[Closed] Private school vs state school

Slough Grammar please flashy. That's the second time you have done that. Are you an OH by any chance!?!?

I used to know one of the guys in that photo, ironically he hated his school.

Correct. This is becoming a habit.

When have you ever admitted otherwise?

Comparing what I am accused off with what I do in real life, makes me smile even more. I enjoy the irony and happy for it to continue. It makes me smile.

No one "accuses" you of anything, unless you are particularly sensitive to what you experience as value judgements on what you do. If you drop hints as to your occupation attached to funny, controversial or interesting posts on a forum for long enough, people will tend to join the dots. Unless you have fabricated some of these, I think most regular readers here have a pretty good idea of what you do for a living and what your professional interests are, in the same way as they do for other regulars on here like ernie (where is he btw), JY and DD.

So anyway, when can I put my sprogs on the waiting list and what bursary will you be awarding an outstanding 9-year old from a 45k income household?

😆

An awesome contribution Binners I laughed in an office 😳

I agree!

Fair play. Christ only knows how us state educated plebs had ended up lobbing terms like exclusivity, and superiority about eh? Must be the politics of envy, because we never got to dress up and stare moodily into the middle distance

And of course Eton is a typical private school, isn't it?

Oh, and if you put aside who is in the photo, you can just enjoy the quality of the hairdo's 😀

Fair cop - accuses is the wrong word. Things that are "attributed" would be better. Don't worry though Julian I would hate to lose the laughs.

zilch, interviewing the parents is the first step!! 😉 (hope you are not particularly sensitive)

Seriously, the last thing you would need is a bursary, that's the point. Ironically, getting rid of exclusivity is central to the project. Hence the lovely irony.

in the same way as they do for other regulars on here like ernie (where is he btw), JY and DD.

Seriously, the last thing you would need is a bursary, that's the point. Ironically, getting rid of exclusivity is central to the project. Hence the lovely irony.

Does that mean it won't be in a hollowed-out volcano in international waters either? I iz dizappoint 🙁

But more seriously, taking your educational project abroad (as you mentioned last page) is hardly going to make it equally accessible to all uk kids unless it is done on the internet. And then you still have vicarious responsibility (via the parents) for home-schooling/ofsted regs, no?

I'm glad to see this thread is still going (was out of circulation yesterday). I will read back over the many pages I've missed but a couple of comments from the two pages I've read here.

On awarding bursaries - yes there are difficult choices, people face those every day. Doctors make decisions based upon budget considerations (whether they admit that or not), that's far harder than educational decisions.

As for banning fee paying schools this won't impact the real elite as they will send their kids to school abroad and the elitist issue will still remain although perhaps at a lower scale.

I say again the real solution in to better fund state education to reduce the gap (real or perceived)

In our lifetime jambalaya, the proportion of state spending allocated to education has risen threefold from 4% to 13% of total Gov spending. It has been argued that over this same period both standards and equality of education have gone down. Perhaps rather than simply more money, we need to spend it more wisely?

In our lifetime jambalaya, the proportion of state spending allocated to education has risen threefold from 4% to 13% of total Gov spending. It has been argued that over this same period both standards and equality of education have gone down. Perhaps rather than simply more money, we need to spend it more wisely?

+1

There isn't a public budget (of that kind of size) that couldn't be spent more wisely.

We do need to spend it wiser for sure - more bursaries for private schools to enable choice 😉

we certainly need to stop wasting it in apprenticeships and colleges offering expensive courses to which their are no/limited/few/ employment opportunities Motor vehicle, construction, forensic studies, Hairdressing, Beauty Therapy, Animal studies etc
I would love to knwow the figure for what % of folk with these "trades" dont work ever in the job. My sample size is skewed as I meet only those who fail but I would imagine it is way over 50% and in some cases over 90%

Same for degrees it is pointless having 50 % of our population degree educated when 50% of jobs dont require a degree

Threefold, wow! (Is that a basic percentage or are we adjusting for and comparing to expenditure in other areas, I am specifically thinking justice/police and health (also more) and defence which if we are talking lifetimes that began in the 60's would be way less)

Also I put forward that class sizes, vocational training in fe rather than simple apprenticeships, choice of subjects and IT were major components of this rise, but nevertheless worth it.

Edit:sorry ignore those stats, they were bllx. It's actually been constant as a % at approx 12% in a rising pool. Sorry!

Gov spending has increased as a percentage of GDP - from mid 30s to nearly 50% and within that education has stayed broadly the same percentage.

