Radio 4 debate on private education.

[smegballs]

Listening to people say they want to ban private education, even ban private health....

Remember monopolies are really bad... unless they are state monopolies...

[kawakid]

If I could afford I would send my kids to private school, I could probably afford to send one, but not three. The local high school is something like 1400 people. When I was at school it was 400.

My cousin did the full boarding school thing, My grandfather offered to pay for me, but I viewed it as a punishment.

I do have private medical insurance though and have only ever had an operation in one. Though I have an NHS dentist, whom I had 4 visits and a root canal for £48 this month.
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I've a twin and a 4.

[Derivative]

These debates bore me.

If you want to fix wealth inequality, then tax people more.

Patching over the gaps is nonsense.

Social mobility in itself stands opposed to inequality.
It says something along the lines of - 'Work will set you free'.
I can't see that it creates anything but unhappiness.

We have those who rise from poor backgrounds, essentially isolated from their childhood friends and family. Breaking out and 'making it' is lonely business.

Then, there's those who fall from grace. A necessary consequence - upward mobility requires downward mobility - the world needs manual labour.

Normalizing incomes and wealth should be the goal, always. Problem is, that stands opposed to the religion of capitalism.

[pa_broon74]

No issues with private (or public if you're doon sooth) schools.

The issue I think is the clubby nature of them after the fact, I have no idea how you counter that side of it.

When you think about how George Osborne got his job for example, the arc his career has taken with relation to his actual ability, I'm sure its not just politics either.

Its a bit scary.
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Didn't catch anything.

[yen_powell]

[Derivative]

[smegballs]

My take is one of freedom of association and respecting a parents right to choose an education vendor. I'll accept the premise that state-mandated education is a good thing, a parent should be able to choose where to get that education from whether state/private school/private tutoring/homeschool etc etc.

If people want to agree with a third-party to exchange money for their kids education, I think that is pretty reasonable. As long as the private school education is to a standard equal to or greater than that of the state education, there isn't a problem.

According to the people on the show, there are numerically more kids with straight A's at GCSE from the 7% of kids in private schools than there are from all the kids in the state schools.

I'd actually be in favor of a more stratified schooling system, even at a state level. I went to a state school, and while it was pretty good and we had some good teachers, I wasn't being stretched or pushed at all. I think it would do bright kids a lot of good to have a separate school where they are pushed to work hard; the "smart but lazy" seems to come out pretty often.

[Rogerborg]

[Derivative]

[pa_broon74]

Perhaps the point is, you can be a low achiever at a public/private school but still make it into positions of power based on contacts. Where-as, if you're at a state school it doesn't really matter if you're bright or not because the contacts just won't be available to you.

To me, the problem with private schools is people go to them, get networked up and tend to do well on the merits of others. I'm not averse to the idea of private or grammar schools, letting brighter kids move ahead leaving the less able to other things, what we have at the moment in some regards (with some, not all private education) is the opposite.

When I think about it, history probably proves that point quite well.
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Didn't catch anything.

[Derivative]

[pa_broon74]

[G]

I was amused by the woman that suggest that it wasn't fair on the state school pupils because the best students would otherwise be 'helping' the less able students.

Reality?

The best students will most probably be put down by those that don't like their intelligence, and have their classes disrupted by those that don't care.
The less able end up getting bored when the teacher tries to challenge those at the top.

Personally, I found lessons noticeably better when we were 'setted' at school - it was left to department heads to choose how their department was run in that aspect.

The reality is there will always be ties to your social circle.
No real way around that - even communism has failed to stop that in reality.
And it works both ways - I bet your typical Etonite won't have contacts to get some plastering done at 'mates rates'.


Personally I think these days the 'class system' means very little in traditional terms.
We've got the same that you might expect in any country - probably actually less of a 'class system' than the US I'd say - where there often seems to be a bigger separation between rich and poor than in the UK.

[Nick 50]

Not sure how accurate this is and not exactly related but fairly close:

[G]

A nice anti-socialist, red-neck-fairly-land story, but misses out so many nuances to be meaningless.

[Nick 50]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Everyone getting the same is hardly Obama socialism. What is described is very different from a basic safety net.

All the best

Keith
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[Rogerborg]

Maybe. When you reach the point where about half of what you earn gets taken away from you in tax, NI and a pension contribution that might as well be placed on Syphon in the San Antonio Handicap, the incentive to work any more actually does drop off sharply.
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