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.

Rootandbranch no I haven't asked them and I can't link anything. I said 'presumed' because I thought the Labour Party wanted a more equal society and private education, as is pointed out frequently on these boards, gives an unfair advantage.
I'm not sure why you had to answer my post so aggressively.

Rootandbranch = allocating places at schools by lottery is no 'fairer' than allocating by wealth.

Truth is that if society and politicians truly wanted to abolish inequality in education they would have done so. They haven't abolished grammar schools or private schools. Not even Labour.

Suggests they don't actually feel its an issue they want to deal with and or it will not be a vote winner.

I would have saved a small fortune in fees if we had a good grammar school in our town but we don't.

"Rootandbranch = allocating places at schools by lottery is no 'fairer' than allocating by wealth."

Why? It's less open to manipulation and not dependent on parents' ability to buy a home near their desired school.

"I would have saved a small fortune in fees if we had a good grammar school in our town but we don't."

Is there no school other than selective schools within reach where children can achieve highly?

My dd's comprehensive has more than double the national average number of children on free school meals and only a minority of children who are high achievers. But those who do achieve highly do really well. Although it's a comprehensive some local middle class parents consider 'rough', it still sends girls off to study law and medicine and other competitive courses most years and gets kids into top universities - not massive numbers, but proportionate to the intake of very high achieving children who come in at year 6.

Do no children do really well at the schools you have chosen to avoid?

"Rootandbranch no I haven't asked them and I can't link anything. I said 'presumed' because I thought the Labour Party wanted a more equal society and private education, as is pointed out frequently on these boards, gives an unfair advantage."

I think you'll find that the labour party aren't the only ones who believe in equality of opportunity for children.

Parents don't believe for a second that it doesn't matter what school they send their children to, it's all down to parenting how well they do. If they believed that, private schools would be a lot less full.

9Bluedolphins

Totallyagree, there would be no over subscribed schools, people moving for catchment, and dc would automatically attend the school nearest to their home.
There would be no need for grammar schools, or private.

Rootandbranch - ok, whatever. There's not much point having a discussion with you as if you disagree with a poster you are unpleasant or patronising.

allocating places at schools by lottery is no 'fairer' than allocating by wealth yes it is! Clearly it is!

How do you allocate places by lottery? Put the names of everyone who wants a place in a hat and pull out the same number as there are places? If this is how it's done it seems pretty fair to me.

But then you have children doing lots of travelling to get to whichever school they've been arbitrarily allocated. Not great.

9Bluedolphins but you'd only put your DC into a particular school(s) lottery if you were happy about any travelling.

Alan Bennett has stated in several interviews that his anti private school views stemmed originally from personal bitterness/jealously/inadequacy he felt as a seventeen year old when he sat his Cambridge scholarship exams:

"It was the first time I ever saw boys from public school. They were confident... we were timid grammar school boys and they were much at ease....They hogged the bread and slurped the soup....I also realised that they had been better taught than I had."

His grammar school education must have been pretty good though as eight boys from his year group all sat and passed for Cambridge - not bad for 1951.

In 2008 Bennett also stated: "If the state schools here in Britain were the best and you had to compete to get into them, then the whole nature of education would be transformed." He's still advocating selective education then.

Interestingly, Barbara Taylor Bradford who was in the same infants class as Bennett went on to a girls' private school - her father was an engineer who had lost a leg in WW1 and they lived next door to the private school. However she left school at age 15 and took a job in the typing pool of the Yorkshire Evening Post as she had fierce ambitions to become a reporter and saw the typing job as a foot in the door.

I agree with Mimsy (waves to Mimsy from Archers thread). I came on here to say much the same thing. Also he doesn't have any children and it's much easier to be ideological about education when it's all theoretical. If he had had children I wonder where he would have sent them to school? You only have to look at the children of Labour politicians and where they go to school to see that it is not always easy to stick to your guns when you are trying to do your best for your own little darlings and you have enough money to have a choice - either to pay school fees or move to a house in the catchment area of your choice.

Meant to add my dad is the same age as Alan Bennett and was also in the express stream at a northern grammar school where ten of them won places to Oxford or Cambridge. It was a different age.

Really? Anti private school thread again?

This type of subject never dies...

For what it's worth, parents should do everything they can for their kids. For some, it's private education, for others, it's music lessons or languages.

If every single parent in the country had the best in mind for their children - putting the little one's needs before theirs - we would have far less inequality than simply getting rid of private schools. Sadly, that isn't the case, but excuses are found in the discrepancy of wealth...

