Private school vs private anything educational

[stopitstopitnooow]

If you have an issue with private schools, why? Do you have an issue with:

Buying houses in expensive catchment areas
Extracurricular activities such as music lessons, swimming, sports coaching
Tutors; language, 11+, GCSE

(Also, private healthcare, dentists, opticians)

I honestly don't understand the angst when it comes to private schools. Let people spend their money however they see fit.

What is this mystic utopia whereby private school parents sweep in like knights in shining armour to spruce up state schools? That’s incredibly offensive to the other state school parents who it is implied just can’t be arsed to do anything about the situation.

Parents who are forced out of the independent sector aren’t going to suddenly wave their wands and make things better. They have no control over the children or parents who think education is a waste of time (there were plenty of those at my school) and they’re certainly not going to hand over lumps of cash either. What they will do is hire private tutors and pay for extracurricular activities that will help their children achieve good exam results, or use that money freed up from school fees to increase their mortgage and move to the catchment of an existing outstanding school, therefore driving up house prices even further.

But they will no longer have an unfair advantage re getting into top unis and jobs. Some parents do those things already as more attainable for many. Still won’t give them the advantages a private education will.

My DH and I could have just about afford private school we decided to buy in a naice area with good schools. Lots of people in our area have thought the same.

My plan was similar to yours, however, COVID happened and suddenly, houses in decent catchement areas were selling for 25% - 30% over home report value. Sometimes more.

On that basis, we chose private school fees.

Your choice isn’t so different to mine - we both bought “privilege” (to use the term thrown about on this thread) for our children. Many people cannot afford to pay school fees, but many people cannot afford to buy a house in a good catchement area either.

I grew up in one of the poorest boroughs in England. I learnt pretty quickly that I would need to leave my area to get away from the toxic inter-generational poverty that still exists.

Again, this is similar to my situation.

You say that moving privately schooled children into state schools will improve schools because “those parents with pointy elbows will focus on how to improve the school”. However, privately schooled children will not be going to the types of schools that you and I did. They will be going to the “good” schools in the expensive catchment areas. There will be no change to the schools that actually need improving.

If you really feel that involved parents with “pointy elbows” will improve schools, why didn’t you send your daughter to the kind of school you went to and focus on improving it?

I know why you didn’t, I made the same choice, and you are incredibly naive if you think parents of privately schooled children are going to sacrifice their kids to the cause, when you didn’t.

But that is a seperate conversation. It is the idea that privately schooled children moving to state schools will somehow miraculously improve the quality of education in state schools that is being discussed.

But they will no longer have an unfair advantage re getting into top unis and jobs.

I don’t believe this to be true at all. Those parents will still be able to afford homes in the expensive catchment areas of the top performing state schools, private tutors and expensive extracurricular activities. “Unfair advantage” doesn’t disappear because private schools do.

”Unfair advantage” begins in the womb, not at school.

Isn’t there a piece of research that states the most influential advantage for a child is the level of education of their mother? As @Vivi0 says, advantage comes early and you cannot mitigate against every morsel.

Vivi0

Those things do not give the same unfair advantages and cause the damage to social mobility that private education does.

You know it, everybody knows it.

@Vivi0

I know how much parents can make a difference as I have experienced it - although not at secondary but at primary, although my prediction is that it exacerbates as DC get older.

When we moved to this naice area my DS1 was initially given a place at the roughest primary school in the borough until a place became available in a school nearer us. Fortunately he was only there for a year Y2 but we were on the verge of pulling him out and putting him in a private school.

The school was bad mainly due to a minority cohort of parents who didn't value education that really brought the culture and aspirations of the entire school down. The EFL families were brilliant, as were the Syrian refugees. Unfortunately it was the white working class who were the main detractors - the low point was when a police officer was stationed at the school gates for a few weeks as 2 parents had a fight in front of DC

My DS then got a place in a local school. It was like night and day. Expectations and standards were higher, a calmer atmosphere and genuine camaraderie between the school and the parents.
There were event planners and marketing manager parents who put on amazing events and raised loads of money for the school. Everything was easier and slicker.

I do think if all these types of parents mixed up, there would be a better outcome for society

WTF?

Government doesn’t produce anything.

It takes money from citizens or prints it. Printing devalues cash citizens already hold and takes from them in a different way.

Everything Government has is taken by force.

Everything Government does would be done better by someone who a) isn’t a monopoly, and b) could be held to account by customers.

Government involvement in education is a really really bad thing.

When Government gets involved in farming and food, people die. Can’t you learn from that?

I don’t agree with you at all.

Not all private schools are Eton. In fact, most private schools are not.

Tell me this, if a child who has never been read to, cannot hold a pencil and is still in nappies starts school alongside a child who has been read to since they were a baby, can sound letters and write, and has a wide ranging volcabulary due to parental engagement, are those children starting off on equal footing?

I don’t believe that the advantage the second child has is something that can be made up for by schooling alone. Do you?

Quite right. They are going to send their kids abroad. And those who currently come from abroad will stop coming. That won’t be great for our international trade.

If society is re-ordered so that going to university and having a middle class income becomes a disadvantage to your kids, why will anyone do it?

