Can you be a leftie and use private schools? Are people prejudiced against the privately educated?

[SpoonsAndForks]

I've always been into equality of opportunity and on that basis, think that it's wrong that our country allows private schools.

But then my son's state primary went into special measures and I pulled him out and put him into private school. Now he's being offered a really great scholarship to stay on and I'm considering going private all the way. So I'd rather private schools didn't exist but now they do, yes I'd like my child to benefit from them.

I came across this book yesterday - www.amazon.co.uk/Posh-Boys-English-Schools-Britain/dp/1786073838/?tag=mumsnetforum-21 - the intro to the book sets out the 'public schoolboy' as the most horrible creature, misogynistic, egotistical, generally a posh hawhawhaw uncaring horror (usually a nasty MP). Yet the intro also sets out some interesting statistics about those in top jobs always being from private school (which makes me want to give my child that opportunity). But makes me sick at the thought of educating my child into a guffawing posh MP.

I'm keen to explore:

• whether you can sit politically to the left and square it with yourself if you use a private school
• whether children who go to private schools will experience judgement and prejudice against them
• whether children who go to private schools are all at risk of turning into posh uncaring brash misogynistic MP types.

Private school is not about education. It's about giving kids who have loads of cultural capital already even more. It's about perpetuating social divisions. It's about allowing the "haves" to exist in a world so far away from the "have nots" that they can, for example, help maintain a society where the poor and disadvantaged stay poor and disadvantaged without questioning the status quo.

if you 'abandon' principles as soon as a choice is required, they were never principles in the first place, just unthought through ideas.

That's a really good way of putting it caroldecker.

I’d like to say I admire the contortions you’re putting yourself through to maintain private education is unfair without admitting it might be better, Bertrand, but actually I just think they’re very silly.
Cultural capital my arse. What cultural capital did I get from my girls school no-ones ever heard of outside a shitty declining northern town? What I got was a solid education which the state couldn’t get its shit together to give me. And that’s the situation parents face today,
Cultural capital my arse.

The “buying into the catchment” thing really is only an issue for a few schools.

Christ, really? It’s pretty much every school and area around here. The price of your house determines whether you save money on education.

I’m stuck in a faith primary for DS1. Not my choice, but I did choose state system over private for primary. Not loving the amount of time they waste on religious instruction that could be spent on proper teaching, but there you are. It’s what the system gave me, because a previously popular and oversubscribed school got a bad ofsted and parents fled.

But I live in one of those places with lots of great, leafy primaries but not brilliant secondaries. Choices for my kids are: hope they get into superselective up the road (hypocritical), move house and pay extra for the catchment of a good, achieving secondary (hypocritical), go private like about a third of the kids at DS’s school (hypocritical) or let the kids take their chances at the local secondary. It does really well in drama. Not so great in maths. DS1 is six and says he wants to do maths at Cambridge. So on balance I am probably going to embrace some form of hypocrisy or another.

Private schools provide loads of stuff that state schools don't. Nobody would be daft enough to say otherwise. But the stuff they provide is almost invariably the same stuff that private school kids get at home. That's why I talk about cultural capital, rather than GCSEs. I don't think anybody would deny that private school type kids are pretty much guaranteed good exam results wherever they go. It's much more complicated than that.

So private schools are better then. Glad we’ve established that.

It's only hypocritical if you believe that doing such a thing is wrong in the first place. My DS will be going to grammar in September. I do not feel like a hypocrite sending him there as I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

as Far as I’m concerned, a school is there, however it is paid for. If it’s a great school and I could afford to send ds, then I would.
Criticising private schools and then using the doctors and scientists that they educate makes no sense.
Rather than deny your own child for the sake of an idea, put your spare time & effort into fundraising for the local state school as well.

"So private schools are better then. Glad we’ve established that."
Depends what you mean by better. Being able to provide a wide choice instrument or sport because of having mega bucks? Yep. Better. Being able to have a fully functioning theatre because of having mega bucks? Yep. Better. Being able to get clever well supported children good exam results? Nope-not better. Getting clever privileged children to look at their privilege and think about the society they live in and the impact they might have on it? Nope-not better.

Cultural capital my arse. What cultural capital did I get from my girls school no-ones ever heard of outside a shitty declining northern town?

Yes, quite. Did get some from university and subsequent friends though, many of whom went to state schools that were highly ranked in their areas.

Quite a lot of state schools have longer lists of well-known alumni (and actually well-known ones) on Wikipedia than do these unremarkable small private schools.

I think it's more advantageous to have gone to a really good state school than to an indifferent private school: you get more academic opportunities and still get the respect for having been to one (outside a few sectors like big law and the City there are a lot of places where it does sound better).

But there are areas with very few good state schools where these nothing-special independent schools look like better options to many of the parents who can afford them.
I have seen it said about certain on cities or local authority areas (always outside the South East) that significantly higher proportions of children go to private schools as compared to the national average, but can't find them now. (Search results are full of stuff about universities)

It's not hypocritical at all.

It's not sacrificing your child's wellbeing on the altar of your own principles.

