The Court of Appeal reduces the abortion lady’s sentence from 28 months to 14 months suspended.
I think that's fair. She's going to have an awful lot of difficulties in her life with the sentence still.
Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde and Mrs Justice Lambert, said Foster’s sentence would be reduced to 14 months and that it should be suspended.
“This is a very sad case … It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment,” Sharp said.
That's all well and good, but did the original judge make a mistake in law? I can't see the full judgment online yet.
It says here
Generally, appeals against sentence are based on the sentence being:
'wrong in law' (there was no legal power to pass the sentence), or
‘wrong in principle’ (you are arguing that the wrong type of sentence was passed, such as when a prison sentence was imposed when the offence only deserved a community order) or
‘manifestly excessive’ (far too long, taking into account the circumstances of the offence and the offender, and any relevant sentencing guidelines).
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Definitely more of a medialand story and obviously Edwards and Schofield are many, many times more famous.
He's a real piece of work though and I hope he gets proper comeuppance.
I've certainly popped him on the list for the 8th circle of hell (hypocrites).
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
You tell PBers today you didn't go to a private school or have a foreign holiday. They won't believe you.
You went to a grammar school, they damage comprehensive school children more than fee paying schools could ever do.
Mrs Thatcher's second finest achievement was closing down so many grammar schools.
If you go to a grammar school, by definition you're not a 'comprehensive school child,' surely?
I know I’m talking grammar schools damaging nearby local comprehensives.
We private school boys much prefer comprehensives as less competition. Only grammars really challenge private schools in terms of Oxbridge entry and top A levels
Strange. I could have sworn that I achieved three grade A A-levels (when that meant something) from a bog-standard comp in the north east.
I didn't apply to Cambridge as I didn't want to spend three years surrounded by posho twats. (Mind, there was still a sprinkling of twats at Brum.)
Silly misconception on your behalf, there were plenty of working class Northerners at Cambridge, there were very few posho twats.
No there were fuck loads of posho twats. The place was theirs. I still don't know if I was right to go to Cambridge, a lot of the time I felt quite uncomfortable and unhappy there. I did meet my wife there though, so on balance it was a positive experience.
And you were schooled in posho before going down there, yet it was still a culture shock.
I didn't have a scooby doo.
I was moderately schooled in poshos as I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant as a kid, dealing with the "yahs" every night. Also my parents both went to private school (on scholarships, hated it and had no intention of putting their kids through it even if they could have afforded it, which they couldn't). So I was certainly middle class, albeit from the poorer end of it. But yes, it was a massive culture shock, the place is built around the lifestyle, culture and preferences of privately educated wealthy people from the home counties and the rest of us had to somehow bend ourselves to fit in. Plus we had no money to do anything, while we were surrounded by red faced people in black tie who seemed to be permanently drunk. I had a good group of friends, almost entirely comprehensive school educated from various provincial outposts, and we kept our heads down, worked hard and moaned about the place. I'm not sure it was the best way to spent the prime of my youth. But I did meet my wife there so there is that. And it looks good on my CV so I am thankful for the doors it has opened.
The Court of Appeal reduces the abortion lady’s sentence from 28 months to 14 months suspended.
I think that's fair. She's going to have an awful lot of difficulties in her life with the sentence still.
Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde and Mrs Justice Lambert, said Foster’s sentence would be reduced to 14 months and that it should be suspended.
“This is a very sad case … It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment,” Sharp said.
That's all well and good, but did the original judge make a mistake in law? I can't see the full judgment online yet.
Quite. This was a premeditated infanticide, she knew exactly what she was doing. The trial judge was quite clear in the reasoning for the custodial sentence.
We're going to disagree on this. "calls for compassion, not punishment" - I agree.
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Two differences are that hardly anyone has heard of Dan Wootton whereas Huw Edwards and Philip Schofield were known across the land, and that there are many more allegations against Wootton so the case is harder to follow, at least for this bear of little brain who gave up halfway through.
What mildly disturbs me about these cases is that all involve gay men, and certainly in the first two cases, it is hard to see what was actually illegal or even greatly objectionable. Is there an element of homophobia in there?
Schofield tried to do a “Kevin Spacey”, and bury the story of him grooming a teenager as being that of a brave man coming out. He almost succeeded as well.
Spacey is now on trial for criminal offences, and had Elton John testifying for him in court the other day.
Edwards, whether he was commissioning private porn from an 18-year-old male or female makes no difference, he’s still a pervert.
Wootton actually looks like he might be in more serious trouble. He was a manager, as well as a ‘talent’, and some of the allegations concern people who worked for him directly. It’s only not as much of a story as the others, because most people don’t know of him.
Male or female does make a difference, surely, at least until we see a flurry of stories about men being perverts for paying women on Only Fans or looking at bare breasts on page three.
If Schofield had been caught f***ing the teenage female intern, he’d have been fired three years ago, rather than getting away with his deflective sob-story about his “bravery” in coming out.
Edwards I don’t know enough detail, and don’t want to speculate and get OGH in trouble - but if a teenage girl on OF came forward alleging a long-running paid relationship with the news anchor, there would still be a problem. At that level, you’re expected to be the squeakiest of the squeaky clean, in practice as well as in theory. That’s what the £400k salary is for, you can afford the type of sex workers who are discreet enough to go away in the morning, no matter who you are.
Wootton, we don’t know yet, but I suspect he’s in big trouble.
Page 3 has gone away, no longer considered acceptable in newspapers since 2015.
Well, there have been stories about heterosexual men shagging women who worked for them, not least in politics, but it did not end their careers (not this century anyway).
Matt Hancock disagrees!
I think the bigger issue is the ages of the people involved, and the power relationship between the partners at the time they met.
Now, it maybe that homosexual relationships are more likely to involve very young (but legal) partners, and from my limited knowledge of gay culture that’s known to be a fetish on both sides - but it doesn’t make it homophobic to call out a relationship between someone in their 50s and a teenager they work alongside, no matter what the sexuality of the participants.
It's explicitly a legal issue - if your company turns a blind eye to relationships with subordinates,*they* are in trouble.
It's been explicit in the companies I've worked in - if either person in the relationship is in the reporting line of the other, they are breaking the rules and can be sacked. The correct thing to do is to go to HR, state the situation, and they arrange for one party to be transferred - that day.
I went to a lowish achievement state school with an old school headmaster - any thought that a teacher was merely training these kids to be on the dole was strictly verboten and banding and setting was strongly adhered to. I don't remember much disruption in the classroom, though the horizons were narrow.
Went abroad once before I was 19, to the Tirol, with my junior school on one of those little paper orange passports.
State sixth form was very good.
I think it's right that the promotion of mediocrity is the curse of private education that we bear.
My daughter goes to a state grammar school, taking with her average 11+ results (they were ranked) and has soared there. A lot of our decision though was based on her character and the alternatives. However, the mediocrity of those who prep schooled next to the state primary kids is palpable.
I don't think state or private education have a monopoly on indifference and incompetence.
I went to a Belgian state school until I was 12 and as far as I can remember it was excellent. Then I went to a (very expensive) private school in DC. I couldn't read or write English very well and they didn't give a fuck so just let me concentrate on sports (shooting, wrestling, baseball). After that I went to a British boarding school and they soon realised they had a fourth Irish literary titan (after Wilde, Beckett and Joyce) on their hands and put tremendous effort into me in general and my English in particular.
It's good that my parents had the social and financial capital to allow all of that. If I had gone to a comp in one of the UK' s un-levelled up northern oblasts I'd be dead or in jail now.
The Court of Appeal reduces the abortion lady’s sentence from 28 months to 14 months suspended.
I think that's fair. She's going to have an awful lot of difficulties in her life with the sentence still.
Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde and Mrs Justice Lambert, said Foster’s sentence would be reduced to 14 months and that it should be suspended.
“This is a very sad case … It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment,” Sharp said.
That's all well and good, but did the original judge make a mistake in law? I can't see the full judgment online yet.
It says here
Generally, appeals against sentence are based on the sentence being:
'wrong in law' (there was no legal power to pass the sentence), or
‘wrong in principle’ (you are arguing that the wrong type of sentence was passed, such as when a prison sentence was imposed when the offence only deserved a community order) or
‘manifestly excessive’ (far too long, taking into account the circumstances of the offence and the offender, and any relevant sentencing guidelines).
