Leaving private school for state 6th form - experiences?

[WomensRightsRenegade]

I did ask this once before but it was quite a while ago now so I was just wondering if this was something more people were doing/ thinking about doing?

Thanks to the VAT increase my son had his bursary halved (from 100pc) and it looks like it’s about to be reduced further or removed. I guess they have no need to rush confirmation seeing as they will know parents will do almost anything to avoid moving schools for year 11. It’s all been quite nasty really. Seeing behind the gloss and the taglines about how they care for the boys like family has been illuminating.

Anyhow DS is utterly heartbroken at having to leave when he is so happy. He is very talented musically and was so looking forward to continuing in the ensembles and taking Music A level there. It’s going to be an agonising last year as he can’t even let anyone know he’s leaving until April. No local sixth forms to us even offer Music A level and the nearest college is a lottery system.

Are other people facing having to remove kids against the child’s will? I am so worried he will always think we could have found a way, even though he’s said nothing to us except that he understands the situation totally. Academically I’m sure he’ll be fine if he works hard, but socially and musically it feels like it could be a very abrupt end. If I could go back in time I would never EVER have accepted the bursary. This was always the risk.

Which post are you referring to?
The ones you have no answer for?

You're on the wrong side of history supporting this policy which I suspect you now know but just won't dare admit. How is the £0 improving state schools.......sorry, housing........sorry, defence.......sorry, the super massive black hole that Labour have created?

How do you (and the universities apparently who are ‘onto’ it), differentiate between families who have moved because they can’t afford it, and others who have moved to ‘game the system’?

"I know cos Janet down the street said that's what she's doing" so therefore everyone must be doing it! That's a strawman if I ever heard one!

Give me evidence and I will take you seriously, up until then, sorry!

Cos someone up the street told her when she was food shopping

@WomensRightsRenegade

Is it possible to block some of these bitter & angry posters? They have zero manners and continue to derail the thread even when asked to stop 🙄 it’s absurd & pathetic!

I am replying to a direct Q the OP asked me

You make some interesting points but you do realise that there are more rich parents with children in state schools than in private schools (I think you are one of them?).

The majority of rich people send their children to state schools (including those in the top income decile). Therefore if you want to raise serious amounts of money for education you need a progressive tax system where everybody pays. You can’t just get other “rich” people to pay.

Dan Neidle has published today some very interesting research on a wealth tax which tackles similar misconceptions. I don’t have the link now but if you google you will find it.

Well, the universities are “on to it” because they don’t actually give preferential places to state school kids. And I have no reason to disbelieve the parents of children who joined my children’s 6 forms from private schools and were quite open about it. Why would they say it if it wasn’t true? What about the posters on this very thread who have said the same thing? I don’t understand why you’re so unwilling to believe it!

@Escapefrom1984 - if by “rich” you mean living in London and a homeowner and in professional jobs paying loads of tax? Yes.
However, no we are not rich, it all goes on taxation and the DCs. We have 4 DC. The tax system here does not acknowledge the cost of having 4 children, they do not let you deduct reasonable amounts like in eg Switzerland. It would make more sense to incentivise professionals to have kids than take every help above a certain point (no child benefit, no help with nursery now, no help with housing or uni costs etc). Pretty much every middle class person now just gets taxed through the roof and disincentivised from having more than 1 max 2 DC and then they are surprised that not enough children are being born.
The thing that the State does not to start acknowledging is that parents are the prime teachers and educators of the next generation.

if you privately educate 4 children then you are rich…..

Why do you think rich people should be incentivised to have more children?

@CurlewKate - I am not privately educating 4 children though, am I! They are in state schools. Yes I could probably just about afford to educate 1-2 in a cheaper private school if I then did not support those at uni at all, never went on holiday, maxed my mortgage out, but I would not do that. Would possibly also cause resentment in the long run.

We do benefit from private schools though. Swimming lessons, hockey, cricket, rugby pitches, countless orchestras and summer camps so I am grateful to private schools for their outreach and value that. County orchestras run at boarding schools, NCO in the past etc etc.
So yes, I am anti VAT on private school fees. It is ludicrous.
If the state and private sector just worked together more the state sector could benefit even more. Did Eton not try and open academies in more deprived white working class areas and got the no no? Where are they with that. They were simply trying to help. And here I am reading another article stating there will be a report on educational underachievement in white working class children. Something people have know for many years. And yet when a rich school tries to help the powers to be don’t embrace the help.

Yes Eton were all set to open schools up in NE specifically to engage disadvantaged children, but Bigot Phillipson put a stop to them. Can't have aspirations you know!

Many appologies @Araminta1003 I remember now that you aren’t a private school parent. Blame the early morning!

Can someone provide a link to the proposed Eton scheme, please?

@twistyizzy - it is so strange is it not, that they cannot acknowledge that institutions educating for hundreds of years with top notch teachers may not know a thing or too about education, and in particular, educating boys?
Just because they are also educating the elite, does not mean they cannot add value elsewhere. The two are not mutually exclusive and the charitable aims of educational endowments were intended to reach as widely as possible.

https://staracademies.org/our-partnerships/eton-star-partnership/

Might be this one. Not sure. Seems like the Eton brand is a bit more hidden now. If that is what it takes to make progress with something valuable for society.

Very easy to Google.

It was given green light by Tories but then stopped by Labour. This article pre-empted the end of the scheme.

https://feweek.co.uk/planned-free-schools-in-doubt-as-review-launched/

Yep that's it but BP stopped the Middlesbrough one. Crazy when she should have been encouraging this sort of partnership working.

Well hopefully she will see the error of her ways @twistyizzy!

Apologies. I just assumed it would be at your fingertips.

Just skimmed-will do some digging later-but all the proposals seem to be for 6th forms.

What is wrong with Sixth Form level? Prime time when value can be added for uni entrance and levelling there or other forms of prep for the working world?
Eton is a 13 plus school, so the earliest they have know how is at 13 plus level and there is no 13 plus level in the state sector.

Also if they are going to “invigorate” the North and Midlands then specialist competitive schools is what you need surely?
If London is too expensive for the young now and house prices are cheaper elsewhere and you want to promote Education a la former London plan, you take all the help you can get and push back on local resistance towards London style competition. You want to grow those areas? Well competition and hard work is what it takes.
Brit school in Bradford sounds great. The arts and culture is one of our main strengths and it needs tapping all over the country.

Yes, and? What's the problem with that? Absolute prime time to add value for university etc