To be gleeful that most of us were right

[Wranglestar]

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/adding-vat-to-private-school-fees-has-had-no-obvious-impact-on-state-sector-applications-390546/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2ATdaVlNkJsbtC-KizuW4Fw41obnpvezxnFv4IAFwzJPHXmU90Awr5eqAaem9tMIsn9I0vHSC4jrdYONIA#0rd9makyd4264nstc4us9j77yk5kaoswtLondon Economic

And that private schools has had no impact on state school places. The rich have simply - paid more. Excellent news!

@arbo I'm afraid your post, while interesting, is just hugely out of date for the schools you mention. Those accounts of boys and men were definitely the case years ago. And these accounts are precisely why the schools themselves have changed enormously in the past decade and a half.

There has been a demographic shift in these schools - very few are now exclusively for White British Upper Class boys born into power, wealth, land and connections. The British aristocracy has been pretty well dismantled over the years by one political force or another.

Those schools now are selective (alongside being the most expensive out of all types of private education). Families that send their children there are British-Asian, British-Nigerian, British-Chinese, you get the picture. The same types of ethnicities overrepresented in Grammar schools around London. Thanks to extensive bursary programs, the intake is of bright boys often NOT of a white British background. It will be interesting to see what these "privileged" educated men are like in a decade or two when they are in a position to contribute to society. It will look very different to the Boris Johnsons you imagine in your mind.

Every one of those schools have also invested significantly in pastoral care, to counteract the terrible history and hyper masculinity you've noted. Like many post colonial apologists, they don't wish to return to those days of unquestioned privilege.

@arbo I'm afraid I agree with the pp. Your post is really irrelevant to the current debate and actually just perpetuates the outdated stereotypes that bear no resemblance to the current situation or the vast majority of independent schools. Mine go to a very old but very small and frankly shabby place with a wide range of intake from the locale and overseas. Noone is going to leave there with an outlook like an Etonian. What it does provide is brilliant personal support for kids on the spectrum especially (though it's a mainstream school), just by having a structure that allows for somewhere a student can go and have a chat and hot chocolate with a pastoral staff member if the day gets too much. They can do work sitting on a sofa with a housemasters dog curled up next to them. It's nothing difficult to provide really and makes a world of difference to kids who would otherwise be absent.

@arbo

You are talking about a world that no longer exists - and you are highly focused on a very niche section of private schools.

The people you reference are my age and older. When I finished secondary school, only 15% went to university. My SE England grammar had ONE non-white child (they were half-Chinese) in the entire school.

My parents had lots of children so could only afford a top public school for my very much younger sibling, but their colleagues all sent their children to those. The days when GPs, country lawyers, farmers and the vicar could afford the fees for boarding at a public school are long gone. Nowadays they are aiming at the grammars and the really good comprehensives, or stretching for a cheapish day school.

With people like Boris Johnson, you have to ask how much is down to school and how much is down to being the scholarship kid whose mother was an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital most of his childhood and whose father was a philandering thug?

And again you are referencing a minuscule percentage of the children who went to those schools who opted to go into public life. Hundreds of others are NHS consultants, teachers, engineers, charity workers, athletes, musicians. Are all of them awful people due to the choices that were made for them as children?

If I look at the parents at my DD's comp, there are at least 5 who are household name famous, there are surgeons, academics, business owners, lawyers, a couple of members of the House of Lords - and plumbers, electricians, shop workers, nurses and those who don't/can't work. A complete mix of every kind of diversity. However it is also interesting to me (having occasionally ended up clicking the wrong zoom links and having met my child's friends) that the top sets are very much dominated by those from one socio-economic demographic and that my child's friends all have parents with similar levels of education and in the same kind of jobs that we are.

Today's "posh" or "elite" private schools don't even have that many British children - to the extent that some are actively recruiting. It's quite hard to sell 'come to St Custard's for the quintessential British education' when the majority of students are flying back to Hong Kong, Nigeria, Russia (not so much today), China and other bits of the world. You hear British parents worrying about whether their child is going to be miserable and excluded at X school because the majority of the boarders are from one nationality, are only focused on academics rather than the extra curriculars and all chat in their native tongue. The British children that are there are far more likely to have parents or grandparents born overseas than they are to be able to trace their lineage back to the Doomsday book...

On top of that, schools have made huge changes to how they run and the pastoral care. I have a friend with a child at one of the schools you referenced. When I was at boarding school, I came home at holidays and exeats, and spent 30p a week phoning them from the call box in the corridor. Today they all have smart phones, video calling on tap and the parents seem to be endlessly there for concerts or matches or whatever... feels a bit bizarre to me, but probably a good thing.

To focus so much attention on destroying a sector that is a haven for many and creates choice (and removes children from depending on the public purse for their education) because people don't much like Etonians who left the place 40 years ago seems utterly ridiculous.

