Message #3461

[Martin]

They can reduce it as much as they like - the parents of rich kids can more than compensate for that. Even if the funding was reduced to zero they would be able to fully fund the school - after all that is exactly what is happening now!

But all that needs to happen is that all funding must be declared (as it is now) and funding above a certain level is simply filtered off and given to other schools on the basis of fair distribution.  Also, if a quarter of the students at the school came from the local council estate, they would be receiving the benefit of any extra funding provided by the rich quarter.

So yes there are things that the government would need to keep an eye on, but no they are not insurmountable.

Not if the majority of politicians have a vested interest in it not winning - regardless of the will of the masses! (and I afraid I do not trust the politicians of any hue...)

You're right, of course, we need to rid ourselves of corruption and self-service within the political system.  We need to make it easier, by having a proportional voting system, for new movements with fresh idealism, to get into the political arena, so that new parties can get a few MPs this year, a few more MPs next year.  We need to stop the strangle-hold that the three major parties have on the political system.  Not easy, I grant you, but if the will is there it can be done.
 

[Except that this is NOT my attitude... I entirely agree that we should work for greater equality - especially in the distribution of wealth. There is a book - The Spirit Level - which explains that, once the average income is above a certain point, the critical factor in all sorts of beneficial criteria is the ratio of the high(est) earners income to that of the median earners. Everything from health, happiness, crime, educational achievement and I forget how many other things they checked on all have the same shape of graph, with countries that have a large ratio having bad outcomes in all the criteria when compared to countries with a smaller ratio - whether that is caused by a smaller difference in the wage packets or by a large difference in wage packets coupled with an effective re-distributive taxation system. I just don't think trying to abolish the private schooling sector will achieve this...- and certainly not before persuading the majority of people who currently use the private schools that doing so is not the way forward.

Abolishing private education won't in itself achieve it. But as I said before, we are not in an either/or situation.  Your attitude seems to be that we should leave private education alone because it is too difficult to stamp out privilege in education.  But who are those politicians you were talking about, who have a vested interest in keeping the system as it is?  Who are those people in charge who won't change things?  Well the Prime minister is an Eaton boy and so is the chancellor, while the deputy PM is a Westminster boy!  We need to fight private education because it is part of the self perpetuating problem and we need to fight that self perpetuating problem at all levels, not just some.  Don't believe the hype that private education doesn't harm society.  It does. Massively.

If you want to get poor kids into the 'elite' schools the only way is for the govt to pay the full price for those place.

The 'only way'?  Who says? As I say, if you accept the hype then it becomes true.  If you challenge it at every level then it evaporates.

The first is that there would have to be a LONG term commitment - at least 20+ years - and with increasing numbers of places funded.

The struggle is a long one.  Possibly it is never completed. But there should be no compromise, no acceptance that things are good enough. We should be battling at all levels for a fairer world.  We should never say that it is right or OK for rich people to buy the most well paid and most powerful positions in society for their children. We should always challenge it.

In your final paragraph you seem to be arguing that poor children entering a school in a rich area wouldn't thrive because they wouldn't want to be there. This, I think, is not likely to be as much of a problem as you might think.   Yes there would be children with super-rich parents in the class, but there would be children with middle class parents in the class too, and then there would be the council estate children.  We are talking about a gradation of wealth backgrounds in most schools, and we would need school policies that did their best to promote an equality amongst pupils.

There is pretty much the same sort of gradation (though with the very highest end absent) within comprehensives in the leafy suburbs and although the affluence of some is very apparent and there are problems which stem from that, it is far better that these children go to the same school than that they should go to different schools based on the affluence of their parents!   Within such comprehensive schools you get bright children from poorer backgrounds and not so bright children from affluent backgrounds, classes are often streamed and therefore it's not too unusual for friendship groups to develop within those levels.   I agree that affluence plays a part in defining the groups which can arise, but there a reasonable amount of crosstalk.  If all that were to come of the kids being taught in the same classes, was a recognition, by everyone, that achievement and ability were not defined by one's class (poor kids realise that they are just as good, sometimes better than their richer peers and rich kids realise that there is talent outside their class) then that would be a massive bonus.  But there is more to it than that, real friendships develop across class boundaries and serve to break down the class system.