Polly Toynbee.

It is not a question of any of the attributes or behaviour of any individual who occupies the role of monarch - rather how do you improve on a system that does prevent abuse of power? We have arrived at our current arrangements over centuries of discord - would be reluctant to change for any other current model.

Toynbee wrote a very moving expose about life on benefits, and how impossible expectations of job seeking are when you don’t have enough money for travel to interviews.
But she’s way offwhen it comes to the monarchy

I believe he will be king just look how many turned up and how many watched it and Megan what she got to do with it she won’t last.

I just don’t agree with her. Many other countries still have their monarchies and whilst I see things changing I certainly don’t see them “disappearing” forever… but there again what do I know

Personally I wouldn't predict a future vision with any amount of certainty too many unknown variables can alter how we envisage the future may unfold.

I didn't know Polly T sent two kids to private schools! Just another hypocrite like many others.

I am old enough to remember these sentiments being expressed both publicly and privately in the 1960s and they were doubtless also expressed all the way through Queen Victoria's reign when many European monarchies disappeared and again at the end of the first World War when both the German and the Austrian Empires were replaced by republics.

We have five children and used a mixture of state and private, depending on the child’s needs.

It is a lovely illusion, isn't it, that if pushy middle class parents sent their children to state schools they would do better.
It's a point of view. I don't see it as an illusion, but of course you are as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine.

It is a lovely illusion, isn't it, that if pushy middle class parents sent their children to state schools they would do better.

In fact the majority of pushy middle class parents do send their children to state schools. Less than 10% of children go to private schools, yet 25% of working people fall into social classes AB, and 50%, into the usual middle class definition that covers social groups ABC1.

The problem is that there is generally a correlation between the socio-economic background of the catchment area of a school and the quality of the school and since those that own homes tend to be better off than those that do not, and home owners also buy the best house they can afford, schools with lots of 'pushy middle class parents, tend not to be in the areas where state schools are most in need of improvement.

My DGC are attending excellent state schools. In fact nearly all the schools in their city seem to be excellent - and that is because over 60% of the population fall into socio-economic groups ABC1 so 'pushy middle-class parents form the majority in most schools.

But how much is the excellence the socioeconomic group of their families in purely money and occupation terms and how much in the higher educational levels of the parents, that means they are likely to be providing a culturally enriched back ground for their children: books available and brought into the family, talking to children more, reading to them, taking them to visit places etc, walks in parks, visiting (free) local museums and libraries. Things that are available to everybody regardless of social class, but are known to be used most by the better educated.

Callistemon21

Doodledog

But they aren't making policies for others to live by.

One in particular was spectacularly useless and should not have been teaching an important subject to top stream GCSE pupils. Her own child, of course, got the benefit of a private education courtesy of mother's salary for doing very little towards teaching those children whose parents could not afford a private education.

Thank goodness we could afford some private tuition - many could not.

I don't approve of 2 tier systems for health and education, but I think the case you mention is the fault of the teacher, not the system. The school should have sorted it out one way or another, and if she hadn't sent her children to a private school it wouldn't have improved her own ability.

Doodledog

But they aren't making policies for others to live by.

One in particular was spectacularly useless and should not have been teaching an important subject to top stream GCSE pupils. Her own child, of course, got the benefit of a private education courtesy of mother's salary for doing very little towards teaching those children whose parents could not afford a private education.

Thank goodness we could afford some private tuition - many could not.

But they aren't making policies for others to live by.

Doodledog

Callistemon21

It's Hobson's Choice here unless you pay 🙂

And there's no choice at all if you can't. But I don't think that means that someone who represents an area with a poor school should necessarily sacrifice their children on the alter of her own ambition.

I do, however, think that people who persist in making (and voting for) policies that ensure that state schools have cuts to funding, that teachers are poorly paid, and that tax relief is available to the public schools where they send their own children need to Think On.

Several teachers I knew who worked in the state system here sent their own children to private schools.

Callistemon21

It's Hobson's Choice here unless you pay 🙂

And there's no choice at all if you can't. But I don't think that means that someone who represents an area with a poor school should necessarily sacrifice their children on the alter of her own ambition.

