Ethically, is there any difference between buying a house in a good catchment area and just PAYING fees?

[Fillyjonk]

Seems pretty much the same to me

Both ways you are paying for an edcuation

Both ways the intake of the school is limited, one by catchment (local, expensive) one by just upfront paying fees.

Thoughts? Justifications ?

(this got posted in SEN for some reason. Not sure how. Apologies)

I love my ds' school in Hackney too! Absolutely lovely! Can't believe people are so stupid to go privately around here, money thrown out of the window. There are plenty of good primary schools.

greenday, what does that mean, please? It seems to imply that people only choose state because they can't afford private, but surely that's not what you meant, is it?

What an astoundingly good question. I haven't read the thread ( that's so annoying when Mnetters say that!) I suppose the bigger question is around those with money and those without equalling those with choice and those without in both cases.

Unquietdad - totally agree with you!!!

My god daughter, nearly ended up in a Hackney area school. As her father put it, "I don't want my daughter growing up talking like a nigger".
The cost of going private hurt, a lot.

He was of course black.
It's all very well talking about the need to "support" state schools, and "stay faithful", but it's stupidly hard to undo the damage. A black girl has enough crap in her way without being subject to schools that not only fail to teach, but often cannot maintain order and are physically dangerous.

Time and again, we hear defenders of our hopelessly broken education system talk of "our nice local school". I don't doubt they are telling the truth. But the government's own heavily spin doctored numbers show that even the average is just simply appalling. In many cases our schools are failing to even teach kids to read.
We now know that dumb, cheap subjects are being promoted in order to get "good numbers" for the school. So bad is the problem that the government has had to change the rules to stop dumb subjects being given the same weight as maths.
You haved to ask why that could have been possible in the first place, but when you leaen that there were several people with arts degrees and no people with Chemistry degrees in charge of setting the syllabus, the picture gets clear.

You have "god" daughter?

Both are morally right choices as you have a duty to give your child the best education you can and if you spend our spare money on foreign holidays, nice clothes and expensive furniture and not school fees then you're morally wrong in my book and you should cut back your own spending and get paying those fees. You will also therefore release a state school space too and benefit the poor of the nation at the same time. All moral honours for those of us who pay.

More pragmatically you will be in a strong position too as you won't be at the whim of change in catchment as in Brighton or whatever. you will have power as a directly paying consumer and choice. In some areas like this bit of NW London there are many very very good private schools to choose from.

Tamum - sorry, didn't read your post earlier. But to clarify, I really don't have an opinion so wasn't 'saying anything' to it. Was just re-telling what I read and thought was intersting and debatable point. Sorry!
I don't have children of school age (dd only 2yrs) so as such, I don't have much of an opinion. But this thread interests me because it will affect me as a parent in a few years time. Also, we are just about to move and the issue of moving to good catchment areas has become inevitably part of our decision making process.

i do think an argument that is often used is that kids need to have a good social mix, etc

but a school in a "good" catchment area-they are not going to have a good social mix, are they?

Thats another of my sticking points

I do also find it a little annoying that so many people I know who are espousing state education = good , private = evil HAPPEN to live in catchment areas for the best local schools. And my word it is not coincidence that they do either.

Take Tony Benn. Wow he sent his kids to the local school, isn't he a good socialist. Except his local school was in bloody Holland Park

It is entertaining to watch people of roughly my age group get older. I was always to the right of most of them, but I'm hearing an increasing notion that the kids in state schools are simply less intelligent. Nearly all went to state themselves, but they cannot help but notice that their kids are just so far ahead, that they find it hard to believe it's just a slightly nicer home environment.
They're wrong of course, state school kids are on average less smart due to the fact that private schools are typically selective, but the racism in the education system, and the way that middle class areas get more than their fair share of resources mean it's hard to argue them out of it.
Partly of course that being lefties they simply cannot accept that both Labour and Tory administrations set things up so coloured kids get worse education, they genuinely believe it is a tory-only thing.

