How soon before the next step to privatising the state schools?

Joseanne

Why would any parents who have opted for private schooling wish to give up the choice of a system that works successfully for them? Private schools fulfil their commitment to the parents/customers to deliver the type of education they require, and this goes way beyond the classroom.

Indeed! They wouldn't want to give up a privilege. Who on earth would? But how about ensuring that everybody has the same choice and level of service?

I agree with you that when a small section of society can afford better services for themselves and their families and are also the people with power, they have no incentive to improve services for the vast majority. I wonder if some of them even have any idea what people who have to use public services are experiencing.

Why would any parents who have opted for private schooling wish to give up the choice of a system that works successfully for them? Private schools fulfil their commitment to the parents/customers to deliver the type of education they require, and this goes way beyond the classroom.

growstuff

Doodledog From experience, I don't agree that private schools have the best teachers. In many cases, they have teachers who couldn't cope with the demands of state schools. When they "take" teachers, they don't leave state schools with a shortage in the same way private healthcare does.

PS. I've been for a blood test this morning and discovered that my "named GP" has left to join a growing private GP practice and apparently the practice is struggling to replace her, so I'm feeling a bit raw about private practice stealing NHS GPs.

That's why I qualified my comment by saying that they take 'many good teachers', not that they necessarily take the best ones.

I'm not minimising the drain on the NHS - I think that what we've seen in dentistry is likely to become the norm in general medicine, and it is very wrong - but I do see parallels with education and housing, in that removing a vested interest from those who have the means to get a good experience is likely to result in a poorer service for those without.

I wonder whether having entirely separate systems of health and education would work? If private versions had to pay for the training of their staff, build their own facilities etc (so taking nothing from the public sectors), would that restrict their affordability to too small a pool to be viable? As it is, teachers and medical staff are trained at a cost to the public (training is way more expensive than student fees) but are free to work in the private sectors, which I see as a huge imbalance.

Grantanow

Labour should have nationalized the independent/public schools in 1945. Some state schools may be better than they used to be but others are failing for a variety of reasons. The Tories don't care because their kids don't go to failing schools.

They did take some private schools into the state sector (and some still exist). Don't forget that before the 1944 Education Act, most grammar schools were fee-paying. Church schools were also essentially private schools. Unfortunately, the private school lobbying groups were just too strong.

Doodledog From experience, I don't agree that private schools have the best teachers. In many cases, they have teachers who couldn't cope with the demands of state schools. When they "take" teachers, they don't leave state schools with a shortage in the same way private healthcare does.

PS. I've been for a blood test this morning and discovered that my "named GP" has left to join a growing private GP practice and apparently the practice is struggling to replace her, so I'm feeling a bit raw about private practice stealing NHS GPs.

And private schools take many good teachers and wealthier parents out of the state system, and provide many less able children with the chance to get the qualifications that set them up to be in charge of business and politics in the future, and sell it as a meritocracy at the expense of able kids from poorer areas.

Labour should have nationalized the independent/public schools in 1945. Some state schools may be better than they used to be but others are failing for a variety of reasons. The Tories don't care because their kids don't go to failing schools.

No, it wouldn't be quite the same.

Private healthcare takes staff away from the NHS, so that those who can afford it can jump the queue. Private healthcare doesn't shorten the queues - it makes them longer due to a shortage of staff.

GagaJo

By the same argument, anyone using private healthcare is adding to the problem with the NHS. Allowing the government to underfund it, because anyone that is anyone can afford to go private.

It's basically a massive F- you to the poor and the working class.

I agree 100%, but if I or my loved ones risked going blind, losing the ability to walk, or something else that was preventable if we found the money for private medicine, I would pay for it.

That should not be an option, as if nobody could take medical staff and equipment out of the NHS the queues would be shorter, and the sharp-elbowed would ensure that healthcare was available to all. It's the same with schools and housing.

As things stand, public schools have charitable status, which, perhaps predictably, I think should be scrapped. By definition, many of the parents who send their children to them can afford generous contributions, and to pay for the sorts of extras that state schools need to provide (if they can afford to offer them).

State schools are underfunded, and often don't have the ability to make up shortfalls by asking parents to cough up. They are also more likely to need to 'level up' before they start teaching children who have not been socialised into familiarity with books, or other sorts of behaviour which makes teaching them possible. This situation is deeply divisive, however you cut it.

Comparisons with the 50s and 60s don't hold true. The demographics of the day meant that class sizes were larger, and expectations were lower, so what counted as a successful school would have been different, even if schools had had league tables, which of course they didn't. More able children were creamed off to grammar schools, which got better funding on the whole, and anyway the school leaving age was significantly lower than now, so less money was needed. Many people saw (and in some cases still see) education as existing simply to feed the job market, and back then there were jobs for semi-literate and largely ignorant people who just needed to pull levers or run errands. Those jobs don't exist in any numbers now - people need to have better qualifications in a wider range of subjects, so leaving without them is even more of a disadvantage than it used to be. In the past there were more opportunities for unqualified but able people to 'work their way up', either by learning on the job or by going to night classes or day release. Again, those opportunities barely exist now. It's just not comparing like with like.

