go to a shit state comp is just, in my opinion, wilfully ignorant. It’s this attitude that keeps the whole sorry system going. That’s not to say all state comps are shit, of course.

Why not argue for state secondaries to receive £37k per pupil funding, rather than argue for nuts-and-bolts, run off the back of a reused envelope provision for all?

No they shouldn't be banned. If you can't afford private schools, find other opportunities to make things better for your kids. No one is equal in terms of education anyway. It's all dependent on the school, good state schools, poor state schools, good or bad private schools, where you live, the parents, academic ability, other opportunities that are available outside of school, do the parents go the extra mile or not. A level playing field is simply not possible.

@yawnsvillex

And why exactly do you think it's ok for you to tell me how to spend my money? *@year5teacher*

This is just as silly as me saying “exactly do you care more about your money than children’s futures being determined by their household income?”

Spend your money how you like, as I quote clearly stated at the start of my OP. I’m not here to berate individual people for what they do with their money. The blame doesn’t lie with the people, it lies with the government and the way they uphold systemic inequality.

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?

YANBU. I understand your POV. But if this is morally wrong, then is it morally wrong to buy spacious houses with pleasant gardens in safe areas in the catchment of good schools? Wrong to fill our houses with books, read and discuss them, take our DC to theatre, gigs and concerts, museums and galleries, good restaurants, opera and lectures in subjects that interest them, to take them abroad to places of cultural significance, on skiing holidays? To pay for ballet, chess, extra academic tuition? To encourage golf and tennis as socially appropriate pastimes in high earning circles? To buy extra workbooks to help them tackle subjects they struggle with and put in the hours with them to get them up to speed with their peers?

Because a lot of people who deplore private schools do these without a qualm, knowing that their children will thereby 'access a generally better level of education, which in turn can affect their trajectories for the rest of their lives'. Why is one so morally dubious and the other good parenting? No one ever bothers to reply to this question on threads like this. I suspect because they don't have a rational answer.

@reefedsail

Why not argue for state secondaries to receive £37k per pupil funding, rather than argue for nuts-and-bolts, run off the back of a reused envelope provision for all?

Please read the thread or at least my replies where I have said many times that I want the good education to be available to all children - not for all children to have a poor education. I mean, I’m clearly a teacher.

If higher earners who have worked hard to build a better life for their families

Do you think higher earners are the only people who work hard for their families? High earnings are not directly related to how hard you work.

I agree in principle that all children should have equal access to the same high quality education. I would happily abolish private schools if doing so would achieve that equality and quality. But it simply wouldn't.

Getting rid of private schools will not magically improve state schools. Really, why would it? I say this as a teacher who's taught in both sectors and have dc in state comprehensives but would send them private like a shot if I could afford to.

Private school is a red herring in most cases. Those children would have done well anyway.
Except the advantage isn't just educational, it's about networking and contacts too - otherwise why would politics and the law have such over-representation from private education?
It's a shitty setup that discourages meritocracy and encourages cronyism and it's getting harder for bright poor kids to follow certain careers, not easier; that stinks.

The comparison with the NHS is pointless and spurious - they aren't the same at all.

I have massive sympathy for the desire to improve education provision, I just don't see how anyone thinks that's going to be achieved by moving those children who are currently in UK private schools into a different type of private provision instead.

Many private schools take the kids the public sector wont.

We should obviously ban private healh, good restaurants, soft toilet paper. Only government approved basics. No choice of spending.

So - who would you take the money from to pay for this? To improve state schools significantly, and also pay for these much-improved schools to take on an extra 7% of kids (those currently in private schools).

There is a limit to how much we can tax and borrow before businesses move, individuals don’t vote for it, etc. I think we will be hitting that limit in years to come just to pay the Covid bill, not sure it’s realistic to hope for education to get more funding.

Surely you know how many times this has been done and thought about and discussed.

Back in the 70s Labour were discussing it very seriously indeed, at the time they introduced the comprehensive system and ended grammar schools.

If it would really work as you envisage then it would have been done already but there are just far too many other factors involved in this complex situation.

It is doubtful that it would be legal to ban it in UK law.

It wouldn't reduce the unfair advantage of DCs from wealthier backgrounds as many PPs have said

It would put a massive extra financial burden on the state sector

It would damage the UK economy as the independent education sector is worth around £6 billion per annum.

Why don’t we just turn to socialism and make the earners above £80k pay 80% tax while you’re there.

There was a labour government in England from 97-10 and I don’t see what they did to boost/improve education standards. Stop always making it about your own political beliefs.

Private education will never be “banned” so it’s a ridiculous argument and therefore YABU.

• I do believe that the system we have where some children have excellent opportunities and some have awful ones based on their parents money is really wrong. Household income is the biggest contributor towards the education attainment gap*

Abolishing private schools wouldn't address that though. Parental income would merely buy a house in catchment for a naice comprehensive.

Mother's education is the biggest predictor by the way.

If higher earners who have worked hard to build a better life for their families

As I said, I wouldn't ban them, but this type of comment is flat out offensive and is basically gaslighting. People at all.income levels work hard and often much harder at lower income.

I went to private school, parents there were not especially hard working and the majority had inherited wealth in their families.

So basically, the only 2 arguments I'm seeing against the OP's post are:

1. Inequality is everywhere, so why bother
2. Don't tell me what to do with my money

1. is wilfully defeatist - just because inequality manifests in many forms, doesn't mean we can't work towards mitigating it in this particular form. Yes, we will never eliminate some level of inequality, but there are models which promote far greater levels of social mobility - see the Scandinavian education model.

1. is just selfish, and basically indicates that you don't care about the educational outcomes of anyone but your own little darlings.

This issue does interest me. I think the struggle lies not in banning private schools, but in making state schools so string, so desirable that only a fool would part with money to get their child educated. right now, that's far from the case.

But there will never be a level playing field. Life is not fair. My DS went to an excellent private school. He thrived there in a way I know he wouldn't have at a state school, because they threw support at him that just isn't available in the state system. But then... he's miniscule for his age, with some noticable physical impairments as well as ASD. That's bloody unfair. That's no start in adult life, being a tiny man with disabilities. Would I swap his excellent schooling for a six foot, healthy physique and no ASD? Yes, every time. He's more likely to fare well in life if he's state-educated, tall and neurotypical than stunted, disabled and privately educated. I just shifted the playing field a tiny way in his favour because I couldn't do anything about the rest. Other people have other advantages. That was his.