Private school fees up 43%

[UnquietDad]

story here

Deliberate, do you think?...

So if only "18 professions" can now afford them, and they don't include teachers, architects or police officers, what are they? Any offers?

It's a popular misconception tesla (and UQD loves it) that because social mobility and numbers of kids from working class backgrounds getting into Oxbridge has remained static since getting rid of the 11+ nationally that somehow grammar schools educated loads of working class kids and gave them a key out of their council house existences. This is largely rubbish. Of course there were exceptions but grammar schools educated less than 30% of kids and those kids were mostly middle-class. I'll find you an itneresting link.

I don't know why people make a link between the 2 - lack of social mobility and getting rid of grammar schools - as if there's nothing else been going on that might be influential!

education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2209710,00.html

This is interesting. In fact, makes me think that you're wrong to think UQD is stuck in the 80s QC it's actually the 50s because of his glorious grammar school days.

Here are some extracts from the article although I realize this is something of a digression:

'There may have been many wonderful schools and great teachers 50 years ago, but large numbers of working-class children went to secondary moderns, the higher social classes were clearly over-represented in grammar schools, and low expectations of children from poorer backgrounds were prevalent in all schools, whether selective or not.
'

'Many young people left school with low levels of literacy and numeracy, which partly explains why so many adults are struggling with maths and English today even though they were educated in the "golden age". In 1959, around 9% of 16-year-olds got five or more O-levels, and more than a third of grammar-school pupils failed even to get three. All this in an age when society was arguably more stable and schools didn't have to take responsibility for coping with family breakdown, mental-health issues and the influx of non English-speaking pupils.'

Of course the more the private sector is the only provider of all the excellent facilities Hulababy describes above, the less that kind of thing will actually be expected, still less demanded, in the state sector.

In a way we are our own worst enemy in the state sector - we demonise our own schools and are relieved to get our children into one with a reasonable pass rate and where they aren't checked for knives on the door. We should be demanding so much more. But because of what we are fighting against - and because people say "well, if you don't like it there is always the independent sector" - we accept, if not low standards, then distinctly average ones.

MrsGG, here is nothing wrong or childish using the word "should". (It's often used on here, in every context from housework to being able to walk down a dark alley safely.)

Fivecandles, my father is a doctor because of grammar schools. He grew up on a shitty council estate with parents who didn't give a damn about him and used him as free childcare/housekeeper/cook whilst they were off drinking.

My mother had great parents but they could never have given her the education she and her siblings got at grammar school. My grandmother took on extra cleaning jobs just to afford the uniforms.

I've said it before but I'll say it again. It's stupid to criticise individuals for taking advantage of the choices they are given by the Govt. Parents who choose private schools cannot be blamed for this when the schools are there, I don't even blame parents for going to faith schools when the Govt bangs on about choice and promotes league tables.

combustible, I know, I know there are lots of examples of working class kids who benefited from grammar schools. But they WERE in the minority and this doesn't alter the fact that there were huge amounts of kids who were disadvantaged by the system. There are more adults who will tell you about how they were written off as failures at the age of 11 than there are success stories.

Now under the comprehensive system (such as it is) at least there is no child who is not given the opportunity to study the same curriculum and sit the same exams as his friends and neighbours. Every child has the opportunity to succeed academically even if it will be harder for some than others. That could not be said under the grammar school system and that is why it is unforgiveable.

"...the same curriculum and sit the same exams..."

And unfortunately for some, that is where the problem lies. The one size fits all curriculum - too much crammed in, nothing in any depth, no room for teacher imagination. And no allowace for the children who don;t find the middle average.

Yes but the O levels they got back in the Olden Times then were actually worth much more. Has anyone tried to do the past papers which were published in the Times (I think) a week or so ago? They were HARD. If you had five O levels you were clever. If you have five GCSEs you aren't necessarily.

The article quoted about the class breakdown of state grammar pupils in the 50s and 60s also doesn't allow for family pressures. Poorer families sometimes couldn't afford for children to be in school until 16+ and not earning. Social attitudes meant that a lot of parents didn't see any point in getting that level of education for girls. The cost of the uniforms was also an issue. I know that at least two of my mother's (female) first cousins passed the 11+ but their parents wouldn't let them go. One because of the cost of the uniforms, the other because why should she be filling her head with that when she was needed at home to look after the younger ones.

I actually don't agree with you there Hulababy. GCSEs run from A* - G. There are few students who can't get on the scale at all and the point about full marks is that it can't discriminate between a really, gifted student who has worked incredibly hard and Shakespeare. For those kids who find GCSE too easy there is now the flexibility to begin A Level courses early or do some independent study or G & T courses and for those who have no hope of passing GCSE there are basic literacy and numeracy courses.

Quite combustible. There's an awful lot or harking back to the golden age and bemoaning the general state of things on Mumsnet as in life and very little celebration of the achievements that have been made and are now possible for our students to make.

Yes, but all children know that the real grades that count at GCSE are C and above. Well, they certainly did in the schools I taught at, regardless of what teachers/parents might say to them to the contary.

Schools are still very much focused on academic success. There is very little available for the vocationally minded children, except in a handful of schools. Children should, IMO be given the chance to move away from the academic GCSE approach at 14 if they are not that way included. Move towards vocational subjects, and address literacy/numeracy via them.

