Why would anyone consider going to Rugby school better than the mixed local comp?

[Charis2]

I read this article in the standard earleir, and just thought what is this headmaster on? Why is this scholarship presented as such a huge honour for the boy, when in fact it is a way of the school paying to improve its results by taking in some of the best sixth form students without fees.

What "lifechanging" opportunities does he expect he can offer, which Hassenbrook acadamy can't?

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/needs-pic-teenage-footballer-wins-70000-scholarship-to-boarding-school-that-invented-rugby-a2953791.html

Headmaster Peter Green said he hoped Michael and other Arnold Foundation scholars would have a “ripple effect” on their communities when they return home.

He said: “We might be able to be transformative and transform their lives. Then when they go to university, and after, they can start to transform their own local communities. It’s not about parachuting someone out of that. We want to keep their association with where they are from.”

What a snob. Does he think the staff at Hassenbrook only teach poor peoples maths and physics, and the maths at Rugby is somehow a better class of maths? perhaps he thinks the laws of physics perform better there too?

I hope this lad has fun, but I don't think for a moment his life is going to be in any way better because he spent two years mixing with rich snobs rather than normal people.

I would suggest you read your own posts then. You seem quite happy with the idea the most able shouldn't be catered to for the benefit of the majority. Although incidentally I disagree it needs to be either/or. Its also widely accepted that mixed ability teaching is disadvantageous to the most able, but better for the rest than creaming the most able off.

Of course I've heard of mixed ability teaching! I just haven't heard anyone say it is so far that bright children should be sacrificed for the majority.

" You seem quite happy with the idea the most able shouldn't be catered to for the benefit of the majority. "

I haven't actually said anything of the sort.

And I have never said that I agree with mixed ability teaching either. Don't make things up!

A good few comprehensives set children for some subjects although in my view that is not as good as being in a school with children in the top 20% for IQ.

Ah well, in my view it's better.

But to return to the OP, yes, that head teacher was immensely patronizing and offensive. Nothing like someone who's decided to devote his career and expertise to helping out the rich a little extra bit, throwing a few crumbs at the poor and the clapping himself on the back for the immense advantage those crumbs will provide to all the people the poor know as well. Very irritating.

Agreed. Just like the stuff private schools do to try to justify their charitable status......

I'm not making anything up, just reading your posts.

Thank fuck for private schools charity status too, it's saved my dd from the shit otherwise on offer to her.

"I'm not making anything up, just reading your posts"

Does that mean you actually don't want to have a discussion? You just want to tell people what they think and ignore any other points of view? Let me know, and I'll stop wasting my time.

"A good few comprehensives set children for some subjects although in my view that is not as good as being in a school with children in the top 20% for IQ"

Drivel, there will be MORE children in comps in the top 20% of IQ than at private schools. Stop convincing yourself that all children in private schools are really naturaly super bright. I taught in one, on a hill, near London, breifly. SOME of the children were super brights, the majority were decidedly average, because you know, that's the way averages work? My lovely state comp has done work with other private schools and I have worked directly with a head of department at the place where they invented the wall game. Even the teachers I have worked with would say that yes some of the students are very bright, but a lot get their excellent results because of the money invested in them, the resources that are available to them which dwarf those at state schools.

What the research shows is the thing that makes the most difference to education is parental interest and involvment. If you are intersted enough to pay for the privileges, fine, but stop pretending that its anything but that.

Wrapping yourself in the my child is exceptional ( everyones child is you know) so is far too good for the comp idea is just a way of not admitting that you are paying for them to get their advantages, they aren't earning them.

IQ is really not everything in life.
Mine is v high but I am a fuck up professionally.
Son's is v high but all he does is annoy people in authority.
Daughter's is v low (starved of oxygen at birth) but is v good at getting on with people, eg 'EQ' and will probably do better in life than either of us.
Just saying.

Also (on a roll now) I have noticed that children who have been through the state school system are much better at getting on with and accepting those with additional needs or disabilities.

lurker do you really believe a decidedly average pupil can achieve A/A* at A level?

Because if you do, those schools must be brilliant.

Lots of interesting points on this thread. I have said if you are happy with comps fine. If you are happy paying school fees as I am that's fine too. So we all have no problems.
I have never said all private schools are for bright children. My dauighter was at NLCS and that is full of vey clever girls and traditionally we all know Eton was if you were bright and Harrow if you were thick as a plank etc although less so there days and Rubgy is a reasonable school academically but nowhere near NLCS, Eton, St Paul's etc. nor the best state grammars.

I have never heard anyone say children at state schools get no better with people with disabilities. One of the best things about the private schools is children's communication skills and ability to get on with all kinds of people. Those children might well have siblings with special needs and do much more volunteer work than state school pupils so if anything private pupils are better with acecpting those with disabilities although this is not a thread about disabilities really is it?

well no it is not, but it is a fair point.
DD16 was truly shocked when the rather lovely privately educated boss's daughter at her work thought it fun to go around the supermarket pretending to ....have severe learning difficulties.
Not all private schools have an ethos like NLCS, some of them are just holding pens for vile thick snobs.

Lisbeth - so all the pupils at non academically selective fee paying schools are 'vile, thick snobs'?
What an unpleasant comment. Do you encourage your DCs to have those sort of views?

See there in lies the rub Grazia your predjudice that Eton is if you are bright and Harrow is if you are thick? They get fairly similar results you know..

Also yes, shegot, I do believe (and have experienced) students from pirvate schools who are average getting really good grades, because of the resources available to them.

