Would you be prepared to pay more tax to get better state education for all?

[happygardening]

Any other suggestions welcome to ensure that all where ever they live and whatever their background have access to education of the highest quality.

Tasmania, I dont believe that the parents of close to 50% of school students dont care. Students are at school for a good proportion of the active part of the day. Saying it's all the fault of home life is just an excuse - blaming the raw materials.

As NotGoodNotBad describes, for some, the failure of education goes back generations. These parents want better for their own children but are effectively cut off from the educational system.

Many parents struggle to be active in their children's education. Like many parents I am out to work before the DCs have left for school and am back in the middle of the evening after homework has been and gone. Many parents are working hard in NMW jobs working less than family friendly shifts.

Too true grovel

"^^ Just to add... an issue that school face these days is that they seem to be expected to do more and more of the parenting". .

Like what?

Schools are in loco parentis. That presupposes an element of parental care happening at school.

Are day schools in loco parentis? At DS2s boarding schools we sign a form authorising the HM/school to act on our behalf but we've never done this at DS1s day school.

Well, if you're looking after a child all day, then that, of course presupposes a degree of parental care. That doesn't mean doing parenting! If I have a child's friend round for the day, I will do parenty type stuff- but I won't be parenting.

The Times Educational Supplement advised in 2012, that under the Children Act 1989, teachers have a duty of care towards their pupils, traditionally referred to as 'in loco parentis'. Legally, while not bound by parental responsibility, teachers must behave as any reasonable parent would do in promoting the welfare and safety of children in their care. The idea dates back to the 19th century when courts were first coming to terms with teachers' responsibilities. It was during this period that case law established that a teacher should act "as a prudent parent".

The worst schools, the kind that people convert, move, or pay to avoid, are a product of bad parenting.

The best schools are often purely a product of good parenting (i.e. if you compared the management, etc. with the bad schools, they wouldn't be any better).

There are precious few schools that transcend their raw materials (i.e. the children and their home environments).

This is not primarily an issue of school financing.

Education spending rose 71% in real terms over the previous government (1997-2010). Where did this money go? Mostly into higher wages.

Obviously good news for teachers, but 'output' absolutely did not improve by 71% over this period.

Private school fees increased at a pretty much identical rate btw, I think reflecting competition for resources from the state sector (i.e. higher wages).

Combined of course with the withdrawal of assisted places scheme in 1997, private education is now reserved for the children of country's wealthiest families, i.e. the offspring of the likes of Nick Clegg, Dianne Abbot, George Osborne.

The previous government's policy of ruinous house price inflation and unprecedented levels of immigration also resulted in normal parents being priced out of the catchments of many good state schools.

If you are not rich, with politicians having priced parents out of both housing and private education, the only option in many areas is to quite literally pray (preferably from before birth).

Given how shitty this situation is, the idea of giving politicians any more money to supposedly improve education is laughable. It won't happen.

If you increase spending, wages will go up, there will be more building projects, but will actual educational outcomes (i.e. whether people can read and write at a functional level, not bullshit inflated GCSE pass rates) improve? Probably not.

"Happy. There are several grammar schools which regularly get better results than Eton, Winchester, harrow and Roedean. "

Hmm, a slightly arbitrary selection of schools.

Eton got:

35.7% A*
82.0% A*-A
96.4% A*-B

at A Level

According to this:

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/leaguetables/9482674/A-Level-results-2012-results-from-427-state-schools.html

Only one boy's school (plus one girls's school, but not a valid comparison) beat either the A or A-B figures (no detail for the A*-A): Queen Elizabeth's Barnet, and it does this by culling 25% of the boys prior to sixth form and telling them which subjects they can study.

At GCSE, prior to kicking out dozens of boys, QEB 'only' got 90.4% A*-A, compared with 95.9% at Eton.

Winchester don't appear to publish detailed stats.

Harrow is not as academically selective as Winchester or Eton and performs less well than numerous day schools. Roedean is less selective again.

Both Eton and Winchester will send twice as many boys to Oxbridge (and, increasingly, US Ivy League) as any grammar school.

I do think that debating results is a bit of a red herring. Selective schools get excellent results- almost without exception. Of course they do. They're selective - the kids who aren't going to get any As aren't there. And the kids who get the As will get them wherever they are. (With, obviously, a few exceptions). When people talk about this selective school doing much bette than that one, you're talking a %point to two ,not really significant.

