to think many parents who send their children to the lower quality independent schools are so pretentious it is cringeworthy?

[Barrelofloves]

Is it due to insecurity? Because I have found the seriously loaded/titled folk are not like that at all.

snap! except I think I must be a good deal older than you, as I left in '82!

How about those stats - please can anyone tell me how they KNOW that the indie 'spoon-fed' choldren struggle at university?

oh, probably tucked away in the same government cupboard which houses Xenia's regarding poor people only be able to achieve to their very low genetic potential.

MrsGuy - I reckon it is anecdotal.My experience at a university with a high independent intake was that they were a complete mix of abilities as were the state school students.
DS1 (academic independent) sailed through university - or rather slept through most of the course and got a good 2.1. He has never commented on whether there were a significant number of spoon fed independent school students who are unable to cope at his Russell Group university.

Mme Defarge - I was well before you at the dreaded Ursuline!

Oh good lord! Another post from Xenia full of ridiculous contradictions and unintelligent generalisations!
With one breath, she parents of privately schooled children want their children to have reasonably lucrative careers, in the next, she genuinely doesn't mind what jobs they pick or how much they earn.

In another paragraph:

' In my view the private ones are doing better as they graduate. It's partly because they know banking pays better than teaching and becoming a teacher which is a huge achievement if all your family have always worked down the pit if they worked at all, may be failure and a life of poverty if you earn a decent income.'

Are you judging that becoming a banker makes you more successful than someone who becomes a teacher?
Is it because bankers earn more or is it because bankers do a more important job?
Are these the same bankers some of whom have helped to put the country into a recession because of their dishonesty and greed?

The comments about working down the pit (who are all these people working 'down the pit' nowadays?) and children with Down's syndrome are woefully ignorant and actually make you seem very unintelligent and out of touch with the world in general.

MadameD- you could be right about the love child

xenia just does not believe the trash she writes
she does it for fun - blue touchpaper - sit back and laugh...

Defarge, what is your basis for saying that if private schools were abolished, standards would rise across the board?

It will be the same pitiful pot of money to fund education that will now stretch to accommodate another 7% in overstuffed classrooms. If anything, standards will fall.

I agree with Buckrogers that the whole point of a private education is more about raising the game of the middling student (who are being overlooked at many state schools), than to propel the more able to dizzier heights.

mostly because parental expectations and involvement in schools can impact in an extraordinary way on schools. I believe the tipping point is 30% of middle class parents to turn a failing school around and dramatically improve results.

Funnily enough some of my father's family did work down t'pit - till the Durham mines got shut down after the general strikes in the 30s. But thanks to being bright enough to get educated and get a scholarship to Oxford he did become a teacher (after WWII desert rat).

He was a much better man than what I've seen of bankers, thank you very much. We were poor in material goods but rich in books, love of nature, ethics, the things that really matter.

Now, in all probability my daughter will be going from private junior to private senior. But my estimation of her character won't be based on how lucrative a career she chooses at the end of her education. There are far more important measures of a human than that.

and its Madame to you 2Shoes

eerhhghhg, blueshoes (my crappy education again, cant read properly...)

Actually my reason for putting my ds in private school is those very reasons, an average little boy getting crushed in a failing school.

But what I do pragmatically for my own child does not mean I do not believe it might well be possible to deliver high quality education for all our children.

I think most fee paying parents on this thread do not agree with Xenia's comments. Like I said, having contempt for all but the richest and most successful does not a decent human make.

I am heartened by the faith you have, defarge, in the involvement of middle class parents. No matter how involved I am, I could not turn a school around as I don't manage it, I don't teach there. To be honest, the thought of having to agitate for a good education for my child is frankly ridiculous. Sadly, in this country, the way to avoid this is to pay for my children's education - that way I can leave the teaching to teaching professionals, as it should be, and if they don't perform, vote with my feet.

well I think its a combination of visionary heads and a strong parental voice through the governors and pta. And if really really rich parents sent their kids there too...my, who knows how well equipped the new Fotherinton Smythe ICT suite might be? [wink}

is it too cissy to use my full name? shall start calling you Shoes, very Tom Brown's Schooldays!

So defarge, do you think your privately pushed ds will be unfairly taking the uni place of a more able state school student who did not have the benefit of his superior education. Do you believe your ds will struggle once he gets to uni?

Does not trouble me. Insisting on titles is putting on airs - I would have thought you'd be arguing against that.

I wonder why communism did not succeed. You wish, defarge.

ah, my little monkey! Nah. Doubt he will get to uni. I actually took him out of state school because the pressure of the national curriculum is crushing and leaves no room for personal development. He is a very fragile child ( and I am not being pfb about him). So I have sent him to the one private primary in London that parents moan about being not pushy enough. Very hippy dippy and loving. But got an oustanding ofsted for its personal development and care of the kids.

So he gets two years of a school which concentrates on developing his confidence before he thrown back in with the state school piranhas.

I can't see an extra 7% of middle or 'upper class' parents making much difference if spread over state schools. And they wouldn't be spread. They'd inevitably cluster into the already good state schools, using the various means of unfair entry already available (e.g. I suspect the Royal family are a shoe-in for CofE places). And would thereby displace others from the good schools to worse ones.

Nice idea but it just wouldn't help.

hm, not sure that hoping for equal educational opportunities for all children is the same as communism...but what would I know?

I think if the political will were there it could be done. But sadly I do not think that will ever happen.

Still, I live in hope.

And blueshoes I like to think of it as good manners, not putting on airs.