Again this is anecdotal but, I teach economics in a leafy north London comp, to both GCSE and A level students. I currently have 3 classes of aabout 18 in year 13. Last year the dept results were 78% A*-B at A2, which quite frankly is brilliant, but we are always in the 70% upwards in this measurement.
I take my A2 students to a competition run by the BOE every year and last year we were up against some of the most exclusive schools in the country. I remarked to another teacher that it was hard work getting the preperation done with the team as it had to be done at lunch/after school and being in y13 they were all busy too with EPQ projects, UCAS statements etc ec. He was suprised at this as he had done it all in class. The team of 4 speakers and 4 to support them was his entire y13 cohort! My 8 students made up less than half of one class of three! Oh and later on when discussing with this chap about his timetable he taught a significantly lower number of lessons.

There lies your reason for the results, I've said it repeatedly before, at private schools smaller class sizes, and lower teacher timetables give your children the most important resource of all. A teacher who has time to do things.

I work hard, I plan and deliver outstanding lessons (OFSTED proved), I get great results, I can stretch and challenge the most able and help students who are less able to achieve things that they never thought they could. I can kick lazy 17 year old boys asses so much that they turn it round and encourage reticent girls to speak up and state opinions and debate issues. But bloody hell I could do so much more on a lower timetable with less children to teach, with less admin and data churning to boot.

Sending your children to private school is fine, I bear no grudge, but I do sincerely object to the repeated assumption on here that these children are just brighter, its not true. Nature vs Nurture really isn't it, and if you really believed in nature, your child would be at a state school.

Obviously, there are good state schools and bad ones. Good private schools and bad. And also a lot of schools from each category that are particularly suitable for some children but not others.

It is unfair that some people are able to access private schools when others are not. But it is not the only unfair thing in life we face.

It seems to me, there isn't a lot if angst about "thick kids" at mediochre private schools. The focus of the debate seems to be that some bright DC can access selective education through private schools.

More grammar school places, and significantly better differentiation would solve this problem. But, it's like stepping on a bubble in the carpet. The unfairness debate would move onto the unfairness of DC who just miss the cut off.

Problem grammar schools though is that the 11 plus is as much about a test of cultural background or socio-economics than anything else. Look at all the children who go to tutors for months (if not a whole year) before they go to take it, they are coached to get in whilst someone brighter but not as able to access the extra tutoring will not.

Yes, I do agree.

The restricted number of places exacerbates this problem.

Lisbeth - so all the pupils at non academically selective fee paying schools are 'vile, thick snobs'?
What an unpleasant comment. Do you encourage your DCs to have those sort of views?"

It would have been a very unpleasant comment- if she has said it. But she didn't. So that's OK then.

Really Bertrand? I thought that was the last sentence in her most recent post. Is she quoting someone else?
She did say 'some' private schools are holding pens for vile, thick snobs, but that indicates that these schools' pupils are made up of thick vile snobs. I don't think you can write off whole schools' intake like that.
No group of people will all be thick vile snobs.

lisbeth - Rugby isn't an all boys school, it's mixed.

I agree with the OP that the head could have made more of the benefit the boy would be to the school as well as vice versa. Rugby is not especially academic. I work in a prep school that sometimes feeds into Rugby (maybe an average of 2 children per year choose to go there) so I know its entrance requirements and standards pretty well. I'd say you need to be of slightly above average intelligence to get a place there but not that much above.

I do believe they give every child there the best possible opportunity to achieve their potential once there though.

I think it's nonsense to say that the opportunities are the same in your average state and your average private school but I think the OP's probably got that message by now.

I don't think teaching standards are higher in private. In fact, to be honest, I doubt I'd still be teaching in the state sector; my weakness was always classroom management and I don't need anything like the skill to manage 12-18 per class as I would to manage 30+. But I do think resources, class size, facilities, freedom from the curriculum and, in some cases, selection result in a better educational experience for the majority who are lucky enough to access it. For a bright child who will succeed and thrive anywhere I don't think it's so important. It's the low and middle achievers that I would do everything I could to pay for an education for. I love getting news back from senior schools that children who were still struggling with reading and writing age 10 have achieved really commendable GCSE and A Level results. Individualised education is so much more important for the type of child who is likely to fly under the radar or just sink in a large comprehensive.

The extra curricular and all around experience is, in my opinion, far better in the majority of private schools than in the majority of state schools.

Not saying any of this is fair. But I do think it's true.

Again there goes another statement: " just sink in a normal comprehensive", we don't allow children to just sink, there are a huge number of interventions that we put in, just not all students respond to them.

I agree that managing 18 children is much easier than 30, from my work with "partner" schools in projects I would say that more teachers from the state sector would cope well with the transition to private than vice versa, note not all, more.

Maybe I'm just being defensive, I think I do feel that the state sector has come in for lots of unjust criticism here. I think we work wonders with the resources that we have.

lurker having twins I'm very interested in nature versus nurture.

It's like my own in house experiment . Given that they have access to the same resources so to speak, at the same time.

And Ive come to the conclusion that outcomes are affected by a slippery mix of nature and nurture. This includes my DC's academic achievement. They are naturally clever (nature) and have an inclination to work very hard ( mix of nature and nurture?) and have had an excellent private education ( nurture).

I've never ever denied that my DC's school is fab and resources are aplenty ( I've been told on MN many times I'm deluded and their school is a 'waste of money' my DC could do just as well in a comp but hey ho).

However it's just not right to say that the DC are 'averagely bright'. And it's also not right to say that many comps offer an appropriate education for DC of their ability ( though that's not why I don't send them).

Sorry cross posts.

I agree that many comps and many teachers of everything they can ( and more).
But costs and ideology are often a barrier.