To think that there would be less anti private school

[Poopoolittlekitten]

sentiment or threads on MN if people using private school were a tiny bit more self aware and didn’t ask for sympathy for rising fees or possible rising fees if Labour take away their false ‘charity’ status?

send your kid private if you want, just don’t come moaning about the costs or claim than anyone can go private if they ‘prioritise’ their child’s education they way you do. Particularly at a time when state school teachers are striking over pay and conditions.
And many, many people are working their socks off just to keep a roof over their family’s head.

YANBU - stop whining and looking for sympathy about your fees!

YABU - my milkman sends his 4 kids private by ‘prioritising’ their education so it’s not just for whiny poshos….

"But having to turn kids into something they are not."

Forcing certain children to aim for EBacc at GCSE level. When they don’t need it or enjoy it. Too much SATs pressure at KS2 for some children who needed far more interventions earlier and killing their love of learning.

This is my problem with judging schools by exam results. What I want to know is what potential did these children have and how have they improved?

You understand that children from state schools don't get automatic contextual offers?

Obviously.

By the way when you say 'not a grammar but really a grammar' - it's not an academically selective school is it? So it's not a grammar.

It has grammar in its formal name but it's in a non grammar county. It selects some on distance only and the rest on academics with an inner and outer catchment. So it's only partially academically selective, called a grammar and I'll leave the rest to you to decipher.

Irrespective of the amount spent, they get excellent results, above many of the local private schools. None of which I have an issue with, it's great to see high performing state schools which benefit our community.

I just don't get the constant jealousy of private schools. I didn't have a chip on my shoulder as I was at a state school, I worked hard and got the grades I deserved.

It's never held me back, in fact it's been an advantage over private school pupils when it came to jobs. We can all support academic excellence without needing to close all private schools which would undoubtedly not level up as people intend.

I think what is interesting about this thread is that many of us who have had a good state school experience (either for ourselves or our DC) are not going to be anti private school. We understand that the private system is separate and often could benefit from it if we lived locally and used their pool, netball courts, tennis courts, cricket nets, extension clubs for local kids etc.

I would have been happy for my DC to go to a secondary school with all the kids from our church primary (rather than the grammar). What mattered is that they came from families who read with their children regularly, did the homework, supported the PTA and were polite to the teachers. I would say at KS2 often almost 45% of the class got to greater depth. In the grammar we had a lot of Asian parents (Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean mainly) - again, it didn’t matter that not all were well off, many actually lived in flats and worked all hours and were not all professional middle class types, at all. What mattered is that they strongly encouraged education.

Meanwhile, I also live in an area where there is a primary school where parents do regularly show up with the types of dogs I don’t like, shout, swear, smoke and yes, some do show up in pyjamas. It is an utter cliche, of course. Some of the kids from those households can be fine in primary but more often than not, they switch off education in secondary. Unless they really have amazing teachers. But children are only in school for 6 hours a day and 18 hours at home, including the holidays.
What is also really unfair is that some children who are nice, from nice polite families who are not rich can only end up in school with a large amount of children with the former profile. Of course, I feel very bad for them and I expect government to do something about it. However, I don’t think it is my job to send my DCs into that type of primary or secondary and I don’t think it is the fault of private schools either. This is why additional funding is required for those kinds of schools and I think it is better to get help from the successful schools (be it state or private) rather than attack the better schools.
What I would like to see in schools with demographic challenges is smaller class sizes, streaming, lots of one to one attention, better paid teachers to encourage some who want to make a big impact on a deprived child’s life. Which can be done if there is enough time to give them actual attention.

There is also the option that has been tried in some comps which is zero tolerance of bad behaviour and really strict uniform policies and blazers. The problem with that is that often only quite motivated parents end up sending their DC there so it is often a back door selection too.

I agree. My nephew lives in a fairly deprived area of Yorkshire and 75% of pupils at his school didn't speak English as a first language. Not a problem if they spoke decent English but most didn't. It made it very hard for the school.

