John McDonnell - fee paying scholar to Marxist

growstuff If parents wanted their children to learn anything beyond the 3Rs, RE and handiwork, they had to send their children to private schools. That's why the 1944 Education Act made such a big difference to people's lives.

But thst doesn't mean that they had to pay fees. The history of charity financed schools goes back well into the middle ages. Shakespear attend just such a free grammar school.
By the mid 19th century similar schools were coming into existence for girls as well as boys.

My great grandfather was a 'general labourer' for the City of London Corporation. When he died, in his late 30s, his wife was offered free places at the City of London Boys School for her sons. This was in 1882. In the next generation, my mother and her sister, the daughters of a London Docker, who died in WW1, went to a Convent Grammar school in Southwark - and their mother certainly would not have been able to afford fees. My mother turned down an opportunity to go to university in order to start working and her sister trained as a nurse and ended up as head of the nursing school of a big London Hospital.

These ideas that the 'working' class (whatever that means) were stopped from rising up the social scale because they had no access to education is ridiculous. To begin with, it is only in the last 40 years that the professions have been closed to anyone without a degree.

Secondly the middling classes as they were referred to, have been growing in size since the Post-medieval period (roughly after 1550) and the growth hasn't been form existing members of that group having lots of children but from people working in labouring and agrcultural jobs being bright and adventurous and grabbing every opportunity to do well for themselves.

Scratch almost anyone over 40 in a professional job and you will find a parent or grandparent who worked with their hands. I have friends who from O levels and a difficult start in life went on to become solicitors and judges and chartered accountants

Education for the labouring classes only kept up with industrial needs.

So before the industrial revolution, it was generally considered unnecessary indeed even dangerous to educate the poor.

Industry later required a minimum level of education and this was done in the 19th century.

The average labourer had no access to education beyond this minimum level until it was deemed necessary.

The Empire required a level of education provided by minor public schools to fill the civil service etc.

Now most of the jobs that represent power in this country are filled by those educated by the top fee paying school. Of course there are the exceptions, but the 7% are wildly over represented in certain professions.

MOnica, I did mention in an earlier post that before 1944 approximately a third of places in fee-paying schools were actually free, so I do know that all parents paid fees. However, the situation wasn't uniform across the country. If a child was bright, he or she had might have had the opportunity to sit a scholarship exam. If not, the parents could pay for the child to go to a private school. If the child wasn't bright enough or there weren't any nearby schools offering scholarships or the parents couldn't/didn't want to pay, the default secondary school was elementary education, which finished at 13 (later 14) and only offered a basic education. Girls' education had far fewer opportunities.

After 1944, the elementary schools became secondary moderns and the others jostled for a role for a while. Some of the more academic private schools became completely independent (with some still offering scholarships) and others became direct grant, with 25% of places' being free. Some of the less academic schools remained independent and survived because some parents didn't want their children to go to secondary moderns, if they weren't bright enough to pass the new 11+. Many of those schools have now disappeared, as the new comprehensives were introduced and improved. The Catholic Church paid for and maintained a number of schools, presumably in the hope of offering Catholic children a religious education and possibly producing some future priests. It's one of those kind of schools which John McDonnell attended.

The original seven HMC public schools always were something different and in a totally different league.

I'm well aware that it has always been possible for "working classes" to rise up the social scale through education, but it wasn't universal. The late nineteenth century onwards saw a number of people rise up through the social ranks and there was some mingling with the established aristocracy. It was a fascinating time. Like yours, MOnica my parents' families did just that. One of my gt gt grandparents was a builder who made oodles of money and decided to spend the money on education for his nine children, including the girls, one of whom was one of the first women to achieve a London University degree. My grandfather went to one of the original public schools and became the head of a civil service department by passing exams.

The above was how meritocracy worked to challenge the old aristocracy. However, it wasn't ever universal and has always meant that the ones who didn't rise to the top were neglected.

Sorry for the length of that post. The point is that the school which McDonnell attended wasn't "posh" and would have been much more commonplace than it is today. Religion was more important than it is today, so for many poorish families, supporting a child to become a church minister was seen as a way out of poverty. That's why the Catholic Church paid for places at its own schools and why parents were keen for their bright children to take them up.

Whitwave The stats are actually even more unbalanced. 7% of children go to private schools in England, but not all of those schools are top fee paying schools, if you mean academically successful.

I was out with friends yesterday afternoon so wasn’t aware of the entreaties by jura and growstuff!

Here you go:

heraldpublicist.com/the-public-school-past-that-marxist-mcdonnell-tried-to-hide/

I would dispute that the cost of sending a child to a local state school was ever the same as sending the same child to a private school no matter how bad the private school was. Class sizes in state schools at the time were around 40.
As for the instances of scholarships many of the now private schools were indeed set up to provide education for poor children and fee payers were the exception. But by the 1930s most of these had substantially cut the number of free places and working class children attending were the exception. My late FIL did gain entry to one of these schools. This was such a rare occurrence that his London primary school gave all the children a day off. He still left school at 14 and went out to work. His family needed the money.
I've never understood exactly how charity schools became private.

