Private / Public Schools and Brexit

[jellycat1]

I read the Education boards a lot as we are planning to put our two sons through the pre-prep/prep/public school route. We haven't decided exactly where, but it will either be day Prep in SW London - so on the crazy 7/8+ bus, or a Surrey / Berkshire area day/boarding prep to 13.
My question is to current parents - what is your sense of the effect, if any, of Brexit on the demand for places at the selectives / super selectives? Do you think it may soften demand a bit or have no noticeable effect? We are overseas currently and all my friends' kids are older, so I feel a bit in the dark about it all - but then aren't we all...! Sigh...!
I know nobody has the answer right now but just interested in your thoughts really and what you hear in your schools.
TIA.

Happy
I know that the soldiers are very brave
but I also know that their wives, children and mothers are nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to unskilled migrants.
Peterenas objects to EU migrants being allowed in when Ghurkas are not.
My comment was merely that the families of the decorated menfolk have no skills that should let them jump queues.

I should also add that I’ve never met a “loud” Gurkha in fact the complete opposite. The families I’ve met have been generally like their soldier partners been quiet and hardworking and their children are usually very respectful usually do well at school. Gurkhas are usually Hindus or Buddhists IME the latter in particular are unlikely to be “loud” in fact the complete opposite, at Folkestone where the regiment is based they live very quiet lives.

I think peteneras is wrong about them not being allowed in I believe that now have right of residency after they’ve served a certain period in the army.

Whatwouldrondo - while the situation of unskilled migrants within ASEAN is very irregular right now there is increasing recognition of the need to establish a framework of rights, because demographic pressures will require formal allowance for movement of unskilled migrants from places of high population and underemployment to places where populations are aging and raw labour is needed.

^Happy
I know that the soldiers are very brave
but I also know that their wives, children and mothers are nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to unskilled migrants.^
TalkinPeace don't take all you have been told as fact and then communicate it as You don't know

^Happy
I know that the soldiers are very brave
but I also know that their wives, children and mothers are nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to unskilled migrants.^
TalkinPeace don't take all you have been told as fact and then communicate it as such. You don't know.

And Happygardening is right, since 2009 all retired Gurkhas have the right to UK residency including those who served before 1997.

Math You are talking about very different cultures to Europe, not just the economic disparity but also a racism and different approach to individual rights that is deeply rooted in culture (Frank Dokotter’s book on the discourse of race explores those roots). Even in Singapore and Hong Kong (latter obviously not part of ASEAN) where there is a recognition of the need to protect individual rights in the legal framework the practise on the ground even for documented migrants is one of exploitation and abuse. For every case of abuse that comes to court there are multiple instances that do not. Interestingly both are now looking to increasing migration as the answer to their “silver tsunami” but it will not be in the context of a European style freedom of movement (which is what is needed to sustain the care system in this country) but rather in the context of strictly restricted rights of abode, not in any way equivalent to citizenship . That is in the more developed economies, in other Asian economies people trafficking and the commodification of people as workers, wives etc are common. In Cambodia where I have a particular involvement with an educational NGO we are up against a system where the trade in the virginity of girls from poor backgrounds (current rate $600) is encouraged by the aging men in power who believe that sleeping with a virgin reinvigorates them.

I am not in any way arguing (as leaders in Singapore would) that western style rights and responsibilities are not something that would work in Asia, just that values rooted in the European enlightenment need to root in local culture and that takes time.

Incidentally whilst the Gurkhas in Hong Kong are similarly denied the same rights as Hong Kong Chinese (you actually have to prove Chinese ethnicity to get citizenship) they are the one ethnic minority who are recognised for special treatment by the Hong Kong government, allowed to stay because of their role in the defence of Hong Kong up until the handover. There is an issue with disadvantage as a result of the use of Cantonese in the educational system but former Gurkhas are in demand for security and related work and they are highly organised in terms of NGOs that step in where the Hong Kong system fails their community eg in establishing schools. They are not a group within that society who are not proactive in improving their situation or characterised locally as in any way feckless.

"They are not a group within that society who are not proactive in improving their situation or characterised locally as in any way feckless."
^^This.

I find the attack on the Gurkhas very distasteful, I would have thought from their pervious comments over the years that those doing it would not be the sort of people who would have indulged in this kind of stereotyping. Do you make the same sweeping generalisations about minorities I do hope not especially you Draylon as an HCP you should know better.

