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.

I don't believe in banning private schools, as I think the right to opt out of the state system is a civil liberty that outweighs the disadvantages.

However, it's obvious that they entrench inequality and that is why people don't like them. At the top (Eton, Harrow etc.) they have bred a self-reproducing elite who colonise a lot of the top jobs in any sector and haven't necessarily made a very good job of running things.

I did think the wailing over VAT was quite telling- people complaining they couldn't afford private school any more, completely ignoring that they weren't at all bothered by the fact that this was true of most people before the change was announced.

Adding VAT to private schools did not work in Greece. Reeves is doing this because of ideology. You could see it all over face when she spoke about being educated in prefab classrooms during the Budget.

I send both of mine to private primary and will continue to do so. I don't want them in a class where teachers supervise the children brushing their teeth or where toilet training hasn't happened. I want them to be free to learn in a pleasant environment where they have freshly made, healthy food at lunchtime.
We live in a smaller house, drive an old car and spend very little on clothes and other nonsense. Our choice, and we are all happy with it.

For those who say it's not fair to buy advantages for your children, what about the private language class we send our kids to at the weekend, or their private swimming lessons. Should they be outlawed?
What about parents who pay for extra music or drama lessons? Surely that's not fair either? What about parents who are able to help with homework because they can speak foreign languages, or are brilliant at maths and science? That's not fair either.
Where do you draw the line?

I am happy to do whatever I can to give my children every advantage possible. Life is hard and competitive.

This.

I'm am also against grammar schools (despite attending one) and faith schools in principle, but accept that if you live in an area where there are lots of these (for example Bucks, Kent, Lincs) then you just need to deal with your principles and put up with the fact that this is what is on offer in your area.
I feel that more money means you are absolutely entitled to buy an expensive car, pay for a cleaner, buy designer clothes, have nice holidays or whatever else floats your boat. But I don't think it should entitle you to pay for your kids to have a "better" education than another child whose parents don't have so much.

Im not anti private school. If I had enough money i would send my kids.

What i do have issues with a few select people complaining about the costs or rises in costs saying they work hard to afford the tuition. While that might be true it’s having the self awareness that for most of the population even if they work hard and saved lots of money it would be £1-2k not the 20k needed per year. It’s like a well off person complaining they had to turn their heating off for their indoor pool due to the COL crisis to someone who is using a food bank.

Because we could (just about) afford to live in an area with great state schools our children did well at school. How is that any different from sending your children to private school? We then moved our children to the private sector for 6th form as their A level choice combinations were not doable at their state school. What really struck me about the move was that our children did not have to put up with other pupils messing about in the class. This never happened because the teachers had sanctions they could use and the pupils knew this.
As someone who started secondary school in a secondary modern but was later transferred to a grammar, I think great unfairness lies here too. I also know someone and he and his wife went to church every Sunday for years and years. As soon as their children left school they stopped. This had been to get their children into the church school. No system is fair and I don’t blame any parent who tries to do the best for their child.
I think the best thing this government could do for education is to have sanctions for bad behaviour in school. Just one person misbehaving in a class can ruin a lesson for the other pupils in that class.

I'm politically and philosophically against private education.

Just because we can't level the playing field completely doesn't mean we shouldn't try and level it at all. Come on.

The reality is that, yes I am buying a better education and contacts and all of it for my three. The school they are at encourages all the qualities I want in my children: namely gumption, independence and self sufficiency. Plus, they will get a good education. The reality is that an education can only take you so far. You can have all the A grades in the world but if you don't have any drive it ain't gonna get you a good career or a good life. The state system does not, at this time, really follow that model so I buy it in.

We have the money to send our children to private school and didn’t for a second consider it.
Having such a 2-tiered system is detrimental to U.K. education in general. Only the very well off can afford ( despite the denials on MN!) it which means the children all look, and sound the same in private schools, people are trying to buy influence and connections and privilege for their children - I don’t think that’s good for anyone, certainly not for the cosseted children who go to private school.
State school, IMHO, is a much more realistic and richer experience.

Having a government run by public school boys and girls, who sent their children to the same private and boarding schools, was the works thing that could have happened to our state education system.
The assumption that private schools are automatically’superior’ in some way is an illusion. If anything the politicians that it has produced should be proof that the private school system kills creativity, and churns out arrogant, self centred, self interested, not very bright students.

Then your friends' children went to very poorly-run schools. That doesn’t change the overall principle. If more children of articulate, influential people went to state schools there would be much more pressure for those schools to be given the resources they need, to cope with disruptive pupils, and to change their curriculum if enough parents objected to it.
I've forgotten what the percentage is of journalists who were privately educated, but it is ridiculously high, hence the lack of pressure in the press for better provision in state schools.

But this still happens all the time in the state school sector where the best schools often have very expensive catchment areas that only wealthy families can afford to buy in.

If private schools were abolished I suspect the scrabble for the right postcode would become even more expensive and competitive - and therefore out of reach for most.

What, so ‘can’t win, don’t try’?

