Education race to the middle agenda falls to the bottom?

[WindowGlass]

I find myself increasingly polarised regarding my opinion of education in the nation, and wonder how others feel about it.

I want all children to do well at school. But short of a totalitarian nanny-state, we can't enforce a child's upbringing, and neither would I want to.

A socialist left would want to bring down all the best, normalise and dilute them; only later to find what is lost by that scheme of things.

A hard right would entrench segregation and leave the under-privileged to the dogs, like some sort of inhumane evolutionary natural selection in education.

There are regional variations in education, but somehow politicians and even state educational professionals seem to fail to galvanise the best of each and spread the benefits.

Is Britain condemned to the bipolar pendulum swing to the right for a time and then to the left and back again and on.. This is our nation and our lives and our childrens' futures they're playing with. We pay the taxes, we are the electorate, we bear the children; can we not choose how our children are educated without governments interfering to restrict what little choice we have?

[Eromdap]

I think part of the problem is that we are unique human beings. Everyone of us is different and what suits some doesnt suit others. There are children, like my brother, who thrive in a co-ed school and would hate a singles sex school, I am the opposite.There are those who have the ambition to be successful whether they went to grammar or not and those that would just go with the flow (like me) and not fulfill their potential. Perhaps this is why thete is no one correct answer?

We are fortunate in this country to have a variety of routes through education that can be accessed by some. The only problem is that they cannot be accessed by all.

[Proudmumregardless]

The issue is with the middle classes and 11+ tourism.

If grammar schools were treated like special schools - for the truly gifted and not for those who could afford to travel round sitting different exams and pay for extravagant tutors - there would be far more social mobility than there is now

[Stroller]

Selection of any kind is a conundrum. Children whose families value and prioritise educational attainment and a semblance of organised living will find any selective education system easier to access. That's not fair to the high IQ children whose parents are unsupportive in a grammar area. But selection is also permitted on other grounds. Using religion, gender, narrow post code catchments or even sibling priority to determine access to schools always gives some an advantage over others. No child controls where their family lives, whether they participate in demonstrable religion, whether their parents produced a sibling at a convenient time, whether they are the right gender for a convenient single sex school. Is that fair?

The issue is with the middle classes and 11+ tourism.

If grammar schools were treated like special schools - for the truly gifted and not for those who could afford to travel round sitting different exams and pay for extravagant tutors - there would be far more social mobility than there is now

If the sentence read "...not for those who could afford prep schools", prep schools being rather more expensive than tutors, would you agree with it?

Preparation is essential. Paid tuition isn't, be it tutors or prep schools. Even if you dislike the system - and I do - you can choose to work within it, move to a non-selective bit of the world or extract your child from it and home educate.

What is tourism? One exam more than your child did? Blaming the parents is futile because some of them aren't as bright as their children or are in dire situations and refuse to recognise how much pressure their children are under. They see the 11+ as a massive but temporary endeavour, on which the fate of the family may hinge. They don't believe that their child could be one of the majority who won't get through the exams even though mathematically, that's the soul-destroying reality for many. They also don't see an enjoyable childhood with lots of unscheduled free time as a good (or better) thing in its own right.

Tourism could be stopped in the blink of an eye by the government tracking every school applicant with their existing school pupil number and restricting the number of exams a child sits to "X". Or by local authorities such as Bucks saying, if at the time of applying for the exam, a child isn't living within one hour by public transport of the school they've applied for, we won't mark the paper and/or we'll exclude the score from those we use to standardise and set the qualifying threshold and/or we won't release results to tourist parents because the application was ineligible.

The bigger system can easily be changed by the government (e.g. cut the charitable status of fee-paying schools, force their consumers to bear the full economic brunt of their choices and let the schools stand or fall on their merits) and by local authorities and academies who set and operate admission criteria. As simple taxpayers, our influence is limited. People try to do what they think is best (even if it seems barmy to everyone else).

[salsa]

+1 Well said Stroller. The issue is more complex than it appears at first.

[timothylewin]

surely if the system is funded by our taxes and maybe in some cases by this paying as much as 40%, then this is a right in itself to those?

[hermanmunster]

surely if the system is funded by our taxes and maybe in some cases by this paying as much as 40%, then this is a right in itself to those?

you know full well that the right to education is determined by living in the country not by the amount of tax an individual pays

[Catseye]

A very good discussion.

I think one has to be on one side or the other, sitting on the fence is untenable.

Either, you are for state funded selective schools or you are against.

Private schools are by definition an individual's choice in a capitalist society but I think it would be good idea that all ministers of HMG are morally obliged to use the state sector.

I would agree that the charitable status of such schools should be withdrawn but it would add little more than 5% to the fees of an average Indie school, since there would be no compulsion on them to offer any means tested bursaries or share facilities with others.

[Proudmumregardless]

Everyone has equal right to access any and all forms of education. It should not be a priviledge for only those who can afford it, which a grammar education is rapidly becoming.

[salsa]

Everyone has equal right to access any and all forms of education. It should not be a priviledge for only those who can afford it, which a grammar education is rapidly becoming.

I know a lot of people whose children went to prep schools and/or had tutors and their children didn't pass or didn't have a high enough score. The children either got nervous on the day or refused to do enough work to prepare. At the other extreme, I know people who have been preparing from year 2 and who have had top marks. These children have been also tutored, children of immigrants without spare cash, but who have made it a priority to tutor their children.

Either way, the children had to put in the work.