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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
ks.234 said:
Nonsense. Labour has not tried to abolish excellence or bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Your ideas of excellence appear to be enshrined in institutions of privilege and inherited advantage.

If an education system is not designed for everyone, it's not fit for purpose.

If 'excellence' is forbidden to those who cant afford it, it's morally repugnant
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Codswallop. Labour introduced the comprehensive system in the mid-60s and has attempted to phase out the selective Grammar schools ever since because it abhors excellence and wishes to bring all pupils into an 'egalitarian' system where everyone receives an identical education. By spreading all of the pupils who are currently in private, grammar and academy schools into the already strained, cash-stretched and oversized comprehensives it is merely going to drag the common denominator downwards. Its nothing more than the same old communist collectivism claptrap that has shown itself multiply to be an utter disaster. It is the tired old ideology of envy.

The government should be very grateful for the private schools. The more pupils there are in private schools, the fewer there are costing the state system money, which equates directly to more money per pupil. What the government should be concentrating on is raising the standard of the comps, improving facilities and teaching, reducing class-sizes, and getting on with ensuring that the schools turn out properly-educated and fully-prepared children. Killing private schools will have the opposite effect. It will merely ensure that excellence is forbidden for everyone.
 
Joe Hutch said:
I was bright but very lazy. That's grammar schools for you!
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I was a child genius who’s future was blighted by the hard left mediocritisation of education. Bolshevism must be confronted where ‘er it raises its many hydra heads, not least here among the crypto-communist trendies currently infesting pfm. Now the threat comes from the tin eared neoliberal corporatist elites of Brussels, with their ‘harmonisation’ killing individualism and effort stone dead. Don’t be fooled.
 
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eternumviti said:
Codswallop. Labour introduced the comprehensive system in the mid-60s and has attempted to phase out the selective Grammar schools ever since because it abhors excellence and wishes to bring all pupils into an 'egalitarian' system where everyone receives an identical education. By spreading all of the pupils who are currently in private, grammar and academy schools into the already strained, cash-stretched and oversized comprehensives it is merely going to drag the common denominator downwards. Its nothing more than the same old communist collectivism claptrap that has shown itself multiply to be an utter disaster. It is the tired old ideology of envy.

The government should be very grateful for the private schools. The more pupils there are in private schools, the fewer there are costing the state system money, which equates directly to more money per pupil. What the government should be concentrating on is raising the standard of the comps, improving facilities and teaching, reducing class-sizes, and getting on with ensuring that the schools turn out properly-educated and fully-prepared children. Killing private schools will have the opposite effect. It will merely ensure that excellence is forbidden for everyone.
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If the only credible education is selective or fee paying, how is everyone else to access education?
 
eternumviti said:
Codswallop. Labour introduced the comprehensive system in the mid-60s and has attempted to phase out the selective Grammar schools ever since because it abhors excellence...
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Well, my experience on the other side of the 'ed biz' showed me long ago that education requires a student to be willing to learn as well as the teacher having some more information, etc, to offer. On that basis I'd point out that what you keep writing - as exampled above - shows your mind is still stuck in the past, and your error is preventing you from learning. In particular:

1) It is a delusion to assert your 'faith' that Labour "abhors excellence".

2) That the economy and society has moved on and changed a lot since you stopped noticing. Thus policies have also moved on in ways which you haven't realised.

3) That, having been in the 'ed biz' *receiving* the output from schools, I took the time long ago to check. And the evidence seemed clear enough that Grammar schools weren't actually generating more 'excellence' *overall* by cherry-picking once other kinds of good school systems were in operation.

BTW I 'failed' the 11+ and ended up as an academic. Not unique in that, either. I did go to a 'grammar' school for two years because my 'secondary modern' didn't do A levels at all. Because it was taken for granted that essentially none of the students would be up to it, and the school wasn't *funded* to support them. So it was virtually pre-ordained that the school's 'excellence' would be poor.

When you are in such a school you get to know what 'discrimination' means. For many, that then put them off taking *themselves* seriously in terms of education.
 
