I know posts appearing just before a page turn sometimes get missed, but I really thought that advanced fee thing I posted at the bottom of page 1 would have elicited more (any) reaction…

Alright, I’ll be honest, I had that one up my sleeve when I started the thread and thought it would be become the main angle on the debate…

Anyone?

I’ll accept your figures at face value

To be fair, I did quote the source when I first mentioned it…

Less easy when it’s your son that has the choice of 40+ pupils in a class, or 12. If you had the money, can you honestly say you wouldn’t go the private route?

That’s not the real choice is it though? No one picks a private school because of class size (it’s just one of the ‘advantages’). they pick private schools because they are elitist and give the child an advantage. Private school’s sole offer is that they are exclusive, otherwise what’s the point?

The argument may as well be; If you had a choice of two schools offering first class education with small class sizes and equal opportunity for all pupils, why would you choose one that you had to pay for?

That’s not the real choice is it though? No one picks a private school because of class size (it’s just one of the ‘advantages’). they pick private schools because they are elitist and give the child an advantage. Private school’s sole offer is that they are exclusive, otherwise what’s the point?

I can tell you that I specifically chose a private school for class size and class size only. The assumption I make is that there is more contact and thus a better educational input. To me beyond that there are more disadvantages than advantages, but that is quite important to me.

i have never understood why companies whos business is education are allowed to claim to be charities when they clearly arent. They are businesses providing a service to those who choose to pay the fee and are accepted.

All this talk of grants and having a token gesture of scholarships is just a very thin con to justify the benefits of being a charity and there are many. Im quite sure that they companies would stay registered as companies if the tax advantages made that more attractive than charitable status.

Less easy when it’s your son that has the choice of 40+ pupils in a class, or 12. If you had the money, can you honestly say you wouldn’t go the private route?

However, some research suggests class size has far less impact than better teaching methods.
I have a friend who’s offspring won a sports scholarship to a private school. The friend happens to be education officer/quality improvement officer. The statement “less than impressed” has passed her lips regards the teaching methods and “teaching to the exam”. A lot of the teaching (outside the of the “extra curricular”) is supposedly pretty poor in this school.
So, Tarquin and Portitia get their A* grades, but cannot problem solve their way out a paper bag.
No matter, as Portitia’s dad can get her that internship if he just has a chat with his golf partner….

( 😉 )

i have never understood why companies whos business is education are allowed to claim to be charities when they clearly arent. They are businesses providing a service to those who choose to pay the fee and are accepted.

How about a charity that supports state education systems and employees to do things ‘better’?

That’s not the real choice is it though? No one picks a private school because of class size (it’s just one of the ‘advantages’). they pick private schools because they are elitist and give the child an advantage. Private school’s sole offer is that they are exclusive, otherwise what’s the point?

So you somehow know the thought process my wife and I went through 20 years ago?
That’s very clever of you. Did you go to a private school?

It was the only thing that made us look at private schools.

and these institution serve NO other purpose than to prevent that from happening.

😯

Private school’s sole offer is that they are exclusive, otherwise what’s the point?

😯 😯

Very very damning there THM
Its blindingly obvious they give their pupils an advantage WHoTF is going to pay those sort of fees if they don’t get a better education/advantage?

Would the statistics that prove the advantage help or will you just emoticon them in an intellectual fabulous and hilarious way ?

DO you really wish to argue you send your kids there for a reason other than to give them a better education/start in life?

It was the only thing that made us look at private schools.

and if you hadn’t had the money, what would you have done then?

sent his/her kids to a non fee paying school – just a guess?

A lot of the teaching (outside the of the “extra curricular”) is supposedly pretty poor in this school.
So, Tarquin and Portitia get their A* grades, but cannot problem solve their way out a paper bag.
No matter, as Portitia’s dad can get her that internship if he just has a chat with his golf partner….

So? Portitia still gets her internship regardless.

and if you hadn’t had the money, what would you have done then?

sent his/her kids to a non fee paying school – just a guess?

Exactly.
And your point is?

Point? No point – just answering the question.

If there is a point to any of this, seems to be improving ALL education would be a good starting point. But that requires a bit more head-scratching….so guess what, lets focus on something else instead….

Junkyard- education is an advantage. If you spend 30 mins with your kids every night (regardless of what type of school they go to) then you’re giving them an advantage over Kylie who mum just smokes tabs and watches Jeremy Kyle all day. Are you saying we should all stop doing that too?

If something is going to be ‘Private’ is should be just that – no state involvement, including tax breaks for ‘charitable status’. While I’m at it, I’d make all the faith schools become private or make them remove all religious connections.

The opportunity to educate other people’s children is a rare privilege, bringing with it a huge responsibility to provide the best all-round education possible as we aim to prepare young people for happiness and success in their adult lives. At Hogwarts we take this responsibility extremely seriously. We care about the individual and pride ourselves in the warmth of a community in which all our pupils feel valued.

