No difference between state and private schools

[richmal]

Mr. Gove wants anyone walking into a state or private school not to be able to tell the difference. Could they not simply count the number of children in the classroom?

Agapanthers
When a rural catchment is ten miles across are you seriously trying to imply that EVERY house in that area is MC?

DCs school catchment ranges from multi million pound houses to council flats to tenanted farm cottages
as do those of most of the other rural comps.

You live in catchment - rented, bought, council, lodging - you get in.
Please explain the selection pressure?

Lol at affluent

What a blinkered thing to say

The school is right next to one of the poorest estates in our county (I know this as I had to write a grant form for the school for a particular reason)

It's a good school, has outstanding music provision

Agapanthers blindly ploughs on

I live in a rural area where the majority of people are MC commuters or reasonably well paid upper working class.

The vast majority of DDs primary run two cars and have a holiday ( some uk, some abroad) every year. They use gallons of petrol, running their DCs to ballet, football, cricket, swimming etc.

If school organises a trip or they lose their school jumper the bill is no great sweat.

However, there are a very few DCs at primary and a higher percentage at senior school. Desperately trying to keep old bangers on the road to keep NMW jobs. They have no spare money for extracurricular activities and can't afford the petrol for days out. Their DCs don't have iPods, laptops or their houses broad band.

Many of them have one car or both work long and difficult hours. Their DCs come to school on the bus and they can't make 'sharing assembly' and PTA.

A great deal if the time they are forgotten by the majority of parents and the school.

I only remember them because, by a quirk of rural life, one such family lives next door. Their DD plays with mine and I see her waiting forlornly for us to come back from ballet.

Her eldest brother borrows my phone (he never has any credit) and was in 7th heaven when he got an
Instance quote he could afford. This meant he kept his job (buses are rarer than days without rain)

I live in a rural area where the majority of people are MC commuters or reasonably well paid upper working class
Highly unlikely.

Statistically, rural areas are much poorer than cities.
Remember that people with school age children the same age as yours will be a minority in the population.
Those with younger, older, no children are part of the demographic.

For every Pargetter or Archer there are the Grundy, Tucker, Carter and Horrobin families.

We only really notice those like ourselves.

Friends who live in the lovely villages north of here are pretty much unaware of the nasty concrete cottages round the back of the farmyards where the local families live.
Because I look at the Council records I know for a fact that there are grindingly poor areas even in towns like Winchester.

The Pargetter and the Archers go private anyway!

Define what "Upper Working Class means" .. It surely is an Oxymoron ?

TOSN
John, Helen, Tom, Pip, Josh and Ben did not go private.
Phoebe Tucker Aldridge is not at private

rural state schools are far more mixed than many townies realise

I live in a fairly rural area, don't forget the landed gentry :)

…definite pockets of deprivation though.

Talkin, your job sounds like a teachers dream with all that setting. I'm still not sure it's best for the kids though, especially those lacking in motivation.

pickled
I'm an accountant. I don't work in schools. Nasty smelly places.
DH works in schools. I work with local councils. Amateur polticians are almost worse than professional ones.

The Aristos we have round here do not have school age children.

Ha ha ha ha, mixed you up with your DH :)

I can't stand local council 'politics', it would drive me insane. I dared to cross a few amateurs at our governors meeting last night…took me a while to realise what I'd stumbled in to.

bronya, surely there are parent's who can afford to send private because their income is inherited ..not necessarily 'earned' ... and therefore level of wealth cannot necessarily be linked with intelligence ...

They will never be equal...for all the reasons already stated.

Ban fee-paying schools altogether and make it illegal to select children based on ability. So ALL schools are state schools with catchment areas.

Implement a fee based on household income for education...anyone earning over X amount pays X per child, per year. Plough that money into schools....increase the provision for extra curricular activities and opportunities, smaller classes etc across the board.

THEN all children will get an equal education.

Lifeisfor
Banning fee paying schools has not worked in any country
there are significant parts of the UK market who will always choose fee paying, and the excess fees charged by the UK to those from countries where private schools are "banned" are a good earner for the UK and prove the market forces aspect of my point.

Fee based per income :
utterly unfair unless those same people recieve a commensurate tax deduction ... the top 10% already pay 34% of taxes in the UK remember

the richest have paid for their state school places at 40%, the poorest at nil % - ther is no integrity in exacerbating that

what I would change
and it would have hit me directly

is that children should be allocated to their nearest school first and only then does parental choice kick in
yes, area variances would occur,
no shit sherlock, they already do

PS all faith based selection gets binned in my utopia

PPS
I have no problem with fee paying,
HE bothers me a lot more
and state selection a million miles beyond that

I thought Pat and Tony did use the cathedral school?

Pip and bros went to Borchester Green, as did Phoebe and Amy and Alice at sixth form... But Ruiauairigh and Kate and Daniel all went private, and Phil tried to help Pip go to the Cathedral School but she didn't want to!

Lifeisforliving what will a ban on fee paying schools achieve? And how will you implement it?

Ban on fee-paying schools just ensures that rich parents will send their children to state schools in super-expensive catchment areas where poor people can't afford to live. Actually this happens already, it would just get worse. Until they invent teleportation, it's impossible for state schools to be of an even similar standard, and ridiculous to suggest that more money would fix the problems of shit parenting.

If you reduce the access of MC DC to social capital at school, how does this benefit the less educated/affluent?

I would impose a 'fairness' tax on private school fees. The money would be used to reduce class sizes in state schools and for an initiative to teach parents how to support their children's education.

Supervised homework clubs in state schools.

Grammar schools having to take the vast majority of their intake from local state schools (ie, a representative intake) - teachers from state primaries to put forward children they believe have great potential (would side step tutoring issues).

Supervised homework clubs appear to be very unpopular - lots of negative comments on here about not wanting the school day to be extended.

Perhaps you'd like to expand on your idea of a *fairness" tax. By the way my DH is already a high rate tax payer as are many people paying school fees. DS2 has only spent two (very unsuccessful) years in the state sector the rest of the time in independent ed. So not only are we paying more tax and have lost our CB it us also not costing the state anything to educate my DS. I do not resent this in any shape or form, thats life, but I could start feeling exceedingly resentful if I had to start paying a "fairness tax."

Surely the 'fairness' tax is already there - people sending their kids to private school are still paying their share of tax that goes to providing state education! They are paying twice, another tax would make it three times!