Is banning private schools a workable solution?

[APMF]

Whenever the conversation turns to bias in favour of privately educated people there are always voices that shouts out - ban private schools!

Is this a badly thought out knee jerk reaction or am I missing something?

IMO if private schools were to be banned the following would happen.

a) the rich would educate their kids abroad. Aged 18 those kids will be back to grab those coveted uni places and, on graduating, the top jobs. So no change there.

b) some will choose to buy up the properties around the highly regarded state schools. Thus driving up prices and nudging aside your untutored DC which is what is happening in parts of London

c) Some will take the fees saved and hire tutors in order to give their dcs an advantage.

d) x thousands of kids will rejoin the state system thus busting an already over stretched system. Tax increases for everybody to pay for the extra resources and if you thought that it was hard getting into your over subscribed comp at the moment ......

As I said above, is banning private schools a badly thought out solution or am I missing something?

[breatheslowly]

TalkinPeace - please link to the data you have used.

[mam29]

I think if we look at future university applications

long courses like

dentistry
vets
doctors
law

will be predomiantly private school pupils as the sheer amount of debt 50k least on fees not including living for 5-7years.

I use those examples as high earners.
investment banks seem to favour graduates with least a masters and like computing and mathamatics bot quite academic subjects.

to go into doctors or vets you would need all the sciences , top grades and even then no guarantees..

The usa higher education system has so many scholarships and wealthy people donating money. Thier ivy league remind me of our private schools. All the wealth gets passed to an even more privaliged few

Im not even sure any private school gets top jobs.
There are the top jobs from high profile schools.

[breatheslowly]

Plenty of people really scrimp to pay school fees, I imagine that many of them will now be weighing up whether to send their children to private school or save up for university.

[TalkinPeace2]

www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/whatsnew.shtml
www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/STA/t001076/index.shtml
www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s001093/index.shtml

University fees are repayable in the same way as student loans : as a proportion of income over a certain amount for a certain number of years.
NO parent has to find the money up front.
People who never earn a lot will never have to pay it back.
Its a tax.

The USA system moved to loans years ago, government holding of student debt is around one trillion dollars ( $1,000,000,000,000)

[goinggetstough]

University fees are the least of a student's worries as TP says they are repaid once the graduate earns a certain amount. The problem is the living costs and that's when it can make a major difference to whether an individual goes to university or not. This is because what the government assumes parents can afford to contribute might not be the same as what they can actually afford. This will affect students at all types of schools.

[TalkinPeace2]

But its a loan whose repayability is dependent on income, not the balance of the loan.
Name another loan that automatically gets written off after 35 years
or that never becomes due if your earnings are low

interestingly on living costs, Oxford is one of the cheapest - because college rooms include holiday storage

[boschy]

Does anyone else worry though that future govts will change the status of student loans? eg it will become another opportunity to raise money for the exchequer, like pension funds?

[exoticfruits]

I can't see how bringing grammar schools back helps as it just improves things for a small minority and over three quarters are left with worse when the top have been creamed off! Parents with very bright DCs are not the only people to pay for education- those with the slightly above average, the average and the below average want the very best too! If you bring grammar schools back you definitely need the choice if private schools.

[MoreBeta]

December - I thought Singapore had an excellent education system and comes out near the top of the league tables?

I know Singapore has a lot of expats living there, I used to work for a form that had a Singapore office with a mix of locals and expats but that was because were a global firm and there simply was not physically enough skilled people to fil all the top level jobs there.

[exoticfruits]

Singapore is above UK in the league tables on education.

[exoticfruits]

People always roll out Finland and Singapore as the best.

[peteneras]

The truth about Singapore is that the nation's population is not expanding fast enough. At best it's remaining stagnant if not actually shrinking. Educated Singaporeans particularly the female species delay marriages in order to hold on to their careers; many of them remaining spinsters thereafter for 2 reasons: (a) they would have passed their sell-by date when the time comes to swap career for family, (b) they would not marry a younger man or someone who is less qualified academically. The 'suitable' ones are all married by then.

This issue is giving the government a major headache - one of its own making. A few decades ago the government was actually penalising families for having more than 2 kids. Now it cannot reverse its own blunder fast enough! They actually have social clubs sponsored by the government to encourage unmarried Singaporeans to meet! I've never heard of any governmental match-making anywhere in the world!


The solution (they think) is to import foreigners, especially skilled ones, to run the economy and man other top jobs but that in itself is giving rise to new problems amongst the locals who complain bitterly that the foreigners do not fit into their culture and worse, are taking over their jobs.

[APMF]

Singapore ARE 'importing' foreigners. They are called Hong Kong Chinese :)

I have no knowledge of other industries but a lot of the senior managers in the finance companies are HKCs even when its a domestic bank as opposed to foreign owned.

[APMF]

The HKC regard Singaporeans in the same way as Americans regard their Canadian neighbours ie too nice and polite and not as ambitious or as ruthless as them. This is another reason why the HKCs get a lot of the top jobs. (I worked there for a while so I am not generalizing based on a 24hr stop over :) )

[wordfactory]

If you ban private schools then you must also make home education illegal.

Either all children must be educated in state establishments or there must be choice.

[rabbitstew]

That's just your interpretation, wordfactory. It is quite possible to word legislation so as to make home education permissible and private education illegal. After all, legislation in this country is not based on logic.

[rabbitstew]

What is awesome? There's not much about the modern world I find awesome - just lots of technology-obsessed, self-centred power freaks with no interpersonal skills.

[wordfactory]

But with my lawyer's hat on rabbit how could that be workable?

What would be the defininition of each?

[DoesntTurkeyNSproutSoupDragOn]

I made the point earlier that if you ban private education on the basis of it being unfair/discriminating on the basis of wealth, you have to ban schools that discriminate on the basis of faith. Those are equally unfair.

Of course it would be possible to word any legislation to leave certain education options open but would that be any fairer than the current situation?

[dapplegrey]

wordfactory - I think there is a UN rule that the state can't have a monopoly on education which is maybe why Labour governments have been unable to ban private education. (Though I'm not sure how the UN would enforce their rule).

[Chandon]

Freedom of education is a constitutional, legal concept that has been included in the European Convention of Human Rights, which the UK has signed and ratified. As part of International Law, this rightcan not be over ruled by any national legislation. So no government could make national laws that infringe this right.

Article 2 of this covenant gives parents the right to have their children educated in accordance with their religious and other views.

Therefore, in countries like the UK we can have Catholic schools, Muslim schools, Steiner and Montessori schools, prep schools and SEN schools, and the government could not stop it if they wanted to.

I believe this to be a good thing.

( polishes up ancient law degree)