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Dan Wootton didn’t tell the Nation, and the World, that the Queen had passed on.
Yes, it does appear to be another media scandal, and he’s getting cancelled at best. Let’s hope that the rest of the media remembers to carry on reporting the actual news this time.
Worth bearing in mind that Wootton was executive editor of The Sun for a while (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wootton), so he wasn't just a writer or performer. How much of a difference that makes and in what direction, I'm not sure.
It’s very much an aggravating factor. He was the line manager of his accusers, which is very different to an external ‘talent’ who comes in and does their own thing.
Oh bloody hell.
Can I just point out that my test at the time the X (now revealed to be Edwards) story broke was whether or not it was on or off duty, so to speak? By that criterion, this has the potential to be bad.
Edwards was paying teenage sex workers in his own time. If he wasn’t the person who told us the Queen had died, it would have been a non-story. The only worry was that the sex worker might have been 17 rather than 18 when pictures were taken, in which case there might have been a criminal issue, but the police said he was okay there.
Wootton was originally an editor rather than a ‘talent’, although in recent times he’s better known for his commentary work on GB News and in the Mail.
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Definitely more of a medialand story and obviously Edwards and Schofield are many, many times more famous.
He's a real piece of work though and I hope he gets proper comeuppance.
I've certainly popped him on the list for the 8th circle of hell (hypocrites).
He is quite specific that this only applies to mainstream broadcasters......
The Court of Appeal reduces the abortion lady’s sentence from 28 months to 14 months suspended.
I think that's fair. She's going to have an awful lot of difficulties in her life with the sentence still.
Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde and Mrs Justice Lambert, said Foster’s sentence would be reduced to 14 months and that it should be suspended.
“This is a very sad case … It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment,” Sharp said.
That's all well and good, but did the original judge make a mistake in law? I can't see the full judgment online yet.
Quite. This was a premeditated infanticide, she knew exactly what she was doing. The trial judge was quite clear in the reasoning for the custodial sentence.
We're going to disagree on this. "calls for compassion, not punishment" - I agree.
We can agree to disagree.
I’m well aware that my views on abortion are those of a minority, and I happen to believe this to be an egregious example of someone trying to use the emergency pandemic legislation to further their own aims.
She was convicted of lying to medical professionals, and of acting in a pre-meditated manner to kill her unborn child at 36 weeks. I believe that’s worthy of a custodial sentence.
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Definitely more of a medialand story and obviously Edwards and Schofield are many, many times more famous.
He's a real piece of work though and I hope he gets proper comeuppance.
I've certainly popped him on the list for the 8th circle of hell (hypocrites).
He is quite specific that this only applies to mainstream broadcasters......
We are not a mainstream broadcaster so what we do is meaningless would be courageously honest marketing from GB News.
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Definitely more of a medialand story and obviously Edwards and Schofield are many, many times more famous.
He's a real piece of work though and I hope he gets proper comeuppance.
I've certainly popped him on the list for the 8th circle of hell (hypocrites).
He is quite specific that this only applies to mainstream broadcasters......
We are not a mainstream broadcaster so what we do is meaningless would be courageously honest marketing from GB News.
Didn't some of the Trumpets try and defend egregious, sustained bullshit that got them in legal trouble - By claiming that it was so obviously bullshit that no-one should take it seriously?
sad to see the Commonwealth games in extinction level trouble - Whilst of course not totally immune from commercialism most competitors in it do it for the sport sake not money sake . The Queen would have bene dismayed
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Definitely more of a medialand story and obviously Edwards and Schofield are many, many times more famous.
He's a real piece of work though and I hope he gets proper comeuppance.
I've certainly popped him on the list for the 8th circle of hell (hypocrites).
He is quite specific that this only applies to mainstream broadcasters......
We are not a mainstream broadcaster so what we do is meaningless would be courageously honest marketing from GB News.
To be fair to Wootton, (damn, I hate trying to be impartial!), the allegations against him are historic, refer to his time working at The Sun several years ago, and were formally dismissed by the organisation at the time.
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Definitely more of a medialand story and obviously Edwards and Schofield are many, many times more famous.
He's a real piece of work though and I hope he gets proper comeuppance.
I've certainly popped him on the list for the 8th circle of hell (hypocrites).
He is quite specific that this only applies to mainstream broadcasters......
We are not a mainstream broadcaster so what we do is meaningless would be courageously honest marketing from GB News.
Didn't some of the Trumpets try and defend egregious, sustained bullshit that got them in legal trouble - By claiming that it was so obviously bullshit that no-one should take it seriously?
Didn't the DT, closer to home in terms of the UK media, try to get out of serious trouble with the regulator by using that very argument? I forget the details, though.
The “Ukranian Children kidnapped” story is really horrible.
I’ll try and not say too much that’s personal, but my wife made enquiries about orphans in Ukraine last year, as the war started. There weren’t any orphans.
sad to see the Commonwealth games in extinction level trouble - Whilst of course not totally immune from commercialism most competitors in it do it for the sport sake not money sake . The Queen would have bene dismayed
Problem is putting everything in 1 place creates massive problems unless you have a need to build 10,000 student style rooms for hosting the athletes.
I wonder if the approach used in the 2018 European Championships would work - hold the event at the same time but scatter the events across existing venues so the athletes are spread across the country/ world.
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Definitely more of a medialand story and obviously Edwards and Schofield are many, many times more famous.
He's a real piece of work though and I hope he gets proper comeuppance.
I've certainly popped him on the list for the 8th circle of hell (hypocrites).
He is quite specific that this only applies to mainstream broadcasters......
We are not a mainstream broadcaster so what we do is meaningless would be courageously honest marketing from GB News.
Didn't some of the Trumpets try and defend egregious, sustained bullshit that got them in legal trouble - By claiming that it was so obviously bullshit that no-one should take it seriously?
Fox news for one. Purely for entertainment and not news according to their own legal pleas.
sad to see the Commonwealth games in extinction level trouble - Whilst of course not totally immune from commercialism most competitors in it do it for the sport sake not money sake . The Queen would have bene dismayed
It seems it's always Australia or Blighty, except once in New Delhi. Other Aus states have very firmly said No so this immediately becomes a big UK political issue: host it permanently (with money we could have given to the NHS) or let it lapse and lose a big part of the Commonwealth prestige. With HMK nae doot furiously lobbying to keep it, not at his own expense. As you say,thank goodness HlateMQ didn't see this day.
I went to a lowish achievement state school with an old school headmaster - any thought that a teacher was merely training these kids to be on the dole was strictly verboten and banding and setting was strongly adhered to. I don't remember much disruption in the classroom, though the horizons were narrow.
Went abroad once before I was 19, to the Tirol, with my junior school on one of those little paper orange passports.
State sixth form was very good.
I think it's right that the promotion of mediocrity is the curse of private education that we bear.
My daughter goes to a state grammar school, taking with her average 11+ results (they were ranked) and has soared there. A lot of our decision though was based on her character and the alternatives. However, the mediocrity of those who prep schooled next to the state primary kids is palpable.
I don't think state or private education have a monopoly on indifference and incompetence.
I went to a Belgian state school until I was 12 and as far as I can remember it was excellent. Then I went to a (very expensive) private school in DC. I couldn't read or write English very well and they didn't give a fuck so just let me concentrate on sports (shooting, wrestling, baseball). After that I went to a British boarding school and they soon realised they had a fourth Irish literary titan (after Wilde, Beckett and Joyce) on their hands and put tremendous effort into me in general and my English in particular.
It's good that my parents had the social and financial capital to allow all of that. If I had gone to a comp in one of the UK' s un-levelled up northern oblasts I'd be dead or in jail now.
Have you ever tried a novel?
No. My wife's best friend is something in publishing and encouraged me to write a biography. So I wrote the first half; all the way up to and including "Chapter 9 - Muqtada al-Sadr: His Part in My Downfall". She read it and said it was well written and very funny but "so, so dark". The vivid descriptions of what were almost certainly war crimes were also considered potentially problematic when considered from a legal and marketing perspective. So, we left it at that. I want to put such time and intellectual energy as I have into mastering Arabic.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
I went to a lowish achievement state school with an old school headmaster - any thought that a teacher was merely training these kids to be on the dole was strictly verboten and banding and setting was strongly adhered to. I don't remember much disruption in the classroom, though the horizons were narrow.
