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?

@MoreBeta

I once asked a foreign born Muslim why they hated the west so much. His reply was that they don't. It is just that that the media concentrate on the angry voices. Your average Muslim's primarily concern is feeding his family and marrying off the daughters :) as opposed to US support of Israel policies in Gaza.

Same with the anti private school voices. They aren't representative of the general population. The mums at our primary school for example thought that the local school was good enough for their kids. They didn't feel that their kids were getting an inferior education to mine so why would they resent the private schools?

Morebeta: A big part of the issue is that people with money can buy a good education. That good education is likely to lead onto a good job with good pay and all that that pay can buy, including a good education for the next generation. So wealthy lifestyles, which many people would like for their children, are handed down within the same families, rather than being earned by natural endowment and hard work. There are only so many well paid jobs (also interesting, etc jobs) to go round, and they are largely "bagged" by the rich families, on and on and on. The question is, is it morally and should it be legally acceptable for parents to buy these lifestyles for their children, or should all children be given a chance to gain those lifestyles, on their own merits?
Yes, it is possible to earn decent money even if you have been to a rubbish school. But the odds are stacked against you. So lots of children are born almost predetermined to a poorer life.
Some people think that doing something to level the playing field would be a good idea.
In other countries the playing field is genuinely far more level, and there is far less of a sense of social class. Those countries are arguably happier places. Eg northern Europe.

I love the way private school parents credit themselves (personally, it would seem) for saving the taxpayer £3billion, but don't credit themselves with any other kind of power . Perhaps if they didn't credit themselves so roundly for saving the taxpayer money, they wouldn't be so widely considered to be the walking on water types who might actually have the nouse to improve state education, if they weren't too busy avoiding the sorts of jobs that actually make a difference to peoples' lives but don't pay enough for the school fees (and yes, that is tongue in cheek and designed to annoy... ).

It's a shame private school parents are so pathetic they can't make any kind of difference to their local schools. I wonder whether all the people involved in setting up chains of free schools and academies have children in the state sector?

If I don't spend on DD's education by sending her to a private school, then I will probably save up the money for a deposit on a house for her. I would also have the facility to pay for a private tutor if there were problems with the teaching in her school and would definitely do that if needed. My own education will hopefully also allow me to help her with her school work. Banning private school can't ban the advantage that having better off parents gives. It will just move it to other areas of their life.

It really is a free for all out there, these days...

breatheslowly - but that's the whole point. Where is it acceptable to have an advantage and where should one try to level the playing field a bit (being aware it will never actually be level)? If people believe, as most do, that education is fundamentally important to giving someone the chance to better themselves, rather than be artificially shoved into a better position, but spending the money on a house is merely considered a means of making your life instantly more comfortable and less stressful, then education has to be prioritised as one of the areas that some serious levelling is required.

rabbit there's no sensible place to draw the line, so better to have no line, but use other support mechanisms to help the disadvantaged to break the cycle.

I think that the term "levelling" is unfortunate as it implies that some levelling down is acceptable.

I really don't see how leaving it to the lottery of natural ability is any better than the current unequal system.

While I am not (yet) and may not be a private school parent. I have put effort into improving the state sector both by teaching in it and by being a school governor. Does that mean that I am allowed to send my children to private school? I might want to at some point, if I decide that the school available to DD doesn't meet her needs. I would happily work to improve a local state school but I would not be happy to commit to DD's education in a poor one as improvements might come too late and I would feel that I had sacrificed her opportunities on the altar of ideology.

Dromedary - you seem to be saying state schools deliver a bad education and private schools a good education. Hence it is unfair that people with money can buy the good education and that leads on to good jobs and so on.

You seem to be confirming what many people think. Many state schools deliver a bad education.

Surely the solution is make state schools better not get rid of good private schools?

I hasten to add that there are bad private schools although they tend to shut down quite quickly. There are also go dprivate schools which is relfecte din exponentially rising house prices and tiny catchment areas or aggressive selection and tutoring.

Good eductaion is what everyone wants and a lot of people 'buy it' one way or another eithe rvia fees, tutoring or buying expensive houses in catchment areas. We would have to ban market forces and prevent people moving house to make all education 'equal'.

@gelo - regards your comment about drawing the line, I totally agree. No matter where you draw the line some one will think that it is unfair.

A number of MNetters, who are against selective education because it is inequitable, are proud of the fact that they went to a bog standard comp and still ended up at Oxbridge.

The flip side of that is it is they who are now the 'privileged few' to someone who can't get a job at a blue chip company because they are redbrick and not Oxbridge.

It's 'funny' how some people rage against the inequalities of secondary education yet fully embrace the mother of all inequalities that is Oxbridge.

