To be annoyed that private school parents are demonised?

[Imsorryyoufeelthatway]

Starting this threat to vent and as an antidote to the Closing all private schools would benefit state schools thread. In short, I'm a bit fed up with private school parents being bashed for buying a better education for their children, while parents who 'don't believe in private education' and spend a fortune on homes/second homes/rental properties in catchment areas for 'good' state schools then another fortune on tutors seem to get off scot free.

I'm also fed up with private school parents all being lumped in the same category. We're not all selfish, mega-wealthy, Bullingdon Club (or female equivalent, if there was one...) alumni; many of us are ordinary people (I'm a working class lass from a council estate whose parents worked as cleaners and in warehouses) who've worked bloody hard to be able to afford a better start in life for our children than we had. We were the first people in our families to go to university (on full grants, when they existed), the first to have careers not just jobs, and the first to own our own homes. No-one has ever handed us a penny – my DH got the train to university with £4.50 in his pocket and had to get a job straight away to buy food. No bank account, no trust fund, no-one paying his rent. We've managed to achieve social mobility against the odds, yet we're not allowed to celebrate this because we've chosen to invest in our children's future rather than over-priced property in 'good' state school catchment areas.

Yes, we all know that private schools are a major cause of inequality. Parents like us have literally lived and breathed that inequality our whole lives and we'd do anything to prevent our children having to do the same. We think that all children should have access to high quality education in safe, inspirational environments where they can achieve their potential, not just ours. But most state schools in the UK just cannot meet this requirement. We also know that if catchment areas for state schools were mixed-up, and the schools in deprived areas had an influx of children from more affluent areas and vice versa, then this would likely make things more equal over time. But our children are not part of a social experiment. In short, if those of us who had difficult starts in life and went to terrible schools choose to work our arses off so our children don't have to, can't we be given some credit?

So please, the next time you're tempted to lump a private school parents into the same category and give them a bashing, take a moment to consider their reasons and background. Rant over.

You can use blind recruitment but the children who are nurtered within a family unit of course have an advantage. They're taken to sports clubs, music tuition, rainbows, cubs, other hobbies, they're tucked up in bed at night with a story. As teenagers they're driven to weekend jobs at the oddest hours to encourage independence financially. They eat well are loved by parents, grandparents. Everyone cares about them. They will stand out on job applications.

The best way to make everything fair would be to do away with families altogether. They give children far too many advantages.

The best way to make everything fair would be to do away with families altogether. They give children far too many advantages

I know you are being sarcastic but the point is it is a well researched area and the evidence demonstrates that early intervention is key if a state really wants to reduce the gap between the haves and have nots. Properly funded good quality early learning care and education, family support, parenting support, timely access to therapeutic supports, and so on. There is a lot that can be done to counteract the impact of poor parenting, abuse, poverty and so on but it is sporadic and not funded properly because the will with governments is simply not there and the rewards take too long for a government to benefit from. No use telling a politician invest in infants and the prison service will save money in 20 years time! By the time a child gets to secondary school it is often too late the gap is too wide. Supports need to be put in place when the child is born.

Is this supposed to be funny?

Yes, children raised within the care system or children who suffer major adverse childhood experiences are significantly disadvantaged throughout their lives. Why does this amuse you?

I'm sorry that this truth is inconvenient for you.

It's definitely NOT by blind recruitment. It's by beginning to acknowledge the massive inequities and the fact that very mediocre people from privileged backgrounds have far greater success in life than very talented and intelligent people from deprived or chaotic backgrounds.

There is plenty of interesting and important work being done on social mobility right now. But I don't think most of the posters on this thread want it to be addressed.

And, as I said earlier, the best way to handle those talented people from deprived backgrounds is not to bring everybody down to the level of education the state deems cheap enough to get away with, but to enforce mandatory means-tested scholarships for 20-30% of the places they offer, paid for by the schools' charitable endowments, but keep the total level of funding the same for state schools.

That means some 20% increase in the per-pupil funding for state schools, and an immediate increase in social mobility for the genuinely bright and talented, at zero cost to the taxpayer.

