to think private schools having charitable status is taking the piss

[zanz1bar]

Most private schools have their charitable status as an accident of history. Does a school like Eton really deserve the same financial status as the NSPCC.

Can it really be justified by a few subsidized places.

I think the number is more like £6K per student. It's just over $10k in the US.

Was just a random number zazizoma.

Why is that a horrible feeling Metella surely each kid is worth the same amount?

I just think it would lead to more high-achieving children deserting the state sector thereby making the state schools look like poor performers so leading to more people moving their children - a vicious cycle.

It would also allow for ALL children to move to the independent sector, making independent schools the defacto state schools.

Hence pleasing both sides of the argument I would think.

But how would that be zazizoma? Surely parents would have to top up the fees and not everyone could afford to do that?

UQD a round of applause...you are doing a sirling job under considerable fire. I particularly want to back you up on:

• the point that there are state-users who also want the best for their children. there are even state users who could afford to go private who believe they are making the best choices for their children

• the point that having issues with the current set up doesn't make you want a one-size fits all approach

• the point that the fact that alternative solutions are hard doesn;t mean we should just roll over and accept things the way they are.

keep going uqd....I have to get on with some work. this thread is a major distraction...

Metella, here's a picture . . .

There are economies of scale in independent schools as well as in many other areas of work. If a school knew it would have a steady stream of students because cost is no longer an issue, it could, for example, lessen its outreach and development efforts and save money. I think a child would get a very good independent primary education for £6k, and schools could in turn reduce fees as well because there would no longer be a need for providing bursaries. Or said bursaries could completely go toward making up the difference, where they would go a lot further.

This of course does not get you to Eton or Harrow or Hill, but then you are truly coming up against the class issue in those cases, not the choice in education issue.

Dilemma, my choices were somewhat similar to yours. I'd had a very good state education and was sorry I couldn't in good conscience use it for my DD. You have to choose whatever seems to you the least bad option.

And at least in our case the school did turn out to be excellent. Better use of money than whatever else we might have spent my paycheck on ('Daddys wallet' [snort]). Cars rust, houses and shares go down as well as up, eating out makes you fat - where better to invest our savings than between our daughter's ears?

Yes, I completely agree with UQD too!

hatwoman "- the point that there are state-users who also want the best for their children. there are even state users who could afford to go private who believe they are making the best choices for their children"

Of course people with their kids in state schools want what is best for them as much as those in private.

I have no problem with the state sector, no problem paying tax for everyone to be educated. But you have a problem with the parents of privately educated children choosing what they think is best.

So how come what you think is best for your kid's has to impact what I think is best for mine?

£6k per student for a class of 20 students is £120,000. To educate 20 students for one year. One could do it, easy!

£6K should do it - the school in the report charges £5,795 a year.

Anyone know what is the figure for state schools - total cost per child (including salaries, pensions, buildings etc) - I'm curious to know but can't find it.

to be honest morloth I don;t particularly "have a problem with the parents of privately educated children". Given the flaws in our current overall system (ie both state and private) I don't haul individual parents over the coals for their individual choices. my problem is with the system as a whole. I have a fundamental belief that the existence of private education is divisive and not good for us. It's a belief that's tested - and like UQD, I don't claim to have all the answers. but it's a belief I find hard to shake. Basically I crave a more egalitarian society. (and apply this to all sorts of things, not just education). When I read Rawls as a student I was stunned by the basic problem of the liberty-equality tension. and perplexed as to how it would be resolved. And I still don;t know (funnily enough)...but I do know that I stand a bit closer to equality than liberty.

liberty wins hands-down for me any day of the week

Polar opposites hatwoman. I think society needs to provide the very basics for everyone equally and what happens after that is totally down to the individual.

So universal healthcare, education, roads, tax free allowance, pensions etc, the same for everyone regardless of their income THAT sounds like the perfect arrangement to me.

I'm with hatwoman on liberty/equality. Liberty without equality works a lot better for the rich than it does for the poor.

I just don't get how a voucher system would work in practice. The more people try to explain it, the more I am convinced it would actually make things worse!

This has probably been said but I haven't read the whole thread.

Those who are concerned about equality and unfair privilege - aren't your own kids unfairly privileged anyway? Ie your kids have literate, interested, engaged, caring parents who have taught their DCs respect for education and have given them a thirst for learning?

The problem isn't 'bad schools', it's schools that contain too many of the other type of pupil, the ones whose parents don't give a toss.

Kids will never be equal - they are the product of wildly varying adults.

I had a state education but I was privileged beyond measure simply by being born to intelligent parents. Sometimes I wonder if the more liberal end of the education types (I trained as a teacher myself and am liberal in general btw) would like to ban parents from stimulating their kids in the interests of 'fairness'. In fact this has already happened - in some parts of Scotland in the 1970's homework was banned as it gave an unfair advantage to the kids who actually did it.

I'd be far more worried about improving things from the bottom up than trying to reduce achievement and opportunity at the top.

I can't see the voucher system leading to anything other than the flight of money from the state school system, with disastrous consequences.

The problem with the liberty-equality thing is that "liberty" is an abused word these days. It's used by the Right to describe the "liberty" to have "choices" you can only have if you are in a particular stratum of society.

Vouchers are simply a means to wrest education control from the state, which would continue to pay for it. Ala Morloth.

The current state system is divisive too; if that could be dealt with some of us would return to the egalitarian fold.

Equality of opportunity is a noble aim for a society provided it doesn't turn out to mean mediocrity all round.

GrimmaTheNome "Equality of opportunity is a noble aim for a society provided it doesn't turn out to mean mediocrity all round."

And this appears to be what happens.

Policy, yes, so what? Ideally, all children would then attend independent schools on vouchers. As I said, then the independent schools become the state schools, without the state saying what goes on in them.