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?

Anyway, I had best go and pack because in two days I'll be sailing on the Med.

Swedes: favourite education: Independent.

fivecandles - well, my DW teaches in the state sector and hasn't necessarily seen the kind of generalisations you come out with here. But perhaps her school is very different.

I get very dubious when people start SHOUTING about FACTS and, indeed, putting RANDOM words into CAPITALS because it makes them look BIG and CLEVER. Although it is quite AMUSING to watch.

Maybe the kids who are in the bottom sets are suffering because they are being made to do a selection of academic subjects which they haven't a hope in hell of passing? (Sorry, PASSING.)

No, your dw's school is bound to be different. No doubt the kids in the bottom set at her school (if such a thing exists) daily give thanks for being in said bottom set and work hard (but not so hard that there could be any suggestion that they're getting ideas above their station) and look forward to the day when they, too, can become the successful hairdressers and plumbers full of gratitude and satisfaciton at their lot in life just like all those secondary modern success stories that you know of and the rest of strangely don't .

Ooh, we are into the realms of sarcasm and hmm-ing. I love it. I doubt that I'm the only person to know of success stories who have been to secondary modern, but that's not really the point, is it, seeing as I'm not arguing for their return.

There are 2 things going on here. One is about what is fair and equal and most likely to lead to social mobility for everyone and the second is about what we want and will do for our own kids (which will probably give them advantages over others). Although we might like to think that these two things are one and the same they are often in conflict.

So when I say I want my kids to be challenged and not disrupted by others I am saying that I do not want my kids to be educated in the same classroom as kids who are likely to be disruptive and mean that my kids can't work at the pace of which they're capable (unless I have guarantees that the disruptive kids are going to be prevented from disrupting and the kids that need support are given it which I might have if class sizes were reduced and there was more specialist teaching, training in SN and behehaviour management and in and out of class support) . So as a middle-class parent who is fully aware of the strenghts and weaknesses of my local schools (dp and I have taught in lots of them) and able to read league tables and able to work the system one way or another I have choices

I can:

move house to be in the catchment of a school were disruption etc is limited

adopt a faith

go private

send my kids to the local comp anyway and support their education myself

etc.

But I recognize that those choices are not available to everyone. Even by having these choices my kids have an advantage which not all kids have. And taking any one of those choices adds to my kids' advantages.

If every middle-class parent makes one of those choices then that leaves sink schools (where the kids are doubly disadvantaged becuase they're all lumped together with limited aspiration and self-esteem and teachers don't want to work there etc)

So there you go. Most people want a good education for their kids and what constitutes good is likely to depend on your own educational background and aspirations and hopes that your kids will match or surpass your own success (academic and otherwise) and happiness or surpass it.

So do I think grammar schools are right? No, no, no. They add to the advantages of middle class kids and compound the disadvantages of the poor kids and they use everyone's taxes to do this.

Would I send my kids to one if there was one in my area?
Probably.

Does that make me a hypocrite? Probably but at least I'm not saying that all the kids who don't get to go to the grammar shool are or should be happy with their lot.

You are not wrong IMO for wanting the best thing for your own kids. This is a basic parental instinct. But you are wrong for pretending that what is best for your kids makes life better for everyone because it often conflicts with it.

On Mumsnet most discussions about education are actually only relevant to a minority of privileged (private school, grammar school, A grades, Oxbridge etc). Of course, these are relevant issues to us self-selecting Mumsnetting largely middle-class concerned parents but on the great scale of things these are relatively insignificant issues.

As I've said and you've just ignored UQD, middle class kids are doing fine. Whether they're in a faith school, a private school or the comp down the road (and we can be fairly assured that they're going to be in the best school their mummies and daddies can afford/ have on their conscience) they're ok.

The real problem in education is the kids who don't get any or few GCSEs, the white workign class boys who are doing worse than anyone. They're not ok. And things are not improving for them. And grammar schools/ private schools/ faith schools in no way are ever going to benefit them.

The very fact that we're having this debate speaks volumes about our concerns as parents and our concern as parents. I just find it incredibly sad that here we are fighting about our kids getting even more of a leg up or not and nobody is talking about the kids whose parents are not and never going to have this debate.