Urmstongran I refuse to consider credible any article which is so badly written. If this was presented by a Year 6 scholar they would be told to take it away and read it through carefully.

growstuff, ah, I see, you were talking about selective schools. Most of the ones where we lived were not selective but some were considered more 'desirable' than others, especially the single sex schools.

trisher there were several articles on Google. I selected one at random because of the beseeching directed towards me!

Google it and select another if you wish. Or not.

I’m damned if I do (supply one) and damned if I don’t (they think I’m ignoring them - I wasn’t - I was out!)

Remember, JMcD is the man about whom Corbyn told Ken Livingstone in 2015 ‘he’ll do the scary stuff’.

Perhaps it was his school days where his misogynistic tendencies evolved?

Well, class sizes in my school were 30+ and DH at a state grammar says classes in his school were much the same. I am also reasonably sure that the school fees were £60 a term.

In the UK most catholic secondary schools that were not in the state system were effectively state schools as most, like mine, had most places taken and paid for by the LEA. I would imagine the LEA got a preferential rate for buying in bulk.

growstuff, I am well aware that the school JM went to was a school like the one I went to. But by attempting to hide the fact that he went to a school that is now a successful private school, draws attention and suspicion and leads to the fuss we have seen over the last week. If he had been more open in the first place, no one would be bothered.

Like at Eton perhaps Calli?

Lynching? Murder?
Ask some female Labour MPs too

M0nica last paragraph
I agree - why try to hide things which are easily checked? What is there to hide anyway?
So many Labour MPs have links with private and selective schools, either as ex-pupils or choosing them for their children that it is hardly news for yet another one to have attended one.

By trying to hide the fact, it has created more of a furore.

How has he hidden it? One article which is not only badly written but actually practically illiterate has been posted. It doesn't prove anything. He may have been traumatised at his Catholic school. Much has been posted on GN about women victims and how we should sympathise with them, Actually much in McDonnell's history points to something going wrong-only there a couple of years then failed to achieve good exam results but eventually managed 2 degrees, gave wrong name to school. It may seem like a cover up, it may just be trauma. If indeed it is anythng except a fabricated story.

It’s not the privilege, ITS THE HYPOCRISY!

Why can’t you acknowledge that most of us don’t care if others have more/better - but we get mad when you tell us we can’t have it and you’re hiding the fact that you and yours had/are having it!

Pantglas2 it’s the politics of we’ve had it, made our millions but you cannot.

I think ‘the lady doth protest too much’ (*trisher*)!

I wonder if jura and growstuff will respond later after asking me for ‘evidence’.

I have supplied a link.

Over to you ladies!

Yes I agree, it’s an (intended) oversight (or crafty cut out?) by JMcD and it’s a storm in the proverbial.

But it’s the fact that he saw fit to paper over his time there, to rewrite history as it were - and for what?

Silly man. In this day and age nothing remains hidden for long.

My thread was merely to demonstrate it happened. Actually I’m surprised it’s still being discussed if I’m honest.

What hypocrisy? He went to an RC fee paying school. He wasn't there long so possibly he didn't like it.He wants an excellent education for every child
I don't suppose when he was sent away to school, possibly against his will, that he stood and said "But I'm going to be a Marxist". He did what most of us did-what he was told to do.
As for the 'hiding' the evidence for this is thin to say the least

Thin - but persistent and sustained.

MOnica I'm still not convinced that he tried to hide it, so I'm not persuaded of the hypocrisy.

I'm speculating here, but maybe (if he did attempt to hide it), it was because he knew that grannies would start rattling their pearls and screeching "Not fair!" like crazy banshees.

Pantglas In the UK, we've always concentrated on those at the top of the pile and nobody has cared very much about those at the bottom. That's why, to this day, we still have a very long tail of educational under-achievement.

Maybe McDonnell feels, as I did when I made a conscious decision to work in state comprehensives, that he wants to improve the educational standards and opportunities for those still not receiving a good education. That will never happen while we concentrate on the achievements of a few at selective and/or fee-paying schools, which is why he wants to ban them or at least make it more difficult for them. Some other countries realised that years ago.

Urmstongran If I am ever reduced to posting a link like that as 'evidence' I will stop posting. It really is a pathetic, repetetive badly written piece of s**t.

That’s a little harsh trisher have I rattled your cage? Don’t hold back now - my intellect is obviously unworthy in your eyes!

I do my best for a bear of little brain.

You seem het up.

MOnica I think we're saying much the same thing. The situation was very different 50 years ago and I doubt very much if McDonnell's education was "posh", when compared with Eton, Charterhouse, Harrow, Westminster, Winchester, etc.

Why doesn't the Sun accuse Nigel "man of the people" Farage of the same kind of hypocrisy?

Because he hasn’t tried to hide it perhaps?