Went abroad once before I was 19, to the Tirol, with my junior school on one of those little paper orange passports.
State sixth form was very good.
I think it's right that the promotion of mediocrity is the curse of private education that we bear.
My daughter goes to a state grammar school, taking with her average 11+ results (they were ranked) and has soared there. A lot of our decision though was based on her character and the alternatives. However, the mediocrity of those who prep schooled next to the state primary kids is palpable.
I don't think state or private education have a monopoly on indifference and incompetence.
I went to a Belgian state school until I was 12 and as far as I can remember it was excellent. Then I went to a (very expensive) private school in DC. I couldn't read or write English very well and they didn't give a fuck so just let me concentrate on sports (shooting, wrestling, baseball). After that I went to a British boarding school and they soon realised they had a fourth Irish literary titan (after Wilde, Beckett and Joyce) on their hands and put tremendous effort into me in general and my English in particular.
It's good that my parents had the social and financial capital to allow all of that. If I had gone to a comp in one of the UK' s un-levelled up northern oblasts I'd be dead or in jail now.
Have you ever tried a novel?
No. My wife's best friend is something in publishing and encouraged me to write a biography. So I wrote the first half; all the way up to and including "Chapter 9 - Muqtada al-Sadr: His Part in My Downfall". She read it and said it was well written and very funny but "so, so dark". The vivid descriptions of what were almost certainly war crimes were also considered potentially problematic when considered from a legal and marketing perspective. So, we left it at that. I want to put such time and intellectual energy as I have into mastering Arabic.
I went to a lowish achievement state school with an old school headmaster - any thought that a teacher was merely training these kids to be on the dole was strictly verboten and banding and setting was strongly adhered to. I don't remember much disruption in the classroom, though the horizons were narrow.
Went abroad once before I was 19, to the Tirol, with my junior school on one of those little paper orange passports.
State sixth form was very good.
I think it's right that the promotion of mediocrity is the curse of private education that we bear.
My daughter goes to a state grammar school, taking with her average 11+ results (they were ranked) and has soared there. A lot of our decision though was based on her character and the alternatives. However, the mediocrity of those who prep schooled next to the state primary kids is palpable.
I don't think state or private education have a monopoly on indifference and incompetence.
I went to a Belgian state school until I was 12 and as far as I can remember it was excellent. Then I went to a (very expensive) private school in DC. I couldn't read or write English very well and they didn't give a fuck so just let me concentrate on sports (shooting, wrestling, baseball). After that I went to a British boarding school and they soon realised they had a fourth Irish literary titan (after Wilde, Beckett and Joyce) on their hands and put tremendous effort into me in general and my English in particular.
It's good that my parents had the social and financial capital to allow all of that. If I had gone to a comp in one of the UK' s un-levelled up northern oblasts I'd be dead or in jail now.
Have you ever tried a novel?
No. My wife's best friend is something in publishing and encouraged me to write a biography. So I wrote the first half; all the way up to and including "Chapter 9 - Muqtada al-Sadr: His Part in My Downfall". She read it and said it was well written and very funny but "so, so dark". The vivid descriptions of what were almost certainly war crimes were also considered potentially problematic when considered from a legal and marketing perspective. So, we left it at that. I want to put such time and intellectual energy as I have into mastering Arabic.
Can't you just write a slightly fictionalised version of it, to remove the legal complications? You have a unique voice and I have no doubt that your book would be a brilliant read.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
sad to see the Commonwealth games in extinction level trouble - Whilst of course not totally immune from commercialism most competitors in it do it for the sport sake not money sake . The Queen would have bene dismayed
Problem is putting everything in 1 place creates massive problems unless you have a need to build 10,000 student style rooms for hosting the athletes.
I wonder if the approach used in the 2018 European Championships would work - hold the event at the same time but scatter the events across existing venues so the athletes are spread across the country/ world.
Yes, think what fun it would be to have the games scattered throughout the West Indies. No need for a central hub, just a widely distributed array of venues. No country should be expected to pay up for the whole circus in this day and age, but each Caribbean nation could probably support at least one event - and the commercial benefits would be considerable. It seems to be something the FIFA World Cup has considered over the years.
I can't phrase this because I don't know what the Smithsons will allow me to say. But phrasing it in an anodyne manner as possible, the accusations against Dan Wotton involve far more men, more physical contact, more deception and more harassment than Huw Edwards. But despite this PB has a right-wing/anti-BBC slant and will refuse to discuss Wotton with the same glee. This is why Huw Edwards is currently in a mental asylum and Dan Wotton is interviewing Stanley Johnson, a [redacted] who [redacted] his wife and went on foreign holidays during Covid. It is a bad world.
Two differences are that hardly anyone has heard of Dan Wootton whereas Huw Edwards and Philip Schofield were known across the land, and that there are many more allegations against Wootton so the case is harder to follow, at least for this bear of little brain who gave up halfway through.
What mildly disturbs me about these cases is that all involve gay men, and certainly in the first two cases, it is hard to see what was actually illegal or even greatly objectionable. Is there an element of homophobia in there?
Schofield tried to do a “Kevin Spacey”, and bury the story of him grooming a teenager as being that of a brave man coming out. He almost succeeded as well.
Spacey is now on trial for criminal offences, and had Elton John testifying for him in court the other day.
Edwards, whether he was commissioning private porn from an 18-year-old male or female makes no difference, he’s still a pervert.
Wootton actually looks like he might be in more serious trouble. He was a manager, as well as a ‘talent’, and some of the allegations concern people who worked for him directly. It’s only not as much of a story as the others, because most people don’t know of him.
And because The Sun aren’t pushing it relentlessly.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
My daughter is at a sixth form college and seems to be thriving there, going by her predicted grades.
I went to a lowish achievement state school with an old school headmaster - any thought that a teacher was merely training these kids to be on the dole was strictly verboten and banding and setting was strongly adhered to. I don't remember much disruption in the classroom, though the horizons were narrow.
Went abroad once before I was 19, to the Tirol, with my junior school on one of those little paper orange passports.
State sixth form was very good.
I think it's right that the promotion of mediocrity is the curse of private education that we bear.
My daughter goes to a state grammar school, taking with her average 11+ results (they were ranked) and has soared there. A lot of our decision though was based on her character and the alternatives. However, the mediocrity of those who prep schooled next to the state primary kids is palpable.
I don't think state or private education have a monopoly on indifference and incompetence.
I went to a Belgian state school until I was 12 and as far as I can remember it was excellent. Then I went to a (very expensive) private school in DC. I couldn't read or write English very well and they didn't give a fuck so just let me concentrate on sports (shooting, wrestling, baseball). After that I went to a British boarding school and they soon realised they had a fourth Irish literary titan (after Wilde, Beckett and Joyce) on their hands and put tremendous effort into me in general and my English in particular.
It's good that my parents had the social and financial capital to allow all of that. If I had gone to a comp in one of the UK' s un-levelled up northern oblasts I'd be dead or in jail now.
Have you ever tried a novel?
No. My wife's best friend is something in publishing and encouraged me to write a biography. So I wrote the first half; all the way up to and including "Chapter 9 - Muqtada al-Sadr: His Part in My Downfall". She read it and said it was well written and very funny but "so, so dark". The vivid descriptions of what were almost certainly war crimes were also considered potentially problematic when considered from a legal and marketing perspective. So, we left it at that. I want to put such time and intellectual energy as I have into mastering Arabic.
I wonder whether you would self-publish the partially-completed works and provide a link on here?
I went to a lowish achievement state school with an old school headmaster - any thought that a teacher was merely training these kids to be on the dole was strictly verboten and banding and setting was strongly adhered to. I don't remember much disruption in the classroom, though the horizons were narrow.
Went abroad once before I was 19, to the Tirol, with my junior school on one of those little paper orange passports.
State sixth form was very good.
I think it's right that the promotion of mediocrity is the curse of private education that we bear.
My daughter goes to a state grammar school, taking with her average 11+ results (they were ranked) and has soared there. A lot of our decision though was based on her character and the alternatives. However, the mediocrity of those who prep schooled next to the state primary kids is palpable.
I don't think state or private education have a monopoly on indifference and incompetence.
