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 hear this claim all the time, but I don't see exactly how state schools would improve if everyone had to send their kids to one. I think, rather, they would become very dysfunctional.

I'm sure most are spending their money on rent and food but an awful lot are having more children than they have to have, holidays in the sun and sky packages or am I just generalizing like the comment of finding £20k down the back of the sofa ??

Yes, you are generalising. Is 20k too much then for two DC at private schools with all the uniform, games kit and music tuition? I may have been looking at boarding fees AaMM but I am quite sure that Sky TV and a holiday doesn't cost half what day school fees do for ONE child.

As I've said, I have two children. If only the 6% who an afford private school should have children at all the country would soon have quite a problem.

Depends where and how often you're going on holiday Nicky.
I'm not suggesting everyone should live like church mice, because it's not much fun at times, we should know, but a lot of very educated people in good jobs claim they can't afford the option and simply they can, it just means not having the 3rd child or the summer and winter holiday.
We aren't really talking about those struggling here are we ?

Oh and £20k would pay for 3 of mine at senior school, uniform, lunches included. Shopping around and negotiating fees all helps.

I left this last night and didn't come back to it. No surprise that the usual misconceptions have come back again.

scienceteacher - stop all this "appropriate job" rubbish. You sound like Xenia, and you have no idea of my situation. And it's missing the point - totally.

MrsGG - Oh, dear me. No. Have you actually read anything I and others have said? About stakeholder society, about equality/liberty?... This is why we feel like giving up...

(What is all this "indie schools" nonsense? Makes me think of boys with floppy fringes forming guitar bands.)

Who started all this claiming I said anything about "inherited wealth"? This is the problem - you go away for a few hours, come back and find yourself being misquoted, misrepresented and downright lied about.

I suppose I have to forgive you, though - you're busy people and chucking a few inventions and lies in is easier than actually tackling the arguments. Bless.

In that case no, I agree, but educated people in good jobs who holiday twice a year are not the masses who may or may not be spending tax credits on such things.

I do know a couple of very uneducated self-made millionaires who live in ridiculous houses and spend money on entirely frivolous things but wouldn't dream of wasting it on something daft like education so there are all sorts!

I just give up on this. The attitudes of some of the parents on this thread is so utterly ghastly, it is reminding me of one of the reasons I do not send my DCs to a private school. Obviously there are a few people out there who COULD send their DC to a private school IF they didn't have foreign hols blah, blah, but that is the minority.

The vast majority of people simply do not have the money and, anyway, that isn't the point. The point is one shouldn't be able to BUY an education, and thus all the advantages, ie mediocre students getting top grades and thus top university places and so on and so forth.

I agree with UQD it is as though one is talking Swahili or something.....

As for the comment 'so what about the masses? why is this a part of the debate' that just beggars belief. Appalling.

The whole "they choose to spend their money on holidays in the sun and Sky TV" baloney is quite possibly one of the most insultingly offensive things I have ever read on here.

(And I was there for the Piers Morgan webchat.)

I'm half-tempted to report it, actually....

It's a pity this thread has got so polarised. The idea that everyone could afford private education if they just stopped wasting money is certainly insulting! On the other hand, the suggestion that everyone who does pay for private ed is a wealthy snob is also insulting.

I never made that latter suggestion, englishpatient, but it suits the lazy mentality of some other people on here to claim I did...

People do not pay for education because they are snobs, but because they value education above the other things they could spend tehir money on.

And Fllly, I am serious about the masses. Why should I do something just because lots of other people do? Is this not a free country? Are we all supposed to be lemmings?

Scienceteacher - again you make the insinuation that people who don't pay don't "value education". It is utter rubbish.

I send mine to private schools, after sending them to state primaries, but the idea that they might have to choose careers just on the basis of needing to pay school fees for their own children at some point in the future is profoundly depressing.

and bullshit too, abraid. It's nonsense. So is the assertion that private schools are open to many. I like how this thread swung from everyone should go to state school to everyone should go to private school instead of having Sky tv fgs!

There was a thread on here a couple of days ago, What can we as parents do to support our local state schools? Got about 25 replies.

Private school threads? Ooh we're pushing the 600s now.

93% is a majority share stake hold however you look at it.

I truly think suggesting private schools create social inequality is a red herring - I mean they do, I see that, but they probably aren't the bogey men everyone likes to assume they are.

Everyone in this country should be entitled to a good education shouldn't they. Now as it stands, you can either opt out the state system and educate your child yourself, or you can pay a private school or you can work the state system and take up a faith or you can move house into catchment you want, you can tutor your child at home for a year to ensure they get into the grammar school. The middle classes do all these things. The middle classes are all right, jack.