@dig135 - EAL is interesting because in London you do get state primaries with high proportion of EAL that do really well. My DC went to school with lots of kids who were EAL at preschool level but absolutely perfect at English by the beginning of KS2. Again, in the grammar there was tons of kids who were originally EAL. A bilingual child if immersed into the local language too with educationally driven parents can do really well. Being proficient in another language as well as English is an amazing skill to have.
I remember one incident in state primary when one of the posher French mums was outraged because her child was told not to speak French at school with another French child. Which they were upset about because it is really hard to keep the French going when they speak English all day at school so they had specifically told their DC to speak French to each other at school… but the teachers were told to encourage kids to speak English to each other. And you can’t tell kids it is OK to speak French or Italian to each other but not Polish or Urdu.

"But having to turn kids into something they are not."

Do you want to say something about this comment? What did you mean by it?

"I am now wondering whether we should take the student loan for the DC and stick it in a high interest earning account and invest it and then hand to the DC to buy a house. What do you think?"

Really not sure what you're getting at here? Is this you trying to signify to me that you have so much money your children don't need to take out loans to pay university tuition and maintenance? Why do you think this is relevant to the issue here?

"I am worse that the private school parents!"

I know taking things personally is a bit of a mumsnet thing, but your choices are your personal choices - I'm arguing that the existence of private schools perpetuates a systemic injustice towards children. I'd also argue that the existence of grammar schools and state schools that select on the grounds of a parent's religion are also unfair.

I don't judge you for working the system to benefit your children - I'm just arguing that the system is inequitable and should be changed. No need to get sniffy with me!

I have already answered the question.

“"But having to turn kids into something they are not."

Forcing certain children to aim for EBacc at GCSE level. When they don’t need it or enjoy it. Too much SATs pressure at KS2 for some children who needed far more interventions earlier and killing their love of learning.””

Not all kids are academic and that is OK. It wasn’t some classist comment.

“I'm arguing that the existence of private schools perpetuates a systemic injustice towards children. I'd also argue that the existence of grammar schools and state schools that select on the grounds of a parent's religion are also unfair.”

The education system is so complex in England, you can’t just change and reform it over night. And blaming private schools for all the ills is a cheap shot and not addressing the real problems.

How is it an injustice to children to have people in society that are well educated? Is a child in the care system really worse off because my next door neighbour sends her child to a school that can help him with his dyslexia at no extra cost to the tax payer? Is it really a problem that the teacher who specialises in dyslexia was also partly privately educated? Will the next generation really be better off because somebody with the potential to discover a cure for cancer never got as far as studying medicine because they were in a class that was disruptive? I can see why the government would want to put more resources into improving failing schools. I can't see how it benefits anybody now or in the future to undermine institutions that are furthering the general good of education at no cost to the tax payer and no profit to themselves.

"The education system is so complex in England, you can’t just change and reform it over night".

Nobody is suggesting this is possible.

"And blaming private schools for all the ills is a cheap shot and not addressing the real problems."

I didn't - that's a strawman argument.

It's not a 'cheap shot' to argue that private schools are an engine of inequality, entrenched privilege and elitism in the UK - because the evidence suggests that they are.

Banks, law firms, Oxbridge also represent “entrenched privilege and elitism”. Do you want to do away with them too? Tax them extra etc.. although the former are making significant contributions to inland revenue.

I am bored of the race to the bottom. My DC are not “privileged” because of the school they attended. They were born privileged- healthy pregnancy, detached house, highly educated parents, family and friends, music, books the lot- opportunities to access internships and London on their doorstep, foreign travel etc - whether they had gone to Eton or a local comprehensive in Cambridge would not have made any difference to their outcome. And frankly, young people don’t understand their “privilege” just as much as most people born in the U.K. don’t understand how privileged they are to even have been born here compared to so many other countries.

