Should England ban private schools

[Gandalf]

You admit that you did it though. I am not sure that being elite is really the goal, but to just be self sufficient and able to get ahead in a field of choice you enjoy. Very few people are what you would call elite and I just argue to tax them more and invest in better state sector education. The private sector is a personal choice like healthcare. Up to the consumer.

Connections do play a role but there was a Guardian piece, or at least I think it was The Guardian, that conceded that private school students end up being two years ahead of state school students in terms of academic development. That is significant. In the state sector conditions are so bad 40% of teachers drop out within 5 years and I am not sure eradicating private education is fair on those students or those teachers who appear more content. Out here there is a lot of private education and parents know what raising a child is before getting into it whence few 6 children households. It is smarter and people are willing to invest themselves. Otherwise, why have a child if you don't want to nurture or invest in outcomes?

I certainly wouldn't want to send a child to a modern inner city state school back home. I would honestly consider alternatives and just try to provide the things that I lacked. It would mean a lot of the things I see here and have learned along the way. I would want my child to be trilingual, to understand that there are many wonderful skilled responsible jobs out there etc. It has little to do with trying to be George Soros or Doctor Evil.

[Fenster]

It makes sense, however, the hypocrites proposing it is an insult.

[Kirkland Laing]

You admit that you did it though. I am not sure that being elite is really the goal, but to just be self sufficient and able to get ahead in a field of choice you enjoy. Very few people are what you would call elite and I just argue to tax them more and invest in better state sector education. The private sector is a personal choice like healthcare. Up to the consumer.

Connections do play a role but there was a Guardian piece, or at least I think it was The Guardian, that conceded that private school students end up being two years ahead of state school students in terms of academic development. That is significant. In the state sector conditions are so bad 40% of teachers drop out within 5 years and I am not sure eradicating private education is fair on those students or those teachers who appear more content. Out here there is a lot of private education and parents know what raising a child is before getting into it whence few 6 children households. It is smarter and people are willing to invest themselves. Otherwise, why have a child if you don't want to nurture or invest in outcomes?

I certainly wouldn't want to send a child to a modern inner city state school back home. I would honestly consider alternatives and just try to provide the things that I lacked. It would mean a lot of the things I see here and have learned along the way. I would want my child to be trilingual, to understand that there are many wonderful skilled responsible jobs out there etc. It has little to do with trying to be George Soros or Doctor Evil.

I did it but I'm one of a vanishingly small number who did. The financial industry has always had to employ a few people smart enough to handle all the money rather than hand it to so and so from the top floor's son or nephew who bankrupts the bank and puts them all out of a job.

Most of the professions and the people around them though are uniformly generations of the same families. My money and connections leveraged my very bright sister's ascent from TV journalist to owning a chunk of one of the world's biggest PR firms. Without the money and the threats and the steamrollering people she could never have made the jump from journalist to where she is now, somebody with money/connections/ability would have beaten her to it.

I don't go to any elite events/gatherings but my sister does as part of her work and she tells me "in Britain I'm a fucking unicorn". Everybody else is from the same class, same posh accents, they all know each other and so on. The only people she meets with provincial accents are showbiz people whose talent got them there. She actually makes a point now of trying to hire people who have some kind of accent as they're far harder workers/smarter than the equivalent posh person just to have made it to the level she hires at.

We're the second from bottom major industrial economy when it comes to social mobility, just ahead of America. Anything that can be done to break up this monopoly, especially as it would greatly boost the economy in the long run, should be done.