I went to a Belgian state school until I was 12 and as far as I can remember it was excellent. Then I went to a (very expensive) private school in DC. I couldn't read or write English very well and they didn't give a fuck so just let me concentrate on sports (shooting, wrestling, baseball). After that I went to a British boarding school and they soon realised they had a fourth Irish literary titan (after Wilde, Beckett and Joyce) on their hands and put tremendous effort into me in general and my English in particular.
It's good that my parents had the social and financial capital to allow all of that. If I had gone to a comp in one of the UK' s un-levelled up northern oblasts I'd be dead or in jail now.
Have you ever tried a novel?
No. My wife's best friend is something in publishing and encouraged me to write a biography. So I wrote the first half; all the way up to and including "Chapter 9 - Muqtada al-Sadr: His Part in My Downfall". She read it and said it was well written and very funny but "so, so dark". The vivid descriptions of what were almost certainly war crimes were also considered potentially problematic when considered from a legal and marketing perspective. So, we left it at that. I want to put such time and intellectual energy as I have into mastering Arabic.
You can self-publish
One of my best friends has an entire original novel and boxes of world/backstory in her loft. The work is all done, It's a crying shame she hasn't (self) published it.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
My daughter is at a sixth form college and seems to be thriving there, going by her predicted grades.
You've said down-thread that you and your wife went to Cambridge. Your daughter was extremely likely, through hereditary factors, to achieve very high grades at any school. Do you seriously think she would have done otherwise at any other institution?
IMO we exaggerate the effect that parents and schools have on outcomes.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
You tell PBers today you didn't go to a private school or have a foreign holiday. They won't believe you.
You went to a grammar school, they damage comprehensive school children more than fee paying schools could ever do.
Mrs Thatcher's second finest achievement was closing down so many grammar schools.
If you go to a grammar school, by definition you're not a 'comprehensive school child,' surely?
I know I’m talking grammar schools damaging nearby local comprehensives.
We private school boys much prefer comprehensives as less competition. Only grammars really challenge private schools in terms of Oxbridge entry and top A levels
Strange. I could have sworn that I achieved three grade A A-levels (when that meant something) from a bog-standard comp in the north east.
I didn't apply to Cambridge as I didn't want to spend three years surrounded by posho twats. (Mind, there was still a sprinkling of twats at Brum.)
Silly misconception on your behalf, there were plenty of working class Northerners at Cambridge, there were very few posho twats.
No there were fuck loads of posho twats. The place was theirs. I still don't know if I was right to go to Cambridge, a lot of the time I felt quite uncomfortable and unhappy there. I did meet my wife there though, so on balance it was a positive experience.
I enjoyed Cambridge (although did not meet a wife), but found it hidebound by tradition and full of itself. I went to Oxford and expected it to be the same, but was surprised by how more posh and ridiculous it was. The students I teach at UCL are very down to Earth, although that might be about what courses I work on.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
My daughter is at a sixth form college and seems to be thriving there, going by her predicted grades.
You've said down-thread that you and your wife went to Cambridge. Your daughter was extremely likely, through hereditary factors, to achieve very high grades at any school. Do you seriously think she would have done otherwise at any other institution?
IMO we exaggerate the effect that parents and schools have on outcomes.
Your second paragraph is a bit odd following you first. Did you mean what you said or should exaggerate be underestimate (For parents) ?
For those not familiar with Dan Wootton, as well as being a right-wing, anti-woke, culture warrior, racist shock-jock on GB news, his columns in the Mail are the direct descendant of Katie Hopkins. Couldn't happen to a nastier bloke.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
My daughter is at a sixth form college and seems to be thriving there, going by her predicted grades.
You've said down-thread that you and your wife went to Cambridge. Your daughter was extremely likely, through hereditary factors, to achieve very high grades at any school. Do you seriously think she would have done otherwise at any other institution?
IMO we exaggerate the effect that parents and schools have on outcomes.
Your second paragraph is a bit odd following you first. Did you mean what you said or should exaggerate be underestimate (For parents) ?
I meant that some lucky children are naturally pre-disposed to do better than others and the influence of parents and schools on this pre-disposition is less than we think.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
My daughter is at a sixth form college and seems to be thriving there, going by her predicted grades.
Both my children chose to go to one, and were very happy about the choice. Good preparation for university, too, as it's something of a halfway house in terms of independence - something that's not really true of smaller sixth forms. Won't suit everyone, but most seem to thrive at them.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
My daughter is at a sixth form college and seems to be thriving there, going by her predicted grades.
You've said down-thread that you and your wife went to Cambridge. Your daughter was extremely likely, through hereditary factors, to achieve very high grades at any school. Do you seriously think she would have done otherwise at any other institution?
IMO we exaggerate the effect that parents and schools have on outcomes.
Your second paragraph is a bit odd following you first. Did you mean what you said or should exaggerate be underestimate (For parents) ?
I meant that some lucky children are naturally pre-disposed to do better than others and the influence of parents and schools on this pre-disposition is less than we think.
You indicate the implied pre-disposition is as a result of the parents in the prior paragraph though.
Your daughter was extremely likely, through hereditary factors, to achieve very high grades at any school.
I went to a lowish achievement state school with an old school headmaster - any thought that a teacher was merely training these kids to be on the dole was strictly verboten and banding and setting was strongly adhered to. I don't remember much disruption in the classroom, though the horizons were narrow.
Went abroad once before I was 19, to the Tirol, with my junior school on one of those little paper orange passports.
State sixth form was very good.
I think it's right that the promotion of mediocrity is the curse of private education that we bear.
My daughter goes to a state grammar school, taking with her average 11+ results (they were ranked) and has soared there. A lot of our decision though was based on her character and the alternatives. However, the mediocrity of those who prep schooled next to the state primary kids is palpable.
I don't think state or private education have a monopoly on indifference and incompetence.
I went to a Belgian state school until I was 12 and as far as I can remember it was excellent. Then I went to a (very expensive) private school in DC. I couldn't read or write English very well and they didn't give a fuck so just let me concentrate on sports (shooting, wrestling, baseball). After that I went to a British boarding school and they soon realised they had a fourth Irish literary titan (after Wilde, Beckett and Joyce) on their hands and put tremendous effort into me in general and my English in particular.
It's good that my parents had the social and financial capital to allow all of that. If I had gone to a comp in one of the UK' s un-levelled up northern oblasts I'd be dead or in jail now.
Have you ever tried a novel?
No. My wife's best friend is something in publishing and encouraged me to write a biography. So I wrote the first half; all the way up to and including "Chapter 9 - Muqtada al-Sadr: His Part in My Downfall". She read it and said it was well written and very funny but "so, so dark". The vivid descriptions of what were almost certainly war crimes were also considered potentially problematic when considered from a legal and marketing perspective. So, we left it at that. I want to put such time and intellectual energy as I have into mastering Arabic.
I wonder whether you would self-publish the partially-completed works and provide a link on here?
I'd pay good money for that.
I'd have to think about it. The Basra chapters would require a fair bit of anonymisation and obfuscation to protect the guilty.
It's a huge thing. I, for my sins, am an occasional denizen of Candy Crush and the advertising can be illuminating.
Good excuse to share another really good observational band that my jaunt around Spotify Heardle and decision to selectively get with program turfed up (what, me, mid life crisis you say?)
I went to a lowish achievement state school with an old school headmaster - any thought that a teacher was merely training these kids to be on the dole was strictly verboten and banding and setting was strongly adhered to. I don't remember much disruption in the classroom, though the horizons were narrow.
Went abroad once before I was 19, to the Tirol, with my junior school on one of those little paper orange passports.
State sixth form was very good.
I think it's right that the promotion of mediocrity is the curse of private education that we bear.
My daughter goes to a state grammar school, taking with her average 11+ results (they were ranked) and has soared there. A lot of our decision though was based on her character and the alternatives. However, the mediocrity of those who prep schooled next to the state primary kids is palpable.
I don't think state or private education have a monopoly on indifference and incompetence.
I went to a Belgian state school until I was 12 and as far as I can remember it was excellent. Then I went to a (very expensive) private school in DC. I couldn't read or write English very well and they didn't give a fuck so just let me concentrate on sports (shooting, wrestling, baseball). After that I went to a British boarding school and they soon realised they had a fourth Irish literary titan (after Wilde, Beckett and Joyce) on their hands and put tremendous effort into me in general and my English in particular.
