To wonder if you are against private schools…

[Unsrr]

Why is this? As in against their existence?

I was brought up in a reasonably poor area and my education was not good. I sometimes went to the nearest private school for swimming lessons and remember being in awe of it. We have one dc now age 7 and can’t afford private but there is maybe a chance we could for secondary. I wouldn’t give it a second thought if we could make it work.

I have never felt private schools should disappear because surely that’s what we should be aspiring to? An education that is excellent (yes I know not all private schools are good and lots of state schools are better), isn’t that what we should aim for?

I feel sad that this country has now made it harder to access this education. What is the reason people are against private schools existing at all? I don’t think it can be jealousy, I think many people are genuinely opposed to it from an ideological perspective and I can’t understand it at all. Just interested really as there’s been so much talk about schools recently.

Academically they’d have been a waste of money for me and my eldest son as we achieved top grades in a state comp. They probably wouldn’t have taken my youngest as he has special needs. If just looking at academics, they might be better value for money for children of pretty average intelligence and with no special educational needs.

I am not a fan of buying privilege be that private school or £££ on a house for a good state school as I don’t think it’s fair to disadvantage children who will never get those opportunities. Or how despite only being 7% of the population private school educated people are over represented in universities/good jobs.

I had a very good state education in a country with a similar system to the UK with private schools, and all state secondaries were comprehensive. I am very grateful for that. It meant I mixed with a wide variety of people, some of whom were very different from those I met through my family. I would wish this for all in the UK too.

Here I see extraordinary privilege perpetuated through elite schools, and feel that is wrong. I also see parents struggling, and not always managing to secure a good education for their children, particularly children with special needs who are not well provided for in the state system, and feel that is wrong. I also see and extraordinary variety of different approaches to education outside the state system and suspect that is a strength.

So I'm not particularly against private schools but they should be very rare and less influential, with the vast majority enjoying a good education funded by wider society.

JFC people are allowed to spend their money how they want, we do not live in a socialist country. We live in a capitalist one which is why I am not against the VAT being charged.

My DD15 has AuDHD and the SEN provision at the local state school was shite. The smaller, quiet private school is the right answer for her SEN needs.

I'm a lone parent, I've had to sacrifice to be able to send her there. So many of her peers are also SEN at that school.

So yes I'm supportive of Private schools and I'll do what the hell I like with the money I earn.

I'm a secondary teacher and have worked in both. I was on antidepressants in the local state school because of behaviour and being spoken to like shit. Makes me laugh when people say privately educated kids are up themselves. They're well mannered, considerate, kind kids at the school I teach in and would be shocked at the behaviour and attitude of some of the worst kids at the state. Highlight was once being told to drink a pint of c*m and a kid doing a shit on the stairs for shits and giggles. (Excuse the pun).

I will pay through the nose to send my kids to a school where they won't be mixing with pre prisoners.

I cba to read all the posts.
I teach in 3 private schools and one over-subscribed non-selective state school.

The main difference between the sectors is class size. Any teacher will achieve great results with only 15 in a class.
I see amazing results in the state school with 30+ in the classes, and some very challenging students.
The whole system needs overhauling.

What an offensive last comment. I’m sorry for what you went through, worth reflecting whether some of the children could detect your contempt for them and react to that.

I'm not completely against them for everyone if that's what they want to spend their money on, but I am against them for my children, as in this area we have excellent state schools. The private schools here are full of property developers' kids and footballers wives type mums with their bad facial filler and huge range rovers. Its become a status thing over a good education. I wouldnt want my kids solely mixing with people like that. That said, there should be an overhaul of the state system I think, as I am very aware that not all areas have a good state education provision.

It also makes me laugh when people talk about private kids being rude! Many people in my family and friends circle are teachers. My sister was pushed by a student when she was pregnant and school brushed it under the carpet. She would get told to “F**k Off” on a daily basis and the girls would mock her

That’s just as bad as saying {disparaging things} about state school children! (I’m not writing them - hence the brackets - but I’m sure you can use your imagination)

Most private schools are small. They’re not mini Etons.They contain children from a variety of families NOT all rich and posh. As I said, I came from a very poor family myself, and other children in my class were the children of nurses, teachers, care workers, etc. Just normal children, speaking in various accents.

Yes, I’m opposed to them on ideological grounds. They perpetuate privilege. I believe that if all parents had to send their children to state schools, we would soon see a rise in the standards of the latter, amount of money spent on schools etc. because of parental pressure from rich, articulate parents.

I am very heartened to see people agreeing that having a value system and living by it is a good thing.

My DC attend and have always attended state school although we could afford private
We did not move house into a catchment we just sent them to the one we live near
There are no grammar schools here
We did not employ any tutors

The secondary school was RI the whole time my DD was there. It's just been regraded to good the year she left.
FSM 40%
5 GCSEs at more than a 5 = 50%
Can't find anything on exclusions but there is a level of bad behaviour for sure. She doesn't feel it affects her.

DD got 7-9s in her GCSEs and is predicted As and A*s in her A levels.
Her state education did not appear to do her any harm.
In my view she already had all the advantage she needs with middle class, well educated, well off parents.
(Amusingly she now qualifies for contextual uni offers at many places which she also doesn't need)

I have tried to give back to the school eg by being a governor there for many years.