I'm a lefty- would send my child to a good, private school in a heartbeat.

to maintain private education is unfair without admitting it might be better
Private education is unfair because only a small minority of children can access it. However is is also 'better' for the FEW children that can access them.

If you chose to pay for a private school because it is better for your child then you are a capitalist, NOT a socialist. Nothing wrong with that.
A real socialist would chose a state school because it is BETTER for the community as a whole.

You're not necessarily a capitalist if you send your child to private school. You could be eschewing both idealistic positions and your decision be born out of a pragmatism.

For me, it is not about outcomes. It is about how bored and uncomfortable will my child be today?

Depending where you live and the child involved, boring and uncomfortable might describe a state school or a private one.

your decision be born out of a pragmatism Do you mean believing in a socialist utopia which you pragmatically accept can never work in real life?

I am one of them, a fantasy world socialist and a real world capitalist.

Found one of them.

"With Edinburgh having a high proportion of children at fee-paying schools – about 25 per cent of secondary pupils"

www.heraldscotland.com/news/15017175.Number_of_Scottish_private_school_pupils_at_30_year_low/

Also a study saying:
"Statistics indicate that buying a house in the catchment areas of the best performing Scottish state schools can cost more than sending children to a private secondary school and living in a less expensive area"
reformscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Briefing-cost-of-schooling-January-2014.pdf

Interestingly there are a lot of Scottish articles from the last couple of years pop up about abolishing private education, taxing it more etc. Seems to be more of a current topic than in English media.

claraschu, but that means you are exercising the choice to pay (or not) for the privilege of making sure your child is not bored and uncomfortable.

Unlike the other 93% of families who have no ability to pay for that privileged choice. Sounds like capitalism (not socialism) to me.

But it is about education. If you study maths or English in a class of 20 children who behave impeccably, taught by the same excellent teacher all year, you are going to get a better education in those subjects than you will in a class of 30 children, some of whom are unruly, taught by a selection of teachers because one's gone on long term sick due to stress and another is trying to cover another class as well. You'll also have a much better chance of acquiring critical thinking skills rather than just cramming facts for an exam. If you're keen on languages, you're going to get a better chance to study them at university in a school which offers three MFL plus Latin to A level, than you are in a school that only offers Spanish and no children continue it past GCSE. And before anyone jumps on me, I'm not saying for a moment that that is a description of all state schools or all private schools - but that is the choice that parents face in some areas. So fine, criticise those who choose private for their hypocrisy - but please don't pretend that people only choose private so their children can go to school with Tarquin and Jemima, or benefit from social networking opportunities.

No, I mean dealing with things sensibly and realistically, based on practical rather than idealistic considerations.

Walkingdead yes you are right. This is the last of a series of comments I have made. I am admitting to being a hypocrite.

We have only one state school we can send our kids to. What do you do when the only available state school is making your child miserable?

I agree with Bertrand

As for prejudice against privately educated people. Yeah that’s really a thing. The legal profession for example isn’t really full of white privately educated males of mediocre ability climbing to the top of the ladder 😐

I'm in NI where there are very few private schools and I can promise you that we have more than our fair share of white state educated males of mediocre ability climbing to the top of lots of ladders. That's not a state vs private school issue. That problem is way bigger than what school you went to.

I can’t comment on NI but the thread is about private schooling and where available that is what happens. It’s people buying privilege for their kids let’s not pretend otherwise and if you do so then your right to call yourself a socialist is in doubt

Just admit you are a hypocrite. “But my dcs are so bright...” my arse. You want to give them a leg up, and are using money to do it. I don’t care if you exercise that right, but don’t try to excuse it or dress it up as caring more about your dcs’ education.

And don’t criticise people for buying in catchment areas of “good” schools. What is a “good” school? I have been working in a school with lovely new buildings and lots of excellent, committed teachers. It is viewed as a crap school, with terrible results, because of its intake. If you swapped all the kids from the local outstanding school with this one, the results would simply reverse.

By suggesting that a clever pupil should be able to access a “good” school, it is admitting that a lot of pupils are not academic and poorly behaved, and that the brighter pupil should be able to escape them. Isn’t this the grammar school system?!

Of course it's about buying a leg up. A good education is a leg up.

And it's not just about clever children. Plenty of private schools are non-selective. If you're academically average or have significant learning needs, you're still likely to learn better in a small, well-taught class.

And yes of course there are great teachers in state schools. But having had quite a bit insight into teacher recruitment in the stateand privately sectors, IME it's a totally different ballgame. Yes there are great teachers in state, but they are much harder to recruit and much harder to retain. There is a major, looming crisis in school staffing (in good schools as well as poor schools), due to budgets and stress. This is no secret.

What's the answer? I don't know. A truly comprehensive system where 'difficult' pupils are shared out equally and intake is socially equal across the board, probably. Unfortunately totally impossible to achieve without totally changing the social structure of the UK.

I don't think anyone would argue that clever kids or rich kids or church-going kids are more deserving of a good education than other students. But in the current system, those are the children who are most able to secure a good education.