Of course, that's the kind of policy that the political right would never implement, so it would require the ultra-left to relinquish their ideological stance for the good of all...which means it won't happen.

Means tested scholarships do not reach the poorest. They would have to be 100% and include travel and uniform and equipment.

There were quite a few children who passed the 11 plus in the past who did not go to grammar school as their families could not afford the usually more expensive uniform and extra travel.

So...include it - the scholarships should include all costs above that of attending a state school (excluding the optional trips etc).

Easily solved, when you're setting the rules.

Yes. This.

A scholarship wouldn't touch the sides of what these children need. It's not just the financial costs, about which you are correct, but the additional pastoral care and the development of all-round skills and personal development. Children from these backgrounds need far, far more help, and of a different type, than these schools offer.

Children from chaotic homes and/or in the care system also tend to be moved around a lot through no choice of their own.

It's not remotely 'easily solved'.

Like I said: A scholarship wouldn't touch the sides of what these children need. It's not just the financial costs, but the additional pastoral care and the development of all-round skills and personal development. Children from these backgrounds need far, far more help, and of a different type, than these schools can or will offer.

I think some of you have very little idea of what life is actually like for children from backgrounds like this. It's not solved with a bus ticket and a uniform fund.

That's also leaving aside the fact that when they have done things like this (e.g. Eton did a thing where some working-class, predominantly Black boys came to the school for a term or so) there is such a huge social and cultural gulf, and the posh kids, unsurprisingly, have inherited their parents' snobbery and social elitism. The boys who went there did not have a good time at all.

It's really really simplistic to boil a massive, long-term structure aimed specifically at perpetuating and deepening social inequality down to a simple matter of throwing a few quid at it.

Those schools exist IN ORDER to maintain and entrench the status quo. To challenge it would go fundamentally against why they were set up, and what the rich parents pay for.

It is never going to happen.

LOL. I was a child from a deprived background. I had a scholarship to one of these schools. It worked out brilliantly, and I know quite a number of kids for whom it did the same.

And, of course, you're moving the goalposts. First you say that scholarships can't cover all of the costs, so they won't work. Then, when an obvious solution is presented, you raise the nebulous "they need more help than these schools can offer".

This isn't designed to solve every problem that every child has ever had; it simply solves it for most of them, and then the focus can move onto the next largest group who need help.

The whole point is that it's a zero cost (to the taxpayer) solution which adds to the amount that can be spent per pupil in the state system, thus improving circumstances for everybody.

Weirdly, it has worked at the two local private schools (one for girls, one for boys) for well over 50 year, and I speak from experience when I say that the cultural gulf in normal private schools - ie not the ultra-elite ones like Eton - is much smaller than you're suggesting. In fact, since the scholarship kids are generally the smartest, they tend to be guaranteed a way in to most social groups due to the collaborative atmosphere that the schools encourage. Actual class-based tension is minimal - far less than between the kids at state schools whose parents prioritise designer-label clothes and the ones who can't afford it, in fact (as demonstrated by my daughter's experience at the state school in the same town).

a) I was also a child from a poor background who went to a very very top private school on a scholarship. (I left at the end of year 11.)

b) It wasn't me who said the thing about covering all the costs. That was a different poster. I haven't moved the goalposts. I don't and have never thought that the sop of offering a few places to kids from disadvantaged backgrounds does anything at all meaningful to challenge the huge social inequalities that are deliberately perpetuated by the private school system. I think they're a distraction. A bit like Amazon Smile - huge huge company pays no tax and gives a pittance to charity as a sort of fig leaf.

I speak from experience when I say that the cultural gulf in normal private schools - ie not the ultra-elite ones like Eton - is much smaller than you're suggesting. In fact, since the scholarship kids are generally the smartest, they tend to be guaranteed a way in to most social groups due to the collaborative atmosphere that the schools encourage.

My experience, as one of those very smart, not well-off, scholarship kids was that the cultural gulf was huge. And it wasn't Eton or anywhere like that - it's a top all-girls London independent school, very academic.

I agree that the scholarship girls were the brightest, and also the poorest. It was glaringly obvious who had money and who didn't. There were girls in my class who had tennis courts, swimming pools, ponies, etc.

