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.

If you have socialist views then you should be committed to going down the state route. End of.

I'm a leftie and use a private school, although most of our fees are paid by the gov/ tax payer.
It went against my principles, but hey -ho it's great to have principles until they end up affecting your child's wishes for their future.
Social mobility can exist in some private schools, unfortunately there isn't enough and all schools should suit the children's needs they teach.

I'm with you - I have socialist beliefs - work in the public sector, am a child of refugee who were very socialist. But son has gone to a private school. The reason being I genuinely don't believe the local school was right for him and he needs a different environment and more support. If I could afford a private secondary school I would send him there.

I'm a mother first and my beliefs come second.

don't aks me Bertrand, I am sure I could never be as clever or as educated as you obviously are.
I just meant that some people are against state control and would therefore prefer to pay for their children' education.

So yes if you have a scholarship- send your child to the private school. But give him a home education about equality & socialism and hope he grows up knowing how privileged he is.

Does it matter if you’re a lefty? Isn’t it more important to get the best for your child? I don’t agree that you can’t be a socialist or care about equality of opportunity if you live in a nice house, have nice things, etc. Are you really going to send your child to a failing school because of some dogmatic idea that you have to be poor to be a socialist. The sort of people who say those things have never lived in real poverty.

As someone from a poor background, many people would send their kids to a better school (state or private) if they could. Just because you want the best for everyone do doesn’t mean you have to consign your child to a crap school.

The point if being a left is being as arrogant and hypicrotical as possible-do not wanting other people to be able to choose how to educate their children because you know best but then taking advantage of your choice when the need arises. So yes is the answer to your first question.

In answer to your sexi D question, yes in general because people in he weak in this country don't like privately educated people, chips on their shoulders.

It's lovely that your son has the opportunity to get a good education despite prole like you thinking that he shouldn't. You should put your arrogance and your prejudice aside and do what is best for your son. If that jeans staying in private then so be it.

Your third question, while it illustrates the kind of prejudice the privately educated experience, is to stupid to dignify with an answer.

Racecardriver-can you seriously look around British society and say, straight faced, that the privately educated are at a disadvantage?

I'm a leftie and I sent my kid to, not a private school, but a school outside the area associated a middle class intake.
There used to be a school on our estate, which was closed down in cuts. Then the council in its wisdom, put us in the catchment of the nearest other estate school, despite the presence of a well regarded middle class primary school geographically closer.
My initial plan to "just send him to the catchment school" died a death when I saw every other parent put in placing requests. It would have been an empty gesture. So in the end I thought "fuck it-I may as well pick the one I like the best."
He doesn't have that experience of attachment to an area: playing out with the kids he knows from school. But then, the other kids dont have that either.
I try to make up for it by insisting he goes to the local youth club.
Im very far from being able to afford private school but I imagine it's the same sort of thought process.

I don't disagree with doing the best for your child but I do find it comical the number of my 'leftie' friends who have since sent their kids to private school (fee paying) when there are perfectly good state schools in the local area & then complain about the Conservative government.

The hypocrisy bugs me, nothing else.

I think there are a lot of crap independent schools around.They are not subject to the rigours of Ofsted but have their own cosy inspection process.
In terms of higher education, there is a huge drive from Oxbridge, red brick universities and medical schools to recruit students from state schools. I think if you have a bright youngster, it is easier for them to stand out and gain places at elite universities. I think the same positive discrimination is happening in top companies, BBC and Civil Service etc.
As a teacher (state), I can tell you thousands of stories of primary school classmates who are separated at secondary by being sent to state or private and yet end up going to the same universities.
Like Bertrand, my hackles rise when people imagine their sons and daughters are made for life by shelling out loads for private schools. If you knew the pressure on state schools for students to achieve good results, you might reconsider your decision to pay out for education.
In my experience, the quality of teaching at state schools is not rejected but the thought of offspring missing with ordinary kids is enough to make some people turn their back on state education.

'mixing' not missing

I would compromise my political principles to benefit my kids, definitely. Luckily the state schools are good round here.

Going to a poorer performing small private school gives some of the disadvantages of both sides.

All my my uni friends who went to state schools had access to a wider choice of subjects and had more clubs than I had (or actually any clubs other than sports teams), and seemed to know more people from school who were on their wavelength, and didn't have the opportunity to become so arrogant by being top of nearly everything all the time with no effort and not being given much stretching work. Some local comprehensives were higher in the league tables than my school at the time I was there.
And also due to the social mix (quite a lot of seemingly random non-academic kids from rough areas on assisted places), I never really felt like I went to private school. But I did and where it comes up, can be perceived as posher because of it.