We live in exciting and fast changing times and this means that providing an outstanding, progressive and well-rounded education is more important than ever. Of course examination results matter and at Hogwarts our pupils consistently achieve excellent results in all areas of the curriculum, giving them access to the top universities in the UK and overseas. However, this is just one aspect of a Hogwarts education and pupils are supported to show ambition both within and beyond the classroom.

School should be fun and happy children are more likely to be successful. We see it as our responsibility to bring out our boys’ talents, to broaden their interests and to develop their personal qualities. To do this we aim to foster confidence, perseverance, tolerance and integrity; to enhance communication skills; to embrace creativity; to encourage teamwork; and to promote an open-minded and outward-looking mentality so that boys are ready to make a really positive contribution to their wider community.

Tradition is important here and still shapes some of our guiding principles but we seek to build on the past while looking to the future. This is, and will remain, a forward-thinking school that enthusiastically embraces innovation and new opportunity.

We are committed to making a Hogwarts education accessible to talented boys whatever their background and very significant levels of financial support (up to 100% of full fees) are available through our various bursary schemes. Full details can be found here.

Best wishes

Spanker

Old fool missed the bit about the sole objectives of the school and the sole motivation of the parents. Muppet…

Point? No point – just answering the question.

Sorry THM, what’s the point of nicks’s comment.

If something is going to be ‘Private’ is should be just that – no state involvement, including tax breaks for ‘charitable status’. While I’m at it, I’d make all the faith schools become private or make them remove all religious connections.

The problem with that, as has been mentioned, without private schools the cost of the state sector would go up a lot, which would be funded by general taxation.

Right

So my parents, who were both state school teachers themselves, chose to scrimp and save, eschew a bigger house, drove a lada and take camping holidays and send me and my sister to a private school so they could show off to their friends (who wouldn’t give a sh#t anyway)

Or did they perhaps do it because they (probably quite rightly given their direct experience) believed we would get a better education and therefore have a better chance in life of getting a good job etc by going to a private school compared to the local state schools?

Don’t you think they would have preferred to not pay school fees if they thought the education was the same?

I think in the real world you will find very few parents of private school kids (and I’m talking normal private schools not the “name” ones like eton) send their kids for the elitist status and more becaus they believe spending their hard worked for income in this way is looking after their kids better compared to having a bigger car or house.

The trouble with arguments like this (&the NHS one) is that the “death to the elitist toffs” contingent have already made their mind up before they’ve started.

Disclosure: I went to a private school, initially on an assisted place, which was gradually tapered until by the end of sixth form my parents were paying very nearly full fees. I just checked and my old school is ~£6k/term now.

Not surprisingly I’ve no objection to private schooling. Not because I don’t think it’s unfair, but because I don’t see how you can draw the line as to what’s acceptable. If paying for school is bad, then paying for any private tuition must also be bad. So then paying for music lessons is bad. Same goes for paying for sports activities. Paying for family trips to museums etc. at the weekend. Paying for anything educational. Even paying for books to read at home: I can afford to buy books, some parents can’t. That’s very unfair. So buying books for your children should be banned. There should be a standardised government-issued set of reading materials and nothing more. To be fair. “SJ, you’re being obtuse”. Yes, maybe a little, to illustrate the point. All of those things are examples of money buying education. If that is truly your beef then you need to ban all of them, not just the obvious one at the top of the list. And it’s not going to happen. If you simply hate the private schools on some anti-privilege basis without considering what that really means, you’re another example of the them/us problem and you’re not helping.

If you’re genuinely worried about fairness then hell, genetics are unfair. I read to my daughter every day while some parents don’t or won’t or can’t. Do we all need to stop reading, to make things fair ? [1]

But this is the internet. So of course the attitude is: everyone’s children should have all the privileges I choose to bestow on mine, but none of the things I don’t/can’t, because that’s unfair. Without realising how ridiculous and self-centred this is 😆

All that said, I’m not sure the private education did me much good. I definitely got better GCSEs / A-Levels than I would have done at the local Comp, but I got a pretty poor degree and spent a long time in crappy jobs. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been “happy”. The haters obviously won’t accept this because they’re somehow convinced we all automatically become CEOs of major international banks without ever doing any work whatsoever, have mind-blowing fun 24/7 and fart £50 notes every time we laugh.

[1] A story that still shocks me, an ex-colleague recounted that at parents’ evening when told his son’s reading wasn’t progressing he said to the teacher “that’s your job”. He genuinely believed he had no responsibility whatsoever for his son’s education.