Completely agree with you happygardening and out of respect for an extremely brave people to whom our country owes a great deal, I'll be asking for this thread to be deleted - or at the very least, for all the distasteful posts to be deleted.

hg I expect that many decent people from all walks of life will find this sort of stereotyping very distasteful.

HCPs are expected to know better. Many patients' circumstances are challenging, and the classification of entire groups such as Draylon has described proves that the disgraceful behaviour lies with the (alleged) HCP and not the patients.

What little contact I have had with ex-Gurkhas and their families has been as you have described. Even if that were not the case, I would not be as damaged an individual to label them all as some have done.

Returning to the OP, given your DSs' ages, from what I know over quite a few generations of public school demand and supply, Brexit will have no noticeable effect. The expansion plans were in train long before the vote and target non-EU demand. While the US remains a major player and with no realistic prospect of a replacement international language to English, demand for the UK's top independents will be unaffected by Brexit.

Whatwouldrondo - The continent that birthed the Enlightenment also delivered the Holocaust, and plenty of people who were happy to inflict Stalinism on their fellow citizens.

Europeans are equally not too hesitant when it comes to participating in sex slavery, in sexual abuse of children, in producing and using pornography, in exploiting the poor both at home and far away - in Asia for instance, in Haiti, in Africa. Colonialism was inflicted on the globe at the same time that the Enlightenment emerged and it took a long time to dislodge it.

Europeans should not clap themselves on the back for our 'progressiveness'. We as a society are a hair's breath from depravity and we are sadly reminded of that every time we open a newspaper. Human nature is common to all humans, and it does not change.

Yes, we have laws. Yes, we can hope that those laws will serve to ingrain a certain sensibility in us and serve as an example to other blocs. But that is all we have to separate us from the rule of the strongest or the most ruthless.

Movement of people will continue in Asia. The rational approach is to provide legal safeguards and to bolster the rule of law - above all, postwar Europe has given the world the example of how that can effect positive change in every aspect of the life of a state or a bloc.

I totally agree that these evils lurk between the surface in Europe too and I certainly do not believe that the ideals and values spawned by the enlightenment are the definition of progression. In fact I think it is a powerful white man’s paradigm to think of history as a progression at all as opposed to a sum of lived experience and society. In fact Confucianism which is the most pervasive secular ideology the world has seen and predates the enlightenment by a couple of millennia (and helped inspire it) has within it checks and balances that protect the individuals within society and could form the basis of fairer societies in Asia albeit with a greater emphasis on the overall stability and ability to achieve the potential of the collective , family, community, nation than individual fulfilment. However as David Mitchell wrote in the Guardian this weekend, whatever you think of her in political terms suddenly May is looking like a protector of many of our values as she sees a procession of unmemorable white men leave by the door after the latest manifestation of the less savoury values that some in our society live by. At the end of the day the will is still there to protect those personal rights and liberties in law a way that will take a long time in Cambodia or Thailand, even allowing for the secret agendas of the members of the ERG, Legatum etc. Of course there will be migration in response to economic need but I don’t see that being in any less of a two tier system in terms of rights and protections any time soon, until there is less economic and political disparity. The potential in places love me Burma, Laos and Cambodia is huge though. Both Burma and Cambodia were South East Asia’s richest countries before their politicians sent them back to the dark ages.

I think the schools issue suffers from the same illusions of superiority and entitlement that underpin Brexit itself. I don’t see the big brand Boarding Schools, who in any case are careful not to admit too many overseas students and so demand far outstrips supply, suffering. However when some of the less well known boarding schools are already beginning to suffer as Asian parents begin to cotton on to the fact that they often over promise and underdeliver both academically and in terms of the experience of full boarding. It is not just US schools (and ABC is still perceived as superior to BBC socially) but some Australian schools have similar prestigious reputations (Geelong Grammar was good enough for Prince Charles ). For a parent seeking an English medium education I do think that schools that teach in English in other parts of the world and especially the schools British schools are lending their names too (and not that much else) in Asia will be increasingly the choice over the lesser known British boarding schools and we will continue to see closures and mergers.

Theresa May, former Home Secretary, who bundled foreign students into vans and turfed them out of the country?

The 2016 Tory Party Conference speech by Theresa May will go down as one of the greatest pieces of political humbug in history.