It's good that my parents had the social and financial capital to allow all of that. If I had gone to a comp in one of the UK' s un-levelled up northern oblasts I'd be dead or in jail now.
Have you ever tried a novel?
No. My wife's best friend is something in publishing and encouraged me to write a biography. So I wrote the first half; all the way up to and including "Chapter 9 - Muqtada al-Sadr: His Part in My Downfall". She read it and said it was well written and very funny but "so, so dark". The vivid descriptions of what were almost certainly war crimes were also considered potentially problematic when considered from a legal and marketing perspective. So, we left it at that. I want to put such time and intellectual energy as I have into mastering Arabic.
I wonder whether you would self-publish the partially-completed works and provide a link on here?
I'd pay good money for that.
I'd have to think about it. The Basra chapters would require a fair bit of anonymisation and obfuscation to protect the guilty.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
My daughter is at a sixth form college and seems to be thriving there, going by her predicted grades.
You've said down-thread that you and your wife went to Cambridge. Your daughter was extremely likely, through hereditary factors, to achieve very high grades at any school. Do you seriously think she would have done otherwise at any other institution?
IMO we exaggerate the effect that parents and schools have on outcomes.
Your second paragraph is a bit odd following you first. Did you mean what you said or should exaggerate be underestimate (For parents) ?
I meant that some lucky children are naturally pre-disposed to do better than others and the influence of parents and schools on this pre-disposition is less than we think.
You likewise perhaps overestimate the effect of heredity. I think both nature and nurture count to some extent, and it's quite hard to say how much in any given case.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
My daughter is at a sixth form college and seems to be thriving there, going by her predicted grades.
You've said down-thread that you and your wife went to Cambridge. Your daughter was extremely likely, through hereditary factors, to achieve very high grades at any school. Do you seriously think she would have done otherwise at any other institution?
IMO we exaggerate the effect that parents and schools have on outcomes.
She would probably do well anyway, she is very bright and more importantly loves learning and works hard. But I do think the college she is at has really helped her to achieve. I reckon that the quality of the institution can probably add or subtract a grade from each subject, max (unless it is truly awful, in a way that very few actually are).
Military: Russia concentrating forces, on offensive in Lyman-Kupiansk direction https://kyivindependent.com/military-4/ ...Russia is concentrating "more than 100,000 personnel, more than 900 tanks, more than 555 artillery systems, 370 MLRS" in the Lyman-Kupiansk direction, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Eastern Military Command..
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
You tell PBers today you didn't go to a private school or have a foreign holiday. They won't believe you.
You went to a grammar school, they damage comprehensive school children more than fee paying schools could ever do.
Mrs Thatcher's second finest achievement was closing down so many grammar schools.
If you go to a grammar school, by definition you're not a 'comprehensive school child,' surely?
I know I’m talking grammar schools damaging nearby local comprehensives.
We private school boys much prefer comprehensives as less competition. Only grammars really challenge private schools in terms of Oxbridge entry and top A levels
Strange. I could have sworn that I achieved three grade A A-levels (when that meant something) from a bog-standard comp in the north east.
I didn't apply to Cambridge as I didn't want to spend three years surrounded by posho twats. (Mind, there was still a sprinkling of twats at Brum.)
Silly misconception on your behalf, there were plenty of working class Northerners at Cambridge, there were very few posho twats.
No there were fuck loads of posho twats. The place was theirs. I still don't know if I was right to go to Cambridge, a lot of the time I felt quite uncomfortable and unhappy there. I did meet my wife there though, so on balance it was a positive experience.
I enjoyed Cambridge (although did not meet a wife), but found it hidebound by tradition and full of itself. I went to Oxford and expected it to be the same, but was surprised by how more posh and ridiculous it was. The students I teach at UCL are very down to Earth, although that might be about what courses I work on.
Yes I do get the impression that Oxford is an order of magnitude more up itself than Cambridge is. My sister went there and really didn't enjoy it.
Military: Russia concentrating forces, on offensive in Lyman-Kupiansk direction https://kyivindependent.com/military-4/ ...Russia is concentrating "more than 100,000 personnel, more than 900 tanks, more than 555 artillery systems, 370 MLRS" in the Lyman-Kupiansk direction, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Eastern Military Command..
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
I went to a lowish achievement state school with an old school headmaster - any thought that a teacher was merely training these kids to be on the dole was strictly verboten and banding and setting was strongly adhered to. I don't remember much disruption in the classroom, though the horizons were narrow.
Went abroad once before I was 19, to the Tirol, with my junior school on one of those little paper orange passports.
State sixth form was very good.
I think it's right that the promotion of mediocrity is the curse of private education that we bear.
My daughter goes to a state grammar school, taking with her average 11+ results (they were ranked) and has soared there. A lot of our decision though was based on her character and the alternatives. However, the mediocrity of those who prep schooled next to the state primary kids is palpable.
I don't think state or private education have a monopoly on indifference and incompetence.
I went to a Belgian state school until I was 12 and as far as I can remember it was excellent. Then I went to a (very expensive) private school in DC. I couldn't read or write English very well and they didn't give a fuck so just let me concentrate on sports (shooting, wrestling, baseball). After that I went to a British boarding school and they soon realised they had a fourth Irish literary titan (after Wilde, Beckett and Joyce) on their hands and put tremendous effort into me in general and my English in particular.
It's good that my parents had the social and financial capital to allow all of that. If I had gone to a comp in one of the UK' s un-levelled up northern oblasts I'd be dead or in jail now.
Have you ever tried a novel?
No. My wife's best friend is something in publishing and encouraged me to write a biography. So I wrote the first half; all the way up to and including "Chapter 9 - Muqtada al-Sadr: His Part in My Downfall". She read it and said it was well written and very funny but "so, so dark". The vivid descriptions of what were almost certainly war crimes were also considered potentially problematic when considered from a legal and marketing perspective. So, we left it at that. I want to put such time and intellectual energy as I have into mastering Arabic.
I wonder whether you would self-publish the partially-completed works and provide a link on here?
I'd pay good money for that.
I'd have to think about it. The Basra chapters would require a fair bit of anonymisation and obfuscation to protect the guilty.
Have you considered a rewrite as fiction, so that the risk is removed? A sort of Flashman for the 21st century?
Military: Russia concentrating forces, on offensive in Lyman-Kupiansk direction https://kyivindependent.com/military-4/ ...Russia is concentrating "more than 100,000 personnel, more than 900 tanks, more than 555 artillery systems, 370 MLRS" in the Lyman-Kupiansk direction, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Eastern Military Command..
Target rich environment...?
The phrase occurred to me. But I don't think it's entirely a foregone conclusion given Ukraine's lack of air power. They are having to do this the hard way.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
I was the classic "haven't got a clue what I want to do kid" so perhaps I was tricky, but I was interested in politics. What I needed was for someone to say "you like politics, you're good at maths, do maths, further maths, politics and economics" (forget the sciences if you're not into engineering etc.). But no one said that. It was only well after I'd started that I found out what PPE was and thought "that sounds interesting" and then realised what the subjects the posh kids were doing.
Of course, what I really ought to have done is, having got into Oxford to read geography, pleaded to be allowed to switch. I suspect they might have let me on the grounds I came from a poorer background than most who do that course.
Military: Russia concentrating forces, on offensive in Lyman-Kupiansk direction https://kyivindependent.com/military-4/ ...Russia is concentrating "more than 100,000 personnel, more than 900 tanks, more than 555 artillery systems, 370 MLRS" in the Lyman-Kupiansk direction, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Eastern Military Command..
Target rich environment...?
The phrase occurred to me. But I don't think it's entirely a foregone conclusion given Ukraine's lack of air power. They are having to do this the hard way.
No. I expect the Russians have learnt not to do actual "concentrations", at least not within range.
I'm slightly surprised they've found that much to deploy.
I do find that surprising but then again... priorities.
Starmer certainly has control of the party.
Partly Stalinist control of the party; partly that the Shadow Minister for Stationery Supplies does not want the entire paperclips budget spent on this or any other new commitment from someone else's department.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
You tell PBers today you didn't go to a private school or have a foreign holiday. They won't believe you.
You went to a grammar school, they damage comprehensive school children more than fee paying schools could ever do.
Mrs Thatcher's second finest achievement was closing down so many grammar schools.
