Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain

[TapselteerieO]

Did anyone see this?

I have just watched it and thought there might be a thread here about it. Sadly I am not surprised that it happens but I am still surprised by the statistics.

(Going to get dc from school so might not be on here until later.)

Why does Diane Abbott send her son private?

but it would surely still have to be prohibitively expensive for most, or else it would just be a state school? You don't want EVERYONE to be able to go, do you?

Private schools aren't charities. As many on here have said, you are a paying customer and are treated as such - they are primarily business who seek to cater for their customers. They are not there to help anyone else, though will do so in order to gain tax breaks when pressed.

but if it's your choice, why is anyone's business to make it an easy choice for you? We're just minding our own business while you make that choice.

no inherent reason? erm, I can think of a couple!

And fuck, yeah, you're probably right. How depressing.

The vast majority cannot afford the fees to Eton, Westminster etc so if they rise due to removal of the charitable status it will only affect those who can well afford the higher fees anyway.

I am against bought privilege in both health and education, whilst i realise not everybody can earn the same salary or own the same houses or cars I see no reason for private education of medicine, get in the queue and wait your turn like the majority have to.

If the well motivated and connected had little choice but to use state facilities then things would improve for all.

Well I feel equal contempt for yours, so we're even!

'If the well motivated and connected had little choice but to use state facilities then things would improve for all.'

They would hire private tutors, just like Tony Blair

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2097355.stm

Tobies "Free School" has decided the nearest local primary school is not to be a feeder school for his school but schools in a more affluent area but further away are.

They argue that the railway line between the nearest school is a "natural barrier" it gives a new meaning to being from the "wrong side of the track"

Free schools suck, as an idea and in practice.

I despair

Because we live in a plutocracy and if you are in the privileged group why would you want to change that?

That is why children are being priced out of going to university. Don't want the proles getting uppity let them get back to tugging their forelocks to the masters and being glad of their shite jobs.

Bring on the revolution.

Claig, maybe they would but the "old school tie" would be curtailed to a major degree.

Truck, you find the lampost and I will bring the rope. :o

Heroine

Think you are being a bit simplistic though I am sure your list holds true for the so-called "sink" comprehensives.

But worth bearing in mind that there are lots and lots of jolly good comps in country which send kids to Oxbridge and so on.

I'm a prime example. Given that several of the privileged new MPs featured in the documentary were at my college and were friends/acquaintances you can say that comprehensive school kids can get in touch with that "connected" world if they can get themselves into Oxbridge.

From a financial point of view Oxbridge is a great place to be if you don't have much money. Very generous bursaries and support. My college has a policy that no-one should ever have to leave because of financial reasons and gives people handouts. You are not allowed to work part time - if you "need" to work part time for financial reasons, you speak to the bursar and you get a grant.

Re the "free Oxbridge MA" - I am pretty sure that most employers know that this is not a separate post-graduate degree. To an extent the Oxbridge MA compensates a little for the fact that Oxbridge degrees are, I think, a hell of a lot more work then those of other institutions. Feel free to flame me for this, but I, my sister and other friends all studied the same subject and no question that I had to work at least twice as hard, with my whole degree being based on finals, with no modular thing.

I believe in levelling up, not levelling down. It's a free country, and if people want to spend their money on education, then that is fine. What should happen is that the socialists should stop their usual behaviour of working under the thumb of the elite, by restoring grammar schools and allowing clever working class and middle class children to compete on a level playing field.

In the programme, even that leftwinger, Tony Parsons, said he didn't think private schools should be scrapped, but he thought that grammars should be brought back. Of course, the ideological progressives at the top of the Labour Party won't listen to him, because they are firmly under the thumb of the elite.

Middle class Thatcher had it spot on in that programme, when she stood up for the ordinary people of this country, by saying

"people from my sort of background needed grammar schools to compete against children from privileged backgrounds, like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn".

How can bright working and middle class children compete against Diane Abbott's son, if they are deprived of top schools, such as the old grammars?

Maybe that's why the progressives scrapped grammars, to stop ordinary children being able to compete with their children?

7% of children go to public school so no more that 7% of public school pupils should be able to go to the top universities that would put an end to their bought privilege malarkey

Bumps, I don't know anyone taking a fairly traditional degree at a RG university who had modular exams so don't think you are right with that one tbh. However I wonder if the chasm between public school educated and state school is worse now, with so many jobs requiring unpaid internships, based in London. Those from more privileged background will have the contacts and the financial freedom to find one.

My 7 year old son wants to be a FOOTBALLER.

He goes to a selective Prep School. When he was 3, one of the PE teachers told us that, he was going to be a good athlete and the school are encouraging him all the way. He practises with the school team (8 -11) and they have set him up to join the academy of the local League 1 team.

His academics are good too and he stands a chance of getting a scholarship at 8years.

My point being, with private schools, its not all academics, they instill a can do attitude to their pupils which breeds confidence.

claig, screw Abbott or then again maybe not :o

With grammar schools you labeled children as failures at 11 years of age that cannot be right.

Both my sons have been/are at very good uni's from a good comp. We dont have to have elitism in education. We need all state schools to be good state schools with motivated teachers and students not bought privilege and elite state schools.

The Eton students had it spot on. They said that there was competition for everything at Eton, for elections to all sorts of student bodies, and this taught them about politics and about life. So what have the progressives done? They have deliberately hampered ordinary children by fostering an anti-competitive ethos in schools. No wonder the Etonians are more successful. A top class competitive education for them, and a dumbed down progressive education for the hoi polloi.

Eton and Westminster and the like may be very expensive, but a large number of private schools (like my DC's) are just within affordable limits. The school has charitable status to allow it to afford to offer scholarships to able but less well-off children a chance to move into a better education environment. If you took that away, I know I couldn't afford to send my kids to that school, and I know that with the lack of grammar schools like the one I attended my DD would drift and be allowed to drift and achieve about a third of what she's capable of.

I'm very much of the opinion that a good education is what allows social mobility. Closing down the grammar school system was a good way of keeping those uppity clever-but-poor kids poor (I grew up in care, no way were my Foster parents able to send me to private school) Take away chritable status from private schools and you are just finishing what was started in the 80s and giving no hope to lesser beings like me. The country will get more elitist, not less.

fantastic post, Kirk1.

Tony Parsons is starting to make more sense as he gets older amd loses his SWP defeatism.
He was right when he said that this is not class war; we are all in it together, working class and middle class. It is about giving us the best schools so that we are able to compete with the top public schools.