High earners to pay for their children state schools

[Verycold]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25798659

Shootingatpigeons, I completely agree.

"Dr Anthony Seldon, master at Wellington College, also argues that private schools should have to reserve a quarter of their places for children from the poorest families.

A quarter of the kids at Eton already get bursary help. But the problem there is that they cream off the very brightest from the state system, which in turn has a detrimental impact on the schools in the maintained sector. It's not something I blame parents for for a second; they want to give their kids the best education they possibly can. But I don't think private schools offering bursary help to exceptionally bright students, when those students in turn greatly improve overall results in a highly competitive marketplace, are doing so solely for altrustic reasons.

We come into that category and couldn't afford for one of our dc's to be privately educated, let alone the three of them.

My dd's go to a highly regarded state grammar school, all the parents I've met have taken a great interest in educate acting their children in a rounded way. They are all families that discuss, debate, go on interesting days out and have homes that are stuffed full of frequently read books. They come from a huge range of backgrounds, income and ethnicity.

If you want a level playing field, get rid of the two tier system altogether, don't perpetuate it.

Making universal public services into public services that are only available to the poor tends to disimprove the public services and increase the costs of the private services the wealthy are forced to use.

As you can tell by the logic of needing to force parents on high incomes into spending their money on education so that the master of Wellington college can increase the profits of the "charity" he runs.

There is not, and could not, be anything immoral of availing of a public service that you have entitlement to.

It is taking nothing from the poor to use the state system if you are wealthy. The system is intended to educated ALL children, not just those of people who can't afford private education.

The idea that private is normal and you only use public if you are on your uppers is not in the interests of the children whose parents won't be forced to pay fees to send their children to school.

What nonsense.

If it is a legal requirement for children to be educated, a free education must be offered to all. You can force people to pay if it is compulsory. I would love to see the legal fall out if this plan was ever taken seriously.

Families earning more than £200,000 a year with children at the most oversubscribed schools would pay the most — up to £20,000 a year for a secondary school place and £15,000 a year for a primary school place, equivalent to the fees for a private school.

In which case he sounds totally clueless. The full cost of a place in a state school (primary or secondary) is nothing like as much as that. An large oversubscribed school running at full capacity achieves economies of scale and is the cheapest to run. Certainly, in my town, the secondary serving the most affluent area has the cheapest cost per pupil, whereas the small undersubscribed secondary running below capacity and serving the poorest area is the most expensive - but still costing a fraction of £20,000. We also have no private schools within community distance, so state education is the only option unless you choose boarding school. The proposal seems to me to be a tax on parenthood.

So Norudeshit a school that serves a deprived area has to be a bad school? There is nothing that can be achieved by improving leadership, processes, aspirations? OFSTED are barking up completely the wrong tree?

It's just Seldon seeking publicity again, despite not having a proven track record in managing state schools, so not qualified to pronounce on policy. You can tell by the vague qualification of 'the best schools' as simply 'the most oversubscribed' ones.

Are you really going to charge middle class parents for sending their children to a community primary or comprehensive secondary because it is more popular than the Harris academy down the road, whose academy status was forced upon it against the wishes of the community, and is subsequently avoided?

Or is 'best schools' once again code for 'selective schools'? With regard to socially selective schools - such as faith schools - will we see the Catholic Church charging for the London Oratory? Wouldn't it be fairer just to change its admissions policy so it takes local pupils and not just take children whose parents have time for flower arranging?

Or are we, as I suspect, merely talking about charging for 164 grammar schools, and on the back of this trying to justify reinstatement of the assisted places scheme in private schools, which would certainly boost their coffers? This is unlikely to benefit poorer underperforming pupils, who do not do well in selection tests because they have been behind since before they started school, but are as deserving of good teachers and opportunities as anyone else.

Pathetic proposal which is unenforceable.

So many people are misguided, thinking some schools are simply good, and others ar rubbish. When schools do not have the same material to work with, do they?

if you were to put all the children at a seriously failing school with lots of problems (skiving off, disrespect, disruption) and would make thems wap places ith the kids at a thoroughly middle class leafy comp, the bad school woudl start doing a lot better (just from having a "better" intake, "better" meaning having a better attitude to learning through parental supplort) and the "good" school would struggle to remain so good with a more challeniging intake of pupils.

