If you didn’t go to a private school, what do you think about those who did?

[hanginds]

Do you feel they had an unfair advantage? Do you care? Do you think they don’t know about the real world?

I really struggle to connect with colleagues who were privately educated as they seem almost entitled to the job. They seem fearless about finding alternative work if needs be, yet I just don’t have that confidence. I assume it’s their background as it’s the only difference between us in the academic/work context.

@Peppadog I understand your sentiment and philosophy but it would only work if you got rid of the social deprivation factors that create many of the issues in the state sector. It would obviously be a perfect scenario if this happened but it is too big a task for any government and the Tories especially have no interest in ending social inequality as they need it to fuel their ideology.
Labour tried to tackle it through Sure Start etc but we know what happened to that and things are so much worse now than when SS first started.

This is the really advantage.

If what really matters is providing DC with tutors, nutritious meals and the other things you describe, then nobody would be paying for private education, surely? There must be something beneficial about it.

A lot of independent schools have a well organised old boy/girl organisation and fund raise successfully.
Some time ago someone on here suggested that state schools did that - kept alumni up to date with what was happening at the school and solicited donations.
Every possible reason was given why this wouldn’t work and every counter suggestion about how it could be made to work was turned down.
i thought it seemed a reasonable suggestion - if private schools can do it, then why can’t state schools?

I understand your sentiment and philosophy but it would only work if you got rid of the social deprivation factors that create many of the issues in the state sector.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think part of @Peppadog's argument is that private education itself contributes to social deprivation due to the cycle they described.

@SoTedious yes that's what I'm saying. Proportionally the socially disadvantaged make up a certain proportion of the UK, if education was all mixed, they would make up a smaller proportion of each school and it would be less of an issue.
There are obviously rich and poor areas, hard to get away from that, but most areas are actually fairly mixed as each area has to have a certain amount of social housing. The situation Twistyizzy is describing is usually inner city, where all the council estate children go to the local comp and the middle class children go private. Very common in London. The distance based admissions is an issue, which could also be changed to make admissions borough wide.

It obviously couldn't happen overnight, I'm not suggesting you kick all the kids out of their private schools and close them! But I think it's a fairer direction to move in and I think it would make for a nicer society all round.
Anyway I can't come back to this now till later, interesting debate!

I think having engaged parents who have enough money to fund some extracurricular activities and tuition when needed. Who arent exhausted from working two jobs or just depressed and worn down by their life experiences am poverty. I think it is these things that offer the most advantage. Things that lots of middle class families who attend state schools are able to give their children.

I work in children's services. I have numerous families who are living 3 or 4 to a room in temporary accommodation. Children and parents having to share beds. No room to study. No money for ballet or football lessons and even when these are paid for by us they don't have the transport to ferry their children around to matches. These are the children who are most disadvantaged.

I'm not saying that private school offers no advantage. For my children the main advantage is being in a school where they feel safe. I think every child should be in a school where they feel safe.

I think the academic advantage is overplayed as the children at private schools would still have the 'middle class advantage ' if they were in state schools.

I think it is ridiculous for posters to talk about all the advantage and privileged that private school children have without recognising that their own children have significant advantage and privilege over the most disadvantaged in society.

@MissDollyMix
its nice and convenient to blame everything on social deprivation but it’s abject ignorance to claim that improving the school system will not help. State schools have to choose between what they invest in eg music, sport, technology….it’s rare to offer outstanding education in all areas. This marginalises those children who would be highly inspired by their preferred discipline. Extra curricular activities that would mean the difference between a disengaged school child choosing to attend rather than play truant are often optional or missing. PTAs are effectively unpaid chuggers for the school to buy basics such as books and paint. I know of one school where female teachers had to use the girls toilet for a whole term because the school couldn’t afford to fix it. Extra training in dealing with complex behaviours is patchy; pastoral care or professional supervision for teachers acting as pseudo social workers is missing. Staff are leaving in droves to work in eg australia where there are plenty of little shits but basic hygiene factors are at least met.

your post indicates that you do not acknowledge there is any gap in education provision and are clueless on the potential impact that a good education can bring - despite your own choices. Utter hypocrisy.

do you disagree with all initiatives to reduce systemic inequality, widen chances for those without privilege and help to redress the balance in society? Or just those that could possibly disadvantage your darling children

But...how is banning private education going to help this?

