How did Diane Abbott justify sending her son to a private secondary school?

[Bubble99]

After all of her rants about parents who pay for private education?

Very elegantly put Scummy. I would add in one other factorm though, somewhere between Point 3 and 4, "My child is not happy at the school", which can be the case even if the school is objectively or subjectively 'good enough' and even if the child is 'doing well' academically.

Is it middle class black boys who are doing badly at school? I think not. Class is probably a bigger factor in how you do at school than race.

opting out of the system told her constituents (for I am one of them ) that she had no confidence in the system. the difference was that they couldn't afford the luxury of her opt-out. she should definitely have resigned.

Has she actively done much since to remedy what she sees as failing schools in her/any constituency?

not from where i'm standing tinker (went sent dd1 to outside the borough, as it's geographically closer and it's attached to our church, which we regularly attend)

Tinker, are you being ironic ?
It's hard to tell on a text based chat system.

Diane Abbot is a thick racist. She's no more likely to improve education anywhere than she is to win the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Her "contribution" to local schools is more likely to be the sort of racist assault she committed upon NHS nurses.

I think her son needs all the help he can get, bad genes, and an ignorant moron for a parent.

Yes, moral duty toi your children if you can afford it to pay for a better school. I think that's obvious. It's why 47% of parents would pay if they could. My brother was just talking over dinner about how his wife's friends are now kind of slightly dividing between those going to the state school and those private - their chidlren are coming up to 4. I'm sure they'll remain friends but it's an embarrassment of choice and having to justify it and also an illustration of how some of them are better off than others too.

I find that people's views on the "morality" of private education are very closely correlated with the quality of state schools near them.

I depart from Xenia's position because I don't see it as a moral question at all.

To me, a "moral" question is where you are helping or hurting someone else. We are not hurting or helping anyone outside ouR family by our choice of schools.
It is possible to argue that a given state school is a better choice for a given child, but that's not a moral question, it is a practical one. Of course we make some poor choices for our kids, but that's not morality provided we are exercising due care.
My kids are not the property of St. john's in Buckhurst Hill (our nearest state school), or it's deluded headmaster who takes an input far above the average and churns out mediocrity.
That's not a failing of the state system per se since there are crap heads in the private sector, again this is practicality and competence, not morality. His morality is deeply questionable, but his competence is quite strikingly low given that he loudly states that he sees no reason to teach maths beyond the age of 13.
I didn't hit him when he said that, I was quite proud of my self control.

If you know a private school is better and can afford it but then choose not to give your child the benefit of it isn't that morally damaging your child for the sake of your principles? I suppose that was my morality point. Just like a parent who chooses a bad state school over a good one is wrong.

Yes, that is a question of morality, at least it is for you and me.
Not for Diane Abbot or Ruth Kelly, although very different people, they appear to share the same character flaw, they lack any moral objectivity.

Once a "moral" has got into their heads, it becomes part of their self identity, and any attempt to persuade them that an action based upon their "moral" is bad is seen as an attack on them personally. They buy into "morals" simply because they belong to a group who has decided that they should be so. I would strongly suspect that people like Blair or Kelly who've avoided letting their kids mix with the victims of their crap education policies never even really thought much about private vs state education. A big party (or religion) has a view on everything, it's inconceivable that any given member has thought about every single point and come to the conclusion that they just happen to agree with that position.

I could be convinced that sending my kids to private schools is immoral by my own views. Not sure how, but I'd listen to the argument.

But a deeper moral of mine which runs contrary to the religious/socialist view is that there are no abstract "sins". Something is good or bad entirely and exclusively in terms of it's effect on people. not "society", or "morality" or "god's will", but actual people.

Quite happy to be judged immoral by the two of you on this one.

Um, morality does come into it - school choice affects others, too. If you play the system well to get your children into an over-subscribed school, clearly someone else is losing out, for instance. If a significant proportion of people opt out of state education, that changes the social mix for those who are still in the state system. I'm not suggesting anyone completely ignores their own child's needs, just pointing out that the choice does have an impact beyond your own immediate family.

When I was at school, I think only three per cent of children were privately education, that's gone up sharply IIRC, especially in the South East.

Scummy makes good points and I was hoping to adopt that poilicy for my own family , ie I wish I could stand up for state education but it would harm my child - but going through stste education at present is not harming my child, she may be pushed a little less, she may not have the chance to do as wide a variety of subjects and she will probably come out with fewer A grades but that is not the end of the world and for me there were too many factors telling me thatin my case state education was the only option.

Xenia I had a say over dd education as although my ex offered to pay I knew I could not rely on it and I was right as he went bankrupt so my ex was demanding an education I had to pay for. He also has no real legal rights over my dd as I have sole legal whatever the word is for reasons that I don;t want to go into. He did not want dd to go to a private school for educational reasons but out of snobbery.

