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.

State children get £7200 per annum. Private school fees are 13,500 per annum plus.

Please enlighten me how that's better.

"Money doesn't just talk. It screams" - Bob Dylan

Online mental health in state secondaries - that website. Can you please explain further.

7,200 GBP per annum is so insufficient. Please explain how this is better than £13,500 per annum?

IMO it has vanishingly little to do with tax treatment, and absolutely everything to do with intake. Parents who consider education, reading and learning intrinsically important, will cluster together, and that neighbourhood will have a reallt good school. Teachers will want to teach there too. As a person with a PGCE, every teacher loves to teach kids who are keen to learn. It's great fun to introduce ideas and watch them take root and grow in young minds.

It's a lot less enjoyable to deal with the children whose parents don't talk to them, or spend any money on their pleasures rather than their own. It's horrible to try to help a 15 year old whose dad has been in prison since the child was 10. No one can fill that gap or fix the pain.

As another person in possession of a PGCE and QTS - I love crowd control. I'm not afraid of a challenge!

Education vouchers @DragonMama3 .. Everyone gets £7k per child per year and the parents should be able to spend it in any school they want. It would help here in Cornwall where the per capita spend is under £5k. If you want a private education, you take your voucher to a private school. So parents don't pay twice via tax and fees, they just top up their spending for the education product they want.

@DragonMama3

Not sure why you are looking up a definition that pertains to the Philippines. The "Crabs in a Barrel" mentality has been studied by academics in many societies. It is a syndrome of a dysfunctional society. I put in a link below.

"To put it another way: crab barrel syndrome is the thought “If I cannot do it, neither can you,” mixed with jealousy or hatred and turned into behavior (Caples, 2016). It is the display of negative behaviors by a person dominated by jealousy and feeling anxious or worried in the face of others’ success. Crab barrel syndrome can psychologically hurt both the person exhibiting crab mentality and the person being targeted, and results in social affairs in which at least the two parties interact (Ozdemir and Uzum, 2019) and often leads to conflict."

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9615545/#:~:text=The%20concept%2C%20also%20called%20crab,Uzum%20and%20Ozdemir%2C%202020).

Discipulus cave was my classroom motto...

There is no information bar a statement from Labour that the money raised from VAT on private school fees will be spent on on-line mental health counselling in secondary schools...

There has been an increase in issues since C-19. They have to be elected first. What are the polls saying atm on Politico?

@OhCrumbsWhereNow Tory party worker?

To be frank if I ever win the lottery my youngest would be in Sedbergh/Casterton in a heartbeat. Pool, regular sport - who wouldn't want that for their child?

I've never come across that. Maybe we move in different circles.

My DD is in a state comprehensive and getting a superb education for £6,700 a year (according to gov figures).

We could afford private school if we absolutely had to, but frankly even if I won the lottery I wouldn't switch schools. The range of extra curricular options is superb (including horse-riding, archery etc), latest tech in all the classes where that is needed, and it's a massively better school than my own super-selective grammar was.

This is politics of envy, nothing more, and will do absolutely nothing to help any child's education bar lower access to good schools for those with the least options.

The Guardian was the source I just checked if you care to spend some time googling...

@DragonMama3

Ineffectual policies should always be challenged.

Because if you go down this road you will be back at square one in a few years.

How does that help state school students?

If the policy is beneficial, then show us the benefits. They should have been outlined.

Problem is....they haven't. This has been by design. Just a way to get people riled up to
vote.

Thats the real British malaise: short-term electoral cycle gimmicks and zero long-term discussions.

Until you break out of that cycle you will not "fix" anything really.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow Are you affected by the proposed change to private schools? Would the increase in fees be unaffordable for you?

The Guardian keeps telling me how many articles I've read. 87 articles. It's not actually the correct number...I've read more.

I think you have to take a step back and compare the UK to other countries that don't have private schools to see how socially damaging and dividing it is. My children are at private schools. I wish they woukd close them down, so that there was no choice and no pressure on parents to send them. Where we live, our children would stick out at state school. If everyone from the private sector would go to the local state schools, they would be socially more mixed and the parents who now fundrause for the private schools would be pulling in all that money for the state schools, so that facilities would improve massively. At my children's school, some parents honestly donate 10s of thousands. A charity auction can bring in 100k, and they have one every other term. Just imagine what such money could do to improve labs, music departments, playground facilities at a our local high school.

There hasn't been an election called. I've heard talk of spring 24.

Didn't Starmer's own school become private from a state Grammar? Local authority paying fees of affected students. Unpleasant memories? Bitter pill? Bullying?

Would adding tax to fees really sink the schools? A lot of very wealthy where I am and won't be affected at all.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow As a qualified teacher, I am very happy that your DD is getting a decent standard of education. LDN?

Not personally affected in the sense that my child already has a place at the state secondary that we wanted. I had to be extremely sharp elbowed to get that place (DD has one of the few places allocated on aptitude), but had we not had that option then I would have paid for private over the dire local school.

I now spend the money that I could have spent on school fees on lots of extras to supplement DD's interests.

But my vote isn't always decided by things that personally affect me. I dislike bad policies and this is a bad policy.

The Finnish have the best schools. Free lunch for all, no homework and less school time - 20 hours. Zero competition as every Finnish school has exactly the same facilities. . Students get to learn new things in schools from baking and industrial works to music and poetry.

We could learn a lot from Finland.

Except they wouldn't - 93% of the population attend state schools. Plenty of wealthy parents in that 93%.

You invest in tutors, music lessons, holidays to broaden the mind and in many cases a mega mortgage in the catchment of a top state school.

@NellyBarney

Scandinavian countries do have private schools (some for SEN kids and some for International people).

The reason why their state schools are so much better than what you see in the UK is:

They tackle poverty at source (this reduces the number of badly parented problematic children In their state school system)

They have a uniform agreement amongst all political parties that public investment (funding) into education is long-term. That means 5, 10, 15, and 20 year plans.

They take no short-cuts because they understand short-term gimmicks don't work when it comes to funding education. Funding needs to be done suatinably, and it needs to be long-term to see results.

And that is then reflected in the way they recruit teachers, and how society there views the teaching profession (top 25% in pay and high entry standards).