@sundayjumper

Your shocking story is one my Dad heard repeated many, many times as the head of an inner city Midlands primary school.

edlong – Member
I know posts appearing just before a page turn sometimes get missed, but I really thought that advanced fee thing I posted at the bottom of page 1 would have elicited more (any) reaction…

I’ll bite

This should be tackled as part of a wider overhaul of the tax system to make tax avoidance impossible.

I have mixed feelings about private schools, I attended one for a few years of my education (would’ve loved to continue, but my parent’s finances changed and they could no longer afford to send me).

In the time I was there, I went from a bored under performing 9 year old who was being put down and ignored by my teachers to a top performer in the school in the same subject (I still remember when we were being told not to “try to run before I could walk”, and my dad tells me that preparing for the exam he went through some stuff with me, asking if I had done it at school and I assured him that whilst I hadn’t done it at school, I knew how to do it).

The independent school had a fantastic leadership team (especially the primary school – this makes me massively geeky but I loved the headmaster who is sadly no longer with us) who really engaged the children and found something in every child that they could excel at and develop confidence through. I was, despite not being on a full scholarship, towards the bottom end of the financial spectrum there though!

When I returned to the state school system (around 13), I was confronted with classmates who were frightened to be seen as clever, some fairly horrendous teaching in some subjects (and really good teaching in others, to be fair) and very little opportunity for people to develop confidence through extracurricular activities.

I don’t think private schools should be stripped of their charitable status, or banned (and I’m horrendously biased due to the benefit I gained from attending one). I do think, however, that state schools should be brought up to the same standard – primarily through having a lot more sport and music and better provision for art – at which point private schools would exist only for those who saw it as an upper class badge of honour.

Sundayjumper sums it up pretty well.
Thanks.

Which comes back to the same issue in all these debates – the single most important factor determining educational success is not the type of school, it is the type of parent

the ultimate random lottery…..

So we can sum up under life’s not fair, deal with it. But on a wider note, surely schools and Uni’s fall under (b) of the charities act.

The 13 descriptions of purposes listed in the Charities Act are:

(a) the prevention or relief of poverty

(b)the advancement of education

(c) the advancement of religion

(d) the advancement of health or the saving of lives

(e) the advancement of citizenship or community development

(f) the advancement of the arts, culture, heritage or science

(g) the advancement of amateur sport

(h) the advancement of human rights, conflict resolution or reconciliation or the promotion of religious or racial harmony or equality and diversity

(i) the advancement of environmental protection or improvement

(j) the relief of those in need, by reason of youth, age, ill-health, disability, financial hardship or other disadvantage

(k) the advancement of animal welfare

(l) the promotion of the efficiency of the armed forces of the Crown, or of the efficiency of the police, fire and rescue services or ambulance services

(m) any other purposes currently recognised as charitable or which can be recognised as charitable by analogy to, or within the spirit of, purposes falling within (a) to (l) or any other purpose recognised as charitable under the law of England and Wales

On this general subject, there appear to be some religious sects – like the Brethren – whose religious charity status and business affairs appear less than transparent.

Places of worship are less than welcoming to outsiders, schools are closed, there cannot be wider social benefits because they very much operate as isolated communities and, furthermore, the ownership of homes and businesses is tied to the organisation.

IMHO, the whole issue of charitable status needs overhaul. It’s not currently regulated properly and has bloated beyond the public and moral basis of what would commonly be held to constitute charity in its purest sense.

I really thought that advanced fee thing I posted at the bottom of page 1 would have elicited more (any) reaction…

I see nothing wrong in it, all that’s happening is that by paying in advance the school can get a return on the money – the net present value of paying £30k for 5 years is a lot higher than paying £150k up front so the upfront figure should be reduced substantially. I’d still pay the annual figure though as would rather invest in something that would give me a better return than a guaranteed interest rate product.

Try calling up HMRC and asking them to stop your PAYE because you’d decided to give £700 a month to the local cat rescue instead.

But if you are a basic rate taxpayer you can gift aid any donations and the charity claims the tax you paid back. Same effect.

The interest thing is a complete red herring – investment on the basis of differential discount rates is widespread throughout life, you just don’t notice it – should be make paying your insurance premium upfront tax avoidance because you get a discount? The real reason parents look at paying their school fees upfront is to avoid school fee inflation which is well in excess of CPI.

The fact it is a red herring is illustrated by the fact that the FCA are investigating private schools for lending money to parents so they are concerned about the reverse position.

Old fool missed the bit

I not sure he is even 40 yet.

most of the cabinet attended

Oh I should probably also point out that only 5 members of the Cabinet attended private schools, the remaining 17 were educated in the state sector.

I see nothing wrong in it, all that’s happening is that by paying in advance the school can get a return on the money – the net present value of paying £30k for 5 years is a lot higher than paying £150k up front so the upfront figure should be reduced substantially. I’d still pay the annual figure though as would rather invest in something that would give me a better return than a guaranteed interest rate product.

