Private schools charity status: Is 'nicking' poor but bright DCs from the state sector the answer??

[miljee]

as in via scholarships? Personally I don't think they should be allowed to get around the Charity Commission in this way. They're supposed to be 'of benefit to their community'- surely pulling in the clever DCs from the local state schools merely 'degrades' the state school but improves the exam results for the private school? Would we be happy with that as a solution??

UQD - I think it's excusable if used in defence but inexcusable in attack.

brassica - I often think that is exactly what people are getting at, yes.

UQD, I didn't make the point myself but I'll hazard that it was about some/all of the following

(i) Wouldn't it be nice if we could have a voucher system here in the UK to eliminate the effects of paying twice then we would only pay top ups

(ii) Please don't bang the drum about abolishing charitable status because we have to pay twice anyway

(iii) Please don't bang the abolitionist drum because we are paying into the public sector anyway

(iv) Please don't bang the drum about asking us to pay even more in the way of taxation because we are already paying through the nose for stuff we mostly don't use.

I've often thought it would be fairer to give childless people a rebate for not having used the education system, but then again they may have benefitted from it themselves of course.

And to take your jokey point seriously for a minute, might it not be fairer to give people rebates for not using the NHS?

Quattro - to take your serious response to my jokey point seriously, maybe... But then of course we get int the vexed question of who, and when, we give rebates for not using services which they have paid into via tax.

Could someone demand one for being in good health and not using the NHS at all over a period of years?

Should someone be entitled to a rebate if they could prove they don't use roads?

Or that they recycle all their rubbish and hence don't need to have their bin emptied?

xenia, i am so sick of the local paper coverage of haberdashers

so you can afford to get your children on the the accepted list (the city)

well done

I was referring to a report that I saw where the thing that made the most difference to a school was the number of pupils from a middle-class background. I think that having the pupils who would otherwise have gone private would bring up lots of positives for state schools. I'm sure Xenia's lovely children would be a benefit to state schools.

Quattro, you don't 'have to pay twice' you choose to pay twice, and that's the crux of the matter.

It's your choice (as you keep telling us), and as such you can't then go for the sympathy vote too. People are allowed to discuss abolishing private schools, abolishing 'charitable' status, and all the things that would be maybe fairer but inconvenient for you.

I'm not going for the sympathy vote - you'll see if you scroll down that I didn't make the original point

But I would say that there is a difference between fairness and the understandable desire to give people equality of educational opportunities, and the politics of envy.

What's fair about our educational system? IMO absolutely nothing is fair about it. You can go to a good state school if you can afford a very nice house in a nice suburb. What's fair about that? Or you can find religion. What's fair about that? The whole religious thing is absurd - segregating people on the grounds of religious belief cannot but be bad for society. You can have a badly regulated and managed school. What's fair about that?

But wittering on about the unfairnesses of the independent sector - and of course these exist by definition - isn't about improving the education system, or not really IMO. Only 6%-7% of children go through the independent sector. So it's not a dire social problem that needs fixing immediately.

I'm not sure what point you and others are making when you talk about paying twice then.

I'm just saying that paying twice is a choice, and doesn't mean that you can stifle discussion - 'don't bang the drum' about whether private schools really benefit people in general in the accepted sense of a 'charity'

I personally think that the people who benefit most from 'allowing' members of the wider community to use their facilities etc are the private school children themselves, who then get to mix with children from other backgrounds. As I said, I don't envy people who send their children to such closed communities at all. (Not you, Sniffy )

Complaining about paying 'twice' is like complaining about being healthy and still having your taxes spent on the NHS, or complaining about being childless and still having to pay taxes for schools.

There's no capitation for taxes -- you pay what the govt decrees so that they can spend it on a public services that benefit everyone (ok the system is imperfect and variable, but that's a separate issue). For some people their life circumstances or their life choices may lead to them not receiving any benefit from a particular publicly-funded service, but that's just how the system works.

I think most people who opt for an independent education for their children are pleased. You just need to read the thread to see they are not the ones doing the complaining.

I'm still waiting for an explanation as to how the abolition of Independent schools will improve state schools?

"I personally think that the people who benefit most from 'allowing' members of the wider community to use their facilities etc are the private school children themselves, who then get to mix with children from other backgrounds."