Does it not depend on the race to some extent? I thought Chinese and Indians did better than poor whites? My borough is 18% hindu so any school around here hugely benefits because second generation iimmigrant families make their children work harder, stop them partying, stop them drinking, having wild teenage sex, want them to be doctors and lawyers so I love the home ethics of my children's class mates in their private schools which are also there in the local state schools too.

I never really meet anyone who has political views against private education though so I don't seem to get into these debates. No one on this road for example doesn't pay fees or didn't when their children were younger. So we have 100% private.

FJ, Holland Park school is rough as a badger's ar*e. Because the locals are either bankers who send their kids private, or live on council estates. It's really polarised compared with more trendy up-and-coming areas of london.

Ah Xenia, what a sheltered life you must lead.

Dominiconner- could you clarify your point? i don't get it?
Are your former lefty friends now sending their kids to private schools?
oh and our local private doesn't select on ability. Ds has a child in his class who struggles due to being premature and their are others with dyslexsia (sp!) and mild SN's.

And the other local private has a pupil with Downs. Brilliant!

It's hard to generalise. Some private schools cater really well for children with special needs or children who are not very bright but need a lot of help and others are hugely academically selective. Depends on your children what is right for the child. There is more choice if you go private in many areas.

Yes, it may be 100% private on our road. My ex husband's brothers' children go to state schools so I do from time to time come across people who use that sector.

LOL Xenia. You are so funny.

Xenia it is the case that immigrant kids are on average quite noticeably smarter than the indigenous population. Why do you think the BNP stuff strikes a chord with failed white people ?
They don't fear "inferior" coloured, but superior ones who can get better jobs.

recyclingnazi, my point is that my leftie friends were so opposed to eugenics and genetics when young, that they've not gained immunity to the bad viral ideas they carry.
I used to torment lefties with science educations by letting them spout the Guardianista line about kids being solely a product of their environment. Occasionally some even spout a form of Lysenkoism. They actually reliably develop short term speech impediments when I step gently through basic biology that they know to be true.

Thus the lefties are 100% behind moving to nice areas and/or paying for schools.

One model ,which I originally developed simply to annoy lefty arts grads at college, was the "half life" model. Basically you have a 50/50 chance of getting out of a council estate and sink state schools. What has happened in Britain is stability, such that rather than being a random filter, crap schools and state housing now concentrate failed people to a degree that it is now infectious. Send your kid to a crap state school and he may not just be "filtered", odds are he will be damaged by the process.

Well -I think it's obvious that people spout a lot of leftie nonsense and then backpedal wildly it when it comes to their own kids.

Blimey, your post has a lot to digest!

Basically, I wish we could live by socialist standards.

but it ain't gonna happen.

People want choices and that includes me.

My blood always boils when anyone in education equates lower "socio-economic status" (and what a class-riddled little term that is in itself!...) with poor achievement. This stance is used to justify any amount of poor achievement by schools and parents, thereby reinforcing divisions and slowing social mobility.

At least the grammar school system acknowledged that many poor children were getting a bad deal from state schools. Now that that system has gone, we are being served up pap dressed up as lobster thermidor, as the education system struggles with the twin demands of making every child a winner and driving up standards at the same time and in the same setting.

As a (former- still undecided whether to go back- too many ethical considerations) teacher, I found the lack of literacy among any but the brightest, the lack of ambition and drive of many students, the lack of enforceability of anything the school tried to achieve with some (many) students, the basic lack of trust and compensation and confrontational mindset of many parents simply too hard to work with.

IMO, the basic thing that holds a child back, save for a child with REAL demonstrable problems (and not just the feeble excuses for poor achievement trotted out by parents, students and teachers alike), are:

1. low expectations: from parents
2. low expectations: from teachers

full stop. I do not believe that socio-economic status makes even an iota of difference once you have equated the expectations. There are parents with low expectations in private schools as well, but they tend to be in the minority, and the environment is such that their child will prob do well despite them. A child with parents with no expectations put into a school with low standards is unlikely to do well.

If you are a parent with high expectations for your child, you are in a distinct minority in this country, and are probably either: treated as a pushy and annoying parent and brushed off constantly, or paying fees.

