And the point of it is?

[T.i.p.s.y]

The charity commission want schools to raise fees in order for schools to fund places for deprived children and those in abject poverty. This will price middle-income earners out of the private school market and these institutions will go back to the old days of having a tiny super-rich elite running the country and being head of major companies.

The hard work these schools have done to try and open to a wider pool of people has been a waste of time. Everyone complains that the top jobs go to those that are independently educated but in recent years it has been more about the education they received rather than their family background. We will go bak to the old days where the independent system will be made up of the influencial super-rich (schools will also have to be less academically selective to get the wealthiest in) and a small percentage of very poor children who will lack the self-esteem to make the most of such an education.

Is this so the comprehensive state schools will improve because they have a cohort of pupils and parents who support their childs education?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... upils.html

[yoyo123]

and comprehensive school parents don;t support their children's education??

[AB]

Before I can comment on this, I need to know if

it is acceptable to read 'The Daily Mail'?

[hopeforthebest]

Tipsy, I have sent you a pm. h4tb

[SunlampVexesEel]

Daily Mail spin.

What is the problem in encouraging fee-paying schools to offer free or discounted places?

They do operate as charities with all the tax benefits that ensue.

Of course, some well established institutions have pots of gold to fund a few places but to make the whole system more accessible requires the money to come from somewhere, and preferably not the poor tax payer... we've already got £1,000,000,000,000 to pay back.

[T.i.p.s.y]

But it will come from the tax payer. It comes from the tax payer who pays twice for their education and then has to pay more in order to pay for another child to enter the school.

The article was in all the papers and I know it's not spin because last year I received a letter from Winchester saying we were going to have to pay more fees to fund the bursary pot. Funding this does not please me, but that is not the point, the point is that these schools will become less diverse and we will go back to the old super-rich filling these schools and a tiny percentage of seriously poor kids. At present 20% are on means-tested bursaries at Eton but this would drop to less than 10% because they would need more rich people paying higher fees to fund the bursary system.

[sj355]

and a small percentage of very poor children who will lack the self-esteem to make the most of such an education.

If I was a very poor child or the parent of a very poor child I would not be entirely happy with this comment. Above which parental salary limit does your self esteem improve in this country?

By the way I have nothing against private schools, I think that many of them are doing a fine job in improving the education standards and also contibute in freeing positions in good state schools (comprehensive of grammars) for people that can not afford the IS. Hence they do contibute into social welfare!

[T.i.p.s.y]

There is lots of evidence that states that below a certain income or the environment your children are brought up in affects their self-esteem. Take council estates - how many children grow up happy and successful? I'm not talking about people whose income is too low to afford private school, but those children who are clearly deprived. If you are deprived then how can your self-esteem be high, every day is a struggle. And I'm talking from personal experience - there were days where my mother went without food to feed us. Even if I'd gone to one of these top schools I would have felt even worse about myself when I saw the wealth that these kids had. I was clearly one of the brightest in my year at school but I ended up dropping out and truanting and it was the kids who had a more secure family life that did better in school and in life. So if you think I'm generalising about the self esteem of deprived children, then maybe you should ask yourself if you've ever experienced extreme deprivation or been around it long enough to see it's impact. Being PC doesn't get us anywhere, the facts are the facts. A family needs to be lifted out of deprivation, not one child from that family.

[SunlampVexesEel]

http://www.hbosplc.com/economy/includes ... lFees1.doc has an article re: affordability.

And the following quote...

"The average worker in the following ten occupations could afford to send their child to private school in 2002 but can no longer do so without assistance from other sources: scientists, police officers, tax experts, engineers, journalists, clothes designers, teachers & lecturers, writers, trading standards officers and computer programmers."

[T.i.p.s.y]

But, the government don't want middle-income earners being given partial bursaries but deprived children being given full bursaries. Many private schools are filled with children of parents in these fields on partial bursaries, but they would no longer be entitled to anything either.