Ebenezer I do feel that as a socialist working in the public sector I should only use the public sector. I teach in a tough under "underachieving" school and am so passionate about it and by using the private sector I feel as if I am saying that what I am providing for other children is substandard not good enough for me and that just isn't true.

We had a big deision tonught as dp wants me to take out private healthcare as the National health service is failing me miserably and it could quite literally be a matter of life and death as I suffer from depression that makes me suicidal if it is left untreated. I had been speaking to a private health scheme who would be willing to cover me for the treatment I need after two years, but I just could not use private health so I have backed out. There is just something about me that feels uncomfortable paying for something so I can get better than those who can't afford the same. My own religious faith also motivates me to want equality and to abhor anything that creates divisions, hardship and equality.

I think I am in agreement with DC ( I am a bit jaded as I am ploughing through my GCSE files) as I do not think that using the private sector is immoral for everyone, but for me with my views, beliefs and circumstances I do think that it is certainly a difficult stance to defend.

Xenia I don't think I am morally damging my child by putting my principles before her views, hopefully in years to come she will understand that when you make a decision that affects other people you need to consider the needs of people other than yourself.

Exactly Edam, the school I teach in is practically a ghetto for the children of an unemployable dispossessed (sp but am too tired to correct it!) underclass and private education has a lot to do with that. I know lots of children who live in our catchment area who are shipped out to private schools.

you might not agree with Dianne abbott but she is hardly thick.

One thing I don't get in the "morality" analysis is what people do with the money if they don't spend it on private education (or health).
Certainly I could see a moral argument if you said "I will send my kid to a state school and give 12K per year to a charity", but no one on these threads has said they do this, and I don't see it being very common.

So I wonder what people who can afford private but choose not to use it, do with their money ?

Obviously I can't know what individual MNers spend their cash on, but people generally spend money on inflating the house price bubble still further, a bigger car, holidays, and consumer goods.
I can't quite see that as morally superior to education or health.

I feel uncomfortable with money in general TBH, when I was married I had a lot of money and spent most of my time feeling very guilty that I had so much when others had so little and tried very hard to keep it hidden.

I could now afford a private education if we gave up other things but as I am not paying for that education I do not have to give those things up.I live in a fairly average house with a very modest lifestyle and I like it that way - although dp would say my shoe collection is far from modest

I always have given a proportion of my income away as I feel that as long as i can pay my bills, have family days out and put food on the table I don't need money beyond that. Both dp and I feel the same on this having come from families where we lived in severe poverty living from hand to mouth and both know how fortunate we are just to have a roof over our heads and food on the table.

By buying nice shoes I am not however contributing towards a two/ three tier education system where those at the bottom are dumped into "sink" schools.

I suppose I could be blamed for buying a house in a good catchment area and paying the full asking price thereby encouraging prices to rise.

Where are the shoes made ?
You have of course checked that they aren't made by child labour....

I could only "afford" it by remortgaging or getting DH to go back to work.

Hang on a minute ...

My brother at dinner last night said that all those choosing not to pay in his wife's group of friends, in September are those with flashy huge cars and expensive holidays abroad. Better to pay for a school place which relieves a state place for poor children to take and saves the Government £5k a year for 13 years surely and gets your child a better education anyway?

Do not normally agree with Xenia - but Xenia - I agree entirely on this point - parents of private school parents also probably pay vast amounts of tax which funds the education of children like ours! (Doffs cap to wealthy philanthropists..)My go a school which is very highly sought after - luckily many parents of children in the big houses in the catchment choose to send their DC to prep schools, so mine san have a state education. why is tht so bad????? (MN needs a puzzled emoticon)

I pay a lot of tax certainly, I pay back the cost of my university education each month.
My education is why I've made a decent amount of dosh, ditto DW. My parents were very poor, simply no way they could have afforded to pay for me at Uni.
That's one reason I am so pissed off at the way socialist arts graduates have introduced "top up fees", killed off the grant for poor kids like I was, and cut funding to useful courses to increase the supply of media studies girlies.
As one (female) producer put it to me "I don't see why they don't teach them how to give blow jobs as it's the only way they'll get into this industry". She'd had a bad day with MS grads, since the ones she'd interviewed couldn't tell her what a primary colour was, not how colours added and subtracted, and their knowledge of European film didn't stretch as far as visiting Eurodisney.

DC you have made me laugh there!

I couldn't have gone to university either without the elements of genuine socialism that underpinned education back in them days - free schooling (yes it was a comprehensive but I got into Oxford on the back of it) and a maintenance grant (and no tuition fees). And housing benefit and you could sign on in the summer.

Agree with DC about tuition fees, absolutely appalling that the generation who benefited from free university education have pulled up the ladder behind them, selfish gits. We are the fourth largest economy in the world, we can bloody well afford to educate our young people.

Nothing philanthropic about educating your children privately, you do it because you want your child to go to that school and you are lucky enough to be able to afford it. If you were a philanthropist, you'd donate to educational charities aimed at disadvantaged children, or run a youth group or something.