"If every single parent in the country had the best in mind for their children - putting the little one's needs before theirs - we would have far less inequality than simply getting rid of private schools. Sadly, that isn't the case, but excuses are found in the discrepancy of wealth..."

Yes - let's blame poor parents, uneducated parents, ill parents for not trying hard enough as these are the sort of families which the overwhelming majority of underachieving children come from.

I was privately educated. Despite the fact that my very loving parents (who had both left school at 14) never did any more than read the odd book with me, and despite the fact that I was a lazy dreamer all the way through school, I still got decent exam grades and a degree. It wasn't because of brilliant teaching or having a high IQ (I'm pretty sure I don't) it was because I was taught in tiny classes with no disruption, by teachers who had time to address my learning needs when my parents couldn't/wouldn't.

What if every single parent felt that was best for their 'little ones' was a private education?

Well, Rootandbranch... It's unfortunate your private school didn't teach you that it doesn't cost anything whatsoever to bring up your kids with discipline and a moral compass. It doesn't cost anything to teach them respect and to value education.

My grandparents lived in a third world country and weren't rich - in fact, he was much poorer than the majority of the population in this country (including the ones you deem 'poor'). He drummed the value of education into his kids. Most of them had to get a scholarship to attend school beyond the age of 12. Most of them attended university. Some are now teachers. My grandmother also died prematurely, and the elder siblings had to help out. Yet, all their kids were well-behaved, and achieved well.

If all kids were brought up with the same sort of discipline, you would not need your "tiny classes with no disruption"... because there would be no disruption. In that sort of environment, kids learned that your outlook in life would be limited, if you didn't value education, and parents taught their kids that.

"If all kids were brought up with the same sort of discipline, you would not need your "tiny classes with no disruption"... because there would be no disruption. In that sort of environment, kids learned that your outlook in life would be limited, if you didn't value education, and parents taught their kids that."

Because all children do exactly what their parents teach them to do and there are no children with emotional or behavioural difficulties which can't be fully pinned on inadequate parenting?

I have two disruptive children and one who is completely compliant. How did that happen when I bought them all up the same way?

One of my children has ASD. He's bright and loves school. He's also an extremely nice and responsible child, but he struggles with relationships and gets into conflict with other children which disrupts lessons. He's in a class of 31 children and has no allocated support. There are two other children in his class who have special needs and no allocated support.

Whose fault is it that there is regular disruption in my ds's class? My ds's? Mine? The teacher's? The school's?

What about my dd? In year 11, she's spent the last 3 years in constant threat of exclusion at her comprehensive. She has two loving and involved parents with a strong work ethic and high expectations of her, but despite a great start (she breezed through primary without a whisper of a problem) she has bought her teachers and us to the brink of despair with her behaviour.

Having a child who has had a difficult time at school has humbled me. It's been so difficult DESPITE the fact that we are a solvent and educated family with strong social support and a knowledge of the importance of boundaries and respect.

In the end the children who need the most help - for whatever reason - who get the least. The wealthiest and best supported and most high functioning and able children get more than double the amount of money spent on their education as most children in state schools.

That is fundamentally wrong and I can't see any ethical justification for it at a social level.

Not all wealthy children are the most high functioning and able.

I'm sorry about the problems your children face. However, I don't think this is the norm - a lot of kids play up because they can. If every single disruptive child was due to certain behavioural conditions... then, we have larger problem at hand as a population rather than "private schooling or not".

And what difference would it make for your children to ban others from choosing a private school? State schools would suddenly need to accept more children without necessarily getting more money (I'm a pessimist- I think any additional money any government receives will go towards 'other' things rather than school). That would mean even more resources being taken away from those who need it most.

I think I'd like to see higher taxes for the fairly well off upwards, ploughed into education and health. Improved schools would lead to fewer private school pupils. State schools will never match Eton, but they can be as good as the local standard private school, let alone the local not very good private school. especially if they get a bit more money for extras.

I'm not arguing for a ban on private schools.

But I'd like state grammar schools to be required to take proportionate numbers of children from state and private schools. Would also like to see proportionate intakes from state and private into the top universities and most oversubscribed courses.

But ability is also affected by the degree of parental involvement in the child's learning outside of school. Parenting approach will be a differeniator and that would be very unfair. So we must then stop these patents from helping their kids or showing any interest in their education so as not to positively impact their ability.

We must ensure equality for all and as it us difficult to bring up the ones in the lower range, we must bring down the ones who have the unmitigated gall to even attempt to move upwards.

Newrule