This will get you all going - State v private again!

[DecorHate]

You need to scroll down to around the middle of

this

Bit of an odd article and I wonder if he has been misquoted but the jist of it is the Head of a private school (and leader of a private schools organisation) is criticising well-off parents for not sending their children to private schools!

Sour grapes in the current economic climate perhaps? I can't believe that there are that many £3M houses where he teaches (I know the area well...) Plenty of people there may own a house which is worth 0.5-0.75M but in most cases that means nothing to them as they bought their houses when they were significantly cheaper - possibly couldn't afford to buy them now!

Or is he so out of touch that he doesn't realise that private school fees are out of reach of most families, even those of above average incomes in the area his school is in, particularly if you have more than one child.

And why not send your child to a perfectly good state school if that is what you want? Lots of people prefer them for their ethos....

Just thinking about Beaconsfield. Many of those girls that end up at Beaconsfield High (Grammar) have parents that live in the Penn and Beaconsfield area. A nice 5 bed detached with garden there, towards centre of town, can be as much as 3 million!

Actually loads of v wealthy people send kids to state grammars in this neck of the woods - often at preps first though.

Yes, there is a two tier society but if the education every child received was the same, there would still be children who are more intelligent than others, no doubt about that.

What is so wrong now is that one can buy a 'better' education for some children and so a disproportionate amount of those children then go on to the top universities and thus the better careers and so on and so forth.

Those children of equal intelligence in crap schools do not as a whole tend to end up with the same examination results and then the opportunity to even apply to a top university.

For what it's worth, the grammar school system worked properly when there was no outside tutoring, everyone went into the 11 plus with the same chances and there really was an opportunity for a poor but clever child to get on.

And don't anyone say 'it was always thus' with the grammar schools (with extra tutoring etc, children from private prep schools) because a)I am very old and b)I have seen the archives at a top super selective grammar school and the difference between the intake (as in the area they lived, parental occupations, primary school attended) then and now is huge. Now there are only one or two children in every year whose parent isn't a professional of some kine and who didn't attend either a private or 'top' state primary. Not many from the local council estates now (if any!!).

*kind, obviously.

"What is so wrong now is that one can buy a 'better' education for some children and so a disproportionate amount of those children then go on to the top universities and thus the better careers and so on and so forth."

But what exactly can you do about it?

When one school does begin to show signs of being "good" then people who do have money will use that money to get into that school.

It's the same thing with tutors, if people have the money they will use it.

My solution? No idea, I'm stumped.

Yes, I agree, I have no idea what the solution is!!

Not having fee paying schools would go some way to even it up but that would cause utter outrage and condemnation (watch this space) but until money isn't in the equation in any way, it certainly will never be a fair and equal education system.

But then life isn't fair, is it?

At the moment, in the education system, it's a lot 'fairer' for some people than others, and in that article whoever said something along the lines of ' a private education isn't particularly for the privileged these days' is talking utter nonsense. Even the cheapest independent school costs money which most people do not have under normal circumstances, same for houses in good catchment areas for good state schools.

"And don't anyone say 'it was always thus' with the grammar schools (with extra tutoring etc, children from private prep schools) because a)I am very old and b)I have seen the archives at a top super selective grammar school"

I'll say it! It always was thus, though not quite as much. Grammars have never taken a very high proportion of disadvantaged families though they do take less now (most especially the super selectives). The attainment gap between rich and poor is measurable at age 3 and gets bigger with age. By 11 there isn't really much chance of fairly identifying the brightest across the income range.

"The whole point is that it is wrong for a child's decent education to be dependent on the relative wealth of their parents."

The trouble here is definition of the word "decent".

We are never going to invent a system where every child forever gets a fabulous state education that is identical across the country. We need to be bothered about absolute standards, but also about the discrepancy between the educational opportunities of the least and most privileged children.

We'll have to agree to disagree then!!!

I certainly can't prove it but the sort of children I was at GS with in the early 1970s wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting a place at a grammar school now. There is huge competition from the private sector which didn't exist then. Most in the private sector wouldn't have dreamt of having to go to a state grammar school.

I went to a grammar school in 1977 and the vast majority of children came from state primaries - I was one of only a couple in each class who came from a private prep.

Quite a lot of girls studied needlework rather than German and left school after O-levels to work in local shoe shops. Others went on to Oxbridge. I very much doubt the mix of final destinations is the same these days.

"Not having fee paying schools would go some way to even it up but that would cause utter outrage and condemnation (watch this space) but until money isn't in the equation in any way, it certainly will never be a fair and equal education system."

If you remove fee paying schools then you're going to free up the money that some parents would have spent on them. They'll then probably end up using that money to fund house buying near the better schools and thus driving up the prices in that area. The situation will then get even worse for the rest of us than it already is.

The situation is genuinely rubbish but I can't see a way to improve it.

I think the thing that matters most in all of this isn't that a bit of money will buy you something "better", whether that's in school fees or mortgage or tutors.

It's that there are schools which are badly failing their pupils. The "lowest" level of schools ought to be improved to the stage that children at them have at least a reasonable opportunity to get a decent education. That may not translate to high positions on league tables, because some catchment areas are going to have lower average attainment whatever the level of teaching, encouragement, discipline etc. But there should not be schools which just shrug and operate as low-grade prisons to keep children barely under control for a few hours each day with little or no prospect of improving their lives.

There are lots of schools in "difficult" catchments which are doing a lot to reach out to the children and help them to improve their chances in life. There ought to be a huge amount more effort and time and money put into learning from those ones, the ones that have high "value added" even if they don't rate on league tables, so that the choice is no longer "good school or sink school" but "good school in nice leafy catchment or decent school in less-favoured-surroundings"

I agree with what the article said. I said something similar on the other state school v private school 'necessity' thread today. I dont have a car or house and have not been on holiday for 2 years but pay school fees to get a better education for DSs than the state can provide in my area.

I know some people can barely afford the necessities of life and I am definitley not poor but well off middle class people who have 2 holidays a year, drive around in big cars, buy an expensive house in the catchment area of a top state school, pay for private tutoring and then claim the moral high ground for not 'going private' drive me mad with their hypocracy.

Yes I do include some Labour politicians in that category. [anger]

AMumInScotland - well said.

SomeGuy, I couldn't agree more and I say it all the time on these threads.

Sometimes I think this whole debate - across the press, on the telly, everywhere - ignores the elephant in the room. ie that good and bad school do not generally exist at random. A good school will be one which gets good exam results, it will achieve this by having an intake of kids from homes where exam results are important.

Does anybody honestly think that there are a whole bunch of crap teachers, all working coincidentally in schools with an intake from impoverished areas?

And that the good teachers who get the good results just happen to be in schools near affluent areas?

It's not the school that matters, it's the kids, or rather, the home backgrounds of the kids. The rest is window dressing.

Morris - I disagree. The calibre of the head and teachers can make a big difference to the school. That's why in the private sector there are good schools and weaker schools - with pupils from similar home backgrounds.

But the differential between the good schools and less good in the private sector is relatively small. Whereas in the state sector, it can be vast.

Agree LadyB - but in the private sector 'market forces' mean weaker private schools are likely to close (or get rid of a poor head) - eventually. Which results in less differential.