Do you feel you are *entitled* to the "best" school for your children?

[UnquietDad]

If so, why?

and just a few other questions/points.

Define "best"

and

Does this apply also to people up the road?

and

Does this apply also to people in different social classes?

i.e if you're entitled to the "best" school why isn't everyone else?

Is there a middle-class sense of "entitlement" to the "best schools" in this country?
Is the problem that we have such a variation in standards of schools across a supposedly comprehensive system?
Is it people playing the system, moving out of catchment, "getting faith" etc, and making themselves part of the problem and not part of the solution?
Or is the issue simply one of being too obsessed by the schools that do well in the league tables and/or have a nice uniform?

(It's a quiet Saturday... Walks away whistling, hands in pockets... Gas Mark 6, set to simmer. I'll be back...)

So its a good thing that people avoid becoming engineers because they want jobs where they will be able to afford to pay £20K + per year on school fees?

So why hasn't the wonderful socialist government that has been in for the last 11 years, and has the power to do so, reversed this policy? I get really irritated when everything gets blamed on policies dating from the late 80's/early 90s. Things haven't got better despite what NuLab promised, and that the funding cap hasn't changed is down to them.

As for the engineer thing, you need to pick who you work for. DH is an engineer who has moved around as per his employer's career structure, acquired other skills and been promoted, therefore increasing his salary and our ability to pay for school fees.

Cornwall is not a well paid area, I know.

Distribution of the pot of money? I'd quite like private school parents to get their £5k a year voucher rather than that money going on other children for a start. In some parts of the US parents are given the voucher to spend as they choose where they like and that seems a fair way of doing things.

Also there is often not choice in the private sector either. In good private schools you can get 5 applicants per place and most children can't get in however rich their parents are.

school vouchers

you mean we would get some of those extortionate tax payments back for not using the state system? to spend on private schools?

Xenia, please stand for PM. the country needs you ...

My ex-colleague - the engineer who scrimped to get his children through private school - now has a son who's a bar manager.

Think he's wondering if it was worth it.

Actually, another friend who sent their son private rather than the not so great local schools now has a son who has no idea what he wants to do with his life.

I'd be interested to have this conversation again when all our kids are through their schooling and we can make the definitive assessment of what worked well....

completely agree that this so called socialist government should have changed things. just pointing out where the in-equality stemmed from. the current goverment should pull their finger out and change it, of course they should. it's ridiculously unfair.

god it'd be great if they introduced vouchers. then i could afford to home ed them. fat chance of that happening tho. it would make parents acutely aware of the fact htat they are paying for their child's education (through taxes) and that they should, in a lot of cases be demanding better value for money. the government wouldn't like that, would give us parents too much power...

Xenia,
Very few applicants apply for one place in private schools. Many children will apply for several private school. They will not have the same school as their first choice. Things like location, having siblings at a particular school affect choices as well as exam results.

It is certainly competitive, but not always as bad as you think.

I like your suggestion of all parents getting a 5K voucher. They have done that in Sweden with a lot of sucess. However I think schools should be forbidden from charging top ups, just has been done in Sweden.

That's true but the very clever children will get 5 offers and the thick as a plank ones who shouldn't even have bothered to try for XYZ school will get none.

There will be children who don't pick careers early on and appear "failures" (although I Never saw it as buying exam results or a particular career path) but you do often find even the drop outs in a year or two end up founding the Lonely Planet company or Virgin or are another James Blunt etc.

It's extremely competitive for places at academically competitive day schools in and around London. My sons' school don't even have a sibling policy. They take the top 70 students based on the combined results in competitive entrance exam in English, Maths, verbal reasoning, science and non verbal reasoning at 11 and all those things plus French and Latin at 13.

Save us from another James Blunt

I only applied for one school for my sons. A mediocre education isn't exclusively available courtesy of the state; there are plenty of really useless independent schools.

I can help. It is better to take a private school place than a state school place if you can afford it (as long as the private school is a good one of course).

The difference, being of course Swedes, that one can shop around.

Amiccisima - Surely it depends on the individual schools in question. Go and have a look around both and decide which would be best for your child; bearing in mind the fees. The independent option isn't always the best.

You should be pleased you have a true choice.

We knew when we started down the private education route that it would cost and that we would not get the tax back that we paid for education. I don't mind that. What I do object to is the underfunding of state schools that goes on year on year, and that the only way this load of incompetents who govern us can see to address the inequality in the education system is by hitting the private schools via the charity commission. I note today that Winchester are requiring parents to 'donate' £1400 per year extra to fund assisted places/bursaries.

This government bleats about equality and social engineering. We have qualifications that are devalued and some students being encouraged to go on to uni and get into shedloads of debt who should have gone into vocational training at 16. They have has 11 years to sort out the supposed mess made by the Tories. I know who I'd rather have, and it isn't this lot!

Sorry, should read 'have had.

Actually I have no problem with private schools being made to justify their charitable status. Why shouldn't they have to pay tax when their really is so little charity involved and that only going in the form of bursaries to a gifted couple of students each year post 11.

I think Amiccisima was asking whether it was selfish of her to take a place at a 'good' state school thus forcing another child to go to the sink school when she could afford private education - not what was best for her child.

The answer is of course not.

Given that TB's sons went to London Oratory, a selective state school not local to either Westminster or Islington, I don't think it was in his interests to tamper too much with the system.

Wonder where Gordon Gloom's children will go to school?

fivecandles- I am a secondary school teacher, and taught almost exclusively in the state sector. I taught in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire, in leafy suburbs where things that happened in the schools would make your hair stand on end. So please do not assume I have no knowledge of state schools. I think that my knowledge is rather better founded than some.

And is also why I removed my children pretty sharpish from the state ed system.

MadamePlat- I went to a state school in foreign. I was extremely well taught there by people who actually had degrees and phds in the subjects they taught. The difference is that the bar was set at the 60% to 70% mark in terms of ambition, rather than the 40-50% it is so as not to scare the chronically idle -and believe me, the number of truly hard working pupils in the schools I taught in around the home counties was truly small. Some of the hard-working ones were very clever, some were not so clever. These were invariably a delight to teach.

The remaining 70% of work-shy, belligerent and aggressive teens were not such a a delight.

I think one of the problems faced by state schools in leafy suburbs is that most of the locals go to private schools. We have never really had a proper comprehensive education system in this country. Duchesse, were private schools popular in the country where you were educated?