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?

The thing is though yes in principle everyone would have access to the best healthcare and the best principle. Nobody would disagree with that, surely?

But that concept isn't transferable to a world with finite resources available.

We could say everyone could have access to the same healthcare and education (by having a communist state) but that's quite different to wishing everyone had the best healthcare and education.

I wish everyone did too but I have no idea how to make that principle come to fruition in the real world. I wish I did, obviously.

If I'm honest. If you closed my dc's school tomorrow, I wouldn't be sending them to my nearest comp. I'd move house into the catchment area of the best comp in the area which is about 10 miles away. Will that help the situation? The only way to abolish private schools is to ensure all of the state schools are of the same standard.

I actually used to work in a state primary which has a generally excellent catchment area and whilst it isn’t private, it’s about as close to it as you can get without paying the fees. The children there go skiing in the alps, go to the theatre, go to museums, go on bloody safari, all stuff that is expensive and not accessible to everyone.

Yep. Because let's be honest, lots of parents with resources don't want their kids being educated alongside the least privileged sections of society. This is why I have my doubts that even if all privately educated children did move into the state sector (which would never ever happen even if you did abolish private schooling) it would do much for the poorest.

strong not string!

@Hingeandbracket

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.

Right, like I was on my holidays in a place that happened to have an INCREDIBLY expensive (like, £11k a term) boarding school in. I admit I walked round the grounds imagining how nice it looked, whilst talking about this to my DP who is probably even more passionately opposed to private schooling than I am. Anyway I looked on Wikipedia and the AMOUNT of lawyers, army officials in high ranks, pilots, top rugby and cricket players, who went to the school is crazy. It’s quite clearly not the same for 99.9% of state schools. How is it right for people of such a high elite class to dominate?

There was a labour government in England from 97-10 and I don’t see what they did to boost/improve education standards

Don’t you? High taxation countries have better levels of health and education. We could learn a lot from Scandinavia.

I think you’re focused on the wrong thing OP and really arguing the toss on the margins between middle class kids who may have got slightly better grades or into a better university if they went private instead of state. By all means feel this isn’t fair but its a long way from the most serious problem For the kids we really need to worry about the evidence is quite clear on this - most disadvantaged is entrenched by the time kids show up on their first day of school. Someone said it up thread - household income and educational level of the mother are the overwhelming determinants of outcomes for kids. A focus on poverty reduction, decent housing, ante-natal and post-natal support, early years education, mental and physical health services, debt counselling, addition services, family counselling.... all of these things would do more to give kids a better chance in life than the marginal gain if any to be had of worrying about private school. As many have said people with practical, financial and social resources will always find ways to support their child. & while I would wholeheartedly support increasing funding for schools it’s naive to think that alone can come close to closing the gap.

Would you ban faith schools as well!

I absolutely would, AnneLovesGilbert. I think this is a much bigger issue than private schools personally. There should be no place for faith schools in a modern society. I think the divide caused by faith schools is more damaging. It is massively abused for one thing - there is a Catholic primary near me that is rated outstanding and is always over-subscribed. It is on the edge of a very deprived area yet children within the catchment who really need the excellent teaching and resources miss out because other parents will play at being Catholic long enough to get their kids in.

The children of the rich will always thrive, if there were no private schools they would have private tutors, music lessons, extra-curricular activities, family ties to help them get on in life.

Someone said it up thread - household income and educational level of the mother are the overwhelming determinants of outcomes for kids. A focus on poverty reduction, decent housing, ante-natal and post-natal support, early years education, mental and physical health services, debt counselling, addition services, family counselling.... all of these things would do more to give kids a better chance in life than the marginal gain if any to be had of worrying about private school.

Yes.

I would say it’s more about making really good standards of education accessible to everyone. I do maintain that the best levels of education shouldn’t be monopolised by wealthy people. It’s not about making things shit for people, it’s about making things good for everyone.

I think most people would agree with the principle it would be better if more people had access to good standards. But how? It's easy to say I think that every child deserves the standard of education offered by an elite private school. But saying that doesn't make more funds available, and actually abolishing them would mean those kids went into the state school system and likely move to catchment areas that have better rated state schools. I don't know the answer, but I think it's a bit of a strawman argument when people say 'why don't you think everyone deserves access to the best education?' Because how would we make that happen in reality?

Maybe we should ban grammar schools too right? Stop parents using them as an extension of the private sector through over tutoring their often average kids and denying potentially more gifted children those school spaces that aren't accessible to them because of lack of life opportunities / support /ambition / parental wealth etc etc.

@Irreversible

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.

No. The main things people are putting forward is that OP's plan reduces everyone to the lowest common denominator. Most posters have said state schools need pulling up to the levels of private.