There were stretches of 5+ years when no-one got into Oxbridge and several years when no-one even applied. People who moved from the school to state sixth forms and colleges got in to Oxbridge proportionally more often. People who stayed wouldn't have had the contextualisation applied to them that they did by moving to the FE college - they had the worst of both worlds, presumed privilege from being at a private school meaning they couldn't be used to boost the state school acceptance stats, but the lack of preparation and insight of pupils at a middling state school.

(I didn't move for 6th form because of health problems, and the school was very near home and already knew me. The long commute to the best FE college in the area would have been too much. I wouldn't have chosen to go to another private school for 6th form - politically, and because I wanted to be less sheltered. I'm not sure we could have afforded another private 6th form either, as where I was I had a big scholarship that meant fees were only in the hundreds per term; they really wanted to keep kids who could help lift their results.)

The main advantage the school did give, as I realised after getting to know more people who went to really bad schools and had to struggle with disruption and/or bullying daily, was very tight crowd control.

Diane Abbot gets a pass from me because of the extremity of the situation.
There was a big problem with crack cocaine in Stoke Newington at the time, with the trade controlled by curropt police, via youth gangs.
Add to that, the fact that a lot of police would leap at the chance to nick the son of a prominent female black politition....
It would have been a hell of a situation to put the lad in.
It's not a set of circumstances the average middle class lefty is facing!

A good book on this subject is "How Not To Be A Hypocrite: School Choice For The Morally Perplexed" by Adam Swift.

I take it the OP is a school governor and has done everything she can to help the school improve? Or is that someone else’s problem? ‘Cos if she’s so concerned about left wing principles she could actually do something to help everyone’s children, rather than just buy her way out of trouble.

And I dislike the “he’s bright, he deserves to do well” comment. Implies the thickos can get stuffed.

Your local state school will have one less person in their overstretched school

They also have one less set of parents with the resources to support them.

This argument is applied to private health care as well. The issue is that when the educated and the affluent buy their way out of state provision in these areas the state provision becomes neglected.

As a society its in all our interests to have a healthy, educated population. You don't get that where state provision is a badly funded last resort for the poorest.

I am a leftie sending kid to private school.
OP & other posters make a lot of assumptions about why folk send their kids private which don't apply to us.
Seems like OP is type of leftie with "chip on shoulder about posh people" (hence jibes about nasty MPs).
Hard for me to contribute to thread since i'm not OP's type of leftie.

I'm getting huge surprise looks about DD going private. Feeling very judged. I think the looks are made up of

80% "I didn't think YOU had money to do that!"
10% "I didn't think YOU were a snob!"
10% "So unfair that you have money to do that!"

I could be wrong.. could be 80-95% resentment. I am learning not to tell ppl about it.

As for whether this will effect his personality:
If your a lefty you'll know that material conditions determine consciousness.
You can't put them in an elite institution and expect it not to effect their outlook.
I saw something recently about a private school in the US and was actually quite annoyed with the parents who thought they could mitigate this by just telling the kids how grateful they should be. It was like they wanted the kids to carry an emotional burden for a choice they themselves had made.

If you can afford private then surely you are less reliant on state resources. Your local state school will have one less person in their overstretched school.

Yes, surely this is a different argument now from what it was, say, in the Blair/Brown years when schools were better funded?

The distinction is also increasingly artificial because there are (at least) two tiers of state schools:

• the underfunded ones that can/do struggle
• the ones in prosperous areas with many kids whose parents bought places by moving into catchment, and where parents can afford to give large donations to the school and PTA for facilities, and in the case of selectives, additionally by tutoring. Tutoring by well-off families who could afford private school fees but want to save a bit of money now crowds out most bright children from households who can't afford that, especially in competitive exams where tiny differences in marks determine who gets in and who doesn't. I understand that primary state schools stopped being allowed to tutor for the 11+ in areas where grammars still exist, and that's what led to the rise of the tutoring arms race, which has become more and more competitive, mirroring an increasingly unequal society.

Ourday, the problem with that is that it creams the brightest children off & thereby lowering the standard of the state schools. If all children went to state schools, then the standard in schools would generally be higher.

Love it. My wanker BIL is a proper leftie teacher, banging on about privilege and how the country is going to the dogs. Then he wants to move countries and figures out cheapest way to do it would be to get a job in a private school and so he wins on two fronts as he'll be able to get a discount sending his son there too.