I do, however, think that people who persist in making (and voting for) policies that ensure that state schools have cuts to funding, that teachers are poorly paid, and that tax relief is available to the public schools where they send their own children need to Think On.

It's Hobson's Choice here unless you pay 🙂

The way your name appeared under the title of this thread on my screen made it look as though PT herself had replied to my post .

Thanks Doodledog. I was about to post but you’ve expressed my views well.
I wouldn’t sent my children to private school. I did choose to buy a house in a part of town with a good comprehensive and good faith high school. My children went to the faith high school, where they were very happy.
My nieces went to private schools, including boarding. Lovely young women but imo lacking in understanding of life outside the privilege they life in

I see no contradiction in campaigning to abolish fee-paying schools whilst sending one's own children to one. Knowing that the local schools are awful, and that one of the reasons for that is because better off parents are opting out and taking their money and sharp elbows with them could very well be the reason you want them abolished. Not to penalise the better off, but to spread their advantage amongst all children, and remove the social kudos attached to the right to wear a particular tie, to the detriment of poorer but equally talented young people.

Meantime, whilst you are campaigning for that, what is wrong with getting your own children the best education you can, even though you would prefer to see that option removed? Is it very different from wanting a fairer society in which no children do without nourishing food, but meantime ensuring that your own children have a good breakfast and sending them out with a balanced lunchbox? Sending your child to school A because school B is poor, whilst campaigning for a system in which everyone goes to school C seems to me perfectly reasonable.

Also, children have two parents, and it is common for one of them not to be a politician. Does the other parent not have a say?

The phrase 'champagne socialist' is just a way to dismiss middle class 'lefties'. There is nothing to say that anyone voting Labour has to live in a council house, read the Sun and eat beans for every meal, and to suggest that Labour voters who don't fit that mould are hypocrites is clutching at straws.

Who exactly can call themselves an "impartial onlooker"? Polly Toynbee has given her opinion, which some will agree with and some will not, according to their own "partial" views on the matter.

Personally, I agree with most of Polly Toynbee's views but, of course, my own opinions are not neutral.

I sometimes wonder if, in order to give their children a head start, parents, instead of impoverishing themselves to get their children into private schools, spent the money on other things. Things that could produce a well rounded, knowledgeable person.

I think I'm right in saying that The London Oratory is not the only high achieving school in West London, possibly Cardinal Vaughan is thought of even more highly, but they aren't the only outstanding state schools in the area. All schools should be of that standard imo.

My husband's older grandchildren went to The Oratory and its sister school, Sacred Heart, both had a very strict criteria as to admissions, one parent must be a practising catholic and documentation such as baptismal certificates were requested. At the time they attended, both schools took 25% of their pupils from less advantageous backgrounds.

Going back to fee paying schools, in an ideal world we would have a level playing field but it's a choice and on previous threads about the subject some posters have stated they paid for their children's education, then again I don't think those posters would describe themselves as socialists. I think what many find contentious is "declared" socialists using the private system, surely what they are striving for is a more egalitarian society by patronising a fee paying school they are giving their own children a head start. We all know something like 50% or more of those who enter the top professions and positions within companies are among the 7% educated at private schools. Thousands of parents will be desperate about the state of their children's school and for good reason, but simply don't have the means to shift them somewhere better and their is no choice for those people. In a way, Alistair Campbell had a point when he said if only parents such as the Blairs who would have had enough clout to improve their local comprehensive would send their kids there they might have a chance of turning the school around Nevertheless, Cherie Blair was and I imagine still is a practising catholic and like many other adherents to their particular religion they often want a faith school.

In 2021 The London Oratory sent eighteen students to Oxbridge. Bog standard? I think not!
Blair chose The London Oratory because it was a good school. It was justified because it was a Catholic school. It was also an extremely good school that got/gets more students into Oxbridge than many minor independent schools.
Is it being argued that the reputation of The London Oratory had absolutely nothing to do with the Blair’s choice? And that it was a Catholic school was the reason?

Dinahmo You put up a stout defence of Holland Park School. I was talking of then. Now, the school closed in December 2022, deemed inadequate by Ofsted reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/23/140134 I think this was a culmination of years of decline and failure.

How have the mighty fallen!