Alan Bennett on private education

[UrbanDad]

A great quote from AlanBennett, in the Guardian today taken from his talk last summer at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge: “We all know that to educate not according to ability butaccording to the social situation of theparents is both wrong and a waste. Private education is not fair. Those who provide it know it. Those who payfor it know it. Those who have to sacrifice in order to purchase it know it. And those who receive it know it, orshould. And if their education ends without it dawning on them, then that education has been wasted.”

I cannot disagree with any of that.

barackobana is making an excellent point.
It worries me that people would rather direct their ire at the independent sector than focus on how badly the state sector needs improving. I half suspect that it's because most people don't know any better - they don't realise how great and varied an education can be, what brilliant facilities a school can have, how a school can be like a mini university campus etc. If they did really sit and think about this, and they thought it truly worth fighting for, then we might have a proper revolution in education.
Also, Ofsted isn't fit for purpose and is so misleading.

barack - in response to this -

What I don't understand most (and hoping someone will enlighten me as I didn't school in the U.K) is why is it that all those arguing about inequality in education completely ignore the huge elephant in the room? Who is responsible for education? The state! Why are there no threads about the government being lobbied for an educational experience on par with what the independent sector provides? If dim but rich Jonny goes to Stowe and gains five GCSEs at grade A and Bs but would have sunk without trace in the local comp, is that not testament to what a good quality education can do? Evidence of how many children are being failed

I don't see how 'Johnny' and his 5 As and Bs can be 'evidence', partly because he's imaginary (though of course based on real individuals), because how can you possibly know that the fictional alternative for this fictional individual would be that he 'sank without trace' in the local comprehensive? If 'dim but rich' Johnny comes from a home supportive and well-off enough to find and spend fees, chances are his parents are not going to let him 'sink without trace', and he won't be turning up hungry, knackered from being a carer, or anything other than well-fed and cared-for. Why would he do badly at a comprehensive?

The only way you could 'lobby the government for an educational experience on a par with what the independent sector provides' would be to demand that the government offer all children the chance of an education where all disruptive, or unacademic, or poor, or generally unsupported, children are excluded at the door. Because exclusion is what the independent sector offers. The teachers aren't better - though the facilities are often nicer, granted - the intake is different. Because it excludes. The problem with demanding that experience for all children is that it isn't logically possible,

Thick rich Johnny would be in the low streams in the comp, and that's where there tend to be discipline problems, disrupting the lessons, of course made more difficult by the fact that classes are so big.
Some children remain near the bottom of the class even with extra tutoring.
Very expensive private schools are more likely to have good teaching, surely? If the teaching is poor, the parents are likely to vote with their feet. Also, the decent teacher who fails at state school because they can't discipline are better protected in small classes at private.
Not to say that all teachers in private school are good - both I and my DC have had the most atrocious teaching in private schools. In my case some teachers didn't even bother to turn up a lot of the time, and when they did just dictated from their university notes. In my DC's case she learned German for 4 years and can barely speak a word of it. And she's quite linguistic. Also DC's private school still does everything the old fashioned way - eg short lessons and constant grammar learning. Her move to a very good state school has been a wonderful breath of fresh air.

If dim rich Johnny really were that dim, then regardless of his education, he wouldn't be taking the sorts of jobs available for bright people. He might, conceivably, take a job off a poor dim Kevin, but he's far more likely to go into the sort of field where dim rich people can be paid to be the acceptable face of an organisation dedicated to servicing other rich people.

That may be the case. Meanwhile poor Dim Kevin is flipping burgers. In fact, at the moment bright Sandra with no family contacts or parents who can afford to pay for her housing while she does internships is flipping burgers too.

If education were allocated on 'ability' then al children would receivethe eductaion they need approprate to their apritudes.

The education system doe snot work that way - hence I pay for private. Its a choice of either buying an expensive house in a naice catchment area or pay for private.

Even socialists understand that choice hence we see so many prominent Labour MPs doing the catchment area shuffle and playing the system or going private.

Most parents don't have that choice - they can't afford either option.

I would say that many people feel that that is the choice - and many users of private schools will tell you that that is the choice. Meanwhile, in the real world, the vast majority of us do neither.

So, do you want everyone to have a choice or no one?

Is your solution some sort of fair access scheme, or equality of provision?

MoreBeta Its a choice of either buying an expensive house in a naice catchment area or pay for private.

No, it isn't. Are you living in a dream world? What about those people who live in an expensive house AND pay for private? There are lots of those people. In fact, I bet the vast majority of parents paying for private education live in an expensive house in a 'naice' area.

But more to the point, what about people who simply cannot afford that choice? Where is the fairness there? I suggest you find the Alan Bennett article in the online edition of the London Review of Books (you'll be able to read that one article without subscribing) and then apply your mind to what he says. A bit more information for you: Alan Bennett was brought up in a not-particularly-nice area of Leeds and was the son of a butcher.

Link here to an article in The Guardian a few years back, which caught my interest. It is about some research which showed that middle class children are not held back by being sent to a poorly performing school (something already well known to many MNers!)

It would seem to indicate that there is a very basic unfairness between those who have motivated parents who are ambitious for their children's education and future (who are not exclusively white, middle class BTW) and those who don't. Differences in the quality of schools doesn't cause this unfairness, and I'm not sure that abolishing some of our best schools, because they are private, will help remedy the situation either.