Finally, poor old Diane Abbot is trotted out as a lazy example of 'Labour hypocrisy' in the same way as Mick Jagger is used to symbolise the need for means-testing pensioners. That is far more of an example of Groundhog Day than someone sticking to their viewpoint that we would be better as a nation if we allowed all citizens to reach their potential. It is perfectly possible for someone to disapprove of something being unfair, but refuse to sacrifice themselves or their children on the altar of 'parity'. Most of us probably spend far more than we really need to survive. Should we be disparaged as hypocrites for having more than one dress and taking holidays when we could pare things back and give the 'wasted' money to the poor? If we don't choose to do that, but instead opt to feed our children well, or to have a decent standard of living ourselves, does that mean that we don't care about the poor? I don't know what DA's circumstances were when her children were young (or whether her children would have needed security because of her job) but if she lived somewhere where the local school was poor, should she have condemned them to that while she worked to improve education standards for everyone?

By the same argument, anyone using private healthcare is adding to the problem with the NHS. Allowing the government to underfund it, because anyone that is anyone can afford to go private.

It's basically a massive F- you to the poor and the working class.

Callistemon21

Callistemon21

But parents of private schools students bear a little responsibility

How exactly?
Their contribution through tax is not being spent on state education.

I should rephrase that.

Their contribution through tax is not being spent on state education for their own children.

I know some people fail to follow that logic but underfunding is the fault of government, not of those who opt out of state funded services.

Callistemon, the logic is basic. It isn't that I or anyone else fails to follow it.

The logic I'm talking about is that as a society, we would be forced to put more money into state education if private wasn't available.

The government is voted in by the electorate. But a proportion of that electorate doesn't need the state services, therefore doesn't value them and votes for a party that will lower their taxes.

The government knows that they can get away with underfunding state education, because anyone that is important to them (friends, family, contacts et al) doesn't care.

Schools are massively underfunded and anyone that votes Tory accepts and allows this. Anyone that votes Tory, that benefits from tax cuts, is part of a system of inequality. As a society, we voted in a party that thinks ridiculously expensive wall paper that was just going to be ripped down two years later is more important than a child's education. A party that threw millions (or was it billions?) at their friends during a pandemic, for services which were mostly not fit for task.

So please don't insult me with your simple logic. Life isn't that simple.

growstuff

To an extent, some state schools have already been privatised. Academy chains aren't allowed to make a profit. However, some have set up independent profit-making companies, from which they buy services such as curriculum plans or advisory services. Thus, money which should be spent on pupils is being siphoned off to individuals.

Indeed growstuff. But this is what the government believe in. As do some on GN (or they think they do).

Closing our eyes to the way this ERG manipulated government thinks, means we sleepwalk towards very basic, or none, underpinning state services.

growstuff

Callistemon21

So they're not actually pinching money from state schools?

The issue is that if decision-makers can afford to send their children to private schools, there is no incentive to improve provision for those who can't afford it.

Which decision makers?

Our Tory MP sends his DC to state schools, unlike some Labour MPs whose children are or were privately educated.
Presumably he's not going to vote to deprive their schools of assets?

That argument holds no water.

Mollygo

*I know some people fail to follow that logic but underfunding is the fault of government, not of those who opt out of state funded services.*
Sorry, you are flogging a dead horse.

Thanks for highlighting it, though, Mollygo ?

M0nica

DaisyAnne I have two grandchildren who attend their local state secondary school.

I'm glad you have a good one. I just have "contacts" within those who run our local Secondary School. They have no idea how they will cope with what is coming and these are the people who are responsible for making it work. Add to that the general underfunding of anything state run, and you have a perfect storm.

My point in the OP was more along the lines that this Government wants a market-only economy. By small state, they mean vanishingly small. They will know that is not entirely possible, but they now have a very short time during which they can be confident of being in government. As far as I can see they are out to destroy as much as they can of state-driven economy. If they do this, particularly in education, some children will never get the education they should as, even if the government changes, we will not be able to pull back quickly from what they have done.

I do appreciate that some will not see it this way but it is what they have been telling us they will do - if you listen carefully.

Callistemon21

^But parents of private schools students bear a little responsibility^

How exactly?
Their contribution through tax is not being spent on state education.

Correct. However, that won't resonate with those who falsely say "Tories want the poor in workhouses"

Do all decision makers do that?
IMO the fact that the better off decision makers, (and there are many more of them, than those who send their children to private schools), have more chance of getting their children into the school of their choice, so have little interest in improving the chances of state schools in poorer areas.

I think that it has been empirically proven that middle class parents of school aged children definitely have a beneficial effect on school standards both educationally and in things like maintenance, and influencing politicians.

You certainly don’t have to be far left to understand that?

Callistemon21

So they're not actually pinching money from state schools?

The issue is that if decision-makers can afford to send their children to private schools, there is no incentive to improve provision for those who can't afford it.

To an extent, some state schools have already been privatised. Academy chains aren't allowed to make a profit. However, some have set up independent profit-making companies, from which they buy services such as curriculum plans or advisory services. Thus, money which should be spent on pupils is being siphoned off to individuals.

There is zero chance state schools will get privatized, parents were always asked to contribute to school fund and there was provision for those that genuinely could not. This winter is going to be tough for sure, we tighten our belts and do the best we can. Maybe extracurricular will suffer, core education will continue, of that I am certain.

I know some people fail to follow that logic but underfunding is the fault of government, not of those who opt out of state funded services.
Sorry, you are flogging a dead horse.

Callistemon21

^But parents of private schools students bear a little responsibility^

How exactly?
Their contribution through tax is not being spent on state education.

I should rephrase that.

Their contribution through tax is not being spent on state education for their own children.

I know some people fail to follow that logic but underfunding is the fault of government, not of those who opt out of state funded services.