To be outraged about fee-paying schools and social inequality?

[coffeerevelsrule]

I have a ds in Y11 who has been researching potential careers and degrees and it has brought home to me what a horribly unequal society we still have in this country. Apparently 70% of barristers went to public school and there are similar stats for other desirable non-stem roles like journalism and the civil service, as well as medicine. It's a bloody disgrace - what a joke for a supposedly modern society.

And it seems that certain schemes like blind recruitment might also feed into this as although going to Oxbridge might have become slightly more attainable recently thanks to contextual offers and an awareness that those institutions shouldn't be filled with people from certain schools, now blind recruitment means the advantage a state school student may have got from going there is pretty much cancelled out.

To me it seems that ds is most disadvantaged in a way as he wouldn't qualify for schemes aimed at people who are the first in their families to go to uni and we aren't in a deprived area, but he has none of the advantages that would have come from going to an independent school. Everything about us is just average!

He is very bright (predicted all 9s and got that in his mocks) and wants to achieve but it seems that the odds are against people like him having prestigious roles. Obviously when he is quoting these stats at me I'm telling him not to be defeatist and that he has every chance of doing something amazing as long as he keeps working hard, but inside I'm wondering if how true that is.

I've always been against fee-paying schools but him reeling off all these stats at me has just been sickening and yet when Labour make noises about doing something about it there's outrage when in my opinion there should be daily outrage about the current situation.

Can anyone who cares about fairness honestly say I'm BU?

Sorry, fits paragraph was quoting @MrsBennetsPoorNerves, bold fail.

At my comp you were a geek if you worked hard and there was disruption in the classroom. When I ask my teens about this I get blank looks. Doesn’t happen in their girls state. It’s not perfect but it’s a very good school buildings very smart it’s cool to do aa well as you can etc. From what I see the advantage of private is better sport which you can source outside anyway. But if the state offering were less decent I might make different choices so it’s very subjective

You are spot in. It has sports facilities that most kids will never really appreciate or even want. No regrets about my DD going to state. She’s made it too maths, science, English, you name it, and what’s more she did it all herself. Imagine that for an ego boost throughout life knowing you did it yourself.

It not just the sport that's better at private school - the music lessons too. From my experience very few can afford to support their dc with music lessons. We are lucky and now I am working more outside the home we could afford for my state educated son to have guitar lessons in school - this is run by the council but still costs over £200 a term!! Not everyone has that kind of money - hence so few children get this opportunity in the state sector. I know they will let you borrow some instruments but still music seems to be for those with money still - apart from singing..

Although to be fair music lessons will have to be paid for in the private sector too.

It's not just the school though. Parents that use fee paying schools are more likely to be highly educated themselves so genetics favour and parents are more likely able to support and teach their children. More likely to have extra curricular opportunities. Fewer behaviour problems etc.

Also "it's not fair" that some people drive a Maserati and others have a bus pass. It's not fair that some people have a detached house in the countryside and some have a council house. You can't dictate how wealth is distributed.

Also parents who send children to private school are more likely to only have 1 or 2 children rather than larger families so have more time and money to dedicate to each child. I honestly knew no one in my year at school who had more than one sibling. I didn’t even know it was possible to have more than one until I was much older! It is definitely a more nuanced debate than just the school type itself

Yep it’s not fair it’s not fair but what’s really unfair is the fact you have not reached acceptance. Once you do, you can achieve so much more. From cooking to health to education to love. The latter. Love yr kids and they will thrive. Mope about and they will grow up thinking it’s unfair. We’ve just done a budget two day holidays and kids were ecstatic. A friend of mine has gone skiing and has taken her two anxious little charges that she’s just taken out of state into private. They saw it as a chore. But it’s a lifestyle you’ve gotta keep up. Fancy school fancy hols. They don’t earn more than us and we’ve certainly done better in property. Just different priorities and ideals. Would not swap the kids nor the education.

What are you talking about - in what sense is taking your kids on a sporting holiday that you don't enjoy "a lifestyle that you gotta keep up"? Are you suggesting that they are only doing it for bragging rights or something? Or that they believe their children will not succeed in the workplace if they don't learn to ski? What a load of tosh.

I don't understand why people think that they have to be competitive about holidays- none of the other families are actually with you on the holiday, why would they even have to know anything about where you went or what you did? It's not compulsory to give chapter and verse about your plans/ what you did over the break when you're making small talk at the school gates.