It must depend on why the schools are poorly performing. If the teaching is good, but there is a difficult catchment area, then children in the top streams can do well. Good teaching and a lack of disruption in the class are key. Also high expectations. If your middle class and supported children are the only ones of that type in the inner city school, they may have lots of privileges - chosen for gifted and talented stuff, the school's best hope for sending someone to a good uni, etc.

Well I would take the article in The Guardian with a pinch of salt Indrid. It states that 15% of the children in the survey went on to Oxbridge from their average or poorly performing local school but TWO THIRDS of state schools NEVER send any children to Oxbridge. How 'average' are these schools? Does Michael Gove think he sends his daughter to an 'average' state school? Often on this forum posters maintain that they or their children attended an 'average' comp and when the name of school is revealed it's far from average and sometimes in the list of top 100
comprehensives.

Oh, I take all research with a pinch of salt Clavinova, especially when it is reported in the mainstream press! I just thought it was an interesting contribution to some of the comments upthread re the relative importance of school/parenting in educational outcomes.

Hope I'm not sure anyone has said it's fair and Im sure most people don't think everyone has a choice whether to pay school fees or not and of course many people pay school fees live in massive houses, have 4-5 other houses around the world, yachts, expensive cars and are clad designer clothes whilst other families live in the most appalling conditions and worry about where the next meal will come from. This is life I'm afraid it I wish there wasn't such huge inequalities and I'm don't see that's it's going to change in the near future.
As Indrid has said there is a very basic unfairness in our society and also as she says abolishing schools because they're independent isn't going to make a scrap of difference to this basic unfairness.

This is from the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

If Labour win the election in May and try to abolish private education, how will they get round this?
Or does the United Nations not really have any power?
Genuine questions.

HopeClearwater if you read Wikipedia you will find Alan Bennett went to quiet a nice local school and had a very good secondary education then on to Cambridge and Oxford.

"Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds.[1] The son of a co-op butcher, Walter, and his wife Lilian Mary (née Peel), Bennett attended Christ Church, Upper Armley, Church of England School (in the same class as Barbara Taylor Bradford), and then Leeds Modern School (now Lawnswood School), learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his national service and gained a place at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.[2] However, having spent time in Cambridge during national service, and partly wishing to follow the object of his unrequited love, he decided to apply for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a first-class degree in history. While at Oxford he performed comedy with a number of eventually successful actors in the Oxford Revue. He was to remain at the university for several years, where he researched and taught Medieval History, before deciding he was not cut out to be an academic."

If I had a nice local school state school nearby then my children would go there and I would enjoy the cost savings. There is a highly sought after Catholic state school but I am not a Catholic and it is oversubscribed. The state Church of England school is in special measures. My children go to the fee paying Church of England school instead and I pay full fees despite the fact that and I ring the bells in the Cathedral and my son sang in the choir so no special favours for me.

As others have said, those who loudly claim they went to state school often went to a very nice grammar or grant maintained church school and a 'Comprehensive' in a nice catchment area.

Not criticising Alan Bennett. What he said is actually right and I agree with it. All children should have the life chances he enjoyed and I enjoyed and my children enjoy no matter their background.

They don't and that is a fact.

No political party has any intention of abolishing private schools.

Labour are making noises about private schools losing their status as charities if they don't start doing more charitable work.

I haven't read the thread but it really is pointless trying to argue anything from Alan Bennett's own personal experience of the education system. He is 80 now and was therefore in the system even before there was free universal secondary education. At the age of about 11, he would have taken the Leeds Council scholarship papers and did well enough to get a scholarship to Leeds Modern School, which was then a council-funded grammar school. The C of E school mentioned that he attended previously would be an elementary school taking children from 5 to 14 in enormous classes.

Leeds Grammar School, which was a fee-paying school with a few scholarships for poor boys, turned him down. I have always wondered if that was perhaps a background factor in why he is so anti-private education, but that is probably being a bit petty (on my part).

Rootandbranch - do you think they've got no intention of abolishing private schools because of the United Nations declaration? There must be some reason as presumably all Labour MPs apart from Diane Abbott would like to see them abolished.
I think in the 1970s there was a genuine desire to get rid of them but I don't know why it failed.
Eton - and maybe others - bought land abroad in case of such an eventuality so they must have thought it a real possibility.

Morebeta

As long as the most able parents and children opt out of the state sector, or are allowed to cluster in disproportionate numbers into the most desirable state schools, the rest of the school system is going to struggle.

From my POV the most any government can do now is stop unfairness within the state sector - stop allowing schools to select by faith, and for secondary schools to introduce more banding systems of selection, and lotteries to get round post-code selection.

Universities which take disproportionate numbers of students from private schools, especially onto the most desirable courses like law and medicine, should be financially penalised. Grammar schools should be required to take proportionate numbers of children from state and private primaries (ie - if only 5% of children in a grammar catchment are privately educated, then grammars shouldn't be allowed to offer more than 5% of their places to privately educated children).

I think these things would go a long way towards making the system fairer for the majority of children.

Toomany - why was my question so funny?

"Rootandbranch - do you think they've got no intention of abolishing private schools because of the United Nations declaration?"

It's not Labour policy, is all.

"There must be some reason as presumably all Labour MPs apart from Diane Abbott would like to see them abolished."

What - you've asked them?

How do you know? Can you link us to your source?

"I have always wondered if that was perhaps a background factor in why he is so anti-private education"

Yes - people who are anti-private education are just jealous.

And hypocritical.