It is a valid point about the grammar school system, again it's a British education system so it's only "better" compared to other British schooling, not actually "good" in absolute terms.
Grammar school entrance was gamed by parents, and the correlation between parental income and getting in, far too large to be accounted for by smarter parents having smarter kids.
Which junior school you went to was for too good a predictor of whether you got in to make the claim that they were wholly merit based for poorer kids.

As for living by socialist standards, it is the case that pretty much any widely used political doctrine looks good in theory. The problem being the practice. Socialism does not work for human beings hence my comments about Lysenkoism ,whereby socialists inevitably end up trying to "improve the genetic material".
Hence it's not that different to straight Nazism. which also looks good on the surface. In Nazi Germany there was full employment, a working health service, trains that ran on time, proper pensions at a time when Britain treated it's working classes so badly that when war came nearly *one third" of the men examined for military service were rejected as unfit to serve in any capacity because of malnutrtion.
Same goes for Islamic Sharia, which has fine traditions of charity and lack of racism.

Any fool can knock up a doctrine that works for "average" people, which was the stated moronic goal of socialism. What they fail in is dealing with "others". Anti-semitism wasn't a necessary part of Nazism, indeed many thought it a "distraction" from real issues, like building an excellent transport infrastructure and stealing land from E. Europeans.

d, main thing I've paid for has been very very high expectations. If 100% of the class will get to good universities and most sixth formers are getting As and Bs the laziest teenager of all hugely influenced by their peers and rebelling against their parents is likely to have a better chance at academic private schools (or state grammars too presumably in the past at least).

Many children fall to the lowest common denominator in the class. If that's hugely high you're buying them a big gift in my view. Depends on the child of course. Some will work hard, do well etc at the worst comp in the country but as a teenager above all it is very very hard to be different and if university is uncool and word is not cool rather than the norm then they're not likely to go.

Yup, exactly Xenia. My best friend from university was a freakishly driven girl at secondary school, and emerged from her school's dreadful 6th form with enough A levels to get into Cambridge.

My children are one very bright very lazy lowest expectation lowest common denominator aimer, one very bright very driven but not wanting to stand out one, and one very bright & driven but easy to embarrass one. First two defo need kicks up the arse provided by their current school, little one might be all right anywhere, but not in a school where they take the pee out of kids on any pretext. Seems churlish to impose state school times & terms on ourselves for one child. Also I adore her school- very alternative but academically demanding (and cheap!).

I suppose that actually I don't think that all bright children will do well anywhere, but that the bright, driven ones will. Unfortunately there are many bright not very driven ones, for whom not being driven may just be a manifestation of immaturity, and who may grow out of it in time. I think those ones should be driven externally until such time as they are able to make their own decisions about their level of motivation.

In an ideal world (ie Duchesseland), the state schools would identify and push those pupils. What actually happens in most of the ones I've experienced is that no-one gives a damn beyond the statutory C that pushes the school up the league tables. The net result is that a lazy bright child who ought to get A or A* at GCSE may leave with only a B or C (sometimes less, if that kid has developed an attitude problem along the way). That is where I think schools are failing- by bunching together all results above a D (which frankly is an abysmal level, in modern languages at least) and concentrating on getting the lower achievers up to a C, they are disadvantaging vast numbers of very bright children with no option but to attend that school, and with parents who do not ask enough questions.

The bright driven child is in my experience an extreme rarity. (maybe one to three per 150 strong year group in the state system)

I'm inclined to agree with Duchesse, based entirely on my limited experience of one DS who has gone to local comprehensive! As he has his 5 Cs pretty well assured and can get into one of the local sixth form colleges, the school isn't really pushing him. The school has to concentrate on those who might not get the 5 A*-C grades (and now on ensuring that these include English and Maths) to maintain its position in the league tables.

I agree with Duchesse. It is very hard to be bright and driven if your school fails to encourage you and there is no culture of rewarding academic excellence for fear of 'alienating' the academically struggling kids.Also the bright kids are disproportionately bullied imo.