To think that Eton is being a bit cynical in offering to share some of its sports facilities with the local state academy?

[Shinyshoegirl]

Today's paper reports that Eton is offering free use of some of its 27 cricket pitches and its Olympic standard rowing lake to a local state school. Surely if they were really concerned about helping educational achievement for all they might consider sharing some of their teaching resources instead? I've nothing against cricket and rowing, but it seems like a token gesture towards their charitable responsibilities. Or am I being unreasonably cynical?

Lynette - I was at boarding school too. The teachers were contracted to be there. Boarding house parents were paid more than day teachers by way of a free house to live in.

This whole bizarre pretence of private schools sharing teachers with state schools was got up by New Labour to pacify their back benchers. Private schools in many cases are on a knife edge financially and just somehow supposing that they will employ extra teachers to go down the road to the state school or that the existing teachers will work 2 extra hours day after day at another school and for no pay after they have finished their day job is a nonsense.

If the state want teachers from private schools to work in a state school it has to pay them. I dont have a problem with that but the teachers will no doubt want to know what is in it for them. Its their job.

It is ludicrous. And meanwhile we have state school teachers refusing to do duties and cover.

Cloud cuckooland.

TheCoalition - what surplus resources?

Private schools dont just have spare teachers loafing about the staff room with nothing to do of an afternoon you know.

Unlike a state school every hour of a teaching time is carefully budgeted and allocated.

Yes, including this.

50% of this teachers time is clearly surplus to providing the service you have paid for.

If you don't think you are getting the service you paid for or think that you are paying to much for it then that's one thing. What you aren't doing is paying for the 50% of the time that the teacher is working elsewhere.

What on earth are you talking about, coalition?

TheCoalition - I am not being patronising but let me talk you through the maths.

A teacher works at my DSs school a full week which is 8.30 - 4.30. Spread over a year, they work about 65% of that time in front of class at my DSs school and the rest of the time is spent preparing the lessons, marking the work of pupils at my DSs school, taking their annual leave.

I pay for 100% of teh tie of that full time teacher to work at my DSs school. There is no other time available to teach anyone else outside of that job unles shey give up their holiday or stop teaching at my DSs school.

Now if the Head one day turns up and tells the teacher to go and work 50% of their time at the local state school please tell me who is going to cover the time they now will not be spendng in my DSs school? The only possible solution is to employ another teacher to cover the lessons the existing teacher cannot do as they are working down the road at the state school.

Do I now pay for the original teacher plus the part time teacher as well?

Sorry but you seem to think the teachers at private schools have loads of free time where they have nothing to do. They dont.

BeenBeta - It is a LITTLE patronising though isn't it? But it's not a matter of arithmetic. If a give A gives £5 to B who then gives £2 to C has A given £2 to C? No. (leaving aside issues of escrow, transaction handling etc.)

Take a more concrete example. Say you need payroll services for a company. You give me the contract to do that. As part of that I employ someone to do so. Later on I find that I can fulfil my contract with you using only 50% of that employee's time. I also get a contract with one of your competitors and put that employee on that 50% of the time. Are you paying for that employee to work for your competitor for 50% of the time?

I teach in a private school, and my direct lesson time is 80%. After that, I have duties, cover and clubs/clinics. I'm at school from 7.30am - 5.30pm, give or take. I do 1 - 1.5 hours of school work before breakfast, getting up at 5.30am.

Oh, and I have 6 children, and do Brownies and church groups in the evening.

Where is the other 50% of my time?

Even independent school teachers have the same 24hours in a day that everyone else has.

MmeBlueberry - Thread cross? See above. That's not the point, at least not the one I am making.

TheCoalition - private schools do not suddenly 'discover' that their teachers only need 50% of their time to do their job and have 50% of their time to go down the road to teach in a state school. Your example is just mad - it really is socialist economics.

MmeBlueberry - thank the lord. At least someone understands what I am talking about!

I was beginning to think that there was a team of magic teaching fairies working inside private schools while the teachers sat around drinking coffee.

No, presumably they allow for it in their planning, as they have made a decision that it is a better financial move that losing their charitable status.

Let me try again.