Joe Hutch said:
I was bright but very lazy. That's grammar schools for you!
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It depends on the school. For some reason I was failed for the 11+ entrance (I got 100% in maths) and went to the local Sec Mod. The drummer in my band went to the local grammar. I left school at 15 with 6 'O' Levels one of which was self taught whilst my drummer took 10 'O' Levels at 16 and failed the lot!

My Sec Mod was an outstanding school but the grammar was not. Funny thing is years later after Uni I went into teaching in what was I believe one of the first Comps where I met and taught with some of the teachers who had slippered and caned me! Boy could they drink - I still have my 10 pints in one night drinking tie from them.

Cheers,

DV
 
The "11+" as a claimed 'intelligence test' really is a farce, TBH. It is amazing if anyone now thinks it has any use beyond passing a specific sort of test!
 
2 of mine passed the 11+ and went to grammar school(as did I), the education they received and the environment that allowed them to be taught benefited both immensely.
The 2 nippers who went to the local comp didn't fair quite as well to 16/18 but one still went to uni at 20 after following access courses(gaining a first)to make up for the factory-fodder level education he received. Interesting to note the head from the comp ended up as head of the grammar and sadly that once excellent school is starting to slip down the tables. No 4 son, tbf to the comp, wasn't at all academically minded but very gifted as a musician and the support he received was excellent. The point to this waffle is they all achieved what they have through merit not my ability to pay.
 
ks.234 said:
If the only credible education is selective or fee paying, how is everyone else to access education?
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I didn't say it was.

Two of my children, incidentally, went to an outstanding(OFSTED) non-selective grant maintained comprehensive school, so one with central govt funding but a board of governors rather than local authority governance. At the time it was at the top of the league tables for non-selective, and (in 2009) second for all 163 grammars and around 2800 comprehensives, and is at the top of the tables for all schools each year - in 2015 for example was 9th in all schools (including private) at A-Level or equivalent (they only do the IB). 60 to 70% of pupils go on to a Russell Group Uni.
 
eternumviti said:
I didn't say it was.

Two of my children, incidentally, went to an outstanding(OFSTED) non-selective grant maintained comprehensive school, so one with central govt funding but a board of governors rather than local authority governance. At the time it was at the top of the league tables for non-selective, and (in 2009) second for all 163 grammars and around 2800 comprehensives, and is at the top of the tables for all schools each year - in 2015 for example was 9th in all schools (including private) at A-Level or equivalent (they only do the IB). 60 to 70% of pupils go on to a Russell Group Uni.
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What are houses prices like in this schools catchment?
 
Maybe when someone can explain the difference between Stalin's Communism and Hitlers Fascism I might take politics seriously.
(I have experience of both)

Until such times I will happily sit on the fence and look at all politicians as self serving pillocks.

The answer for those too young to know is that Stalin killed more people in his quest for 'equality for all' than Hitler did.

Priceless.
 
misterdog said:
Maybe when someone can explain the difference between Stalin's Communism and Hitlers Fascism I might take politics seriously.
(I have experience of both)

Until such times I will happily sit on the fence and look at all politicians as self serving pillocks.

The answer for those too young to know is that Stalin killed more people in his quest for 'equality for all' than Hitler did.

Priceless.
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Hitler and Stalin strived for equality?
 
TheDecameron said:
I was a child genius who’s future was blighted by the hard left mediocritisation of education.
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Quite clearly your teachers failed to teach you the correct possessive form of who. Unless of course the rules of grammar are different in Scotland. I know for example that Scottish people say 'The chimney needs swept' instead of 'the chimney needs sweeping'.
 
Joe Hutch said:
You must be quite old then.
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Read 'experience' :)

The joys of youth are that 'Socialism' will provide for us all to be equal.

Well in Romania we believed this fallacy for decades, then we took Ceausescu and his family out and shot them all.


He had built himself a very nice palace, (2nd largest building in the world) at the expense of 'the many' who queued up for bread with armed guards outside.

Socialism,Fascism, Bollixism.

Democracy means you can vote for whatever baby kissing idiot floats your boat.
 
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