Basic point still stands - we spend an increasing amount of our national output in education, but the results by all accounts have been disappointing.

Same for degrees it is pointless having 50 % of our population degree educated when 50% of jobs dont require a degree

The people at our uni who were doing stupid degrees tended to be the dim-witted, privately-educated offspring of home counties dwellers. Clearly having been sent north to get a BA in anything their limited intellect would allow, so that hopefully there wouldn't be too much resentment when daddy parachuted them into a highly paid berth in the company, where hopefully he couldn't do too much damage. They weren't difficult to spot…..

[img] [/img]

[s]It's risen strongly in absolute terms and in relation to other types of spending.[/s]

[edit] just seen your edit above. Much easier to see where 50% hass gone than 300%! See below..

What changes are people really disappointed about with education?
Class sizes? Safety? Safeguarding? Governance? (as opposed to governments!) real world vocational training? (as a sometime arts graduate who has used these skillz for maybe 40 hours of my career since I finished the degree) I agree with JY about the absurdity of there being far more degrees than jobs that need them though) Computer literacy though? According to ceops and most IT teachers, what teenagers can do with computers today is totally beyond the understanding of a majority of the population over 35.

fwiw my own bugbear is the expense of inspectors/regulators who are burnt out teachers (same follows for medicine and social care imho) and the money that goes into preparing for and 'responding to' inspections which didn't go all that badly, and meaningless kpi's and figures. It is also still too hard to sack underperforming staff and I honestly believe that we (as in public service all over) could learn much from private enterprise about this: only thing worse than out-of-touch HR is a slow, toothless and timid out-of-touch HR!

so let's attack the one small part that has thrived over the period instead????

Of course that thriving part wasn't funded by taxpayers (well, apart from the parents!)

-so some data would be very welcome about the relative changes in school fees, and any financial implications good or bad of their charitable status (including, if significant, changes to and if so financial changes from the delicate arrangement between the tax some of the parents pay elsewhere, and the usefulness to their personal finances of making large charitable donations from time to time 😉

-of course any increase in money spent there also should be adjusted for the considerable and welcome investment in improving food and living conditions for boarders since the 60's!

Sorry, Julian my edit for my incorrect figs (got the deniminator mixed up!) crossed with your post. Looks odd now.

No the thriving wasn't, although there were other thriving parts that were eg faith schools.

Cost of better food and boarding facilities (very true) were met by private sources not gov spending, just to be complexly clear (I think that is what you are saying too)

Over the period, percentage of student in private education fell from 8% to 5% and then recovered (excuse the choice of phrase) to 7%. So it's good to see how we sweat on the small stuff!!! It makes a great diversion though as all these pages show!!!

Yes I was saying fee payers spent on better boarding: I wouldn't want people thinking a rise in fees for boarding schools necessarly meant more investment in the education side of the whole package.

So overall, and boarding fees aside, are fee-paying schools (through fees and charitable donations) better off per student than they were in whenever-the-beginning-of-our-notional-lifetime-was? And if so how much? And does this explain why they have thrived? Also if many of these schools have expanded, what did economies of scale bring to the quality for each individual pupil?

Have they thrived? They educate less of the UK population that they did in the 60s.

More recently, entrance figures and %s have rising again. But this is skewed. An exclusive 😉 group are thriving and even expanding overseas. At the same time, an increasing number are under very significant financial pressure. Some on here won't like it, but left to the market, the numbers may well drop anyway!!!! Heaven forbid.

teamhurtmore - Member

Have they thrived? They educate less of the UK population that they did in the 60s.

You alluded to thriving, yes (I cut and pasted it up there^^),

so let's attack the one small part that has thrived over the period instead????

we certainly need to stop wasting it in apprenticeships and colleges offering expensive courses to which their are no/limited/few/ employment opportunities Motor vehicle, construction, forensic studies, Hairdressing, Beauty Therapy, Animal studies etc
I would love to knwow the figure for what % of folk with these "trades" dont work ever in the job.

As someone who has taught in this area, I think that assuming that people will get a job in a particular trade is missing the point of how effective these courses are at providing basic education which is not facilitated elsewhere - I've taught hundreds of (mainly) boys with no qualifications music technology, and they ended up being pretty good and Maths, English and other really useful life skills - significantly better than they left school with at 16 - the fact it was framed round music meant that engagement was higher and they were much better able to learn in the more practical and task oriented framing of a college course.

Yes, it would be great if they all went on to get job X - and a good number did, I still hear from people touring with bands, DJing here there and everywhere and working in some nice studios all from these courses - but lots of them don't, but I would be more concerned about where they would be without them.

