to find it incredibly irritating when in certain circles school fees are talked about as if they are a necessity, not a choice?

[emkana]

Like Emma Thomson currently on the Women programme on BBC 4, or very often in the "Style" section of the Sunday Times.

all of those factors have an influence on children's experience of school which imo, does have an impact on how they are taught (so e.g. by having lots of parent volunteers listen to children reading, it means those children aren't missing out on adults listening to them read which I'm sure helps with their reading progress, and thus helps indirectly the teacher teaching them)

also it is generally the parents who run the fairs and raise the money which helps fund projects like new books in the library, equipment etc.

I've never quite bought the idea that just X children emigrating from private to state and adding X number of motivated, middle-class children to each failing school will make a difference on its own. But then again, that's never what I've thought people were actually arguing. That's quite a reductive interpretation of the actual argument.

Surely the idea is that if there were just schools - rather than all this "better", "more desirable" schools nonsense, and schools where a child's place was determined by the parent's supernatural belief or the parent's width of wallet - surely that would be better for everyone. I'm not talking about something Socialist or some monolithic State, but just an environment in which the schools are good, where people want to send their children, where there isn't any of this ridiculous bitching and sniping. Where we are (trying not to sound like High School Musical) "all in this together".

I suppose what "makes the difference" is a culture rather than actual numbers. At the moment, you can buy yourself an easy escape route from the state education sector if you have enough money, power or influence, and that must be a pernicious thing on several levels. What motivation is there for our movers and shakers to provide a quality, rounded education for all if they know damn well that their own children are going to be bought out of the system? We need not only accountability but also endorsement. MPs should be using the hospitals and bus services and schools in their own constituencies.

Because at the moment it all seems like a scrum, with a very "haul up the ladder I'm all right, Jack" culture - and it's depressing. It really is. People excuse it on the grounds that they are doing it for their children, not themselves, but often, sadly, they are doing it for themselves - who can claim never to have met a Smug Mum who is glowing with self-satisfied smackability because her little darling is going to St. Cuthbert's and yours isn't?

I don't quite know how we got to this point.

Your first paragraph of your last post is the important thing, imo. The fact thet you had never considered this point is also interesting.

UQD - of course if all state schools were as you described then everyone (or at least more) would happily use them. But if what you're facing here and now is one of the broken aspects of the system, and you are able to make some other choice for your own child, well, I don't expect anyone to sacrifice their own child. Not even an MP.

What is unforgivable is if people really do have an 'I'm all right Jack attitude', and having become aware of (and avoided) problems they then sweep it under the carpet. We had no idea about admissions criteria till we had a child, and having picked our jaws off the floor we are now trying to push for change. I would hope that MPs who've felt unable to use some particular state school and have paid or prayed their way to get their kids something better, will feel compelled to do something about it.

Oh good grief, this is ridiculous beyond belief.
Why on Earth does the anti-public-school contingent here think that parents who choose to opt out from state education and send their children to private schools, owe them an explanation or, according to some fruitloopers, an apology???
Preposterous!
Very few who are in position to afford private education have had wealth handed to them on a silver platter. Most people work damn hard to get where they are and do make sacrifices on the way.
If they choose to spend their money on paying for the education for their children, it's their choice, they do not care what you think of that choice, nor do they care what are your opinions on private education, period.
All this bitching stinks of sour grapes in many a case and über-idealistic hankerings for Utopian Socialism for others.

Well said Foxinsocks and Unquiet Dad.

GrimmaTheNome - MPs introduced the problem in the first place by imposing spurious ideas about 'choice' to parents thereby creating 'sink' schools (real and imagined).

I don't think anyone actually 'sacrifices' a child by sending them to their local state school however 'bad' it is perceived to be. Me and my siblings went to a supposedly 'rubbish' state comprehensive, we all went to good univeristies, got good degrees, made good friends, are (reasonably) normal adults. We had very supportive parents which I think is a far more important factor in terms of development. The thing was in those days there was nothing like the neurotic self consciousness about school choice that there is now. That's my 2p's worth anyway.

Rollmops, you choose (emphasis on that word)to send your child to fee paying schools. That's fine - but it's still a choice. You don't have to do it - which is what the OP was saying in the first place.

Just to pick up on Abetadad - you day "that means every state school class would gain 2 privately educated children and their middle class parents."

I think you find more 'middle class parents' at state schools, tbh. It's the plasterers and the princes at private.

'say' not 'day', obviously.

'at least have the good manners to admit it was a purely selfish act and be done with this snitting at schools you have no personal knowledge of.'

I haven't been part of this discussion until now.

Hell will freeze over before I admit to a 'purely selfish act' in scrimping and saving to prevent my children going to our local comprehensive.

My necessities are your necessities.... We all differ in what we hold important. Some remortgage their homes to afford to pay for schooling - it's a necessity for them, obviously.
There has been so much sniping about parents who 'live like Church Mice' only to be able to send their children to private school.
The venom spitting whinging about it all is nauseating.

Absolutely kittycat - successive governments are part of the problem, not the solution, for creating a system in which this specious "choice" system is forced on people, thus entrenching social division.

aarrghhhhhh... are NOT your necessities even

What does "living like church mice" actually mean, really? You often hear it, but it sounds to me like a rather genteel form of poverty in which you downgrade to a second-hand car and forgo a skiing holiday. I doubt anyone would describe someone living in a council flat, having a one-bar fire and shopping at Netto as "living like church mice."

The point is though that it is surely morally wrong that one can pay (either by fees, moving into decent catchment area, tutoring for 11+) to get a better education and thus all the advantages that go with it.

Surely it should be right that every child regardless of their parent's income should be entitled to a decent education.

Loungelizard - quite right, which is why people totally miss the point by talking about "choice" to buy their way out as if education were some kind of consumer item like baked beans.

A good friend of mine ALWAYS complains about school fees, and how they will not be able to go on holiday this year as the school is so expensive (they can still go skiing but the Maldives trip is off).

She seems to forget that my DC go to the state school she thinks is beyond he pale. I do sometimes remind her . Our husbands have similar jobs, so I know how hard it must be for them to scrape the money together.

It is annoying though. Last time she whined about fees, I told her to send them to the local state school. She grimaced and said her children would never be able to get used to that.

I've never heard people talking about school fees as a necessity in real life (obviously move in the wrong circles!) but if I did I think I'd laugh in their face. Ooh, must be so tough scrimping and saving for school fees...

At the primary school my son is at I have observed an attitude amongst parents that their child is 'too good' for the local comp (which has had its issues in the past). The amusing thing is that they haven't visited the school, looked around it. All they see are the headline figures and the hysterical gossip.

No school, whether state, private or selective, is perfect. No school will tick all the boxes.

I have other children at a selective school and I can say that it has the same behaviour issues and problems as the 'rough' school that I work in and the slightly less rough school that my son will be going to! The difference is that the parents of the selective school are more willing to work with the school because they are desperate for their kid not to get chucked out!

The most important factor in any school, and in any childs education is the home life. If you have a stable, loving home where education is valued then your child is onto a winner wherever you send them.

And if you are in the catchment of a 'bad' school don't believe all the gossip - go in and have a good look. You might be surprised.

People do tactlessly forget the whole subtext of "I know you children go there but mine are too good for it." It can be quite astonishingly brazen, sometimes - almost as if they actually forget who they are talking to.

Rollmops you have quite spectacularly missed the point. Fancy getting so worked up when it just wasn't necessary.

It's s choice available only to those who can afford it, to send their children to private schools, but once that decision is made it is necessary to pay the school fees.

So, to the OP, if you're child is at a private school payng school fees is a necessity for which money has to be found, of course claiming that they have to attend the school is a different matter.

On another issue, there are some deeply unpleasnt comments on this thread about how 'it's only necessary if you're child is too thick to cope at the local comp.'

I imagine my child, is one of these 'thickos' to which you refer, who we moved to a priavte school as he will ebnefit from smaller classes. i would have thought refer to 'thickos' and sneer at children who are struggling acamdemically for many differnt reasons should be as unaccptable for children at priavte school and as a state school.

Those of you who disagree with priavte eductaion, do you regard children in those schools as fair game for insults that you wouldn'rt use towards chilkdren on other schools??

I know that mnay, in fact all, would benefit would just as much as my DS if they could afford it, and I can see this injustice and understand the argument whilst doing what is best for my boy. I don't think he, or I should have to be insulted for this.

Well, I have visited our local (only) comp fr all three of children when their time came, and was taken aback to put it mildly by the lack of energy, (all wall displays at least 2 years old and many out of date (ie displays for German up even thogh the school stopped teaching it two years earlier), no music facilities to speak of (music department was based in a room barely larger than a sitting room, had piles of dusty papers everywhere and had a general air of neglect about it), only double science at best available at GCSE to my scientifically inclined son (now doing Physics and Chemistry at A level) (and before anyone pipes up with "Oh but it doesn't affect the quality of their learning to be doing double rather than triple science"- YES it blooming well DOES! and I would rather pay to get that than take on our local comp single-handed from without), no out of school activities to speak of apart from x country running and football, one of which none of my children has any interest in whatsoever.

I could go on, but I won't. Suffice to say that I considered the school not that good despite the elaborate plaudits poured upon it by Ofsted. I was not convinced that fiddly tweaking was not carried out on its results to make it look better than I found it to be.

UQD- in our case we keep our (not very flash) cars until they die, do not go on holiday unless it's really really cheap (last one was 10 days at a friend's house in Italy helping with their olive harvest- cost £500 for 6 of us), reuse and recycle everything we can and indeed do shop in Lidl/ Aldi for a lot of things. We also get a veg, fruit and meat box from a local well-known box scheme, use everything in it and eat meat/fish only 3x a week. We get the childrens' clothes second hand as much as possible (a lot of hand me downs and some Ebay 2nd hand stuff) and have to consider carefully every single thing like school trips. So, no objectively we are not poor, but we do have to be very careful, which we would not have to do at all (both of us working for a fairly decent wage) if we weren't paying 3 sets of school fees.