Also, anecdotally, I'd say only about 25% of the families at my son's independent London school ski. As it happens, we do, because we enjoy it ourselves (DH and I learned as adults) but loads of his classmates have never been anywhere near a ski slope.

Does this really follow if you look to US?

Greater inequality than the U.K. and private / state school divide

I'd say that this is due to a lack of welfare support in the US.

You should tell your son to stop rhyming off statistics and start knuckling down to exams and complimentary work experience.

Moaning about the advantages there for those attending fee paying schools and those who are impoverished or minority is not going to do anything for your son.

Putting energy into meeting admissions criteria will help.

By the by many of these people you are so incensed about go on to have successful careers because their parents continue to funnel money to them post education. For example John the barrister is able to form his own law firm because Mummy and Daddy gave him X thousand. And paid for his first car. His wedding. A large house deposit. Etc.

It isn’t the school that is solely responsible, it is the all round family support and continual large investments into the child well into adulthood that creates the stats as they are. The private school is just one element but it’s a traceable element. The attribution to this alone is wrong.

Oh and there is a lot of affluent neglect too to consider, kids bring brought up by nannies and the like.

Totally.
The private school is not creating job opportunities! It’s just a confounding factor, it’s something that people with money will buy, there is not a causative relation to how the kid does later.

ChristmasJumpers Yes, the student finance system is a disgrace. All it looks at is parental income and it ignores factors like outgoings/how many children there are etc. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been adjusted to take into account col crisis either.Also, it goes on the previous year's income, which was a nightmare for a student of mine whose previously well-paid parent had to give up work due to ill health the year the dd went to uni,

I'm always amazed by comments like these. I earn little more than minimum wage, have no qualifications other than average gcses I earn 30 years ago, but, I appear to be intelligent enough to realise when my dc were in primary school, that should they wish to go to university, this would need to be paid for.

So I read up on it. I found the calculator that told me what my contribution would need to be (zero in our case due to our low salaries),and to plan in case that changed. Should we have been in a position where we needed to contribute, this would have been budgeted for in our long term plan and we would have been allocating money from our budget at that point.

I don't understand why, if I could understand and plan a budget for the future, why all these high earning, seemingly intelligent, privileged people are unable of planning a budget.

Regarding the parent whose financial situation changed- student finance will adjust if they are contacted. This shouldn't be an issue. I would assume they also had savings at this point due to being well paid previously.

I get where you're coming from, and we also did our research and planned ahead (though frankly, I had not anticipated that dd would study medicine and even if I had, I wouldn't have realised how much extra I will have to contribute as a parent as a result of that!)

But I think lots of people are under the impression that it's all student loans now, and that their child will be able to borrow whatever they need. There isn't necessarily a lot of publicity around the fact that the amount that a student can borrow will be limited by their household income.

There is even less awareness about the impact of blending families etc. Many families quite reasonably assume that the income of both parents will be taken into account, but they don't necessarily realise that, if the dc lives in a household with e.g. mum and new partner, then the new partner's income will be considered when calculating the expected contribution, while dad's income might be completely disregarded. So if mum moves in with a relatively high earning new partner a year or so before the dc applies for student finance, he will be expected to fork out for the dc's maintenance costs. The system definitely needs reform!

Fair enough, if it works for your family. I completely agree that being happy at school is hugely important. Luckily for us, my dd has been extremely happy in the state system - no bullying for being clever etc. And excellent extracurricular opportunities as well. The facilities are definitely not up to the standard of our local private schools, but that doesn't bother me too much... they have what they need!

Tbh, I don't think independent schools should be blamed. I can see that they provide privilege, but that privilege is universal throughout life. There are of course opportunities for him to get ahead.
The least successful people who I know were privately educated.
The most successful people I do know went to local comprehensives but put in a lot of additional study and had excellent support at home, are all now laywers, Dr's, surgeons, accountants, gone into sciences etc.

@L1ttledrummergirl Well if you are so intelligent you are surely aware that people's circumstances change and it's not always possible to perfectly plan ahead in the way you have done? All sorts of things can befall people, such as illness, redundancy, having to take on caring responsibilities, divorce etc and this may mean that what they earn on paper at the current time isn't a true reflection of what they can actually afford. They may have only reached their current wage, or even close to it, in recent years so haven't been able to save as much over time. Maybe some people aren't switched on and don't plan ahead - does that mean their dc should suffer when they reach 18? Going to university should be based on merit only and this system doesn't aid that.