This kind of data is also sadly not the kind of data which is collated to illustrate my anecdote with actual evidence.

Are you in forensic medicine Julian? yes, the ones largely referred to here are thriving. As others have pointed out though, Staines Grammar is not representative of the whole sector.

Not in forensic medicine, no... but a useful tool in my job is indeed "sweating the small stuff" as you put it. with my systemic hat on, I am also trained to be curious and 'circular': why did you edit that bit out, and especially given your own forensic examination of others' posts here and elsewhere, did you really not expect anyone to notice and mention it?

??? Hardly hidden Julian, come on. I posted figures about 4-13% and commented on them twice. They seemed strange so I rechecked them and realised that I had made a mistake and posted that clearly with the correct data. I would have been disappointed (having made the effort to be accurate) if no one had noticed. Play fair....

In case you missed it

Sorry, Julian my edit for my incorrect figs (got the deniminator mixed up!) crossed with your post. Looks odd now.

This point may have been made, but any discerning middle class parent would spend the money for tutition on a nice house near a good state school. That way the kid gets a good education [i]and[/i] you get to live in nicer area.

This point may have been made, but any discerning middle class parent would spend the money for tutition on a nice house near a good state schoo

My colleague complains she can't afford tuition for her two sons (11 and 13), despite them probably needing it. Both around £20 each per week.

But at Xmas she bought them (each!) a new iPad Air, xbox and 50" LCD TV.

I just laughed.

(I wonder how many other people fall into this situation?)

??? Hardly hidden Julian, come on. I posted figures about 4-13% and commented on them twice. They seemed strange so I rechecked them and realised that I had made a mistake and posted that clearly with the correct data. I would have been disappointed (having made the effort to be accurate) if no one had noticed. Play fair....

Who said anything about hidden?

Play fair....

I think I learnt this one from you thm, 'play the ball' -the ball in this case being that you seemed to be questioning where I had the notion (from you) that fee-paying schools had thrived (and that n spite of this they were being laid into), and that just because the rise in spending on state education had not risen as much as you had originally said (note my acknowledgement of this in my own edited post) this does not now mean that fee paying schools hadn't thrived after all, that they might not be subject to undue criticism in spite of this, or that you hadn't said it. I can't be responsible for your poor editing but forgive me for [i]not[/i] joining up a change in the understanding of funding and the perceived success/failure for one sector (state) with a change in the relative/perceived success of another one (fee-paying).

Or is it up to Sir who gets to sweat which bits of the small stuff?

This point may have been made, but any discerning middle class parent would spend the money for tutition on a nice house near a good state school. That way the kid gets a good education and you get to live in nicer area.

If you're really good, you bring up bright, intelligent, motivated kids. That way you don't need to waste money on expensive houses near 'good' schools as they will do well in any school.

I would like it pretend I understand all that. But will leave it there. Give me a nudge when we are back on topic.

Mike, from you last sentence sounds like we can all breath a sigh of relief. No need to worry about this school, that school then. There are more important factors to focus on.

+1

teamhurtmore - Member

I would like it pretend I understand all that. But will leave it there. Give me a nudge when we are back on topic.

thm: an hour ago:

So it's good to see how we sweat on the small stuff!!! It makes a great diversion though as all these pages show!!!

c+ for attention span.

I can summarise the last post but afraid (as in 'worried' not false regret) that it won't come across as polite.

Mike, from you last sentence sounds like we can all breath a sigh of relief. No need to worry about this school, that school then. There are more important factors to focus on.

Somewhere on page 2 or 3, someone mentioned research that showed state schools performed better than private, once other factors are taken into account. So, yes.

There's a lot of middle class angst over getting you kid into the 'right' school. I think it's entirely misplaced.

Give me a nudge when we are back on topic.

Original post reads:

bernard - Member

Has anyone got kids in a private school , interested in your experiences. Worth the money?

So yes, after pages of interesting experiences of our own or our childrens' experiences in various schools (and in some cases our experiences as staff), arguing about social mobility, life skills, exclusivity and exciting journeys through stats (disapointing lack of actual clourful graphs this time) THM's (retracted-though-editing-something-slightly-different) assertion that in our lifetime, fee-paying schools have thrived and yet continue to receive undue and unfair criticism in spite of this is, curiously, rather close to back on topic, ie given the cost, is it worth it?