I was thinking this morning that of the 6 colleagues in my dept with kids 3 are going to churc school (although 1 is an atheist, 1 tried the local faithless primary for a while and is now switching but has a faith but is having to bus her kids miles away to get there and only 1 has a genuine faith and lives very near the highly successful church school), 2 have opted for private and 1 has moved to a leafy suburb.

I maintain it is the SYSTEM that is at fault and not individuals. Middle class parents have and will always take advantage of opportunities available to them but where does that leave the others?? sad

UQD - Your thread title was a call to all those parents who pay school fees. People who don't pay school fees are not generally interested in fee increases.

Agree completely with fivecandles.

fivecandles - "you are wrong for pretending that what is best for your kids makes life better for everyone because it often conflicts with it."
I absolutely agree. Lots of posters on here seem to think that the inquiry begins and ends with whats best for their family.

(Teslagirl made this point ages ago and was told she was speaking bollox)

Swedes, you may be right about that on one level, but I know some people who don't pay fees who'd be interested if they looked like coming down. So in a way it is interesting to monitor. And the effects, no doubt, will be that some people who haven't been using the state system will do so - resulting in wry smiles from those of us who have been doing so all along. So in that sense it is very relevant.

All the grammar-school-bashing is just so mindlessly ill-informed that I can't even be bothered dealing with it. fivecandles, your "middle class kids are doing fine" is a vast and sweeping generalisation (and who's allowed to be middle-class anyway?).

This years leavers from my DCs prep school were split into three.
A third toddled off to high end boarding schools. At 25k a year I don't think they'll be too worried about a fee hike - you're either loaded or you're not.
A third went to moderately priced ( these things being relative) day schools.
A third went into the state system to grammars and faith schools.
Although our school is a natural feeder to the grammars and faith schools there were more than ever going so perhaps the credit crunch is biting.
That said, the high end boarders had also increased.
The only reduction was in the middle group who are normally the majority.
Make of it what you can.

UQD, I'd have an awful lot more respect for your POV if you could actually argue it and counter others points directly instead of just dismissing it as 'grammar-school bashing' which is doesn't really do justice to what I've been saying. Likewise if you're going to say that someone's arguments are 'mindlessly ill-informed' I think you need to justify that really. Examples?

Of course saying that middle class kids are doing fine is a generalisation. God, do I really have to preface everything with 'in spite of the odd exception in general...'?

In which case, 'In spite of the odd exception the kids of middle class parents' a generally doing fine academically. This is so blindingly obvious but do look at the stats - i.e. exam results particulaly high grades and A Level together with university applicants together with the social class of those not doing well and the students who are faring worst of all are white working-class boys. I'll find you some links..

These are the students we should really be worrying about.

By which I mean, of course, we're always going to worry about our own kids most of all. That's natural. But at the end of the day when some of us (me included) are worried about our own kids we're worrying about whether the 8 or 9 GCSEs they get are going to be nearer A* than C rather than if they're going to get any and then if they're going to get into x or y university rather than if they're going to leave school at 16 and go on the dole.

But when we concern ourselves with education on a wider scale it shouldn't be the middle class kids and whether they're going to go to a grammar or a faith school and do 4 or 5 A Levels that we're discussing (because their own parents will deal with that fighting tooth and claw all the way as is more than evident on this and other threads) it's the kids whose parents won't or can't or don't know how to fight for their kids to get into the best schools and blah di blah.

education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,,2268558,00.html

Here's a link about white working class boys.

Which confirms one of the other points that I return to again and again which is that schools and their teachers can only do so much with their limited resources and with the students they get and what they bring into the classroom. Parental support or lack of it, their aspirations or lack and the influence of their peers together with role models etc have much, much more impact on a student's academic success than what school they go to although obviously they'll influence that too.

And another thing that pisses me off is the way the Govt bangs on and on about choice, encourages and funds and opens new faith schools, continues to fund grmmar schools publishes league tables, introduces SATS and then wonders why all the middle class parents take them at their word, read the league tables and DO CHOOSE the schools that are highest performing in the league tables leaving the mainly inner city schools in deprived areas floundering.

And their response to the schoos that are mainly in deprived areas and not usually faith and often with a lot of students with English as a 2nd language? Blame them of course. Tell the schools and the teachers in them that they're not good enough.

In case you can't be bothered to read article:

'White 16-year-olds from privileged backgrounds are one of the highest achieving groups. Indian pupils, on average, perform "substantially ahead" of their white classmates, the study found.