I don't know what you are talking about. The access to school facilities is almost entirely out-of-hours so there is no mixing with children from other backgrounds. Frequently they aren't children in any event - you know - like letting a local badminton club use the badminton courts, or local swimming schools use the pool etc.

In answer to the OP, I think that if you accept that independent schools get better results (which objectively they do) then you are allowing individuals who would most benefit from educational opportunities to use them. That's got to be good hasn't it? Or would you prefer them too to be sacrificed on the altar of equality.

I've re-read some of the comments and I can see a lot of complaining from fee-paying parents

Some people are unhappy that their private school has to open its facilities to the community when the state schools don't (not sure if they even are aware of the tax breaks that the private school gets in return.)
Others are unhappy that the effect of extending the bursaries will put up fees and make private schooling 'even more elitist'... LOL at that one - you don't mind it being elitist, it's just making it that bit more so that bothers you...

Some people, CC for one, have said that they are happy to pay twice. I can only assume that the other people who mention it a lot are not happy about it - hence the talk of vouchers, or, on another thread, getting a child in from overseas to take their child's unused place at a state school.

Refer you to previous post re middle-class parents and children going to state schools.

Q, facilities meant schooling too, ie, letting in people who couldn't otherwise afford it.

Yes I agree with you Greger, it is to an extent. I have to reiterate that I didn't make the original complaint about paying twice. But there are some areas of public service where if taxation is linked to usage, then that would encourage more responsible behaviour. Take refuse collection as an example - if you were to provide a basic service and an additional (paid for) service, then that links consumption to usage, doesn't it? With education, I don't think there is a direct link to be made but I do see that a voucher system has potential for massively improving the performance of schools.

redadmiral - I'm certainly not complaining about paying twice. Clearly though, I would rather pay just the once and feel confident in the state system. I'm as sorry about that as anyone else.

You are also assuming that the poor but bright child will be 'sacrificed' if they attend a state school. How do you know this? Bright children at average or poor state schools have been shown to do very well - the school values and supports them, and they go to university (including Oxford and Cambridge)in at least the same proportion as their fee-paying contemporaries. (Just one study, but it shows that you are making assumptions based on your own way of seeing things.)

Should add that that we are talking middle-class children here, but I'm assuming that that is a direct correlation with your child on a bursary. I could be wrong, and the schools take a fair proportion of children from the local council estate on their assisted places, in which case it's not comparable, to be fair...

Well if you are confident that a bright child would do equally well at a state school, then what is your problem? Either state school children are being massively deprived of educational opportunity by not being educated alongside my own monsters children, or they are not?

If children in the state sector are being educated just as well as they would be in the independent sector, then there is no inequality at all surely?

By the way the proportion of independently educated children at the oldest universities is around the 50% mark

The proportion of children in independent schools is around 6% to 7%

Independent education is not just a benefit in terms of accessing more brighter children and thereby accessing better universities, it is a financial benefit for life.

Xenia will be along with her statistics on how much richer independent schooling makes a child.

Myself I'm not bothered about that - I just want them to get an education! Without disruption from children who've switched off from schooling.

Embracing my inner Jeremy Paxman, I ask again:

How would the abolition of Independent schools improve state schools?

My point has always been that it's better not to segregate children, in terms of race, class, culture, etc. I don't think it's good for the children themselves or for society as a whole.

There may be factors that outweigh that for individual parents or children, but to my mind it's not something to be totally overlooked.

Again, and using an example this time... there are parents at my DDs' school who are well-educated, lots of interest in the arts and culture, and happen to be financially very well off. They could easily be sending their children to the private school across the road from our state one. They and their children bring a huge benefit to the school both in terms of their energies and interests, and just a general diversity within the school.

If the school across the road no longer existed for whatever reason and the parents didn't all leave the country , they would almost certainly be a benefit to ours or other state schools in the same way. Although you think that your decision to send your children private is one taken in a vacuum, it is not as irrelevant to others as you might think...

lol at embracing the inner jeremy

Is one of the arguments akin to the trickle-down effect? That my children being so wonderfully clever and good they can instantly reverse a failing school.

The other argument that people make is that More Middle Class Parents in state schools must be a Good Thing, an argument which is as nauseous as it is fallacious.

Maybe you don't see yourself as middle-class Q.

What is your childrens' school full of then? Is it only ok to have a predominance of middle-class parents in private schools, but state schools should really mainly be populated by working class children?