But education should be about more than results. It should be about showing children a wider view of the world. Opening their minds to possibilities, options they hadn't even considered, or even known about. And it does seem to me that one of the things wrong with our society is that Harry from Cranbrook,nice house in the country, pre-prep, prep, Eton, Cambridge, City Law firm and Parliament is likely to have just as blinkered a world view as Harry from Sittingbourne, council estate, nursery, primary, High school, Tesco warehouse. The only difference is that Harry from Cranbrook is in charge, and has known from birth that he will be in charge. That's where the train track of his life is leading him. Obviously, Harry from Sittingbourne could get there too, but he has to find a way of stopping the train he's on, hike across a muddy field to a station on the other line, work out how to stop the train, open the door, buy a ticket........

With apologies to Crqnbrook and Sittingbourne and people called Harry. And railways.

The worst schools, the kind that people convert, move, or pay to avoid, are a product of bad parenting.

FillyPutty I have to take issue with your statement. My DCs have the dubious honour of going to one of the worst (in league table terms) schools in Britain. This school is not a sink school surrounded by gangs, drug dealer and dope dens. Instead it is a typical town school in a typical midlands town.

The reason this school is so poor is that it has had a succession of incompetent heads. The current head is no better than the others.

That's where the train track of his life is leading him. Obviously, Harry from Sittingbourne could get there too, but he has to find a way of stopping the train he's on, hike across a muddy field to a station on the other line, work out how to stop the train, open the door, buy a ticket........

That certainly was true in in the 1930s seeker until the cataclysmic upheaval of WW2 happened, when a lot of people had their eyes opened to the fact that their were other tracks they could be following, and jumped tracks. Not that I am suggesting that we should have a war...

It normally takes a war to stop people being such selfish w*nkers for a year or two and realise that sometimes we have to "all be in it together."

I just don't get why people cannot accept that life is by nature unfair. You cannot have a one system that fits all policy. It simply will not work.

I can only repeat what I have said before we need to nurture the brightest in our society through selection. This in turn will ensure that as a society we have the best scientists, Drs, engineers etc.

We also need to select those children in need of additional educational, behavioural and social need and take them out of mainstream education so that the mainstream get the best from their schools.

The solution to my mind is not intergration. We do our children a disservice with the one size should fit all attitude.

But seeker - If people are saying 'state schools should be more like private schools' and there is little or no difference in results at a given levle of ability then the only other way in which they are different is money. For facilities. The very successful grammars prove that any state school given a similar intake in terms of ability can get the same results. Therefore there is nothing magical about the teaching in private schools. They select, they get selective style results. Like state grammar schools (although you might say that in some areas, eg the ones close enough to St Paul's or similar, the posh schools with decent bursary resources do get the pick of the pupils). But time and again we come back to Happy insisting that her school is better when really what she is desperate to do is justify spending as she is so fond of telling us £30K+ a year. And it's money. That is the only difference between state and private schools with similar intakes. Money. So we have empirical evidence that chucking money at education at that level of ability can make it better. If at that level, why not across the board?

Agree with succubi.

No Russian the evidence that you have provided suggests that selective education based on ability gets you good results. If you want a selective education and you do not live in an area that provides state selection then private is your alternative.

"We do our children a disservice with the one size should fit all attitude.""
Who has that attitude?

Selective education doesn't get results. If it did, the LEAs which still have a fully selective system would have massively better results than those that don't.
A* and A kids get good results.

Seeker as with other similar posters on here I am not prepared to enter into a debate with you. We are simply ideologically opposed and no amount of debating will change that.

So you're not prepared to address the fact that wholly selective LEAs don't get better results than wholly non selective ones? How odd.

And you're not prepared to attribute the "one size fits all education" statement? How even odder.

RussiansOnTheSpree - it is important to remember that public examinations are not perfect or infallible measures of the extent of an individuals skills. Children from state schools may get A at A-level and yet still have a significantly lower skill set or level than a pupil with an A from a private school, because the teaching at the private school is better.

Right. That's a first. Somebody actually saying that As from private schools are better than As from state school!

Ideologically opposed to what, Succubi?