Pakistani pupils perform just below their white classmates, on average.

Strand said when parents monitored the whereabouts of their teenagers and gave them access to a computer at home pupils' exam results were higher.

He said: "White British pupils from low socio-economically classified homes made the least progress over the course of secondary school. Poor progress was most pronounced for white British boys and girls from low socio-economically classified homes."

He added that public examinations at 16 were "high stakes examinations" that had a direct impact on teenagers' employment prospects and entry to further education.'

For all your dismissive comments UQD, I do actually know what I'm talking about. I do try to base my arguments on some sort of evidence as well as personal experience (as an experienced teacher who was worked in many different schools and the partner and daughter of teachers). Unlike others who base their arguments on rather random speculation and assumptions.

Agree again with fivecandles. It is disgraceful and very sad. There is going to be, well is already, a whole generation of children who have not got a hope in hell of being educated properly, through no fault of their own. It is self perpetuating: top of league table schools attract the best, rest left to get on with it. Not any of our children of course.

only read op and fivecandles posts.

hooray that someone cares about others.

I care about others too, but in RL it is very difficult to get the point across to other people when your children are at good, high achieving schools. It is always met with 'well you send your child to xxxx school then' but it is not as simple as that and I for one am glad that fivecandles has been able to articulate so well what I think but am never able to explain to others without being shouted down or accused of being patronising.

fivecandles, I am seriously impressed by your posts and totally agree with you.

I think it's possible to worry both about my own (white, middle class) dds and worry about the children living in deprived areas - because they are going to have to co-exist. We may try and get our kids into schools where disruption/knife crime/all out war is kept to a minimum, but then there is the rest of their lives too!

We are lucky to live near a comp that performs highly in all those league tables. There has been a terrible row as to how its catchment area should be defined, because it used to be on a split site but is now going to be on one - so a load of people will now no longer be living near the school. So - all these middle class parents terrified that their children will have to go to a lower performing comp. Did make me wonder whether these other comps would start performing better with a substantial influx of children with "educationally motivated" parents.

One last point - both my parents were state school teachers, but when I was 11 and Thatcher was on the throne, they took advantage of the assisted place scheme and sent me to a private school. Where I was pretty miserable a lot of the time, being much poorer than the rest of them so not able to go on the ski-trips, wear the clothes etc etc that seemed to keep me out of the in-crowd. I was much happier in a state school with normal kids. Also, I was much more aware of knives and drugs etc at the private school - they could afford to buy better ones!!

End of lengthy essay!!

Where I grew up, our local independent school was for rich, relatively dense girls who failed to get into the grammar school. I remember there was a certain amount of shame attached to going there.

Also there was a girl at my primary school who passed the 11+ but her father wouldn't allow her to go to the grammar school because he thought it was too fancy.

On the subject of Secondary Moderns, DP can speak personally of the shame and sense of failure which has dogged him - yes, dogged him all his 49 years - after he failed to get into the local grammar.

Oh hold on - there wasn't a local grammar! This was rural Yorkshire! So the 4 brightest poor BOYS in the area were allowed to attend the local gentleman-farmer's school (and be bullied for their carrot-puller's accents).

There were only 4 places, so regardless of how bright you were, if you weren't in the top 4, or were a girl, you went to the secondary modern.

Aanyways. DP is by far the brightest and most cultured man I know, with an incredibly broad education. But none of this came from his schooling, and the permanent sense of being 'not quite good enough' has had a profound and painful impact on his life's happiness.

But I don't see why I should spend time coming back again and again just to get bashed. You can post all the selective evidence you like. We can play "let's all link to articles that supposedly prove our point", but it's just like playing tennis. Everyone is behaving as if you have already won the set, whereas I am just playing a different game.

Look:

Grammar schools 'give a lift to results of all around them'
whack!

'End of grammar schools has helped widen class divisions'
lob!

'in the inner cities we don't have comprehensives but a universal system of secondary moderns'
smash!

'it is actually grammar schools which provide a sure-fire route to success for the poorest youngsters'
thwack!!

So fivecandles, do and say what you like - it doesn't bother me and I don't imagine you really care what I think. You come across as someone who has had a bad experience of the 11-plus system and it still rankles. I'm sorry about that, but I'm not going to be held responsible for it.

Onebatmother - But if there had been a proper Grammar school your DP would have got in, even if he was a girl.