Private Education, Letters

                                   Private Schools

The Golden Stairs, Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)

Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

Any liberal, socially thoughtful person has qualms about private schools and the idea that the rich buy their children a head start, irrespective of intelligence and talent. Only 7 per cent are privately educated yet they dominate politics, finance, arts, media and elite sport. 


…Three quarters of judges and a third of MPs were privately educated; top universities hardly get more than half their intake from ordinary schools. In power, after a brief run of state-educated leaders – Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher and Major – we slumped back to the patrician Macmillanesque past with Blair and Cameron. Now, more private-school alumni wait in the wings.

…Some on the left prefer not to question the historic management of state schools, but instead blame a tiny handful of private ones for “limiting the life chances” of outsiders. Labour wants to slap 20 per cent VAT on fees, the Tories threaten charitable status, and everyone is irritated by old-boy networks.

…Sometimes parents do seek status or networks, or even value that elusive and often unpleasant behavioural quirk known as “polish”. But more often it is because the only state alternative is poor, or the fee-paying school offers green space, music, sport, art and drama.

Of course, private schools make mistakes, the most common being to spend millions on ridiculous grand facilities and glitzy brochures and hike the fees up so high that they fill up with international boarders and lose the middle class. Who then cheat and manoeuvre their way into the best state schools. Fees have certainly shot up beyond inflation: why would a day school need to charge three time more per pupil than the state spends? Maybe twice, maximum.

It would hardly be healthy if the private sector was bullied out of existence and the only education available was government-ruled, parsimonious, and led by an ever-changing procession of education secretaries. These amateur meddlers rarely last more than two years: my son saw off five before he was ten.

There is no guarantee that without private schools, state ones would abruptly improve. A series of governments has underfunded, overloaded and disrupted them. It is hard to see how feeding in that extra 7 per cent of children while giving up the £4 billion in tax would help.

(Libby Purves, The Times, 2019)

Private schools often offer a very good education and money enables those, who can afford such schools, a real chance of excellent future employment prospects for their children We know that politics, finance, arts, media, elite sport and the judiciary are heavily weighted with independently educated people. What about medicine, business, local government and education? Do they follow that pattern? Not only do independently educated children have more money per pupil spent on them than state school children but their job prospects in well paid employment are much greater too. They are not just given a head start by being at an independent school. Don’t their life prospects, their futures after being at such  schools, outweigh enormously, those coming from the state sector?  Two more radical articles follow from Robert Verkaik and Owen Jones. 

*…I’ve been told that next month a newly formed parliamentary group will call for the phasing-out of our private schools. The group wants to replicate what Finland managed in the 1970s when all-party support was gained for creating a national education system – under which its children continue to dominate the OECD education outcome tables.

If the cold winds of change are blowing in the direction of the independent sector, then its headteachers only have themselves to blame. The writing was on the wall as long ago as 1940; when Winston Churchill called on the president of the Board of Education to fill public schools with “bursary boys”. Since then the sector has had countless opportunities to reconnect with local communities. Instead, today just 6,000 (one in a hundred) privately educated pupils are on 100% bursaries.

…Through vested interest and undue influence, the schools have staved off meaningful reform since Churchill’s call. So we now find ourselves in the ludicrous situation where a charity such as Eton, which educated Prince William and David Cameron, is able to claim millions of pounds of tax savings each year, while asserting that it is doing us all a favour by not troubling the state sector with the education of future kings and prime ministers.

…With so much more cash pouring into the private sector, it is hardly surprising that its pupils are over-represented at Oxbridge (40%), in the senior judiciary (74%) and in the House of Commons (32%). So, is it any wonder, as we look on with horror at the democratic crisis created by the current crop of politicians of our leaders? Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, even Caroline Lucas, all benefited from a private education advantage. The time is right to urgently examine a system that gives so much to a select few but denies millions of children a fair start in life.

(Robert Verkaik, The Guardian, 2019)

Letters

*Sir, Anthony Wallersteiner, headmaster of Stowe, suggests parents feel “woe” at more state-school students reaching Oxbridge. Having spent £200,000-plus on schooling precisely to ensure an affluent future for their children, they complain of social engineering. And having bought their way through the door, they complain that selection is not based on academic merit. Is irony on the curriculum at Stowe, and could parents be invited for a lesson?

(Paul Coupar-Hennessy, Executive director, the Linacre Institute, Sheffield, The Times, 2019)

Private Education

A Gentleman and a Miner (Captain Morcom and Thomas Daniell)

John Opie (1761-1807) 
Photo Credit: Royal Institution of Cornwall [CC BY-NC]

…When those with wealth and power fear that their privilege is even mildly challenged, they invariably clothe themselves with victimhood. The crux of the Times’ splash was the fear that Oxbridge was discriminating against the privately educated in favour of state school pupils, constituting “social engineering”.

Let’s leave aside the fact that private education is the most striking example of social engineering in our society.

…That the Times appears to be taking up the cause of Britain’s apparently victimised private schools (a few weeks ago the newspaper printed a front-page story claiming these institutions saved the taxpayer £20bn) is itself interesting. A recent editorial extolled their virtues, warned that a Jeremy Corbyn-led government threatened them and added that he “would be wise to leave well alone”.

Britain’s privileged elites fear they are on the brink of a social revolution. “Rich prepare to flee Corbyn’s Britain as Tories desert PM,” screeched the front page of the Sunday Times. My inbox is currently full of press releases with titles such as “Can investors Corbyn-proof their portfolio?”, with media outlets offering advice to the wealthy on “how to protect your cash from Corbyn”.

…But as far as Britain’s elites are concerned, the shift from triumphalism to victimhood has only just begun – and it promises to be fascinating. After the rise of Thatcherism, the smashing of the trade unions, and the post-cold war sense that any alternative to free-market capitalism was permanently discredited, you can see why the wealthy felt drunk on the perceived victory. For them the 90s and 00s were a nonstop party with no hangover: even in the decade after the financial crash a decade ago, the fortunes of Britain’s 1,000 richest families more than doubled.

Migrants, refugees, Muslims, benefit claimants: all these groups became targets of fury in the aftermath of the crash. It is only relatively recently – on both sides of the Atlantic – that movements with political credibility have emerged to challenge the elites intoxicated with triumphalism. They’re still at their party, the champagne is still flowing, but it is starting to feel like the barbarians are hammering at the doors, and the bouncers can only hold them back for so long.

Britain’s social order is indeed tottering, and correction is long overdue. But expect the beneficiaries of the economic policies of the last generation to wail with the injustice of it all, because it’s barely even started.

(Owen Jones, The Guardian, 2019)