@Marchesman
“I think most who educate their children privately expect that they will face some discrimination but they do it because the outcome that they want is that it will make them better people.” [better by what definition?]
“intelligence and attainment correlate strongly with SES and the distribution curve for socioeconomic status shifts to the right in the independent school cohort. Although this is not as extreme as some people commenting here believe - in independent schools 35% are from the top quintile (i.e. overrepresented but less than twofold). Two-thirds of the attainment advantage of independent school pupils is attributable to pupil characteristics not schooling. Put simply, on average they are brighter from the start, unpalatable as that may be to anyone with a bigoted turn of mind.” [so on average, pupils in higher performing state schools where you believe parents have gamed the system are actually brighter from the start]
“Essentially it is due to the increase in admissions from state schools without a corresponding increase in suitable applicants. If you look at archived "undergraduate examination results by school type" you will find the turning point, before which students from state schools outperformed those from independent schools.” [so you think Cambridge has already identified all suitable state school applicants - so why the need for outreach of any sort, or are you using that as a straw man?]
“the setup of good independent schools particularly boarding prep and senior schools is conducive to instilling desirable social qualities such as tolerance, kindness, respect, politeness etc because of the length of time pupils spend together. Competitive daily sports teach resilience, coping with success and failure, bravery, persistence and the virtues of training. Pupils learn to be responsible from an early age and to exercise good judgement. A good mix of positive male role models is on hand, often with military backgrounds, unlike in the state sector where most teachers are female. Even relative maniacs turn into well adjusted human beings. Kipling's "If" sets the tone.” [evidence that even relative maniacs turn into well adjusted human beings if they go to a boarding school?! In what way are you not showing clear bias and attributing all sorts of wholly unevidenced benefits here?]
“@drawingmaps
state school students are somehow inherently inferior
And I said this where?
I went to a state school, my father went to a state school, two of my grandparents went to state schools, and so did one of my children.
Why on earth would I think that?” [But you said earlier that they are, on average, less intelligent - and presumably also are less likely to become “better people,” due to their lack of a public boarding school education- and that by age 18 they mostly have less potential than their public school educated peers, unless from a similar background]
“Don't bother. 96% of privately educated children don't go to Oxford or Cambridge and 95% don't care. It is an obsession more or less unique to the sort of people who game the state sector - the parents of more than 120,000 high SES pupils at the point of HE entry who largely hog the places in socially selective state schools, schools that would be the natural habitat of low SES pupils in an equitable system. Private schools are just a distraction that allows them to get away with it.” [or a reason for doing it, as they can’t afford to make their children “better people”, so settle for more academically successful as their only escape from being left behind like other state educated children? Or maybe the schools aren’t actually “better,” but by your reasoning simply contain a higher proportion of children who were “brighter from the start” and have attitudes and aspirations more similar to those of the privately educated, due to their more closely aligned socioeconomic backgrounds and expectations?]
“Not only is the disparity greater but there are many more high SES pupils in the state sector than in the private sector - by a factor of about seven. They compete directly for resources, not indirectly like their private counterparts.” [so you don’t think a direct competition for resources, or acquisitiveness, resulted in the wealth that enables some to afford private school in the first place, then?]
“By the age of 3 there is already a large gap in cognitive test scores between children in the lowest socioeconomic quintile and other children, but this gap widens as they progress through the education system. A strong link exists between the education levels of parents and the achievements of their children, in part genetic and part behavioural, however the widening achievement gap between the ages of 11 and 14 in England is accounted for almost entirely by the fact that children from degree educated parents are far more likely to attend high performing secondary schools and so benefit from a positive school effect.” [whether private or state]
We have a system in which whoever can afford to live near to the good school has a much higher chance of getting in. But the location of the best comprehensive schools in the most affluent areas incompletely explains social segregation in schools, the underrepresentation of disadvantaged pupils in the best of them is also due to schools admitting lower rates of disadvantaged pupils than live in their catchment areas.” [but are those schools genuinely “better” and not just getting an easy ride from an easier cohort to deal with and support?]
“Private schools are a complete irrelevance to anyone but the pushy middle class who can't afford them. They make effectively no difference to very low SES pupils (apart from those who actually make up the 2% or so who get a free ride through private schools). “ [So where are the pushy middle class meant to go to school? State boarding schools in deprived areas? Non-existent private schools that are affordable for the pushy middle classes but somehow don’t have a direct effect on those left behind in state education? Or is the problem actually the way the whole of British society is set up, with schools just a symptom of that, and the wealthy all arguing that they personally don’t make a difference to anything, especially if they are paying school fees to make their children better people with more potential than state school students?].