If you go to a grammar school, by definition you're not a 'comprehensive school child,' surely?
I know I’m talking grammar schools damaging nearby local comprehensives.
We private school boys much prefer comprehensives as less competition. Only grammars really challenge private schools in terms of Oxbridge entry and top A levels
Strange. I could have sworn that I achieved three grade A A-levels (when that meant something) from a bog-standard comp in the north east.
I didn't apply to Cambridge as I didn't want to spend three years surrounded by posho twats. (Mind, there was still a sprinkling of twats at Brum.)
Silly misconception on your behalf, there were plenty of working class Northerners at Cambridge, there were very few posho twats.
No there were fuck loads of posho twats. The place was theirs. I still don't know if I was right to go to Cambridge, a lot of the time I felt quite uncomfortable and unhappy there. I did meet my wife there though, so on balance it was a positive experience.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
Gaming the system via subject choice is not unknown, for instance Dudley Moore's organ scholarship from working class Dagenham to Oxford, or Boris's sisters comments on the advantages of Latin and Greek for Oxford entry.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
I was the classic "haven't got a clue what I want to do kid" so perhaps I was tricky, but I was interested in politics. What I needed was for someone to say "you like politics, you're good at maths, do maths, further maths, politics and economics" (forget the sciences if you're not into engineering etc.). But no one said that. It was only well after I'd started that I found out what PPE was and thought "that sounds interesting" and then realised what the subjects the posh kids were doing.
Of course, what I really ought to have done is, having got into Oxford to read geography, pleaded to be allowed to switch. I suspect they might have let me on the grounds I came from a poorer background than most who do that course.
I made a similar, but arguably worse choice - opting for an English degree, rather than science (with A grades in Maths, Physics and Chemistry along with English).
I started doing English Literature, and ended effectively doing a PPE. I did an undergraduate business degree at the same time, another slightly unusual artefact of the NZ system.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
I was the classic "haven't got a clue what I want to do kid" so perhaps I was tricky, but I was interested in politics. What I needed was for someone to say "you like politics, you're good at maths, do maths, further maths, politics and economics" (forget the sciences if you're not into engineering etc.). But no one said that. It was only well after I'd started that I found out what PPE was and thought "that sounds interesting" and then realised what the subjects the posh kids were doing.
Of course, what I really ought to have done is, having got into Oxford to read geography, pleaded to be allowed to switch. I suspect they might have let me on the grounds I came from a poorer background than most who do that course.
I made a similar, but arguably worse choice - opting for an English degree, rather than science (with A grades in Maths, Physics and Chemistry along with English).
That is an interesting decision! I hope you at least like English. I didn't mind geography, but I probably took it on at A Level because I'd liked it at school as the nearest thing to politics.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
Gaming the system via subject choice is not unknown, for instance Dudley Moore's organ scholarship from working class Dagenham to Oxford, or Boris's sisters comments on the advantages of Latin and Greek for Oxford entry.
Did Dudley 'game it'? I'd have thought getting awarded an Oxford organ scholarship was pretty darn difficult, and the man was hardly a shit musician.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
Gaming the system via subject choice is not unknown, for instance Dudley Moore's organ scholarship from working class Dagenham to Oxford, or Boris's sisters comments on the advantages of Latin and Greek for Oxford entry.
Did Dudley 'game it'? I'd have thought getting awarded an Oxford organ scholarship was pretty darn difficult, and the man was hardly a shit musician.
iirc his teachers encouraged Dudley Moore to play the organ specifically in order to get a scholarship to Oxford. Obviously Moore was bright and a musical prodigy but money would have been an obstacle for a working class boy in the 1950s (although it is possible the local council might have come up with the spondulicks; it is not as if many made it from council house to college)
ETA I gathered from someone who'd vaguely known him that he would sometimes visit his old school when he was famous.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
You tell PBers today you didn't go to a private school or have a foreign holiday. They won't believe you.
You went to a grammar school, they damage comprehensive school children more than fee paying schools could ever do.
Mrs Thatcher's second finest achievement was closing down so many grammar schools.
If you go to a grammar school, by definition you're not a 'comprehensive school child,' surely?
I know I’m talking grammar schools damaging nearby local comprehensives.
We private school boys much prefer comprehensives as less competition. Only grammars really challenge private schools in terms of Oxbridge entry and top A levels
Strange. I could have sworn that I achieved three grade A A-levels (when that meant something) from a bog-standard comp in the north east.
I didn't apply to Cambridge as I didn't want to spend three years surrounded by posho twats. (Mind, there was still a sprinkling of twats at Brum.)
Silly misconception on your behalf, there were plenty of working class Northerners at Cambridge, there were very few posho twats.
No there were fuck loads of posho twats. The place was theirs. I still don't know if I was right to go to Cambridge, a lot of the time I felt quite uncomfortable and unhappy there. I did meet my wife there though, so on balance it was a positive experience.
I enjoyed Cambridge (although did not meet a wife), but found it hidebound by tradition and full of itself. I went to Oxford and expected it to be the same, but was surprised by how more posh and ridiculous it was. The students I teach at UCL are very down to Earth, although that might be about what courses I work on.
I started doing English Literature, and ended effectively doing a PPE. I did an undergraduate business degree at the same time, another slightly unusual artefact of the NZ system.
I do not know how common it is but certainly I have worked with Australians and New Zealanders with two degrees, the second more vocational than the first.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
Gaming the system via subject choice is not unknown, for instance Dudley Moore's organ scholarship from working class Dagenham to Oxford, or Boris's sisters comments on the advantages of Latin and Greek for Oxford entry.
Did Dudley 'game it'? I'd have thought getting awarded an Oxford organ scholarship was pretty darn difficult, and the man was hardly a shit musician.
Nowadays the trick is supposed to be to switch from public school to local authority sixth form college to benefit from the potential for positive discrim
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
You tell PBers today you didn't go to a private school or have a foreign holiday. They won't believe you.
You went to a grammar school, they damage comprehensive school children more than fee paying schools could ever do.
Mrs Thatcher's second finest achievement was closing down so many grammar schools.
If you go to a grammar school, by definition you're not a 'comprehensive school child,' surely?
I know I’m talking grammar schools damaging nearby local comprehensives.
We private school boys much prefer comprehensives as less competition. Only grammars really challenge private schools in terms of Oxbridge entry and top A levels
Strange. I could have sworn that I achieved three grade A A-levels (when that meant something) from a bog-standard comp in the north east.
I didn't apply to Cambridge as I didn't want to spend three years surrounded by posho twats. (Mind, there was still a sprinkling of twats at Brum.)
Silly misconception on your behalf, there were plenty of working class Northerners at Cambridge, there were very few posho twats.
No there were fuck loads of posho twats. The place was theirs. I still don't know if I was right to go to Cambridge, a lot of the time I felt quite uncomfortable and unhappy there. I did meet my wife there though, so on balance it was a positive experience.
I enjoyed Cambridge (although did not meet a wife), but found it hidebound by tradition and full of itself. I went to Oxford and expected it to be the same, but was surprised by how more posh and ridiculous it was. The students I teach at UCL are very down to Earth, although that might be about what courses I work on.
I met a wife in Cambridge.
Indeed, I met several.
None of them were mine, mind.
As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
You tell PBers today you didn't go to a private school or have a foreign holiday. They won't believe you.
You went to a grammar school, they damage comprehensive school children more than fee paying schools could ever do.
Mrs Thatcher's second finest achievement was closing down so many grammar schools.
If you go to a grammar school, by definition you're not a 'comprehensive school child,' surely?
I know I’m talking grammar schools damaging nearby local comprehensives.
We private school boys much prefer comprehensives as less competition. Only grammars really challenge private schools in terms of Oxbridge entry and top A levels
Strange. I could have sworn that I achieved three grade A A-levels (when that meant something) from a bog-standard comp in the north east.
I didn't apply to Cambridge as I didn't want to spend three years surrounded by posho twats. (Mind, there was still a sprinkling of twats at Brum.)
Silly misconception on your behalf, there were plenty of working class Northerners at Cambridge, there were very few posho twats.
No there were fuck loads of posho twats. The place was theirs. I still don't know if I was right to go to Cambridge, a lot of the time I felt quite uncomfortable and unhappy there. I did meet my wife there though, so on balance it was a positive experience.