Loads of people are also pointing out to @arbo how incorrect she is BUT I would like to add that Top Public Boarding schools like the ones she references bear no resemblance whatsoever to the majority of Private day schools

Those schools now are selective (alongside being the most expensive out of all types of private education). Families that send their children there are British-Asian, British-Nigerian, British-Chinese, you get the picture. The same types of ethnicities overrepresented in Grammar schools around London. Thanks to extensive bursary programs, the intake is of bright boys often NOT of a white British background. It will be interesting to see what these "privileged" educated men are like in a decade or two when they are in a position to contribute to society. It will look very different to the Boris Johnsons you imagine in your mind.

They're really only selective within that very small sector of society that is able to afford their fees, so we are not necessarily talking about the mega-bright here - also people do tend to get into these schools by virtue of having parents who could pay for them to go to the "right" prep schools, often sending them off to board at quite an early age, so that they are very much taught how to pass pubic school entrance exams.

That said, I was very much encouraged recently seeing that Sherborne - which admittedly would not be seen as competition by Eton - puts a lot of emphasis on kindness and empathy, which are very much the qualities I want to see in men generally. I hope that is an ethos that is spreading.

I should say also that the fact that the ethnic intake in such school is changing is not necessarily anything to do with the bursary programmes. If anything, it is due to the fact that increasingly British parents cannot afford the frankly eye-watering fees being charged and school have had to turn to richer markets abroad.

With people like Boris Johnson, you have to ask how much is down to school and how much is down to being the scholarship kid whose mother was an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital most of his childhood and whose father was a philandering thug?

But how do you account for people like Rees-Mogg, Cameron, Kwarteng ...?

@arbo - the only reason Labour hate Eton is because it is Tory training ground. That is essentially it. The ex Tory MPs or current once go there for talks.
It is literally Labour trying to have one large dig at Eton, because it is their competition.
And they are willing to throw thousands of children with SEND under the bus for this.
And that is why it is being challenged in court and will likely succeed in some format.
The legal system is not stupid. It looks at the factual evidence.

This morning I took one of my DCs to a local private school for extracurricular activities. There is nothing left over apart from the fields, grounds and halls in private schools. Labour want to throw ALL of that under the bus just to get at the Tories.
None of us are stupid enough to believe any of their lies.

The issue with politicians is an entirely separate one! They are out of touch because most of them are career politicians from an early age with no real experience of running a business, a hospital, high up in education all of the stuff they should know once in charge of those areas. Our entire political system is flawed - we are putting clueless people in charge of really important things with no actual real life experience in those fields. All the politicians are interested in from an early age is climbing the greasy ladder amongst themselves, in their own bubble, usually post Oxford and post a PPE course - where they pat themelves on the back for being supposedly “clever”.

I also think the kind of strong friendships children build at a school that was excellent (and with a particular ethos, that is character building) and that connects them well into adulthood and beyond into a community, is certainly not at all limited to the private sector.

except....by far the majority of private schools in the UK are not Eton. Or the few that sit up there at the top like Eton. Most are attended by yes, people who are richer than the average person...but I assure you that plenty of independent school parents are ordinary people with a lottery win/an inheritance/grandparents who did well for themselves in business/people doing well for themselves in business (and employing local people)/and ordinary educated middle classes in white collar roles squirreling away money to pay for the fees. They are not people with trustfunds. They are not people who need to know how to address a Duke. They are not people who have necessarily never known someone struggling to get by, nor are they people who might find themselves in a struggle if something were to happen (illness, accident etc.).

You're just looking at ordinary people doing well.

And ordinary people losing their jobs. Are you gleeful about that too, OP?

You don’t honestly think that a) all private schools are like Eton and Winchester and b) that what was the case 20, 30, 40 years ago still is? Though you wouldn’t be alone, a large number of anti-private school types think that. It shows how ignorant many of those tasked with this policy are about the actual facts.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow I agree that DC who are are a problem to teachers get support because it impacts whole class learning where internalisers are ignored or even used as spacers to their own detriment, I have to disagree that parents ‘work the system’ as this implies that needs aren’t real.

I have 2 DC. First time round I was naive and ignorant and the LA took advantage. I live with the effects to this day. Second time around I was wise to their ways and knew my rights. Accessing the system as intended to support your DC is not working the system.

I am sorry you believed the lies you were fed and were ‘timed out’. I hope your DD is OK.

But really you do have to learn the rules of the game, real life makes it more pertinent. Bluntly, year 7 is too late. You need to be on it in time to have priority choice at year 7. So year 5 at the latest. With EHCP. Then you have choices.

DS2 was being badly failed academically at primary and his ASD:ADHD were causing psychological problems. All the teachers assumed he was educationally below average because of speech difficulties and it was ok for him to sit at the back of the class doodling where he didn’t disrupt others. They got a shock when his official reports of indicated IQ at 99th percentile.