for info the gap between private and nhs healthcare is nowhere near as big as people think. All emergency care is NHS, cancer care isn’t always quicker on private and is often delivered by nhs staff in nhs buildings using nhs equipment. nHS Paediatric care is generally excellent and often world class (except mental health).
It’s poor comparison (and grasping at straws)

@Kefir i wrote that I don’t want to abolish it; I want significant investment in state education, private education to be taxed and more initiatives to reduce / reverse teh advantages in accessing education and employment that privately educated children have had and in some cases are still having

By mixing the rich kids with the poor kids? If 7% go to private school that means there would be roughly 100 ex private school kids in our state secondary. With 9 or 10 forms a year that would be one or two in each class. How on earth is that going to change anything?

I agree with the first two. Not wholly the third.

But only 6% of children are privately educated. Do you honestly think that even if all of the 6% were moved to the state sector it would hugely affect the proportion of disadvantaged kids? Simple maths shows that it wouldn’t. In any case, it wouldn’t be 6%, because the foreign students wouldn’t come to the UK at all. In a school of 2000 for example, there would probably be around 100 previously privately educated children. Would those 100 children have a huge effect on the other 1900? Of course they wouldn’t.

Your “simple maths” is assuming that the 6% are spread evenly across the entire country, which of course is complete nonsense. Even lowly state school alumni like I can understand that.

No they’re not evenly spread. Some areas have far less than 6% privately educated, which means that those schools would have an even lower proportion of apparently “privileged” children to help pull up the behaviour of the disadvantaged. And by the way, I am state educated.

Where did I say I didn’t think the state system should be improved? I didn’t say that nor did I blame everything on social deprivation but as others have already pointed out to you even if in 24 hours every child at private school has 20% slapped onto their fees it wouldn’t begin to touch the problems that affect our society and that’s not even the reality because adding a tax onto private school fees would be a much more complex beast. All this anti-private school rhetoric is just virtue signalling nonsense.

The 6% of privately educated student would most likely be moving into the top 10% of state schools. They would just make the top state schools even more exclusive.

But presumably the areas with significantly less than 6% of the population in private schools are either
a) so deprived that so few people can access private schools anyway
b) areas with good schools anyway

Thus, in areas with less state school pupil, the differences would be less obvious anyway.

However, if you have an area with say 30% of the pupils privately educated, it would have a massive difference.

This wouldn’t be the case everywhere. Where I live; there are two state schools in each town - a catholic school and a non denominational school. They both have broadly the same catchments, and parents are guaranteed a place at whichever they choose. There isn’t a great deal of difference between the schools - the catholic school does tend to get slightly better results, but personally, as a non catholic, I’d never send my kids to one, because I disagree with their ethos and religious views.

I think our schools possibly have a better social economic mix because we don’t have a “choice” as such and you don’t “apply” for schools, you simply go to the local school.

Good point.

Price increases will, if anything, entrench elitism because less people will be able to access private education outside of the very top earners.

Banning private schools won’t lead to a well distributed flood of former privately educated pupils into state schools either. Some will access the state system of course, but they’ll create wealthy catchment area enclaves where the schools will essentially operate as private schools in terms of their demographic makeup and facilities.

oh, and then you’ll get the ones that will opt out completely, either home educating with a tutor, sending their children to schools abroad, or creating educational cooperatives with other ex-private school parents.

then there would be the protracted legal battles. The government can’t just strip private schools of their charitable status, that’s up to the charities commission (which has ruled that private schools are charities, a designation decided upon by trustees rather the government). The government would have to introduce a new law, which wouldn’t be a simple process.

Precisely. You’ll end up with some schools with a huge proportion of previously privately educated children. They will effectively be private schools funded by the state. I’m not sure how that benefits anyone.

Parents might move out of your town to an area with better schools though? Parents who pay for private schooling are usually pretty invested in their child's education and are often happy to move move quite far to access the best schools
That is unless the schools in your town are very good.

then there would be the protracted legal battles. The government can’t just strip private schools of their charitable status, that’s up to the charities commission (which has ruled that private schools are charities, a designation decided upon by trustees rather the government). The government would have to introduce a new law, which wouldn’t be a simple process.

This will be interesting if it ever happens. Some of these schools are very rich and could fight a protracted battle.
Would it also open the doors to disbanding religious schools?
As you say, whumprhereitis, it will be hard to force parents to use state schools as they will find alternative ways.