Private school doesn’t always equate to better education.

Gary Lineker famously blamed his son’s private school, when the son didn’t get the grades he needed to get to university.

I wish that wealth didn't have such a direct impact on education levels/success but I don't think there's any way to avoid it in our society. Ban private schools and wealthy kids will get tutored to give them the advantage anyway.

Also it would be impossible for state schools to accommodate. In Edinburgh 25% of school kids are in private schools, where would they go?

I don't personally agree with private schools but we'll never be able to get rid of them

@PiataMaiNei

I actually used to work in a state primary which has a generally excellent catchment area and whilst it isn’t private, it’s about as close to it as you can get without paying the fees. The children there go skiing in the alps, go to the theatre, go to museums, go on bloody safari, all stuff that is expensive and not accessible to everyone.

Yep. Because let's be honest, lots of parents with resources don't want their kids being educated alongside the least privileged sections of society. This is why I have my doubts that even if all privately educated children did move into the state sector (which would never ever happen even if you did abolish private schooling) it would do much for the poorest.

You do have a good point! I still believe (as I’m sure everyone on this thread does) that the standards in state schooling should be higher across the board, not just for those state schools which do have a “good catchment area”. I do still feel personally that it’s wrong for a child’s entire education to be something that can be pretty much physically bought.

Banning private schools won't stop richer families from giving their children an advantage. As a previous poster mentioned, first they will all move to the areas with the best schools. Then they will spend a lot of money on tutors and outside school educational enrichment.

What will help is to increase funding and investment in the state school system significantly to raise standards everywhere and bring in more equality in terms of school resources and class sizes. Increase teacher wages and working conditions to encourage the best teachers to want to work in schools in all areas.

What I think does need a radical overhaul is our concept of what makes a 'decent education' in general. We have systems and curriculums which often cater to an 'average' student and doesn't offer much flexibility for the differences in children's learning styles and needs plus what they need for future success in our changing world.

Most posters have said state schools need pulling up to the levels of private.

Which I agree with - I’m not sure how you could read the OP, which was about not making good education inaccessible to some children, and which was also written by a teacher, and think that I would want all kids to have a shite education.

@cabingirl

Banning private schools won't stop richer families from giving their children an advantage. As a previous poster mentioned, first they will all move to the areas with the best schools. Then they will spend a lot of money on tutors and outside school educational enrichment.

What will help is to increase funding and investment in the state school system significantly to raise standards everywhere and bring in more equality in terms of school resources and class sizes. Increase teacher wages and working conditions to encourage the best teachers to want to work in schools in all areas.

What I think does need a radical overhaul is our concept of what makes a 'decent education' in general. We have systems and curriculums which often cater to an 'average' student and doesn't offer much flexibility for the differences in children's learning styles and needs plus what they need for future success in our changing world.

This is much better out than my post!

11k per term is a bargain for full boarding.

We have a really good state school by us.

What’s happened? Everyone wants to move into catchment. So prices have gone through the roof. So only the rich can go there.

Can’t win

@monkeyonthetable

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.

You’re definitely right in that privilege affects people in different ways, and that we can be disadvantaged in other ways. It’s certainly not a blanket thing. I’m a woman, which isn’t a privilege, but I’m white, which is. I don’t blame you at all for wanting to make the best decision for your child.

From the book 'People Like Us':

"Only 7 per cent of the British population attend independent fee-paying schools. And yet in my own profession, 71 per cent of barristers have attended independent schools, and only 29 per cent are state educated...Over half (51 per cent) of journalists were educated at independent schools, as were 61 per cent of senior doctors. In government, 49 per cent of MPs attended private schools."

Unless you accept that inherently, wealthy people are more intelligent than those who are not, there is something very wrong with this skewed level of representation. The fact that so many can just shrug their shoulders at this and say 'yeah, life's not fair' is quite frightening. But I suppose it's easy to do that if it doesn't affect you directly. I'll never forget the hugely intelligent pupils from my state school who were never able to achieve their full potential and fell through the huge cracks our system has built in.

Only if you also ban
Faith schools
Grammars
Tutoring (how would you ban that?)
Schools where catchment areas mean expensive houses.

The better solution would be to try to work out how to try to bring state schools up to the same level and how to fund it. Plenty of parents think they're being holier than though by sending kids to grammar or faith schools.

Surely it is up the parents how they spend their money. I went to a minor public school (after 2 prep schools). My parents were not well off and went without stuff themselves to send me there. In many public schools, the accent is not so much on academic achievement, but focuses more on developing the child mentally and socially, and sometimes spiritually, depending on the school. Some children thrive in this type of environment better than if they had attended state school. It is a personal choice.