Private schools have lost their moral purpose - says head of Wellington

[RelaxedAndCalm]

here

"Leadership from the independent sector has been sadly lacking and it has failed to provide an inspiring moral vision for us in the 21st century."

I wonder if this will lead the Charities Commission to rethink their stance re charitable status.

Echt yes and Bristol reversed their policy a year later

Erebus where are you going to stop with that line of argument? It is a VERY well known fact that the children of more affluent families do better at school. Should we therefore be asking questions about parental income on UCAS forms? Should universities make offers of EE to children whose parents are on benefits and AAA* to those whose parents earn over £100k?

Social engineering just doesn't work in a global economy. Even if you were able to implement your sort of ideas (which, thankfully you are not), I'd just send my DCs to European or US universities. In fact arguably that's a better preparation for their future careers in any event.

I think discriminating in favour of children whose parents are on full benefits is not a bad idea, actually hr!

No-one really wants to tackle the dreadful condition of the state sector. No-one. All the state school devotees are doing is sniping at the independent sector. Don't snipe. Go and improve the state sector. Make the independent sector redundant. Make independent sector parents rue the day they wasted their money on education for their children, when the same quality of education freely available. That's the more positive and better attitude.

One thing to be said in favour of Michael Gove is that at least he is trying.

Hopefully and the reasons for reversing it were...?

Your exaggerating of Erebus's point is unhelpful. No-one is suggesting that EEs would be OK, though a girl I was at school with got in to Durham with two Es and a D. For along time UCAS did ask about social background, don't know if they still do. Don't know what you're complaining about social engineering for, what is "privately purchased" education but that?

Bristol's reasons for reversing its decision was not made public. A boycott of the university which led to a 5% decrease in admissions might have had something to do with it though :)

Sorting out the DCs and making sure they're being properly educated is my job as a parent. I don't feel that the provision in the state sector is adequate so I have chosen an alternative provider. Nothing to do with social engineering.

Why don't you just go and fix the state system? That's the question you can't/won't answer. You can't admit the system is broken because that would necessitate the Government fixing it. Instead you want to tinker with university admissions to get more poorly-educated teenagers into university, and fewer well-educated ones. In the process this will make the country less competitive on the world stage. Can you not see that you have to acknowledge that the state sector needs vast improvement? Can you not see it needs fixing?

I would have no problem at all with universities taking income into account in a tie break situation and choosing the candidate who had the lowest family income, for example.

It's ridiculous to take income into account in a tie-breaker

Family One - Both parents graduates from Cambridge, both with firsts, both slightly unworldly. Mum has decided not to work. Dad is a teacher. Combined family income £30k.

Family Two - Neither parent has been to university. It just wasn't done from their family background. Mum has decided not to work. Dad started his own business with a chum and has made good and is now a multimillionaire.

In an income tie-break, Family One's DCs would get the place. Yet which family is more in tune with tertiary education? Which family was able to support their DCs best with their academics?

Both of the above families are live examples btw

What incredible intellectual nonsense SM!! Hypothetically, if I earn 20K and you earn 50K my child should be chosen over yours if they both get the same grades?!!! do I get more points for being a lone parent as well?? how can you possibly say that my child is brighter but more disadvantaged than yours

I've never said the system didn't need fixing, and looking at admissions is good place to start. Hopefully I notice it's not social engineering when you make, ahem, choices about your child's education, but it is when other actions would seem to affect the advantages of that choice.

Oh, and removing charitable status from private schools.

And making private schoolteachers take out private pensions instead of battening on the Teacher's Superannuation Fund.

Those last two sentences went adrift from my first: kitten on keyboards.

OOOh, actually I have a third example

Family 3 - Both parents have been to university and neither now works. They live off investment income of £25k as their trust funds were designed to do no more than keep the wolf from the door and provide them with some incentive to work. They both looked at the world of work and decided it looked altogether too unpleasant. They can live off their investment income because the trust did stump up for a rather lovely house, and a flat in town which they occasionally let out.

Using an income criteria, Family 3 get the place! Well done SM. Your plan has ensured that the asset-rich family with generations of privilege secures a place at university ahead of the family with two nurses for parents ....

This way lies madness

Echt I'm agreeing with you about removing charitable status. It needs to go.

I agree with you that independent school teachers should make their own pension arrangements as well.

See how much we agree upon! :)

I also think that all public sector pensions should be abolished. It's a massive burden on the public purse that we have not funded. It seems only right that the public sector should face up to what the private sector had to face up to decades ago.