Phew! Considier yourself nudged, thm 😉 😀

🙂

Somewhere on page 2 or 3, someone mentioned research that showed state schools performed better than private, once other factors are taken into account. So, yes.

It gets better then mike. State schools perform better than private ones. Therefore 95% of the population will do better than the remaining 5%. The gap will narrow, those poor suckers who paid for education will realise the folly of their ways (belatedly) and everyone will be happy. That's a relief. We don't have to do anything other than to nudge the parents and the kids to work hard.

In addition to the unnecessary middle class angst we can add the angst about the existence of different types of school as well. People do get so agitated about that...

Job done and relax.....

You're confusing individual performance with overall performance.

I think that assuming that people will get a job in a particular trade is missing the point of how effective these courses are at providing basic education which is not facilitated elsewhere

I get your point and its a good one but they are not on the course to learn level 1 or 2 key skills and I seriously doubt it equips them with the high level skills required for employment. I would also argue that Level 2 key skills is much simpler than GCSE hence why they pass one and fail the other.

the fact it was framed round music meant that engagement was higher and they were much better able to learn in the more practical and task oriented framing of a college course

IMHO, and I know this is controversial and yes I have seen the stats, low level key skills dont get you jobs - we [society via the work programme and skills conditionality] deliver them to almost all unemployed people - whether they need them or not - does any employer really get excited by Level 2 key Skills - or even know WTF it means? Ever seen it on a job spec?

Your course is likely to be cost effective - ie its probably quite cheap to deliver. 7 years ago a construction NVQ 2 got over 10 k of funding as did motor vehicle and engineering per pupil. It must be higher now and it is not money well spent. I bet about 100k per employee in the industry though, IME no one* who does FT college course gets a job in that industry and those that do used a family connection.

* I am sure some do but it will be in the region of 5 per thousand- no college i ever challenged was able to provide data on this.

It gets better then mike. State schools perform better than private ones.

You thought wrong then julian - all clarified above with figs
Rising spending (% gdp) separate issue to performance of some/all (you decide) private schools
Makes you wonder doesn't it. Perhaps they are selling snake oil?

all clarified above with figs

[edit]
[s]Great, you've more than made the point that it is a roundabout 50% increase in overall spending not 300% of overall spending budget and no one especially not me is disputing that.

but I don't know how else to articulate this!

What does %age of gdp spent on state schools have to do with the sucess or otherwise of fee-paying ones? You never made a link with your first statistic and you still haven't now. You just alluded to fee paying schools "thriving" as a [i]contrast[/i] to state ones.

How did your correcting your figures on state schools also make fee-paying ones any less thriving? Are we talking numbers? (fall since 60's then a rise again according to your last page) or quality of education, results, life experience? [/s]

Actually for the sake of clarity I will leave this in for future reference and humbly correct myself: if a "thriving" charity is related to numbers and so financial turnover then yes if overall numbers of UK population has fallen then thm may have been right to correct his initial comment about a thriving sector. On the other hand if his son's peer group in which a third of his peers are foreign s representative however, then it will be interesting to know what impact that had on overall numbers of students irrespective of country of origin and therefore overall health of the sector. Not to mention success of a charity being the quality and reach of its work as well as financial turnover and numbers of individuals.

To repeat - nothing, two seperate issues
Happy to be shown the allusion - or perhaps it was merely an illusion? Agian two seperate issues
It didn't, you are confused.

Edit for edit: please avoid misreading some "small part" as being all independent schools. That has been cleared up already. As noted and clarified, some independent schools are doing well, even exporting their services as well as attracting foreign students to the UK. Others are struggling financially and academically. Overall the % of the pop educated in the independent sector is lower (slightly) than in the 60s but off its base - you can decide the reasons for that yourself.

thm: crossed posts -please see humble correction above.

Would be interesting to know if

Over the period, percentage of student in private education fell from 8% to 5% and then recovered (excuse the choice of phrase) to 7%.

means "uk students" or "students carrying out their studies in the UK" and if this drop in numbers was offset by large rise in numbers of foreign students coming to uk in more recent years.

Good question - honest answer, I am not sure. I think it's UK students. I will check.

Thank you for the correction. Nice to get back to the specifics.

Looks like domestic - interestingly number jumps to 14% post 16 (guessing numerator and denominator change)
To be specific it is 33.7% who receive financial assistance!!!
Value of bursaries has risen at approx 2x increase in fees
Since 2010 value of means-tested bursaries up almost 20%, scholarships flat.
The percentage of ethnic minorities is (slightly) higher than in the state sector - 26.1%
Foreign students 5% of total