Say you need payroll services for a company. You give me the contract to do that. As part of that I employ someone to do so. I can pay them entirely out of the money you pay me, but only need them to work on your account 50% of the time. I use them to work on my marketing the rest of the time. Are you paying for my marketing?

I guess I am at a total loss as to your point.

All I know is that I work fairly full on from 5.30am - 5.30pm. I really don't have any more time to give.

Do you actually know anything about independent schools? Do you have first hand experience?

No, but it's not a point about independent schools. It's about if after you have given your money to someone in exchange for a service, you can said to be paying for the things they choose to spend it on. I think not, as it is now their money and not yours. If it remains your money, how many people does it have to pass through before it stops being your money?

I'm at a total loss as well. There is just not a load of spare teachers inside a private school.

The way that private schools have managed this demand that they provide resurces to state schools so far is quiet simple.

They 'duck and dive', they 'nip and tuck'. The fact is they ask teachers to volunteer some of their time which pretty much they have no option but to agree to. They then employ a trainee or a part time teacher to make up for the loss of part of the other teachers time, they bung a few percent on the fees to cover the cost and hope parents won't notice. Meanwhie the private school teachers that have volunteered spread themselves a bit more thinly and inevitably spend a bit less time working on the homework of the weaker pupil in Yr 9 English in the private school so (s)he gets a Grade C rather than a B at GCSE English a few years later.

This con trick works OK as long as no one notices the subtle resource reallocation, that private school teachers dont object and parents dont notice the fees being jacked up. It is reluctantly done because of the sanctions being threatened by Govt. The reality is parents are paying more on fees and teachers are working harder in their own time and pupils at the private school are getting sligtly less teaching resource.

The Labour Govt was happy because it suited the political discourse. Meanwhile, state school children still dont get the schooling they deserve in far too many cases.

I'm still totally baffled.

In any case, I think I work pretty long hours (I am not complaining - I love my job), and the extra I do, I do for the church. There is no way I would teach in a state school in my spare time.

There have been issues at some schools of teachers and heads being away a bit too much on their collaborations with state schools but this is all changing now.

The Charity Commission/Ms Leather has in effect backed down now we have a sensible Government and I don't think we'll even really need any test cases on what is public benefit.

There should be differentiation between proprietor-owned schools (eg Thomas's in London) which exist to make a profit for their owners, and those run by a Board of Governors or by parents on a not-for-profit basis, IMO.

The former should be regarded as any other business, the latter should continue to have charitable status. If they can stop the arms race of building fancy sports halls and school theatres for a bit, and work on reducing the fees so the bottom 95% of the population can afford to see this as a viable choice, so much the better for us all.

There are very few good schools though that are prorietor owned. All the ones we have heard of like Eton, Westminster, Manchester Grammar, the livery company ones like Haberdashers, not a single one of them is privately owned for the benefit of shareholders.

Very good thing too, IMO.

It won't change either. There are some groups (Cognita etc) but if 85% or more of your income is going on teacher wages as in many schools that does not leave a heap of profit for shareholders and the people paying (parents) do not have a lot of money to spare if they have had to stretch to £10k a year or more for a day school place so there isn't a big scope for doubling fees to make it pay for shareholders. This is one reason too that education even in the private sector is in essence charity, something good, - the old charitable test was I think relief of poverty, education, religion and varius things like that.

Educating others even if they are from rich home is still a good act and the fact there is no VAT payable on school fees is perfectly reasonable given those parents are relieving the state too from the cost of educating their children which is a much much bigger perk for the poor than the fact we do not pay what will soon be 20% VAT on top of school fees.

This reminds me of the "7 UP" series.

Where one little 7 year old said said something like "You can't make the schools free because all the POOR people would come rushing in"

Very interesting series. The same proportion of privately educated children were just as screwed up as the state educated ones.

It's been a fascinating series for years and years I think since the 1960s.

I suppose my point was that most of us don't want all children to be clones. It's the same argument about pay (interesting radio 4 programme about py which I listened to yesterday) - that people are happy with not much pay rise as long as no one else is getting much more than they are.

Private schools have to to keep charitable status.

i liek the idea that [rivate school teachers are better, this thread seems to presume