I enjoyed Cambridge (although did not meet a wife), but found it hidebound by tradition and full of itself. I went to Oxford and expected it to be the same, but was surprised by how more posh and ridiculous it was. The students I teach at UCL are very down to Earth, although that might be about what courses I work on.
Yes I do get the impression that Oxford is an order of magnitude more up itself than Cambridge is. My sister went there and really didn't enjoy it.
I guess the reason why they supply most of the top politicos?
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
I agree that sixth form colleges should be strongly encouraged. If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
Due to a complicated educational career, I went to state, private and 6th form college. At the time 6th form colleges (at least one I went to) were doing a handful of hours per week per A level, with the rest being self study.
Quite a few people at uni had problems with learning self study and creating their own routine.
The style of teaching my eldest is getting is very close to that - she has got lots more resources and help, but has to organise it her self.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
Gaming the system via subject choice is not unknown, for instance Dudley Moore's organ scholarship from working class Dagenham to Oxford, or Boris's sisters comments on the advantages of Latin and Greek for Oxford entry.
Did Dudley 'game it'? I'd have thought getting awarded an Oxford organ scholarship was pretty darn difficult, and the man was hardly a shit musician.
iirc his teachers encouraged Dudley Moore to play the organ specifically in order to get a scholarship to Oxford. Obviously Moore was bright and a musical prodigy but money would have been an obstacle for a working class boy in the 1950s (although it is possible the local council might have come up with the spondulicks; it is not as if many made it from council house to college)
ETA I gathered from someone who'd vaguely known him that he would sometimes visit his old school when he was famous.
One Oxford college had a string quartet of note for many years. Takes were told of promising violinists taking up the viola to help with entrance.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
You tell PBers today you didn't go to a private school or have a foreign holiday. They won't believe you.
You went to a grammar school, they damage comprehensive school children more than fee paying schools could ever do.
Mrs Thatcher's second finest achievement was closing down so many grammar schools.
If you go to a grammar school, by definition you're not a 'comprehensive school child,' surely?
I know I’m talking grammar schools damaging nearby local comprehensives.
We private school boys much prefer comprehensives as less competition. Only grammars really challenge private schools in terms of Oxbridge entry and top A levels
Strange. I could have sworn that I achieved three grade A A-levels (when that meant something) from a bog-standard comp in the north east.
I didn't apply to Cambridge as I didn't want to spend three years surrounded by posho twats. (Mind, there was still a sprinkling of twats at Brum.)
Silly misconception on your behalf, there were plenty of working class Northerners at Cambridge, there were very few posho twats.
No there were fuck loads of posho twats. The place was theirs. I still don't know if I was right to go to Cambridge, a lot of the time I felt quite uncomfortable and unhappy there. I did meet my wife there though, so on balance it was a positive experience.
I enjoyed Cambridge (although did not meet a wife), but found it hidebound by tradition and full of itself. I went to Oxford and expected it to be the same, but was surprised by how more posh and ridiculous it was. The students I teach at UCL are very down to Earth, although that might be about what courses I work on.
I met a wife in Cambridge.
Indeed, I met several.
None of them were mine, mind.
I went from drinking in Oxford to UCL in the 90s - the students didn't seem very different. There was a bit more dress up for college events. If nothing else, there was already a big international element, in both places, to dilute any UK culture issues.
The dons were well aware that they were Oxford dons - which usually meant hamming up the tweed and port stuff.
I did know a couple of people who banged on about being UCL being posh - by which they meant middle class really.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
Gaming the system via subject choice is not unknown, for instance Dudley Moore's organ scholarship from working class Dagenham to Oxford, or Boris's sisters comments on the advantages of Latin and Greek for Oxford entry.
Did Dudley 'game it'? I'd have thought getting awarded an Oxford organ scholarship was pretty darn difficult, and the man was hardly a shit musician.
Nowadays the trick is supposed to be to switch from public school to local authority sixth form college to benefit from the potential for positive discrim
Free School is the local game for that, around here. Don't forget tutoring in each subject, per week.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
Gaming the system via subject choice is not unknown, for instance Dudley Moore's organ scholarship from working class Dagenham to Oxford, or Boris's sisters comments on the advantages of Latin and Greek for Oxford entry.
Did Dudley 'game it'? I'd have thought getting awarded an Oxford organ scholarship was pretty darn difficult, and the man was hardly a shit musician.
iirc his teachers encouraged Dudley Moore to play the organ specifically in order to get a scholarship to Oxford. Obviously Moore was bright and a musical prodigy but money would have been an obstacle for a working class boy in the 1950s (although it is possible the local council might have come up with the spondulicks; it is not as if many made it from council house to college)
ETA I gathered from someone who'd vaguely known him that he would sometimes visit his old school when he was famous.
One Oxford college had a string quartet of note for many years. Takes were told of promising violinists taking up the viola to help with entrance.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
Gaming the system via subject choice is not unknown, for instance Dudley Moore's organ scholarship from working class Dagenham to Oxford, or Boris's sisters comments on the advantages of Latin and Greek for Oxford entry.
Did Dudley 'game it'? I'd have thought getting awarded an Oxford organ scholarship was pretty darn difficult, and the man was hardly a shit musician.
iirc his teachers encouraged Dudley Moore to play the organ specifically in order to get a scholarship to Oxford. Obviously Moore was bright and a musical prodigy but money would have been an obstacle for a working class boy in the 1950s (although it is possible the local council might have come up with the spondulicks; it is not as if many made it from council house to college)
ETA I gathered from someone who'd vaguely known him that he would sometimes visit his old school when he was famous.
One Oxford college had a string quartet of note for many years. Takes were told of promising violinists taking up the viola to help with entrance.
Trinity had one in residence when Sir John Burgh was President. Forget its name.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
In my first Biology VI class back in the ‘50’s, the Headmaster suddenly appeared, saying to one of us “You’re not doing this F****; you can get a State Scholarship if you do Maths”. And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology! Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
Gaming the system via subject choice is not unknown, for instance Dudley Moore's organ scholarship from working class Dagenham to Oxford, or Boris's sisters comments on the advantages of Latin and Greek for Oxford entry.
Did Dudley 'game it'? I'd have thought getting awarded an Oxford organ scholarship was pretty darn difficult, and the man was hardly a shit musician.
Nowadays the trick is supposed to be to switch from public school to local authority sixth form college to benefit from the potential for positive discrim
Free School is the local game for that, around here. Don't forget tutoring in each subject, per week.
Absolutely. That last bit is *extremely* important.
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
In answer to the second question, a very large number. It was one of the things you noticed in the mid-level private schools I worked in and with, that many of the children talked about their camping holidays in Devon.
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Are you sure about your figure of £5k-£6k? From what I can see that is the typical average PER TERM. In which case £15k would get you a good holiday in Europe.
£15k is now about average day school fees. Inflation in school fees has been running a lot higher than inflation in holidays for quite some time. Back in my day(!) three decades ago, a week in Majorca for a family was about the same as the year’s school fees.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
Is there a list of PBers who never set foot outside the UK until they turned 20 and whose parents would never even have considered sending them to private school? (State grammar and a week camping in Wales for me)
It's a bit four Yorkshiremen on here this morning.
My parents starved to death to send me to private school. But it was worth it.
My parents kept me in a comp. Didn't even try to send me to a grammar school.
And they never took me abroad until I was 19.
Did it bother me? Not much. Didn't particularly want to go abroad. I suffer from heat migraines very easily so the idea of hot summers was not appealing.
Would I have done better academically at a private school? Almost certainly. There was a significant problem with disruption in my local school that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. And you do see some quite stupid people who went to private schools getting on well in exams and careers.
But would have I enjoyed it? Probably not very much. I don't like commuting and my local comp was literally at the end of my road whereas the nearest private school was a ten mile bus ride.
I think this is probably my main personal issue with private schools - the advancement of the mediocre. We see it most obviously in our current government, half of whom I wouldn’t trust to make a cup of tea.
That I would agree with.
Which is one reason why I've always been adamant the way to get rid of them is to cut class sizes in the state sector dramatically. That would first, eliminate the edge private schools have and second, really improve education outcomes (much though I hate that cliche) for everyone.
The strange element in the debate about private and state education is the lack of interest in the actual issue.
Which is the better educational outcomes achieved by private schools.
At this point the debate generally devolves to Olympic swimming pools, thick poshos and my favourite - “Over education”.
