11 Plus Exams Forum

Title says it all really!

An article from the Guardian relating how today's 'upcoming' (how I hate that word!) university fees are comparable to the fees paid by parents 200 years ago to apprentice their children.

link here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/201 ... hefty-fees" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Perhaps we parents aren't quite so hard done by? Did we become to used to the 'Nanny State' paying for everything?

very interesting !

yes we have got used to the state paying for everything - gone through my father's generation who benefited from the first free senior and higher education and were very, very grateful for it, to the those who thought it had always been like that and always would be, to the current generation who are having to pay again.

Yes, the issue is touched upon in David Copperfield - are we moving back towards Dickensian times maybe?

Well perhaps it's a good thing....if we want only the boys to have an education, and to go back to the days of gentry and paupers and poorhouses. I am not so sure.

Looking for help wrote:Well perhaps it's a good thing....if we want only the boys to have an education, and to go back to the days of gentry and paupers and poorhouses. I am not so sure.

Oh I don't know - I think the 18th century could teach us a lot. Think of all the money the government could save if they abolished the child care element of the child tax credits and we all left our children with gin soaked baby farmers instead.

I always look at anything the state pays for as a bonus (or is it?). Where I come from you pay for everything so I find it quite odd when people morn about the cost of small things like uniform when they have free education. Its rather sad that because education is free in this country, its not greatly valued. If parents paid for it, even a little bit then there would see more value in it.

Girls are getting more priority from parents now where I come from. Apparently you have a better chance of girls looking after you in your golden years, so tides have changed to giving girls a good education

If we abolished all welfare, childcare, etc., and put the unemployed into the workhouse we might even be able to do manage without income tax again and put the tax burden back where it properly belongs - on the poor. I think that's roughly the strategy the Conservative Party have been pursuing for several years now.

Mike