Unless we find a way to break up the postcode / catchment issue and have an enormous funding injection into schools, CAMHS, SEN and family support in the very early years, hammering or abolishing private schools will not achieve anything positive.

The ideal solution is to make them unnecessary because state can provide the same thing that a normal, small day school does (not Eton etc, but the far more typical ones which most of the public will have little experience of). Small class sizes, lots of extra curricular, flexible and humane pastoral systems that are not driven by fear of LA attendance figures. If this was achieved, natural market forces would reduce the schools down but yes you would still have the super elite who will continue out of entrenched wealth, endowments and tradition. Unless we are going to bring in very un-liberal rules on wealth, not much to be done there but its still our choice not to elect them to parliament.

The idea that the uber wealthy would bring their influence to bear is a really odd one - deeply contradictory on many levels. a) how insulting to those already in the system that they can't or won't do likewise and b) unrealistic in assuming that they would. They uber-wealthy would find ways around it or set up enclaves around certain state schools - do you really think they'd suddenly all turn up in the failing comp?

Ultimately, enormous, sustained investment is required along with a frank acknowledgement that a lot of the poorer schools are so as a result of parental disengagement and robustly tackle it but no government so far has the balls to do or say that.

I think it’s more the attitude of the parents than the school. Parents who send their kids to private schools obviously have ambitions for their kids but so do some state school parents who will instil the same ambitious streak into their kids. Cream will always rise to the top but you can’t buy intelligence, talent and ability.

I think these threads are started every so often to get a lot of traffic. Yawn

In a perfect world they wouldn’t exist as we should have high quality state schools that allow all children to thrive. In reality though, inequality will always exist because schools in deprived areas face far more issues than schools in middle class or wealthy areas. I can also see why parents send their children to private schools as the education system in our country is broken.

@FrodisCapering why do you say adding VAT is ideological? If you mean that they recognise that private schools are businesses and as such they should pay VAT, then yes I think you are right. But what I think you are suggesting is a more resentful, jealous attitude rather than ideology. I went to state schools and have worked in private schools. I see no reason to ban them, but they are not charities. Many have overseas students, Chinese in particular, why should they not be treated like the businesses they are? Parents are paying for a service that they select. They have a free at the point of use education system available. If they choose to buy another product, so be it.

So therefore all children should have shitty state school education. Fantastic logic.

I'm not against them - I believe in choice - but I don't use them because I feel that what the state offers my children in our local area is excellent and I do not think my particular DC would get enough value added for the cost of private school.

However, I do think that they should have to pay VAT 🤷‍♀️

I don't think it is the same thing – not by a long shot. I think there is a chasm between buying an expensive (though that's not always the case) house in the catchment of a good state school and going to a private school.

Firstly, the premise of the state system is that all state schools have the equality of opportunity to operate as well as any other state school. This could be down to an excellent head or senior leadership, it could be down to efficiency of the trust's finances, the quality of their governors or their success in fundraising. Harder to control is the demographic, but none of that changes the fundamental premise that they have the opportunity to be equal. No state school, ever, will reach the same levels of opportunity as a private school, and that's what makes it so different to purchasing a house next to a good state school.

State schools are also often change quite rapidly in the quality of their function. Badly performing schools can turn around in a matter of 3-5 years. Good schools can also do the same. Whatever state school you are able to get into, nothing is guaranteed. What is guaranteed is that they are built on the premise of the opportunity to be equal.

Music lessons or extra curricular activities do not contribute to generational wealth and excess of privilege in anywhere near the same category that attendance to private school does.

Precisely.

I'm with you OP. My DS was miserable at his state primary. Bullied for being a nerd (liking maths and reading novels), he came out angry, demotivated, miserable.

He got a scholarship to our local, non-selective independent and within 6 months, different child. Happy, engaged, keen to go to school, He's just got 9 good GCSEs and is studying for maths, physics and DT A'levels. Has friends, does sport. Planning to be a civil engineer. Such a relief.

Why would I disapprove of something that my child needs and the state system couldn't provide? Even though I've had to mortgage my soul to keep him there, I would do the same again.

In this case, trying = make things even worse. So… yeah.

Why would you want to make it even more difficult for average families to access good state education?

‘namely gumption, independence and self sufficiency.’

So this bullshit is often trotted out … and yet private children are cosseted and coached, bussed into school in private minibuses, kept away from any real competition with local state schools, handheld through everything…
then last thing they are, as far as I can see from the children of friends is ‘independent’

They have so much less freedom, every second is scheduled.
Unless Of course we’re talking about the famed ‘independence’ of sending young children away from their families to live at school… some called it fostering independence, some call it child neglect…

But they don't within the state sector itself & the government / no one appears to be taking any steps to rectify that.

It's widely acknowledged that many state schools in the U.K. provide a poor quality education. Instead of focus being creating more equality in the state sector and improving the quality of state education, the focus is to make private school less affordable for parents.

All bizarre and quite self defeating for those who want it.

I for one am thrilled it doesn't affect me or my kids, but it is a real own goal for the many state school parents who rub their hands in glee at the thought of richer peers having to move their kids halfway through a school year