@rabbit - why is it pathetic for private school parents to say that they can't make a difference at a school? What are you saying about the non private school parents at that school? Are you saying that they are too dim to involve themselves in their children's school lives and that they need me to tell their teachers to stimulate their children?

Why don't we have calls for people who use private healthcare to give up on it and get involved in managing their local NHS hospital?

Morebeta - there are some bad private schools and many good state schools. For the purpose of talking about the essentials of the argument I took the example of a sink state school against an academically good private school. If you have the money, and are ambitious for your children in terms of their future lifestyle options, you can buy a very good education with access to a good university place (assuming they have basic intelligence and capacity to work). You can also buy access to good networking opportunities for them.
Improving state schools would reduce the number of children in private schools. But the state will never provide an Eton education for every child, and some parents will pay for that even if there is a good state school nearby.
As I have said, this state / private divide is far far less of an issue in many other countries. But it is a big issue here and it would of course be far harder to back-track than to do without private schools if it were possible to start from scratch.
I don't agree that children from a certain social/financial class having close to a guarantee of getting the good jobs is as fair as those who have natural aptitude and a hard work ethos getting those jobs. It is demoralising for individuals and for society as a whole for large sections of society to feel written off from birth. It also means that the people who would be best at those good jobs are not doing them.

I'm not a private health user but even if I were, why do part of the population expect the other part to fight their fight for them? If you think that your schools are crap then do something about it yourself. Why go on about removing my right to chose an education for my DCs so that I can come to your school and make it better for you and your children?

Dromedary - I agree with everything you said.

That is why I want a grammar school in every town so the 25% of most academic kids can go to an unashamedly academic school. It had its faults but at least when we had grammar schools some kids from poorer backgrounds got a chance by passing 11+.

Social mobility has gone down in this country since we got rid of grammar schools in most LEAs. Now even grammar schools are increasingly the preserve of the well off.

If we had a gramamr in every town I am sure the local private schools would be a lot less popular.

Is it just some mums netters want private school banned? I have never heard anyone say that before?

Most of our friends have all supported our decision, some would love to be in our position, (we dont have rich grandparents) but others are very happy With what the local schools offer.

We are not providing anyone with a favour and we don't credit ourselves with the decision we have made.

For those against private education, what are you doing to make your school better?

Morebeta was wondering if someone was going to pick me up on that!

I believe in universal education the same way I believe in universal suffrage, universal health care, abortion rights, gun control and so on.

It's so easy to have ideals when it is not your own children on the line. If there were a half decent state primary in our part of London, they would probably be there.

Having said that, some of our independent schools are amongst the best in the world and it would be a shame to lose that.

It seems to me that a substantial proportion of those against private education are actually teachers in comprehensives, Electricblanket . So I can see what they are doing.

As for me, besides actually, personally, doing an awful lot in relation to my children's school, I have said why I don't particularly like private education (ie that I do view it as something which dampens down the pressure on state education to improve), but I have also said that I would use it if I felt the need, so in reality am not far off the views and actions of people like APMF and breatheslowly - I just object to peoples' justifications along the lines of it not doing any harm to anyone else, or that they are actually benefiting everyone by doing it, or that they have no power whatsoever to improve state education, the latter or which may be true on an individual basis, but since it is widely stated that privately educated people have access to good contacts, etc, it seems a bit hypocritical to then turn around and say but they actually have no power to improve anything at all for anyone but themselves, despite the benefits of their private education. A bit more naked honesty would be good - like that offered by APMF! Even if unpalatable, it at least comes across as sincere. If you are privately educated and privately educate your children, the fact is, you don't have much interest in or understanding of state education and don't know or care about any effect you may have on it, because it doesn't touch you directly.

Thanks rabbit .... I think

What contacts do you think I have? :) Most of us are quite ordinary. We could save oodles by sending our DCs to our local good but not fantastic comp and instead tutor them at home, take them to various externalvclubs and stuff but we rather pay the school to do that. Somehow you have concluded that we are all dynamic Margaret Thatcher types, ready to hand bag the failing teacher and to give an earful to our MP when he pops over for dinner.

I have much less of a problem with fee paying schools than I do with selective (by religion, face fitting or academic) state funded schools.
I went to selective fee paying. My kids are at state. They are getting a better education than I did.

Sorry, APMF, I haven't concluded you are all that type (and you weren't privately educated, anyway ). I'm just noting the irony of the fact that contacts and the ability to gain positions of power are frequently put forward as advantages for privately educated people, yet when privately educated people are really needed to use these advantages to benefit anyone other than themselves they seem to be a bit thin on the ground . (Even when they become MPs?!... no, I don't mean that, really... or not most of the time?....).

If you are going to ban private schools, what are you going to put in place as an alternative to provide my DCs with a sufficient education? Along with all the other military children away at boarding schools so that they can have a stable educational environment