I rather think the favoured selection is to do with the school the student goes to. This has been proposed in the past, and seems to be one way forward.

So in this new system will the social disadvantage from me being a lone parent cancel out the advantage my children have from private schooling??? BTW I have never considered my children disadvantaged from most of their peers, just different

Echt, there is no mechanism currently in law, by which you can just remove charitable status from a school without shutting it down. I'm sure if there was many independent schools would just give up their status as charities

Hopefully you do quite well in your first three sentences then lose it.

Why should the public sector be fucked over just because the private sector has. And you were the one saying the anti-private sectors were "sniping". A race to the bottom, indeed.

I've never said the system didn't need fixing, and looking at admissions is good place to start.

No it isn't. The place to start is primary schools. Getting class sizes down to 20, ensuring music and sport are provided (which they aren't really) in the state sector, improving the standards of teachers and teaching, improving facilities, more and better specialist support for EFL and SN pupils, ensuring that proper management is provided, ensuring that demanding standards are set and met etc. Then you can start tackling secondaries.

To think that university admission is the place to start improving state schools is just, well, baffling. And so symptomatic of the problems of state education.

I am sick of hearing that the state system is "broken" - I'm not even really sure what those using the phrase mean. The vast majority of children in the (fairly middle-class) area I live in go to state schools and do well and friends up and down the country seem to have had and be having the same experience of the state sector. It may be failing poorer children but that's something that is linked to poverty and lack of sufficient resources not a broken system. I was largely privately educated but have not felt the need to send my children to private schools. I actually feel that I missed out on a lot by going private and when I got to university I found that all the brightest most successful people I met were state educated whereas the idiots who went off the rails and had no self-control or self-organising skills has all come from the private sector. I am amused at how the local private schools round here do very unchallenging things to justify their charitable status like sending a group of teenagers along to help at a state junior school sports day, or cherry picking well-behaved girls from a state school who are probably brighter and as middle-class as their own pupils to join in a few "leadership" activities. Charitable status should be linked to something really beneficial to society eg. only available to schools educating pupils with special needs that can't be met in the state system.

Echt, because you expect the private sector to keep forking out for the public sector to enjoy massively more favourable pensions. Most private sector workers arent bankers and the research shows them to be on average now worse paid than the public sector that they fund as well

I know, elastamum. It's very sad that it can't be removed, but hilarious to see how they fought and fought for what they and their supporters so often claimed was a piffling amount.

I reckon not having the state prop up their teachers' pensions world sort them out, though. Going private? Pay the price. It's only fair.

Hopefully I said "a" place to start. Not the only one.

elastamum I think you'll find that, for instance, teachers now have to contribute more, work longer and for less pension. Probably not bad enough for you, I think.

Well if the state system is not broken, then you have no need of lower entry standards to get into university, have you?

The state school devotees on this thread cannot have it both ways. Either the system is broken, in which case the state schools need fixing. Or it isn't, in which case there is no need to lower the university admission standards for state school applicants.

What I would like to see is that independent schools become redundant. When I say the system is broken, which I firmly believe it is, I mean the following:

1. Better exam results are obtained by independent schools
2. Better musical education is provided by independent schools
3. Better sports provision at independent schools
4. Better facilities are provided by independent schools

This is not right, and I am disgusted by the fact that successive governments have not addressed the issue.

In the part of the country I live in, average salaries in the public sector are now considerably better than the private sector. So they have to work longer than they did, just like everyone else

No, to say the state system is broken is to buy into a pretty meaningless sound-bitey concept. The same thing happened with "comprehensives don't work" when, with continued existence of the private/grammar school, they never existed.

Lowering the admission requirements is still on away to go as it provides immediate remedy for inequalities, while waiting for the fabulous improvements which will come about when state schooling is properly funded.

Independent schools get better results because they choose those they teach. If this was removed, their results would plummet.

I agree with you Elastamum :)

So much consensus on one thread.

And by the way, do you know how much it costs to educate one child in the state sector? Official figures are around £6k, but this fails to take into account the maintenance budget. Did you know that the total costs of educating a child in the state sector are exactly equivalent to the fees at an independent day school?

You state sector parents are being short-changed.

In the town I grew up in not far north of London, 2/3 of the children now go to comprehensives where the GCSE pass rate is less than 30%. Unless their parents pay there is no other opton. How can the system not be broken when 2/3 of the children from my home town are being so abviously let down. This sint a problem that can be solved by tinkering with university admissions