.. to think we should scrap private schools?

[katnyps]

How can we ever have an equal opportunities society when people with more money can pay for their children to have a better education?

I know that there are exceptions to the rule, and great teachers in publicly funded schools, but I get the impression that influential roles in society are disproportionately represented by people paid for education... or am I wrong about this too?

I believe that Finland has one of the best (internationally recognised) education system in the world and (apologies if I'm not quite right here, but broadly speaking) that it is actually illegal there to charge for education?

@katnyps

I also didn't mean scrap overnight - I'm thinking more phase out with a 10 or 15 year plan so that state schools could be levelled up and people in private education or enrolled could finish as planned My thoughts were that without private schools as an option the type of people who send their kids there would have more of a vested interest in state schools - more lobbying councils to improve standards, taking governor positions etc.

You think 7% of parents can do what 93% of parents cannot?!?!

You do realise that most if the 7% are just ' normal'people with a bit more cash?

Our school has a huge international intake. Lots of ££ coming into the country that would just disappear.

Oh go away. How people chose to spend their money is up to them,

@toycupboard

*I am lucky that our local state schools are ok.

Just ok?

There are two secondary schools in our town - they're not the best but they're fine and DC are doing well.

Our local school is fine.
Is that the right side of ok?

There is something to be said for a school you can walk to. ( Well if it were open..)

You think 7% of parents can do what 93% of parents cannot?!?!

Exactly witchesbritches.
Are these private school parents some sort of miracle working ubermensch who will turn every state school into high achieving super academies?
Isn’t that quite patronising to parents whose children go to state schools?

I went to a private school. I have close family where I've put them in touch with a school friend who is now fairly high up in An industry they were desperate to work in. They didn't bother to turn up for the work experience. This has happened more than once. Said children are now resentful in jobs they don't enjoy but do not see the correlation between their actions and what they have got in life.

Friends children at private school always turn up.

I send my kids private and have often felt incredibly guilty about it. However, I've come to believe that there are so many different types of equality. I know there's mums in the village that think we are wrong. I also know those families moved to our village mainly because they wanted to get into the good school. They are intelligent enough to read the church school guidelines for the local senior school and Turn up exactly two days before the 2 year limit for "regular service attendance."

A kid who has a mother read to it every night has more advantages than one who doesn't. Those who have ballet/music/football paid for. These are all breeding inequality too.

What I think we should be concerned about so raising the game of state school and parenting. Free government classes on parenting skills to everyone. Bring back sure start centres. I think it's awful there are classes of 30 and not enough sport and music. Invest in it. Build it. Provide it. Don't ban the great stuff we do in Britain. Learn from it, expand it and build off it.

By the way op there aren't school governors in Scotland.

There are parent councils and they are toothless.

I was entitled to free school meals for all of my 7 years at secondary school. This was a direct grant fee paying school with fees according to parental income. Pupils at local state schools whether grammar or comprehensive had more spent on them per head than we did.
No one I knew at primary school was tutored, you turned up did the exam, passed or failed. End of.

The majority people work very hard and make massive personal sacrifices for there wealth, career and lifestyle
If you want to spend the and there kids why not .

If people want to spend their already taxed income on something in the hopes of giving their children a better start in life, then good for them, I would if I could.

@katnyps

Well I also think we should all pay more tax - guess I'm just a tiny bit socialist!

Nothing to stop you paying more tax if you so wish, op.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/01/you-can-pay-more-tax-if-you-want-to

MN appears quite left-leaning on many subjects, which seems champagne socialist I'm all right Jack inconsistent with such strong support for independent schools.

If selection is going to exist anywhere in education, I'd rather it be done by ability and potential, not money. While not perfect, at least grammars gave many more bright but less well-off children a chance to experience a selective academic education, compared to the private school and comps system which maintains a wide social divide.

Yes, independent schools may offer a limited number of bursaries, but only to a fraction of less well-off children who could have benefited from a selective environment.

Why is selection by entrance exam deemed OK for private but not OK for state? It just seems like the few pulling up the ladder behind them and doesn't make sense to me.

OP I went to private school and will send my kids private if I can afford it but I still think YANBU. It creates divisions right from the get go.

Well I also think we should all pay more tax

don't worry, it's coming! Sadly funding for schools is going to take a beating too, and it was bad enough before the lockdown.

To the PP who said private schools don’t get taxed much as they are charities, I know of quite a few which aren’t. I work at one.

The parents are also paying twice for their child’s education; once in their taxes for state Ed and then in their school fees. The state system will be making a lot from these parents too who (if they can afford school fees) must be higher rate tax payers and yet they take nothing from the state system.

Of course the two tier system isn’t fair but if private schools were scrapped overnight don’t imagine the playing field would be levelled.

How are Convents viewed? As desirable schools or not? Out of interest

@gingerperil

This thread is seriously depressing reading. People actually saying they don’t care about equality

I don't think that they said that. They just said that inequality is one of those unavoidable facts of life which will always be there to some extent. Even in supposedly equal communist countries, a peasant's child - no matter how gifted - has no chance of going anywhere whereas the dim offspring of an official can rise to a senior position.

Many Labour MPs rail against privilege but their party is absolutely crawling with nepotism. Does anyone really think that Hillary Benn, Will Straw, Euan Blair, David Prescott, Joe Dromey and Stephen Kinnock became special advisors and parliamentary candidates purely on the basis of their own ability and with no leg up from their fathers (or in one case their mother) at all?

Not read the thread. I'm not loaded btw but I thought Labours election manifesto of getting rid of private schools was a race to the bottom.