Middle class people who care about education want their children educated alongside children of like minded families. What is so bad about that?

Also, this thread illustrates that slighty wealthier MC people get lambased and hated whatever they choose; if they choose state schools they are taking up the place of a child who would have benefitted more, if they choose private they are snobs.

Some kids ( not all) from more challenging backgrounds have nothing but contempt for education and teachers.

Wether a school is bad or good is closely related to the type of kids in it's intake.

he's an arse and its a stupid idea

State schools work best with a diversity of parents
he just wants to cream off the rich parents back to his over hyped school

I am a big Seldon supporter unlike most of you on here, but even I think this is a bizarre suggestion!
Most parents would still scrimp and save as an alternative to sending their children to the worst schools so surely it wouldn't have any affect whatsoever.
It is a huge problem though which needs addressing.

Absolutely right Talkinpeace. If the government can't even impose a fair child benefit policy because there is no longer household taxation - so a two-earner family on £80k keeps it but a single-earner on £50,000 doesn't - then means testing families as to their eligibility for free state education is similarly loopy, arbitrary and unnecessarily expensive policy to administer.

it is NOT a huge problem outside London
but most politicians have never sniffed beyond the private schools they went to let alone the North Circular

Addressing the problem by contributing it is about the weirdest way imaginable to address it.

Although private schools outside London and boarding schools like his are the ones most likely to be undersubscribed, struggling for funds and in need of an injection of cash and bright pupils at the expense of the taxpayer and surrounding schools. That's why they are falling over themselves to convert as free schools and have their debt wiped.

Fiscal one of the bits of best practise that schools are sharing is how you motivate working class white boys, often the most intractable problem in deprived areas. There are ways to improve outcomes for these pupils. Targeting educational strategies to offset the effects of social deprivation can give those pupils chances. It is totally wrong to write off a school because it isn't a sea of nice middle class pupils, and indeed to write off the poor pupils who OFSTED have highlighted do particularly badly in those middle class dominated comps in leafy suburbs.

Here's an idea: those "gaining an advantage" by sending their children to "popular" private schools which get a high proportion of children into the "best" universities and jobs also pay an extra contribution of up to £20,000 a year for the advantage conferred on them. Maybe then that would encourage them to go to the comprehensive down the road, which would suddenly look cheap at £20,000 a year.

What the man is really calling for is the privatisation of state education.

I think it is a sound policy to throw out there for debate. If we are saying higher rate tax payers already pay more into schools than lower rate tax payers and that the plan would increase unfairness on those tax payers then higher rate tax payers who save the state by using private schools should be sent annual medals by the state and thanks.

You don't deserve a medal for paying for a perceived advantage over others.

It's a ridiculous idea and it will just push more middle class people to pay for private school if they have to pay any extra at all.

Totally stupid and unworkable suggestion and completely unfair.

Or you could abolish grammar schools, which in some areas take a third of their pupils from private prep schools, and make them comprehensive with a proportion determined by lottery within a reasonable travelling distance so that all pupils have a decent chance of entry.

And tighten the admissions code and adjudicator powers on religious schools so there are no criteria about regular church attendance or voluntary work.

How radical that would be!

It's an idea for people who wish to go back to a pre-1914 world, where the supremely rich and powerful can entrench their positions, the middle classes have to paddle hard to stay afloat, which they can only really do effectively with the patronage of those at the very top, and the vast majority have no security whatsoever.

So is £80k household income is the new threshold for middle class status? Glad that's cleared up.

Very socially divisive idea, would increase class divisions and inequalities. Would drive high earning community to privately educate even more often and make them feel even less invested in the quality of state schools.

Total bollocks and thankfully unlikely to ever happen.

I wouldn't pay a penny for dd's state education. Apart from the fact I pay taxes which I thought went partly towards this dd's school is also shit. If parents had to pay then a lot of schools would have to pull their socks up.

And then there would be the argument that if you pay do you get a priority for your first choice? People aren't going to pay to go to their third choice are they? And then that would hardly be fair on kids from less well off backgrounds.