To wonder if Private School parents think we can’t read?

[Captainmycaptains]

Work/volunteer in Education so following the whole VAT debate.

SM is full of private parent groups ‘organising’ to get the proposed VAT on fees cancelled - fine you would, wouldn’t you esp.if you’re used to getting your own way.

They’re advocating hassling local schools, councils, demanding stats and figures that don’t exist, wiring to MPs - telling people to ‘claim’ their state place to ‘disrupt’ the ‘system’ while also saying ‘ Obvs we won’t be taking Charlotte and Hugo out of school, we’ll find the money’ etc strive harder, getting granny to chip in’ but this might make the council ‘panic’.

Do they think that people in support of the VAT aren’t seeing/hearing/reading all of these plans???

the funniest one yet is the poster who said ‘ well going to claim our state school places then! See how they like that! We’ll going holiday, pay the mortgage down, shop at Waitrose and save £700k in the process, ha!’
I. no you aren’t 2. Okay - go for it! Who on earth would think £700k is worth it?? Behave like a normal person then…

YANBU - yeah, they’re noisy as expected but the rest of us are as think/ concerned as they seem to think. Also - it’s too late for Sept - waiting lists only…

YABU - applying for school places you have no intention of using is daft, and of course everyone can see what they’re trying to do.

Exactly. I would LOVE to be able to send my child to state school but she was self harming with the stress of state school environment and the school did not have the resources to deal with it. The self harming ended the very day she started the private school. The very day. And still people think I’m a terrible person for getting my child out of such a harmful environment.

Those of you with the happy, NT kids and a brilliant state grammar with strong leadership and a lovely ethos need not participate in this debate. Your experiences are wholly irrelevant.

My DC’s happiness and mental wellbeing.

Well my wealth certainly hasn’t risen over the past 16 years. And pretty much every parent at my DC’s private school that I speak to is complaining about their mortgage and other living costs drastically increasing. I believe that’s why there’s so much push back on this policy. You are wrong to say that it’s not impacting the average private school parent.

I am paying for
Getting the best results they can - so if they are capable of 9's I want them to achieve that instead of overworked and underresourced teachers thinking that a 7 is fine. If they are not capable of a 9 thats fine but I expect them to be stretched
Not being bullied for working hard and behaving
Not in classes with kids who have no idea how to behave
Not seeing Teachers beaten up and/or having things thrown at them
All the resources they need and small classes, split by ability
Not spending break avoiding kids who want to beat them up because we are "posh" (we aren't)
Not watching the almost daily fight on the playing fields
Being in an envrionment where aspiration is something to be celebrated.
Not being in a class with 14/15 year olds who take drugs most weekends..
The school not being in Special Measures
Not having The Police do searches for knives at the door.

IF we had a State option (because there are plenty according to people on here) that offered that my DC would have gone there, our only local State option does not.
A huge amount of housebuilding pushed us out of catchment for the so called "good" State Secondary, which isn't actually very good either. Its just better than the one we are in Catchment for. And if anyone thinks I can't know how bad our Catchment school is I do because I am a Governor so I am trying to effect change but lack of resources, worn out teachers and (some) parents who don't value education mean its bloody hard.

I don’t care about results. I’m paying for for my child to be educated in a school where children respect each other and treat each other nicely. This isn’t available in the state sector where I live unfortunately. It’s worth every single penny!

Yes exactly this.

And being in an environment where being bright and wanting to work hard is supported and doesn’t attract bullying.

And being a boy who’s an actor and also dances and sings isn’t seen as remotely out of the ordinary and doesn’t attract bullying. And is supported by school when he has occasional days off for filming or performing.

And having a disabled brother is also not a target for being bullied.

Summed up what I was trying to say in a much better and more succinct manner.

My children had an excellent education and a very happy time in a brilliant grammar. Doesn't mean I am not allowed to participate in this debate. I appreciate we got a lot more than many are paying for.

Well @Croissant59 - the Labour Party did come for grammars in the past and that is what drove the private school boom in the first place over the last 30 years.

In any event, I thought you were commenting on France. France has a grammar school system and a subsidised private school system as well.
Finland’s results are massively down.

The academic research around the comprehensive model may be flawed. It’s what drove educational policy for years but who is to really say it is the right model. It’s far from clear. What is clear is that in real terms state secondary schools in U.K. are in a poor state on the whole in terms of emotional well being in particular. That’s a fact. Our kids are not happy in our state secondary schools and that’s a crisis in my opinion.

‘I don’t care about results. I’m paying for for my child to be educated in a school where children respect each other and treat each other nicely. This isn’t available in the state sector where I live unfortunately. It’s worth every single penny!’

sure.
all these well off people living in areas of deprivation and shit schools… bordering on bizarre.

Well I live in a pretty affluent area with a pretty shit catchment school. My friend teaches there and she told me not to send my kids to it. I trust her judgement. In any event I went to an “outstanding” comp myself and it still failed to meet my needs and destroyed my mental health. Being top of the class put a target on my back.

Oh believe me, the school I’m in the catchment of is one of the very best in Scotland. But it’s scotland, so teens can assault other teens, be charged by the police with assault and be back in class the very next day (I KID YOU NOT!) because meaningful consequences were binned here a long, long time ago.

