We must end free education for the middle classes

[outofteabags]

Did anyone see Anthony Seldon's article in the Times on this? www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article3645129.ece
I am very interested to know what people think about it especially as I happened to hear a particularly heated debate on this at a party.

pmsl @ humphrey fanning
I mean with a name like that was there ever any doubt which sector his children would end up in

I think that it is all probably true but what can you do? Only allow children of people below a certain income to go to a grammar school

We all pay our taxes and should have equal access to decent education but it is true that where the middle classes colonise an area the schools tend to be better. So maybe rather than the MC types moving in to get good school places, the schools are good because of being in the area they are??

and of course the schools would be free to keep that money and spend it directly on improved facilities

I cannot take Seldon seriously on state education, sorry - he is the Head of one of the most privileged and socially elite public schools in England

He has absolutely no idea of what the state system is like - at both ends of the excellent/"special measures" spectrum

It isn't free. It's paid for through taxes. They should stop certain classes filling up the better schools though, this is wrong. They should get rid of catchment areas, it encourages those that have more money to buy their child a place at a good school by moving into the catchment area. If this is what they want they should go private and stop being sneeky.

lol at the name though. I bet he was bullied at school.

Yes I saw this yesterday and nearly started a thread on it! I actually thought I was already paying for my DDs education - through my taxes. Whilst I think this is inevitable in many years time I would certainly not be happy to do it now, I would simply move my DCs to a private school. I do believe if the government tried to do this now there would be marches like those that occurred when they tried to introduce poll tax. I think people have just about had enough of being taxed to death and just seeing this government waste a lot of the money.

I don't mind so long as I get the money off my tax bill.

One of the more ridiculous things I've read on the subject of education recently. How could one possibly propose a system in which tax payers are charged again to use schools their taxes have already paid for?

But bearing in mind Anthony Seldon is in charge of running a £20K plus per year boarding school, you can see why he might get twitchy about the dwindling numbers prepared to fork out that kind of money when they realise there are perfectly reasonable state alternatives.

and if that happened surely more people would just think 'oh F**k it , i'll send Jonny to Eton/Rugby etc and be done with it'
It's even less fair than the present system

Not necessarily cd
Grammars in N Kent and LB Bexley for example, serve a largely lower middle class demographic, and are all excellent
All the kids I know at LBG Bexley grammars come from the sort of perfectly good suburban London families that people like Humphrey Fanning and Anthony Seldon probably think really should still be In Service or delivering one's groceries
That's one of the reasons why I think Seldon hasn't a clue

But the private sector isn't declining at all, infact it is doing better than ever - which says something about the current system.
But when you currently have a system that allows one family to buy a house for £1,000 000 and gets the child into the great state school with the tiny catchment, why should the next family not be able to benefit from the same school when they can't afford that house?

No this government should make all schools good schools. Using a lottery to ensure that the middle classes cannot 'buy' their way into a good school is not going to work. If you take all these children and spread them evenly I predict that there will be more failing schools actually not that they will get better. I think the reason these schools do well is because the parents are spending a whole heap of time and money (private tutors) on getting them a good education. The fact is that there will always be children who's parent don't give a stuff. What they should concentrate on is how to improve the situation for these children, shipping in children who will 'do well anywhere' from a middle class background will not solve this crisis.

Back to the OP, of course it could be a good bit of marketing. Afterall if enough people ditch state education because the don;t want to pay for it and then are prepared to pay a bit more for a private school then the private schools will be quids in.

I just don't get boarding schools, why have kids to pack them off and let someone else raise them? For some kids with an unstable homelife this is probably a blessing. Heads of these school have a tainted view of things. My ds's head is from a boarding school, he has no idea how real people live. It's a bit sad really.

What an appalling idea, fraught with inequality and division, based entirely on £££££££.

The poor can go to crap schools and if you can pay you can buy your way to something a bit better?

Moron

Teabags, some sections of the private sector are doing very well. But lots aren't, particularly country boarding schools with high fees and not particularly good academic reputations. Large numbers of well-established schools in this sector have gone to the wall over the past years.

If a school has gone down because they aren't up to scratch - so be it, when people pay they will stop paying if its isn't good enough, same rules should apply in the state system, we all pay so make it a level playing field so all benefit (as I drift off into my rose tinted world of what life should be like!)

Anyway it is bollocks
I live in an area where most houses cost about a million quid

And thd state secondary provision is appalling

No I don't think paying directly out of your wallet as well as through taxes would work, because even if my dh's intake had to pay they would still be a difficult bunch of kids to teach, with the resultant problem of recruiting good teachers.

I have noticed that those parents who couldn't give a shit about their children have children who have problems at school. I don't see how making people pay would change this.

DS went to a state grammar school in a large town about 6 miles away - entry was by exam they didn't have a 'catchment area' as such (this was almost 10 years ago now, so it might have changed) The result was that it was much less middle class than some of the grammars which do operate a catchment area. Te downside was that a lot of the boys had to travel a long way - DS went by coach for the first 2 years, which took over an hour - when the bus pass went up to more than £900 he switched to the train which with a 20 minute walk each end took about the same time but was a lot cheaper.
If you do away with catchment areas, there will be a lot more children making longer journeys every day.

I think it is a big problem that some schools have a disportionately high number of poor children. My son's school has a lot of children with SEN and it is a big strain on them. Yet his class has 30 children in and the LSAs are too busy helping children with substantial problems to help the non SEN children. Classes in deprived areas should be made smaller than rich areas.

His cousins go to a state school in a posh part of surrey. They have far fewer children with SEN and the same staffing levels. They get outings to the threatre and a trip to a children's farm for outings. Their school have french lessons from year 1 and also swimming lessons from year 1.

My son had one outing: a picnic in Luton! They don't offer any foreign languages or swimming lessons before keystage 2.

Rather than forcing middle class parents to send their kids to rough schools, I would like the rough schools to be given more money to iron out the inequalities between the rich and poor. There are kids at my son's school who have never been to the theatre or a children's farm. There are also quite a few kids who have never been taken to a swimming pool, yet alone being taught to swim.

What about a voucher system, which you can take to any state school? I think Sweden has such a system and it works well.

The conservatives proposed this a few years ago. I think this would cause the same problems that we have now, those that are more able will take up all the places in the good schools. It would work if the voucher system had a sliding scale of funding, a poor family would have a voucher worth more than a richer family. It would be in the schools best interest to have a socially mixed intake.

Reallytired, yours is the answer in a nutshell: limiting class sizes. It's essentially what ppl are paying private schools for, which would get Humphrey Fanning quivering in his shoes.

the holidays and socialising with barristers will just have to wait, we've got school fees to pay you know