It's the children in poverty that aren't getting the education. But let's not talk about that.

If we abolished private schools, society will only find other ways to ghettoize itself - the middle classes will be at the front of that march. It's what they do. My dc private school turned from grammar to private in 1976 - if they want to experiment again, and turn it back, I'd be thrilled.

I truly believe that attacking the private schools, is like attacking the bankers. They're the big bogey bear of society, the cause of all unrest and inequality. They're NOT, it's lazy to assume they are, lazy and easy.

But actually attending to the needs of children who are brought up in poverty is much more complicated, so let's have a go at the toffs instead.

I mean you, UQD represent social inequality. The middle classes just do. Your dd's will get a better education and be from a more supportive environment than lots of other children. They will get a better education too, because of that. Because you are a well educated middle class professional, and so is your wife. What the school lacks at secondary - if it does - you will make up at home. You care about their education, you will do what you can to ensure they have a good one. What is within your power to do. That's how the inequality works.

We could argue there would be a trickle down effect. Perhaps there would be. The state run education system at present is not doing much for social cohesion though is it. I don't think abolishing the private schools will change that, the middle classes will just regroup. As they do. If it's in the state system, then so be it. They'll work it, just as they do now, there will be more of them, that's all.

The children in poverty? Still out in the cold. Private schools or no private schools.

I mentioned yesterday about Alistair Campbell saying that the so called middle classes owe it to their community to send their kids to the local schools, therby improving them. I laughed my socks off them. Communism is alive and well then.

This is what I mean by thinking a private education is the 'norm'. It distorts the whole picture of education in this country.

If you want to send your children to a private school, fine. Do it. But do not imagine you are the only one who 'values education' and do not imagine the high grades your DCs will get (which they will) makes them actually more intelligent than a child from a crap school who gets slightly worse grades, or, gasp, even the same grades.

Don't feel guilty about the masses. Don't even give them a thought. And don't expect me to think a private school deserves a 'charitable' (ha!) status.

UQD - that is a pretty strong misrepresentation of what science teacher says - her point is to do with why some people choose to pay - I don't think you can extrapolate that it follows that people who don't pay must not care. Of course not everyone can afford to pay no matter how much they save, and there are also people who could afford to pay, if necessary by making other sacrifices, but choose not to for a range of reasons, both principled and because they prefer to spend the money in other ways.

Going back to the OP, hasn't this thread shown that actually the charitable status is on the whole justified because it is worth less than the alternative of having the extra 7% in state education, with all the knock on impact that would have on higher class numbers, pushy parents making it harder for the less pushy ones to access the decent schools etc. And clearly there is no strong group out of more than 600 posts arguing that there would be an overall benefit to having those pushy parents helping to improve the state system, although I accept that is the view of a small number of posters.

Shigella, our local primary schools all offfer breakfast clubs and afterschool care, these parents are working to pay the bills.

If we are finished with our petulant moans and indignation, I would really like to further understand this perspective whereby one's decision to opt-out of the current state education system equates to denigrating the needs of society.

Firstly, if I put my ds in an independent school class instead of a 30 student state school class, then I either 1) free up a space in that school for someone else who wants it, or 2) lower the class size which benefits all the other students in that class. If I'm in a position to do this, I would be paying not only for the state school place, but for the independent school place as well. I'm putting more money into the system, and benefiting everyone. What is the objection to this picture?

Secondly, I would like my dc to have a relationship to learning and education that has nothing whatever to do with testing and exams. I, personally, believe society in general could be improved if there was a more open attitude to success and personal worth and less exam-focus in general. Therefore, by opting out of the state system, I believe that I am ultimately benefiting society in the long run.

Finally, aren't all parents who put their dc in state schools already direct stakeholders in that system, motivated to affect the changes you want? Why do you need to add more?

scienceteacher you are coming across as an obnoxious snob

I value my children's education hugely and take a great interest in it - that is why I am a school governor and am heavily involved in supporting my children's school in every way I possibly can.

I am also very committed to their social and interpersonal education and development. And I cannot imagine anything I would want LESS for them to spend their formative years rubbing shoulders with the likes of you. Your attitude is a disgrace and I am glad my children's peer group does not contain the children of people like you.

Great post, ahundred.

I agree with 100x.
Schools would not all be equal if we abolished private schools. There would be selection by postcode reflecting economic inequalities unless you were prepared to do some pretty drastic bussing (which might work in London where there are rich areas close to poor ones but would not be so viable in large areas of rural deprivation, for instance).