My own kids are at state schools (one primary, one secondary) and I haven't encountered any of the 'prioritising designer labels' that you describe. Funnily enough, several of my daughter's schoolmates are the children of women who went to my school, who have also decided to opt out of the private school system, for a variety of reasons.

In any case, like I say, even if it worked brilliantly for a tiny number of working-class kids, it's a fig leaf to cover up the far greater inequalities that the system is designed to entrench.

The xyx scheme was the assisted places scheme Labour abolished so in a sense already tried. Labour felt it did not work as middle class people would pretend to be self employed with low wages to nab all the places on the schemes.
We could certaily start by equality in the state system - eg Newcastle where I am from abolished grammar schools in about 1970. Some other areas still have them. We could ensure "state education" meant the same thing in all parts of the UK for starers.

On being poor at fee paying schools do children really know? My daughters had a horse each (horses mentioned above on thread) but it was utterly irrelevant if a friend at school had very little.
Also designer labels are surely something the new rich show off about and that is not the done thing for most people in private schools - although I am not saying no class has class identifiers in the UK as they certainly do.

Well, I'm sorry that your school dealt with it very poorly.

The difference between us, though, is that your experience appears to say "Don't do scholarships, they never work because of my limited experience, in fact, abolish that whole system so nobody else can ever have the advantage of opportunity that I had".

On the other hand, I'm saying "It can and does work for a lot of people, even if it's not all of them, so let's try it and in the process improve state schools for everyone else".

Evidence tends to support one of those, but not the other.

What I'm suggesting would result in a 15-20% increase in per-pupil spending in the state system at zero cost to the tax payer; in fact it's explicitly taking that increase from the private school system (which will never be abolished anyway, no matter how much you want it to be). I wouldn't call that a fig leaf, would you?

It's absolutely not irrelevant (and I think I remember from previous threads that your daughter attended the same school I did).

I'm sure it suited you to think it was all lovely and everyone equal and it was "utterly irrelevant" that your daughter had horses and no doubt expensive holidays, clothes, etc. It's not irrelevant if you're on the other end of it.

Yes, that's exactly what I'd call it.

It's interesting that you state so confidently that private schools could never be abolished. That tells you a lot about how integral they are to maintaining the class system and the class divide in this country- the fact that abolishing them is unimaginable.

everyone I've ever met from a private school has been like that.

OP, I don't think parents should be demonised. I do think state schools need to be improved. I'm grateful to those who do send their kids private as state schools are already creaking and held together with sellotape.

I think parents who send kids to private school should get tax relief on fees as they are directly saving the state money, same as I think those who pay for private healthcare should get relief. Given where we are with state schools, I'm more for decreasing the chasm between who can afford it and who can't, rather than increasing it. Many parents want the best education/school they can get for their kids, otherwise everyone would not give a toss which school choice they got. My kids are not in private school.

I'm saying they could never be abolished because a) any such law would have such massive and wide-reaching consequences for extracurricular tutoring, private training courses ( like coding bootcamps) etc that it would be completely unworkable, and b) if the government wanted to convert those schools to state schools, they wouldn't be able to afford to buy the properties or the staff back. As an example, I know of at least five private schools within 40 miles of here which own significant portions of the land in and around the towns they occupy, and have done so for hundreds of years.

The sheer logistics are simply beyond the reach of any non-authoritarian government at this point. Hence my suggestion of using their existence to improve everybody's lot, instead of sticking to an ideological proposition and benefiting nobody.

Keep seeing this nonsense said over and over …..
people who send their kids to private school live in the cheap houses in rubbish area and those who go to good state schools are living in the ££££ house next to the school 😂
where i am the private kids are definitely in the best houses !!! Even ones near the good comp. Anyway op can spend her cash however she wants i dont care but this argument about houses bugs the shit out of me

Absolutely @user68901 !
All the kids I know who go or went to private school had lovely houses and holidays and often ponies too! And gosh, shock, some were tutored.

Really OP - just bloody own the fact that that's how you want to spend your money!

In fact OP hasn't come back so is either a troll or a journalist!