The interest thing is a complete red herring – investment on the basis of differential discount rates is widespread throughout life, you just don’t notice it – should be make paying your insurance premium upfront tax avoidance because you get a discount? The real reason parents look at paying their school fees upfront is to avoid school fee inflation which is well in excess of CPI.

Sorry, I must have not explained this one very clearly.

The school doesn’t make the money, the parents do – the school makes the investment, and because they have charitable status they don’t pay any tax on the interest it earns. They then give that interest back to the parents (in the form of a discount on their fees).

The parents are not paying in advance to fix their fees at today’s price, that doesn’t happen, the fees can (and probably will) still rise, effectively they’re paying the money “on account” purely as a way of investing it and dodging the tax that would be due if they did it in their own names. Schools actively market the scheme on this basis – that it is a tax efficient investment. They’re not getting a discount for paying up front and helping the school’s cashflows – the value of the discount they receive is the value of the (tax free) interest that has been earned on the investment.

Sorry if I could have been clearer about that, I’ll try and find something on the internet that explains it better than I can..

Your main point stands
However

I should probably point out you got both those numbers wrong
its 8 from 27 FWIW

Despite developments, though, Cabinet ministers are still over four times more likely to have gone to a fee-paying school for most of their secondary education when compared with the overall UK population, of which just seven per cent went to private school.

A fair few went to selective schools though. Feel free to read
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/prime-minister-theresa-may-new-cabinet-lowest-number-of-privately-educated-ministers-a7138116.html
FWIW the least privately educated cabinet since clement at less and still x4 the representation would expect.
Still its does not confer any advantage now does it…THM will explain the statistical anomaly via the medium of ignoring emoticons

Abolish private schools is a lose:lose situation. Folly and unnecessary. Why close down things that we are good at? Bizarre idea…

we were good at slavery, if someone thinks that private schools are wrong and act as an anchor to social mobility than its a valid point. Seems to work in Finland.

THM are you happy that the single biggest factor in education is type (mostly education and wealth) of parent? I am not I thinks its a **** disgrace and I think it could, can and in some cases is being changed but that private education acts to prevent this. Why should kids from poor families not have access to good education which gives them the opportunity to even the odds?

As an addition to the OP, is it right that teachers in private schools get access to the teachers pension scheme too?

cranberry – Member
Every parent paying fees for a child at a private school is already paying for the education that the child won’t take up at a state school and as they will be higher rate tax payers living in expensive houses they will be paying for the education of the children of an unknown number of Internet Argumentalists on here who will, no doubt, be shouting from the rooftops at how unfair everything.

( when they are not puking at the idea of someone giving a lot of money to a worthy charity )

Private education is very cost-effective for the state and long may it continue.

I’m sorry, but this is awful.

I’ve seen this logic applied to healthcare too, and it’s as wrong-headed there as it is here.

The teachers at private schools have in all likelihood been educated and trained by the state. If those teachers work in the independent sector, then the social contract that underpins state-funded services begins to fall apart, as the investment made by the state in those teachers is not realised beyond income tax. This deprives the state sector of – in all likelihood – good quality teachers, a drift that’s not very likely to be ‘cost-effective’.

The parents of children at independent schools are more likely to be parents with – for a number of reasons – an investment in the eduction of their children that sees them more involved in the running of the school and more invested in the quality of education the school delivers. This is a less tangible benefit that the state sector loses with the growth of the private sector. The net effect is a lowering of the overall levels of attainment and active involvement at state schools, which is a difficult gap to fill. Attempting to do so takes real, tangible money, again something unlikely to be ‘cost-effective’.

What you’ve written is straight from the private sector manifesto of how to strip the public sector of everything of value, and it’s exactly that sort of selfish shortsightedness that has led to the miserable experience living in this country has become for an unacceptably large number of citizens.

Yours etc,

Mr I Argumentalist

THM are you happy that the single biggest factor in education is type (mostly education and wealth) of parent?

It is not an emotive issue for me – it is simply what it is – in education and well beyond as others have noted.

I am not I thinks its a **** disgrace and I think it could, can and in some cases is being changed but that private education acts to prevent this.

I disagree – an Act of Parliament does not determine parental attitudes. They do. Hence good parents who value education exist in all levels of society/income mix and vice versa. This has SFA to do with governments/acts of parliaments

No it wont change the parents attitude, what it could change is the quality of education and the opportunities for the pupils. But then I expect you knew that.

the single biggest factor in education is type (mostly education and wealth) of parent?

Life ain’t fair deal with it. But seriously killing private education wouldn’t stop anything. I went to a top performing comp, was the school any good, not especially, but lots of kids had outside private tuition and hence, exam marks were good. You can’t stop that.

I’d just like to point out that it is possible to take a dim view of private schools benefitting from charitable status without necessarily finding that their very existence is an abomination and that they should cease to exist entirely..