And for those who have done it already, why would they not go work somewhere less hostile to their kids?

Living standards rise in countries that are not hostile to those who produce.

Quite right, the government is funded by thr people, and this is why they are not in favour of the independent achools taking teachers that the publuc purse has put through their ITT via loans which are mostly never repaid.

Well, quite. There’s a delicious irony to it all, which seems to escape them completely.

If we lived in the catchment of a good state school, like Michaela (choosing that example simply because it topped the ranking this week) and my DC were eligible, I'd pick it in a heartbeat. But there's nothing like it locally. Just low expectation comprehensives.

Interestingly, in some countries (France and Australia are the examples I know a little about) state education funding follows the child. So each child has a per capita allocation of education spend, but if the family want to allocate it to Eton and top up the shortfall, that's their choice. In many ways, I think that's a fairer choice. It's vastly preferable to the regional variations we have in the UK, and yes, I have a grudge because our fairly low wage rural counties ed authorities spend significantly less per capita than the national average.

Haven’t rftt but I agree completely. The amount of middle class people shrieking about private schools while buying schools in “good” catchment areas before their child is even born and then spending significant amounts on academic tutoring and various arts & cultural enrichment activities is unreal.

It’s all the same thing - Using their money, and savvy to get their kids ahead.

I won’t even get started into the ones who pull strings to get their young adult childrens internships etc through their connections or find their kids unpaid internships and placements in London .

If you’re against private schools fine but you need to be against all that extra stuff too as it’s the same idea.

Precisely, I went to 3 state private schools and overwhelmingly the kids in the top sets were from either middle class or immigrants families. We all received the same education at school but like mine their parents encourage education, literacy, reading and creative play etc.

and to add to that are we also going to stop parents who own businesses from allowing their kids to walk into an apprentice / job in their business? There’s a lot of talk of ‘nepot babies’ as it applies to actors /models etc, but really even ‘ordinary’ people who own small business are able to set their kids up with a solid early paid work experience while other better qualified or more able kids are floundering after school/ uni

whats wrong with extra help via strings etc ? sometimes its better the people you know than the ones you dont etc

@Papyrophile I think voucher systems are really interesting and would be a way to radically reform education in a way which improved it for the majority of children. Many parents who can't pay £10-£20k per year could pay a top-up. In theory, it should create more of a free market in education which offers parents genuine choice. A policy of banning or otherwise attacking the private sector aims to create a state monopoly and state monopolies almost invariably reduce quality (the argument for banning private schools to improve the state sector always struck me as very odd on these grounds). A voucher system would also expand rather than destroy the part of our education system which is working well. It might also create a market in no-thrills private schools which are priced around the cost of the voucher e.g. schools which might not have the facilities etc. of more expensive private schools but which offer a solid education, are more accountable to parents and would not be bound by the national curriculum and state model of education.

I think the difficult thing to get right would be provision for children whose parents can't / won't top-up or who are more expensive to educate e.g. due to SEN or not admitted to private schools due to behavioral issues . You would want to avoid creating a state sector full of very needy children unless you could provide additional support for them (though some children in these categories may benefit from specialist schools which aim to support their needs rather than the current system).

You should have more money in the education system overall if more parents are paying a top-up. You could put the value of the voucher slightly under the current spend per child and use the the excess for children who need more support, as well as providing higher voucher funding for children with SEN etc.. You could also put in incentives for the private sector to provide more bursaries etc.

The perception is clearly that private school parents want to buy "advantage" in relation to other children and have their children be part of an elite group. I really don't see it like this - I just want the best education I can get for my children plus some ancillary benefits of private school like wrap-around care and would love a more open private sector which more children could benefit from.

Perhaps you’ve misunderstood, I wasn’t necessarily saying it was wrong or right. That’s another discussion.

The point was it’s double standards and hypocritical for people to use their money/assets/financial resources to help their children in the various ways I’ve mentioned , but then complain it’s unfair that other parents are using their money to get their kids a better education via sending them to private schools.

my apologies, i now understand your points better and agree, human psychology are strange at times

The problem with private schools is that they directly harm government run schools. You need a minimum number of students with academic aspirations in order to have a classroom that can cater well to academically high achieving students. Private schools tend to poach academically high achieving students. This means that the academicially high achieving students left at government run schools have fewer peers, which creates more pressure to move to private schools... and the cycle continues.

Yes, school catchments are a thing, but it plays out differently. It's just not as predatory.

Most of this is affected by parenting though

@Caterpillarsleftfoot Yes, but a school that's a safe, supportive environment, with teachers who actually have the opportunity to get to know students, is a huge protective factor for disadvantaged or at risk students.

I’m not against private education existing—I don’t think everyone should be forced into a single education system as a matter of principle—but I do think it should be taxed for the majority. It is a luxury, and a particularly socially problematic one in terms of entrenching inequality. It is true that life isn’t fair, but it is also true that a society with high inequality and low social mobility is bad for all of us.

I think there could be some nuance to taxation, though, as not all private education is purely about giving kids a leg up. Some SEN kids really need an atmosphere that is different to what their local state option can provide, so I think it would be good for people to be able to apply for VAT exemptions on a case by case basis for this, as for those families, private may be nearer to a need than a luxury.