Has anyone actually done a study on the effect of reducing class size without changing anything else?
Edit : The reason for the avoidance of the issue is obvious, to me.
Not in this country.
That would require you to reduce class sizes...
Once worked at a comprehensive that bust an absolute gut to get down to 24 maximum. Basically all the discrecionary spend in the budget went on that. That was probably not enough to really make a difference (you don't really change much by going from 30 to 24 in a well run school... Suspect the threshold is when 24 becomes 18). It ended up as more a selling point than anything else, and some of the consequent austerities (nothing printed full size, ever) were maddening.
Can't find the source, but I've seen it said that the key problem isn't so much staff as buildings. Cut the default class size from 30 to 20 and you need 50% more classrooms for the same number of children. And nobody has any intention of paying for that, especially in one go. Hence the use of TAs in primaries, to improve the adult:child ratio without changing the size of classes.
What are the ranges of class size in private schools? 15 early on, with slack handfuls for some A level subjects?
My eldest has ended up in a class of 2 for A level Spanish…
In my experience, there comes a point where class sizes are too small - 2 for A-level Spanish, for example. That's because the benefits of being in a group large enough to engender healthy debate and discussion are lost. I reckon anything less than 6 is too small for the cut and thrust of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions and the sharing of different ideas to benefit learning.
My education take that will make everyone hate me is that schools should just get out of the business of teaching A Levels, and do that in sixth form colleges instead. Lots of schools run A Level groups that are too small to be economic and probably aren't ideal from an educational point of view.
Trouble is that teachers like their tiny sixth form class (I know I did) and parents are often up in arms at the very idea.
Totally agree. State sixth-form colleges are the crème de la crème of our education system. Sadly, their numbers have reduced from just under 100 to around 50 as some have had to merge with FE colleges, and others have been academised into federations. Scandalous. Another example of clueless Tory education policies.
We have sixth form colleges in our area (Surrey) and, whilst I agree that they are very good, my secondary school was very poor at advising me on what A Levels to pick. I was basically left to figure it out for myself. Sadly, by the time I realised what I should have picked, it was too late.
That's a management problem, not a general institutional problem. A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
I was the classic "haven't got a clue what I want to do kid" so perhaps I was tricky, but I was interested in politics. What I needed was for someone to say "you like politics, you're good at maths, do maths, further maths, politics and economics" (forget the sciences if you're not into engineering etc.). But no one said that. It was only well after I'd started that I found out what PPE was and thought "that sounds interesting" and then realised what the subjects the posh kids were doing.
Of course, what I really ought to have done is, having got into Oxford to read geography, pleaded to be allowed to switch. I suspect they might have let me on the grounds I came from a poorer background than most who do that course.
I made a similar, but arguably worse choice - opting for an English degree, rather than science (with A grades in Maths, Physics and Chemistry along with English).
Opposite for me. I did STEM because I was a boy but should have done Arts. Top grades but the lack of fundamental interest got me in the end.
I’m amazed at how many on here are privately educated. But I invariably found, working in the UK, that I was one of the few non-privately educated.
Yes, us private school educated bods are vastly over-represented here, I expect ex-grammar school pupils are too.
Us comprehensive plebs are too busy doing proper work
Tutoring people to get into private schools, in my case
Ah, teaching the art of negotiation and sales?
"Yes mummy and daddy, this would mean no more foreign holidays for the rest of your non-senile lives, but you'll be able to brag to your work colleagues that I'm in a mediocre private school and feel all smug when the state school teachers are on strike. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get into Camford."?
Comments
Generally, appeals against sentence are based on the sentence being:
'wrong in law' (there was no legal power to pass the sentence), or
‘wrong in principle’ (you are arguing that the wrong type of sentence was passed, such as when a prison sentence was imposed when the offence only deserved a community order) or
‘manifestly excessive’ (far too long, taking into account the circumstances of the offence and the offender, and any relevant sentencing guidelines).
https://www.defence-barrister.co.uk/appealing-against-a-crown-court-sentence
I had a good group of friends, almost entirely comprehensive school educated from various provincial outposts, and we kept our heads down, worked hard and moaned about the place. I'm not sure it was the best way to spent the prime of my youth. But I did meet my wife there so there is that. And it looks good on my CV so I am thankful for the doors it has opened.
It's been explicit in the companies I've worked in - if either person in the relationship is in the reporting line of the other, they are breaking the rules and can be sacked. The correct thing to do is to go to HR, state the situation, and they arrange for one party to be transferred - that day.
I think the CPS were wrong to drop the more serious charge. They might be thinking the same today.
Wootton was originally an editor rather than a ‘talent’, although in recent times he’s better known for his commentary work on GB News and in the Mail.
Which strongly suggests that ULA's new rocket, Vulcan, is moving to the right, again.
The most important piece I've seen this week so far - Ukrainian children being kidnapped to Belarus. A series of articles each day this week in the Telegraph.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/17/russia-abducting-ukrainian-children-via-belarus/#
I’m well aware that my views on abortion are those of a minority, and I happen to believe this to be an egregious example of someone trying to use the emergency pandemic legislation to further their own aims.
She was convicted of lying to medical professionals, and of acting in a pre-meditated manner to kill her unborn child at 36 weeks. I believe that’s worthy of a custodial sentence.
Starmer certainly has control of the party.
I’ll try and not say too much that’s personal, but my wife made enquiries about orphans in Ukraine last year, as the war started. There weren’t any orphans.
I wonder if the approach used in the 2018 European Championships would work - hold the event at the same time but scatter the events across existing venues so the athletes are spread across the country/ world.
If well run, they are excellent institutions, and can provide a wide range of subject choices with specialist teachers.
A good sixth form college ought to sort that before it's too late, and facilitate a subject change.
It seems to be something the FIFA World Cup has considered over the years.
I'd pay good money for that.
https://www.bathspadentistry.com/what-are-the-risks-involved-in-getting-turkey-teeth/
IMO we exaggerate the effect that parents and schools have on outcomes.
Good preparation for university, too, as it's something of a halfway house in terms of independence - something that's not really true of smaller sixth forms.
Won't suit everyone, but most seem to thrive at them.
Your daughter was extremely likely, through hereditary factors, to achieve very high grades at any school.
Good excuse to share another really good observational band that my jaunt around Spotify Heardle and decision to selectively get with program turfed up (what, me, mid life crisis you say?)
https://youtu.be/Kwfhg1MTfJk
(The Reytons / Istanbul)
I think both nature and nurture count to some extent, and it's quite hard to say how much in any given case.
https://kyivindependent.com/military-4/
...Russia is concentrating "more than 100,000 personnel, more than 900 tanks, more than 555 artillery systems, 370 MLRS" in the Lyman-Kupiansk direction, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Eastern Military Command..
And led the lad out without a word to the teacher, who was Head of Biology!
Mind you, the Head and the Biology master were known to hate each other!
But I don't think it's entirely a foregone conclusion given Ukraine's lack of air power. They are having to do this the hard way.
Today's "Great British Nuclear" (stupid phrase) announcement certainly doesn't look like any kind of commitment to large scale investment:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/british-nuclear-revival-to-move-towards-energy-independence
Of course, what I really ought to have done is, having got into Oxford to read geography, pleaded to be allowed to switch. I suspect they might have let me on the grounds I came from a poorer background than most who do that course.
I'm slightly surprised they've found that much to deploy.
More pointless attrition on both sides I imagine.
Not sure why.
I started doing English Literature, and ended effectively doing a PPE. I did an undergraduate business degree at the same time, another slightly unusual artefact of the NZ system.
ETA I gathered from someone who'd vaguely known him that he would sometimes visit his old school when he was famous.
Indeed, I met several.
None of them were mine, mind.
Quite a few people at uni had problems with learning self study and creating their own routine.
The style of teaching my eldest is getting is very close to that - she has got lots more resources and help, but has to organise it her self.
The dons were well aware that they were Oxford dons - which usually meant hamming up the tweed and port stuff.
I did know a couple of people who banged on about being UCL being posh - by which they meant middle class really.
"Yes mummy and daddy, this would mean no more foreign holidays for the rest of your non-senile lives, but you'll be able to brag to your work colleagues that I'm in a mediocre private school and feel all smug when the state school teachers are on strike. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get into Camford."?