GCSEs are still primarily exam based and are therefore academic. Childre are very aware of what grades count. therefore they still set children up to "fail."

UQD, I had no doubt that you were a spotty thatcher hating teenager in 1985. The issue was whether or not you had moved on.

"Those of you who really don't think the fees are somehow "reassuringly expensive", ask yourselves this - would you be happy for the fees to be £5 per term? Or £50? We are into George Bernard Shaw and "haggling over the price" territory."

I would personally be happy for the fees to be entirely free. As in no fees. On condition that:

(1) It is academically selective
(2) It is racially mixed
(3) It offers wraparound care
(4) It offers a good musical education which offers a variety of orchestras and a curriculum that sees children through their grades.
(5) It is whizzy at sport and offers a wide variety of sports to reasonable levels
(6) It stretches children above and beyond what is required.
(7) It guarantees 100% A-C at GCSE and 90%+ A grade at GCSE.

Tell you what UQD. You find me a state school like that, and I'll send my DCs there. But if I have to move house to get into the catchment area, you have to pay the additional mortgage. And if I have to pretend to be jewish/catholic/muslim/CofE to get in, you have to go to all the churches. Or synagogues. Or whatever. Sounds fair doesn't it.

And doing A levels early bring along a whole other load of issues - primarily that not al universities will accept them, as they like to see the grades from A levels all sat at the same time. My sister had this problem. Doing an A level early just led to her having to do extra work the year or two later, to gain additional subjects all at the same time.

As for the old system, the problem was secondary moderns. Children sent there didn't really get much of a chance at getting an education.

My problem with the state system now is that it's the children like my dad who need the help the most who get the least. His parents would never have opted for any school other than the closest- that's a high school that now gets less than 20% of children gaining 5 A-C grades at gcse.

The grammar system isn't obselete. In Kent, the largest LEA in the country, there are single sex grammar schools in all the main towns, some of the the most "successful" in the country are centered on properous West Kent. Parents who can afford it start 11 plus cramming when their kids are in Y4 and the intake to the grammar schools is not serving the needs of the working class population of the county.

When you look at the value-added data for the grammar schools it's usually lower than the church comprehensives and secondary moderns, although the GCSE A - C pass rate is always going to be higher because the most able students get in to them. If the most able students get in to the grammar schools why don't they have 100% A - C?

Absolutely agree combustible. There are always going to be higher peforming schools in wealthier areas but the growth of faith school, private schools, continuation of grammar schools in some areas, league tables, SATS have exacerbated this problem. While my area is deprived if there were no such things as faith schools and so my nearest school was more mixed in terms of ethnicity and social class I probably would have sent my kids there.

Hula I don't agree with you I'm afraid. Have you seen the info about the new GCSE specs? They're introducing functional skills which you have to pass before doing Eng GCSE (don't know if it's the same for maths). This seems sensible if tedious to teach.

UQD the thing about haggling over price is much more applicable to you than anyone here. Those of us who have chosen private education have laid our cards on the table, those who object to private schooling on principle have theirs too. Of course, I'd still send my kids to their private school if they reduced the fees to £5 if they could still provide everything they can. Once again, I've never met the parent who has chosen a private school for any kind of snobbish or status reason.

IT is you that's 'haggling over the price'. It sounds like all your objections to private schools and the parents who choose them would vanish if the price was right.

UQD - "OK, swedes was trying to persuade me they were falling. I thought it was unlikely." This was my post:

By Swedes on Tue 15-Jul-08 16:41:47
UQD - But the uptake of indepenent education is rising.

My DS's prep school parents include...

Junk-shop owners
Market-stall traders
School teachers
Lots of self-employed people
Corner-shop owners
Restaurant-owners
Retired academics who have property to let(i.e. us)

along with lots and lots and lots of lawyers, consultants, property developers and GPs.

Most of the above (though not, on the whole, the lawyer/doctor/property developer cohort) are scrimpers and savers who prefer to spend their money on education than on houses in expensive catchment areas/holidays/clothes/cars!

Quattrocento, how odd. What you describe sounds very much like the school I went to as a spotty teenager in 1985. It was a state grammar school. In Kent, in fact, mentioned above.

We are so used to expecting the worst in the state system that we are relieved when we get the averagely-good. It's depressing that we settle for it, but we do.

My point about the price has been missed. I am all in favour of a proper, non-religious alternative to the state system for those people whose children genuinely need it and/or would benefit from it. At the moment, an alternative to the state system is available for those people who are willing to pay. The idea that these are even remotely the same thing is laughable, and yet some people still confuse them in their minds.

It's not going to happen unless some billionaire philanthropist sets it up. (And they'd be bound to have an agenda...) I'd like to think some in the existing private sector could be equally philanthropic.

My deliberately-extreme example of the price being £5 was not a genuine suggestion. If that were the case, private education would collapse - just as many people would stop shopping at Harrods or Peter Jones if they reduced their prices to BHS level, because they would no longer be Harrods or Peter Jones, but simply a clone of BHS.

Oh, it wasn't Swedes then. Somebody did. Anyway, whether it is rising or falling makes little difference to my argument.

How arrogant.

It;s not arrogant, it's just trying to stick to the bloody point!! There have been so many attempt to derail and wilfully misinterpret what I've been saying on here that I've been losing track myself.