@coffeerevelsrule my point is that I'm not intelligent, or clever, or educated. So if I can do it, why can't the intelligent, clever, educated people? That's the bit I struggle to understand.

So intelligent, clever and educated people never have complicated lives/things go wrong for them that stop them making ideal choices? And if they do, their offspring should expect to struggle? You can know what you should be doing and not manage to do it for a whole host of reasons, some of which people may sympathise with and others they may not, but their choices are not their children's.

I used to work for a university and helped out in the student finance stand at many open days. I would say that the majority of parents came with the assumption that their kids would be able to get a student loan to cover all of their living expenses and tuition fees, and that any contribution from the parents would be voluntary in order to reduce the amount that the student would have to borrow.

It was often a shock to people to discover that their child's borrowing ability would be limited by their household income. And frankly, why would people know that if they hadn't been told? Nearly everyone is familiar with the concept of student loans and students getting into large amounts of debt to fund university, and most people are aware that means-tested grants went out of the window a long time ago. So why wouldn't parents just assume that their kids would be able to borrow what they need to fund their university places? It is a perfectly reasonable assumption.

The problem arises for students whose parents can't or won't top up to the level of the maximum maintenance loan - either because they don't think they should have to fund their adult children or because they genuinely don't have the disposable funds available. The students are then caught between a rock and a hard place...no funds from the bank of mum and dad and no ability to borrow what they actually need to live. And yes, they can get a part time job to top up their income, but working all hours isn't easy with some courses, especially those with high amounts of contact time. Also, part time wages are needed in some university towns to make up the difference between actual living costs and the maximum maintenance loan, so it's really difficult if they then have to cover the so-called parental contribution as well.

The system is pretty unfair as things stand, and there is not enough information out there to help parents plan proactively.

I don’t think it’s widely known that the amount a teen can borrow is vastly reduced depending on parents income. If it is known people think salary it kicks in at is much higher. Two parents on minimum wage are expected to contribute a few thousand a year. In USA they joke about needing to save from birth for college that’s not the case in England.

I think my kids are aware that its going to be costly sending the grandchildren to university. The eldest is heading there soon, clever girl, predicted good A levels, both parents are high earners. They can and will contribute, but she’s already working part time, and will look for work when she goes.

I’m pleased that she wants to work, most of her friends from similar economic backgrounds don’t. By the time she graduates, she’ll have several years of work experience. It might not be in a relevant field, but showing a work ethic, and developing people skills will be a plus to employers IMO.

Blimey, this discussion is still going on. It's very interesting, though.

L1ttledrummergirl, student finance it's much more complicated and bizarre than you say it is. Very few people can predict at birth what their earnings will be when their children reach university age. They can't predict whether they will become seriously ill, or whether they will die, or win the lottery, or get made redundant, or end up with several promotions. Life is not that predictable.

You say Regarding the parent whose financial situation changed- student finance will adjust if they are contacted

Good luck with that one. Contacting Student Finance England is on a par with contacting HMRC, and when you actually manage to speak to someone, the answer is so complicated that they don't understand it themselves. I have a doctorate, by the way, so am not totally thick.

Student finance is absolutely fucked now, and it is the direct result of too many young people going to university. It ought to be entirely on merit, and those who are bright enough to get there (regardless of background and regardless of whether their parents be unemployed or millionaires) ought to get a free shot at it. There ought to be real, viable, properly funded alternative paths for young people who aren't the highest academic flyers.

As it is, there is a massive lump of 'university students', which includes every course at every university, from the best to the worst. It includes students with 4 or 5 A*s and students with a couple of Ds. Yet they are all lumped together and regarded as dependent on their parents (and/or any unrelated adult who happens to be their parent's new live-in partner) unless their parents can prove otherwise - at the very moment that they leave home.

It is also ridiculous that my children have had full maintenance loans because my income is so low - because I am divorced and they live with me. I am not objecting, as I couldn't afford to support them, but their father could, and his income is not included in the calculations because he isn't the resident parent. Whereas if I had a relatively new live-in partner, his income would be included in the SFE calculations, even though my children are adults and would never have been this imaginary partner's financial responsibility. It is completely insane.

The people who are truly fucked are the £20-40k brigade, who can't possibly fund their children through university, but are expected to do precisely this. That is the real injustice, as their children are the ones who end up doing worse academically because they're also working to pay for their food and rent, rather than for a bit of extra beer money. That is more of an injustice than whether children have been to state or private schools.

Totally agree @KathyWilliams.