"If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere..."
Discuss with reference to Enlightenment values, or even to sober lessons learned from 1939 to 1945.

May is looking like a protector of many of our values as she sees a procession of unmemorable white men leave by the door after the latest manifestation of the less savoury values that some in our society live by. At the end of the day the will is still there to protect those personal rights and liberties in law a way that will take a long time in Cambodia or Thailand, even allowing for the secret agendas of the members of the ERG, Legatum etc.
It would be really nice if you were to turn out right, but I think you are sadly mistaken. If she cared about rights she would not be so eager to throw the ECJ and ECHR overboard. I think the ERG and Legatum will triumph, and it will be because Theresa May found herself in a job for which she is not qualified by education, temperament or experience.

She is a completely unremarkable white woman who will be memorable through history for all the wrong reasons. All of her instincts and leanings are wrong.

Math, I agree May is at the head of the worst governance our country has seen, certainly in my lifetime and I have done my best to help publicise that those border agency vans turned up to illegally detain and deport the softest of targets, international students studying at London's top universities, gathered for a cinema night. It is self evident that Brexit and the corresponding hostile environment, manifested by that event, to anyone coming here, even to study and contribute to universities and the economy in the process, won't be good for Britain's brand in the market for education.

However in contrast to Hun Sen who with his political and business cronies is selling for personal profit Cambodias resources, in particular a young work force who for Chinese companies are a way of avoiding the increasing cost and demands in terms of better working conditions of their domestic work force. They not only do little about the sex trade and sale of young women particularly from the marginalised Vietnamese ethnic community, but they are customers themselves. www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/06/virginity-for-sale-cambodia-sex-trade?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Poor as Mays government is that is a massive disparity....

"'Long term, the EU will become absolutely insignificant because they would be consigned to history!'"

"You clearly mixed up UK and EU. ."

Yes, we know wakemeupbefore, those flipping alphabet soup e.g. U K E U p r e a s s u m e etc are pretty hard to grasp for someone known to have a long-term inability to tell the difference of one from the other. Don't worry dear, we completely understand . . .

Maybe I'm a little slow here, but 'p r e a s s u m e'?
What is that?

Not sure Mathanxiety. Perhaps something only those with a vicarious —and repeated ad nauseam— Eton experience can understand

”Not sure Mathanxiety.”

When not sure of anything, chances are that you simply don’t need to know. Best keeping your snout away for unnecessary prodding might see a door slammed into it.

That could be alphabets you may find inside a soup can, mathanxiety. Depending on how you stir your soup, two words, presume and assume may just appear. To some, they are exactly the same meaning; to others, they are essentially different, and yet there will be a small group who will be utterly confused.

And whilst you’re here:

”You can't be pro-European and anti-EU. That is axiomatic.”

”But you're not even 'pro-European' - you believe in British Empire Part II.”

The last time I looked, Britain (and even Ireland) were in Europe – unless they have now somehow drifted away to be part of the Americas. Yes, it is perfectly possible to be pro-European and anti-EU. Millions of Europeans in continental Europe themselves will tell you they love their own country but not the EU. Even Nigel Farage will swear that he loves Europe, the French cheeses, German and Italian wines, etc.

As for me, look no further than my username, to see where this word/name comes from. It’s been adopted by me since Day 1 when I joined MN many moons ago and has never changed or ever will.

M'kay...

Nigel Farage sure likes the finer things in life, doesn't he. What a pity he will have to pay so much more for all of that once Brexit kicks in. Though whatever he swears to I would take with a large dollop of salt.

Millions of Europeans apparently thought the better of themselves and got over their alleged EU ambivalence last time they went to the polls. And Irish people favour EU membership to the tune of about 85% last time I checked. Ireland, incidentally, somehow figured out how to trade with the rest of the world, including the US, while still a member of the EU.

When not sure of anything, chances are that you simply don’t need to know. Best keeping your snout away for unnecessary prodding might see a door slammed into it.
I take the opposite approach.
When not sure of anything I ask, or do some research. You are welcome to slam doors and be all mysterious of course, but some prefer verbal communication and find that approach a bit uncivilised.

(Your comment there was just about the weirdest non sequitur I have ever come across on Mumsnet, btw, so please accept a virtual boiled sweet from me in recognition of your achievement).

For your delectation, one of my favourite Eurovision songs: