Going private doesn't 'help' the NHS or state education??

[tryingtobemarrypoppins2]

I really don't know if it is BU to think this! Came up in a rather heated conversation over a meal out with pals last night.....

My thought was "thats a mad suggestion and private anything is unfair on those that can't efford it" but on listening to others soon realised I had no idea at all! Slightly out of my depth!

Perhaps this should be AIBU to vote when I don't know much about politics!

So don't work Saturdays and Sundays then. Leave those hours for someone else to benefit from. They will pay tax after all increasing the amount of tax AND the no. of high earners.

Some people cause for themselves ill health, huge debts, their marriage, loss of homes and their pension due to having to fund a private education for their children as the alternative is so poor.

Thanks for replies and thoughts......shame I didn't do this thread before going out last night!!

I hate the idea that you can buy yourself better health and a better education (or think you cann). Having had children brings this home to me even more.

I will never understand this, 'send your child to state school to mix with rich and poor kids' line.

That just does not happen in real life. In areas where catchments are tight, you just don't get such a mix. I would place bets on our local state primary having at least 80% households in the higher rate tax band.

Many parents who use the private sector for education do not actually think the teachers are better or the teaching standards higher.

They are often paying for class sizes, wraparound care or a particular facility not available at their local state school.

It is a geat myth that parents who pay for school do so to avoid kids less affluent.

In fact in some areas like mine the state children are segregated by religion and class because of how the state system works and how the rich can work that system by house price etc whereas the private schools like Habs, North London etc etc they have such a huge mix of often fairly poor children from many religious and racial backgrounds from cultures where education is highly valued and parents have come from countries where you do pay for the better schools and in a sense you pay for the better mixture even although of course all except those on scholarships are able to afford £10k a year fees etc.

Yes, plenty of people do work very hard to bu private school places. We have a spanking new wonderful group practice medical NHS GP surgery which even does weekend appointments. In nearly 2 years I haven't even been in the building once as I've simply not been ill. That is what I am most luckiest of any aspect of my life - health. It's partly b ecause I don't eat junk food but also luck.

I am saving the state money by going private for both health and education.

No-one is profiteering from my going private - Bupa and my DCs schools all being not-for-profit organisations.

And Xenia is indeed priceless

Oh but Xenia, those £1.99 Tesco chickens will come back to haunt you one day!

I'm still having trouble understanding how the local state school would've benefited from me going there instead of the private school I went to. My mum worked in my local state school in a senior position. She was brought in to try and help a failing department. This was one of the worst schools in the city academically. It was rebuilt recently so had fantastic facilities, so children weren't being held back by lack of computers or up to date resources.

The problem was with certain pupils being disruptive because of behavioural difficulties, or because they had chaotic home lives. There was also a lack of respect for authority figures. My mum was punched by a pupil, whose mother wouldn't accept that her daughter could've done this, despite many witnesses. My mum had many incidents where she had to get parents involved and it was nearly always obvious why the pupils were having problems with behaviour. I don't see how parents getting on the phone and complaining about that could've helped. If a certain section of parents are not bringing their children up to respect teachers and value their education then what can the more well meaning parents do?

I went to a state primary school in a deprived area and I think I was an inconvenience to the teachers because I would often finish my work long before my classmates and the teachers struggled to find things for me to do - I often ended up sharpening pencils or sorting out worksheets.

Message withdrawn

The private schools are better because they don't have in them children who disrupt classes and because they may be segregated by sex, class, IQ. They are better because they are apart from and different from the others. People are born competitive. It's why we evolved and won over the Neanderthals. We all favour our own off spring . Someone on this thread might have stronger and more clever children than I have becaue they feed them on Waitrose organic chicken free range rather than my Tesco value chickens say.

The basic point is do other children suffer because 7% of us picked well paid careers and so can afford fees (and indeed the other issue is if some women choose low paid air fairy arts careers because that pleases them as some kindn of supreme self indulgence or work in Tesco because they couldn't be bothered to pass their A levels and then cannot afford school fees are they morally wrong - they are choosing to damage their children's education through picking badly paid work which means they cannot afford school fees?

Erm.... state schools segregate by ability. It's called setting.

And many of them don't do it. Our local comp doesn't have sets until year 10. Three years of totally mixed ability. Hats off to the teachers who can teach them.

Sounds rubbish.

Set for all subjects from Year 7 where I am, apart from core P.E and Citizenship.

Primary school they were only set for English and Maths and only from upper end of Key Stage 2.

I liked my children at age 5 only to be in a school where everyone was very clever, never mind setting in a comp. My local comp raised it's GCSE pass rates A- C from 22% to 34% last year. My daughter's school North London C gets about 99% A and A* never mind A- C! I cannot see if my three older children had gone to that local comp I would have been fufilling my duties to my children and have benefited the local populace . The damage to my children from that attendance would surely have been so so great that that would over come even any minor benefit to the local comp through having reasonably committed children working there. Instead let the 7% at state schools continue to have some of the best education the wolrd which is envied the world over, let them go fortyh into successful careers, lead the nation, make up as the private sector does 50% of most leading positions on board, in Governments and the like - much greater good is done by that than if a tiny bit of their work ethic rubbing off on the children of the poor surely. Surely if you make £50m and spend charitably you do much much more good than spending a life working for nothing in your local oxfam or as a nurse.

There sure are some rubbish areas.

Why does everyone the same have to be a moral right though? Some are born with low IQ, some very pretty. Life is riven with unfairnesses and we all just have to make the best of it. Some people can sit at home and earn a fortune and others never earn much. It's just how it is. Any mumsnetter could write a best selling novel or been looking at the live coverage of the Wash Up session on the internet in Parliament this afternoon and seeking to generate income from it (as I have just been doing). Have they or have they just had their feet up? In free markets there is always money to be made and it's usually made by those who work 3x as hard as anyone else. It's 6p[m that means 6 working hours to mid night or for some means working all night. Everyone makes their own choices and those choices affect our children.

But Riven, your post could be referring to affluent catchment areas too.

In m/c areas where the schools are all graded outstanding, those who pay do so for the extras on top of the good teaching.

What I'm saying is that there are many excellent state schools. The only 'bar' to them is sometimes affording the catchment.

The private sector isn't necessarily providing a better standard of education but rather other things on top.

'I'd like my children to benefit from the best education too. But we are barred because we cannot afford it. How is that right?'

I don't think it's just private education which is unfair. Very wealthy families have the choice of moving to the catchment area of the best state school, or of going private. My parents couldn't have got a big enough mortgage to pay for a house in a better catchment area. They could, however, afford to pay school fees with the help of bank loans. Two of my best friends at secondary school lived on council estates but had assisted places. I think Labour were wrong to scrap assisted places which widened access to private school.