I am live and let live about the existence of private schools. I don't want them abolished but I do think that VAT is fair and long overdue and am sick of whingeing threads about it on here.

Do you live in a city? The background of children in the best state schools in the city I live in will be as uniformly middle class as the children at the private schools.

This!

Private schools are practically unheard of in Germany and many other countries with a good state education system.

I agree wholeheartedly and this by far worse within the state sector rather than between private and state.
It’s out of the each of many to buy a house in the catchment of an excellent state secondary or primary school. Either way, those with money often supplement with extracurricular activities (music and sport) and can afford the books/tuition to plug the gaps where the school may not be meeting their child’s needs.

education is so important to everyone that there should be no way of buying out of our national system. For as long as that happens, there will not be enough pressure to change things. It’s just not possible to get the kind of education people people for privately for the money the state puts in; what is needed is national agreement that more money should go in, and that ‘education’ should include all the things private schools provide.

btw I am not against there being non-state schools - it’s good to have a diversity of school and education types. But they should not be able to charge more than the state schools get per child.

Not bothered either way.
I think all children should receive the best education possible. As a teacher I worked the hardest I could, gave the best I could to all the kids. Even the ones who spat at me and threw the furniture.

Walk a mile in a state secondary teacher's shoes and come back to me. I loved many of those kids but guaranteed about 15-20% will do time.

Absolutely, sadly, not the case. I believe people should be allowed to
spend their own money as they see fit.

I think education should be open to all.

It is in the UK. And it’s parental support/involvement that has the biggest influence on the outcome for lots of kids. Banning private schools would do nothing to help those poor kids whose parents don’t give a toss.

I'm against them because why should one child have a better education and opportunities than another based solely on their parents wealth? It just breeds inequality.

Not to say I "hate" people who send their children private, you do what's best for your children. I moved house specifically so I could be close to good state schools, so even though I am idealogically against private (I had a Northern working class upbringing) I'm also not faced with the option of a neglected and struggling local state school so it's easy for me to say.

However education should be a leveler, there should be no NEED for private schools. And specialist schools should be based on merit and the needs of the child, not a parent's bank balance.

TLDR: I am happy for specialist schools to exist, but there should be no fees and purely merit and needs based. Also state schools need to be funded better with more staff and more schools to meet demand. Class sizes are far too large imo.

I find your comments about state schools quite offensive. Independent schools have the luxury of being able to kick out badly behaved children. Except in extreme cases, state schools cannot do so. Instead, they cope with badly behaved children as best they can. As context, my DD went to both state and independent schools.

Ideally we’d all get the same access to education but it doesn’t work like that does it. A lot depends on where you happen to live and what the school application lottery gives you.

I don’t think it’s wrong for better off parents to choose to educate kids elsewhere, at their own expense. Those parents are still being taxed (some of them by a huge amount) so they’re paying twice and taking a small chunk of demand out of the state system. Yes those kids might get a lot of advantages in life but lots of universities and employers favour those that did well in the state sector these days.

FWIW we considered private school for ours but decided against. Biggest reason was that we wanted our kids to learn to muck along with people from all walks of life, not just the more privileged ones.

I haven't rtft but I have read all of OP's posts.

I'm ideologically opposed to private schools because they entrench privilege.

Buying an expensive house in an area for an excellent state school also buys privilege and I think it's unfair.

I also hate the grammar school system because it really creates a dichotomy and puts a lot of pressure on children at an inapprpriate age.

Education is so fundamental and the children who most need a good school experience (because of difficulties in other areas of their life such as poverty or disability) are least likely to get it due to finances.

Essentially an education system where advantage can be bought compounds that advantage through generations.

For adults, I think we accept that to an extent we make choices and live with the outcome, that we have some degree of control over our lives (although the way society is structured means this is much smaller than we'd like). But children don't have that, so the idea that one child gets a five star education and another is learning in an overcrowded portacabin with a substitute teacher doing crowd control, and this has nothing to do with anything they've done - we don't like this. Some people behave like this is ok, and others get angry about it, because we're trying to live with this unfairness - either we've benefitted from it or suffered it, and we have to find a way to live with that.

Do you really think so? I don’t. Some of my friends who went to the same private school as I did, sent their children to local comprehensives. Some of those schools were dire.

This wasn’t because my friends didn’t speak up or promote education or push for changes. A big problem was the presence of children who were totally disengaged from education and horribly disruptive. The schools gave every impression of giving up on them and let them ruin everyone else’s education. There were also blind prejudices against certain subjects/authors/languages from both teachers and parents. Kind of a reverse snobbery. Everything was dumbed down and bright children, however rich or poor, were left without any extension to the work.

The issue isn’t private schools - it’s state schools. They should look at ways to improve and change. Another issue is the teacher shortage. The government should raise the standards to be a teacher; leave teachers to teach and use their professional knowledge; and sort the work/life balance.

I am against private education because it does not foster equality of opportunity – in fact it makes an absolute joke of the notion of equality for opportunity. In my opinion, education of children is the biggest segregator of outcomes in this country – not just for young people but well into adulthood and generational.

In my case it's not jealously, as my income can comfortable accommodate private school fees for both my children. I simply do not believe that standards of education should be based on level income or the opportunity to sacrifice income.