Systems here are not perfect but they are not anywhere else either. And given we have free healthcare at point of delivery I don’t even think the education system is that bad overall - there is a lot of free stuff some other countries can only dream of providing. Demands in education are actually pretty high - currently year 1 phonics test, year 2 sats, year 4 multiplication test, year 6 sats, cats on entry to secondary school, significant GCSEs (which many countries don’t even do), then A levels etc. or even IB now. Lots of helpful free stuff online, loads of dedicated whipped teachers across the sector trying their best. I don’t think it is that bad. And I don’t really care what private school parents are doing.

Anyway, I am really scared that Labour is going to cock the next election up somehow because all the people I know are now voting Lib Dem.

100% agree.

Well, the next time you need life saving surgery why don't you shout about the 'systemic' injustice that means that the man or woman doing the job actually knows what they're doing because somebody cared enough to make sure they got a decent education.

‘"The education system is so complex in England, you can’t just change and reform it over night".

You don’t change it overnight. You start with smaller things - like taking away tax breaks for private schools.
Racism, misogyny and homophobia are systemic in the MET apparently - but it’ll take a whole culture change to address that too - shall we just leave it as it is? Because it can’t be changed and reformed overnight?

And how are you going to fund the extra pupils that will push into the state system? Beyond the usual stuff about contracts for Tory cronies that is.

Raise taxes? Cut funding in another department? The strikes show the lack of public money given the size of our debt.

There's quite a big difference between a state police force that's racist and homophobic and independent organisations furthering the common good of education at no cost whatsoever to the tax payer - in fact, saving the tax payer money.

Furthering the common good? That's a stretch

“Furthering the common good of education”- I really think people should ask teachers in the private sector what they think. A lot of my friends teaching in the private sector do believe they are in teaching for the common good and that it is their job to teach the privileged kids ethics and how to understand their privilege and how to make the world a better place. These teachers are not paid loads of money by the way. If the state sector could actually provide a balanced and safe working environment across the board for such persons then we could actually start a proper debate on the matter.

Private schools are not just about private school parents. They are largely about those people already in them, the kids, the teachers, the ground staff, the catering stuff, the bus companies etc.
These people are not some political tool to be used to further a political agenda.
Someone who is well educated who goes into teaching whether in the state or private sector is not doing anything wrong, at all. And the children haven’t done anything wrong either. It would be good if our politicians could remember that.

And the 20 per cent VAT does matter… I can think of a recent analogy, although a little far fetched. Removal of “tax benefits” on small time landlords and the removal of deduction of mortgage interest etc. - sure when interest rates were low, it was fine/ish. But now we are seeing that the people suffering are going to be the tenants and the whole lettings sector as a whole. Because you cannot just remove something without building secure housing at a reasonable price to be let out at the same time and tackle the lack of secure pensions (which is why many people who could bought property).

If you put VAT on private school fees at the full rate we will end up seeing and witnessing similar. It won’t get to the root cause of the matter (inequality in society) and those that need it the most, the kids with SEN, are going to suffer the most. It is always the same bloody story with these shitty policies that appeal to people’s emotional fears/envy etc.

A lot of professional musicians, for example, also rely on teaching in private schools. Again, another part of a typically “underpaid for their skill level” community in society but which should be kept alive for the greater good.

Is it, though? It's important that the next generation get an education for the general good of society. Being polite to your neighbours, making sure the buses run on time, starting innovative businesses, discovering cures for cancer etc. Some people are willing and able to pay for it themselves and there are independent organisations committed to delivering it at no cost to the tax payer whatsoever. Why is that such a terrible injustice?

"if both Alleyn and Charter School North Dulwich are correctly identified by the previous posters and you see that Alleyn offers superior education to the one your kids receive - have you tried applying via bursary route?"

My son is extremely hard working. He has good teachers. He's intelligent. He's well supported by me. He's predicted 3A's at A level, and if he gets them he's earned them in fair competition to the other 93% of A level students in the UK.

Why do you think me paying/someone else paying, for my already extremely lucky son to have a massive and very expensive educational leg up would somehow extinguish my ethical objections the deep unfairness towards children that private schools represent?

It's so bizarre. It's like people have a massive blind spot on this issue.