Two of my boys go to private SEN schools. I dont fund ether. They was placed by my LA as they dont / cant / wont give them.therapy in state sector. One was treated like a he was a drain in mainstream state. No one, not one member of staff at all wanted the best for him. He was a loser who got in the way of churning out the gifted and talented. He was kept at the back out of sight as he is dyspraxic with a language disorder. The very first term in SEN school he stood up in front of all the teachers and parents and gave a reading. He is smart, IQ 140.

If it wasnt fir his school he would failed spectacularly. But he is getting ready for uni.

No state SEN school caters to get SEN kids into university. No state mainstream strongly desires for kids with complex SEN to go to uni.

So on that basis alone as someone who has four kids in a 3 bed semi, private school inspires the best possibility, where as state just never do that for my child as isnt sausage shaped to fit the sausage factory model.

Also the school is highly motivated to get a kid into oxford or Cambridge each year to get more kids in. Whereas state is highly motivated to exclude SEN to save costs of meeting needs.

Most private schools are run as tax dodge charities so when they fold, there is no flow off cash back into state school. Most mainstream private fees flow back to overseas with the overseas students. The reality is that most private school kids arent British.

Flowerycurtain, so based on the behaviour of a couple/handful of your state school educated relatives, you're writing all state school people off?!

@Bluesername

"Why is selection by entrance exam deemed OK for private but not OK for state? It just seems like the few pulling up the ladder behind them and doesn't make sense to me."

Because in a grammar school a child can fail the 11+ by 1% or just have a bad day, yet their life if mapped out for them by that test. They are still bright and in top 11% but wont get the same state education as those in the top 10%. Also what about those in lets say the bottom 50% they may be hard workers and have ambition but get a lesser education because they failed the 11+. Doesn't seem a fair state system to me.

I would send my kids to private if I could afford it. Don't have an answer of why the private school being selective doesn't bother me, maybe it's because it's not funded by the taxpayer!!!

As far as I can tell, no-one seems to have yet mentioned something that I realised was a big factor for me in putting my children in independent schools, at least when they were primary age. It kept them just that bit further away from government interference in their education.

I'm all for standards and monitoring, but micromanaging education from the top does not help. Education policy needs to be stable over longer periods of time (hence needs a multiparty approach), and schools need to be not just allowed but empowered to make choices that help them deliver the best education they can to the children they have.

My children aren't in independents "for the results". They are there for the breadth of other experiences that has been offered to them.

In an ideal world, I'd like to see schools not just better funded, but the system always having surplus capacity that allows both real choice and some flexibility to throw more resources at individual children when they need a bit extra to be the best they can be.

Bluesarname: "Why is selection by entrance exam deemed OK for private but not OK for state? It just seems like the few pulling up the ladder behind them and doesn't make sense to me."
....
Grammar school are state schools and entry depends on taking an exam, either the 11+ or an equivalent. They are academic schools, how else will they know what level the pupil has attained and if they are suited to the school? They are not private schools though.

You think 7% of parents can do what 93% of parents cannot?!?!

Yes. It's not about parents fixing the system. It's about the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country having to use a system that they currently avoid and have no motivation to improve. And I am not talking about all private school parents. I know many aren't particularly wealthy or powerful, they just have different priorities. It's hard to find stats for people whose children go to private schools, but here are a few stats for powerful people who were privately educated:

41% of Conservative MPs
14% of Labour MPs
65% of senior judges
59% top civil servants
44% of newspaper columnists

If people who have power and influence cannot segregate their own children without sending them abroad, do you really think they'd be happy with no changes to the current system? i think it would focus their minds on getting rapid improvements.

Friends children at private school always turn up

This is just your experience. As I said in a pp, I've worked in a company where work experience went solely to private school children. Some didn't turn up. That didn't make me believe that private school children tend to be lazy and unmotivated. It just made me think that some children are lazy and unmotivated. If you think state school children are lazier, then maybe we need some additional interventions for children who aren't getting the message at home that work experience can be a real advantage. We shouldn't just assume that these children can't be helped.

Two of my boys go to private SEN schools. I dont fund ether

So your boys are, effectively, state educated. I would like to see a system where successful specialist SEN schools can continue, and be widened, but within the state sector. I'd also keep boarding schools for some children eg as is the case now, where some at risk children, and some from military and diplomatic families are funded for boarding.

I think we need to be ambitious and creative in redesigning the system. There are some great state schools, but there are also many that are not fit for purpose at the moment, including much SEN provision. It's wrong that so many children are failed by such a fundamental thing as education. It's an injustice to those families, but it's also bad for our economy and culture that so many talented, skilled, intelligent people don't reach their potential, while some others seem to flourish purely because of their backgrounds and connections. We need to design a system that allows all children to flourish, and I don't think that will happen as long as those with the power to bring about change are able to opt out of the current system.

@bluegovan
Thank you - you've put it much more eloquently than me!

Surely the elephant in the room is that at least part of the reason they may be better is that they have more freedom to design their curriculum and are not subject to the constant fads that infect state education. Removing them won’t fix this issue.
Inequality exists and will continue to exist within the state system. Data follows the children. KS1 results predict KS2 results which then feed into GCSE predictions. Expectations of children are set at an early age and it can be difficult for children to escape these tracks as schools are measured on this progress data. In reality children develop at different paces. As a teacher, I have had to argue the case for certain children. In the days of level 6 maths, I was told I could only allow 6 children into an extra tuition group. 2 of the children I put forward we’re switched out. I argued the case as I could not look their parents in the face knowing they were being let down in this way. In reality, there were more children in this particular class capable of achieving higher levels but this data would have looked out of place. We have a winners and losers system.
Private acts in part as a check and measure to the state system. Some have great facilities and funding but not all. Most are able to get better results though. The question should be why? Getting rid of them will not get rid of the issues.