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Labour to abolish independent schools?

Should we abolish independent schools in the UK?

  • Yes

    Votes: 20 24.7%
  • No

    Votes: 57 70.4%
  • Undecided

    Votes: 4 4.9%

  • Total voters
    81
There are a number of aspects to this.

1) Charitable status essentially means the state is part-funding the relevant schools on the nominal basis they are a public (in the real sense) good. The qpq has mainly been that they take in a few 'free' pupils or do some other 'good works'. But my impression is that it would be better to scrap the charitable status or require a rather - 'state' decided - level of 'public good'.

2) Many of the schools give their products an advantage simply on the basis of then being recognised as 'having gone to a good school' (sic) or being 'one of us' when trying to get a job in sectors where their predecessors are deciding who to employ in nice jobs. In effect, they get an advantage from the label stuck to them, plus, perhaps having been taught 'rhetoric' and how to look natty and confident even when clueless.

3) Having the public schools to go to means the wealthy can cheerfully vote to cut provision for state/local schools because it means they can pay less tax and dodge the consequences.

So my inclination is to require them to take at least half their intake from children nominated by the local authority and must them treat them exactly as the 'paying' students. And to remove charitable status in the current mode and have the local authority pay on a basis equivalent to other types of school. (cf state for local authority were relevant.)

The bottom line isn't just advantages in terms of education. It is advantages in being labelled in a way that allows an elete to self-replicate and keep a hold in sectors of the economy which their actual ability doesn't really justify.

Anyone looking at BloJo or Jakob reely-smug will probably recognise the above 'labelling' effect taking priority over actual ability. And we get stuck with the results.
 
many state schools in the UK are still unable to control disruptive pupils, who then get to ruin the school experience for their peers.
This is a really big issue in State Schools. Bringing in sin bins for the little monsters has some merit but, if they then leave at 16/18 with no qualifications or modifications to their behavior, what happens then? The destruction of the education of the many by the few is a real problem.
 
Melissa Benn's book about the idea of a National Education Service is pretty good:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1788732200/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

She's to the right of her dad and to the left of her brother, and is broadly "sensible".

Can't quite remember how far she goes on private schools but I'm sure she's against them having charitable status, for most of the reasons already given on this thread.
 
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Melissa Benn's book about the idea of a National Education Service is pretty good:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1788732200/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

She's to the right of her dad and to the left of her brother, and is broadly "sensible".

Can't quite remember how far she goes on private schools but I'm sure she's against them having charitable status, for most of the reasons already given on this thread.

It is a good book and I don't expect Labour's manifesto to depart strongly from it. From memory she wasn't thorough enough in her history. She's correct about the 60s being a time of geat change, very clearly, but the first selective grammars to turn 'comp' were immediately after the war. It's important to realise that the comprehensive movement didn't emerge from hippies and flares as the Tories would have you believe...
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
So my inclination is to require them to take at least half their intake from children nominated by the local authority and must them treat them exactly as the 'paying' students. And to remove charitable status in the current mode and have the local authority pay on a basis equivalent to other types of school. (cf state for local authority were relevant.)

But the private schools have much higher costs... they are attempting ( in their eyes ) to turn out a superior product. If you remove charitable status and then make them take 50% state school children and only pay them the state school rate per child they will go bankrupt.But I think you know that. If you want rid of them then just ban them.
 
i think it's easy to classify privately educated families as being privileged. I think it is true that some are but the majority of families are from taxi drivers, shop owners and ordinary workers who want to spend a higher portion of their income to educate their children. Many people struggle to put their kids through because they do not have a good school nearby.
Balls.
 

https://www.theguardian.com/educati...d-kynaston-francis-green-engines-of-privilege

At every rung of the income ladder there are a small number of private-school attenders; but it is only at the very top, above the 95th rung of the ladder – where families have an income of at least £120,000 – that there are appreciable numbers of private-school children. At the 99th rung – families with incomes upwards of £300,000 – six out of every 10 children are at private school.
 
Sorry I just can’t take any of this seriously. Private education is one of the great English fetishes and the idea that it predominantly serves the scions of taxi drivers one of the great English myths. It’s just total bollocks! Private schools are on the whole for very wealthy people and they bestow a massive and by any standards undeserved advantage on already privileged children.

Honestly, this isn’t a difficult issue. If you actually cared about education, or children, or equality you’d be calling for them all to be closed tomorrow. Labour won’t do it unfortunately because it would be like threatening to jettison the queen into space. The orgy of forelock-tugging it would induce.
 
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probably true but define 'appreciable'. It's a middle class thing (do we have a posher class these days?) largely, but not exclusively. Both systems are mixed...the comps have a sprinkling of rich kids from left wing backgrounds, whose families are normally bright, supportive and the kids do really well, tho rarely, if ever go to Oxbridge, probably anyway to the delight of parents, because the Russell group are a bit more palatable at dinner parties or left wing conference; while the indies have a good few working class kids (normally Sun reading right wing working families who dun good. Their kids also do well and then go run the family scrap business after a spell at Cambridge doing PPE.
Enough stereotypes:)
 


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