He was funded for internet school (with me as unpaid LSA) but got 11 GCSEs with a good smattering of 8s and 9s and extra tuition for subjects like English, attended 6th form and got A stars and As for further maths, maths and physics and is now doing engineering at uni.

I also am full time carer to a 24 year old who only managed 3 terms of secondary education and has been housebound for the last 9 years. My first experience with educational services.

Don’t blame yourself. You trusted people who let you down. That’s not your fault. It’s exhausting to live life thinking it’s a battle and you have to be one step ahead.

wishing your dd the best for her GCSEs and what comes next.

The vast majority of private schools are nothing like Eton, Harrow or Winchester. In any case, the VAT policy will not affect schools like that. Your “evidence of its bad effects on our society” is based on some books and people you have met.

The vast majority of private schools are nothing like Eton, Harrow or Winchester. In any case, the VAT policy will not affect schools like that. Your “evidence of its bad effects on our society” is based on some books and people you have met.

I agree.

Harrovians are somewhat different to Etonians, it's true; Wyckehamists different again; and so on. (I find it really weird that I can often tell the difference, btw.)

@arbo Yes that is very weird - and I don’t believe you. There are three large comprehensive schools near where I live. If I were to say I can tell the difference between students from the different schools and all the students from one particular school are all untrustworthy, I think people would say I needed to find a hobby or get out more.
Why not just admit you hate anyone who has been to an elite public school rather than all this cod psychology crap?

I it is quite true. Of course not every single person but there is definitely an Etonian manner and a wykhamist manner. It’s to do with the ethos of the schools and the type of parents that choose each school.

I it is quite true. Of course not every single person but there is definitely an Etonian manner and a wykhamist manner

If that’s the case then presumably all state schools also produce students with a certain ‘manner’.
A pp claimed that politicians she doesn’t like are entirely a product of their school. I don’t like Alastair Campbell as I think he’s a bully and a liar so presumably these characteristics are caused by Bradford Grammar School and shared amongst all that school’s alumni.

I know, right? There's a comprehensive near where I grew up, and each and every child is deeply untrustworthy. Must be something in the water round there...

And all 3,000+ at DD's comp... they wear the same uniform 😱and their parents all put the school on the CAF 🤔

Oh dear. How awful. Have you thought about crowd funding to get yourself a new kitchen?

I hate hearing real life stories like this where people who send their kids to private schools are struggling to make ends meet.

@Jc2001 that's obviously not the point of her post. Its that had they replaced the kitchen that would be ££££ going to a builder, joiner, kitchen company etc that now won't. It's not about "poor us not having a kitchen". Multiply that up and you start to see how this policy can impact people further "down the chain", including job losses of several hundred should any school close completely.. schools employ many many people who aren't teachers..cleaners, catering staff, grounds people; they have contracts with local firms for drainage, pest control, bigger building work, tree surgeons. All that goes. But again, you've demonstrated the problem that so many people are just too quick to jump to nasty conclusions when it comes to this topic.

So why not use that argument for VAT on anything then. Why should people who clearly can afford it have exception on VAT for private education.

If I buy a new car I could probably afford to get a few jobs done around the house as well if it had no VAT.

Of course you could afford other things if you are except from a tax.

Everything we do or buy has an opportunity cost associated with it. Buying one thing means you can't buy another. It's a ridiculous argument really.

You cannot compare this to a car purchase.
It is more like get a free car from the Government VS buy a car and have VAT on top of it.
For some children with SEND the private sector is essential because the state sector failed them. The Government is denying them the free car in the first place and forcing them not just to pay, but VAT on top of that.

@Jc2001 you say people who can clearly afford it, again ignoring the fact that many of us really can't afford it but don't anyway because it was the only way to access the right education for our children. I've remortgaged twice, have debt on top of that and have considered stopping my pension so that I can keep my kids in the school they can actually cope with and attend. I don't see it as a choice....unless I suppose I could quit my own teaching job and claim benefits and home school. Or just leave them to rot at home alone all day. I would LOVE not to have to find this money, to have kids who could cope in state comps or access a working state SEN system that doesn't just put kids on years long waiting lists til they time out. Once again...IF this policy was going to anything at all to help that, I'd see the argument but it won't.

We now have Labour MPs calling for backtracking on the human rights act, by the way. Very predictable! It is couched in immigration terms, of course, but we do know what this is aimed at.

@RhaenysRocks absolutely, I think that's what some people fail to grasp. The real 'luxury' is having a state school place available to your child which fully meets their needs, where you are confident that they are safe, happy, reaching their full potential. Having to work 3 jobs and/or get into debt to afford a school place which meets your child's needs is definitely not a luxury!