Read my post.
I WAS in the catchment for a "good" State school until a huge amount of housebuilding pushed us out.
We could have moved I suppose but we love where we live and moving wouldn't have been a lot cheaper and we would have had to find the money up front

I'd like to see the evidence that the closure of grammar caused a boom in independents. The areas (SE England essentially) with the most independents also have the most grammars.

I live in France. I was talking about the British system. France has no grammar schools. It indeed has heavily subsidised, for the most part Catholic, private schools. I'm not a defender of the French system.

I realize that UK state schools are in a shocking state, in France it's probably worse. Adding more division by sidelining poor kids in even greater numbers at age 11 will not help.

And so you propose to extract the most motivated and academic kids. That will make the behaviour problems much worse. Kids are not idiots. They know when society has built a big scrap heap for them.

A way to reduce behaviour problems would be to reduce class sizes and above all to make sure kids are living in decent conditions with prospects of a fair chance at making a good life for themselves after school.

A way to reduce behaviour problems would be to reduce class sizes and above all to make sure kids are living in decent conditions with prospects of a fair chance at making a good life for themselves after school.

I agree. I'm old enough to remember the problems schools had under Thatcher. It got much better under the last Labour government because they created plenty of opportunities for social mobility but then this last lot has been Thatcherism on steroids and has created worse problems than ever.

If more people than ever are being pushed into poverty then that certainly won't be helping either.

It's no good people blaming parents - it's not just about parenting. The Covid lockdowns are partly to blame. As are the broken education systems due to lack of funding.

It has an awful lot to do with parenting. How come the parents of my DS’ school friend who barely speak English and live in a Council house on a pretty rough estate have a son at one of the highest performing state grammars in the country? It has everything to do with their attitude as parents and the desire to get their children the best education that they can. A lot of parents don’t value education and that rubs off on their kids. Also, you need to fundamentally change the attitude of many state schools so being the best is celebrated rather than being something to bully pupils about.

I agree actually but £1.7b won’t do much.

It’s small fry.

A much bigger question is where is the £12.3b other funding going to come from seeing as the budget is about £14b short on average per year for education.

Have you asked him that? Because smaller class sizes are not coming your way without that motherload.

He won’t answer that question because the truth is, no extra money is going to education. Just this and even that is I’m question. It will more than likely fall in the courts due to unfairness. That’s the legal opinion from 1982 and no party has attempted to challenge it yet and even more so because now we are signed up to the ECHR.

Hes using this for votes and the j when elected, will put his hands up and say sorry folks, we didn’t know this would happen but we can’t do it. When all along he knew perfectly well.

On a human level I feel very very sad about the U.K. and how things are now. I would very much like state schools to be better funded. Likewise the NHS. I don’t know how each successive government has squandered our money repeatedly over so many years, but they look very very incompetent, all of them, of all colours.

Your way of looking at it is black-and-white @Dibblydoodahdah

You are using one, unusual example to try to illustrate a point about parents being to blame for behaviour in schools.

During the lockdowns, there were warnings about the impact on schools and worsening behaviour as a result.

There were not all these behaviour problems in the 00s. I had children at school, then too.

If your child is getting assaulted regularly then if you can afford it damn right you pull them out to a private school with the ability and willingness to address poor behaviour. Not doing so would be terrible parenting fgs. You aren’t going to leave your child there for classroom cohesion reasons or in the hope that smaller sizes might happen in the future and classroom behaviour improves.

In my sad, stressful experience these children cannot be accommodated in mainstream schooling. I know councils don’t want to because it’s expensive and they have no money, but for the sake of all of our children they need to expand the number of places in special needs schools and PRUs. All of our children deserve a decent education, and so so many in the state sector don’t have that.

When I talked about smaller class sizes I wasn't referring to Labour's policies in particular. I don't even know them well. I live in France where the president seems to have decided to burn the house down.

Divide and conquer (diviser pour mieux régner[ seems to have been a hallmark of both British and French politics for decades now. Inequalities are increasing massively, and along with them fear, resentment and an understandable tendency for people to want to look out for themselves and their own kids.

France seems willing to throw swathes of its young people on the scrap heap, I fear it's the same in the UK, and the future will be full of anger and conflict.

But maybe it will all be fine. Here's hoping.

One of my children attended a mainstream academy where they put children with very bad behaviour in an isolated block. They were criticised in the national news for doing it but it did work quite well. I would not say the school was particularly good academically, though.

A lot depends on the head and the staff. Staff who keep leaving cause disruption to children's education. But staff will leave if they feel they aren't treated well.

I understand, and agree. I would never judge anyone who moved their suffering child anywhere they see fit. I was talking about grammars, not independents. And neither would i judge anyone who sent their kid to a grammar. Where they exist they're part of the system and skew the demographic profile of other schools.

I grew up in NE England, where there were no grammars. I went to a comprehensive, with a mixed intake, OK behaviour, setting from year 9, and had a great experience. That was in the 90s, I wish every child could have that.

Actually moving away from the white working class neighbourhood that I grew up in has taught me an awful lot about attitude. People from other races and culture value education a lot more and they expect a lot more of their children. That’s why white working class boys perform the worst and that’s why my DS, with a white British ethnicity, is in the minority at his super selective grammar.

You shouldn't look down on people and assume that they will never achieve anything because they're working class. Or that education isn't important to them.