Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
Stephen Hunter - who does the bob Lee Swagger series and also a number of other excellent sniper-themed novels - wrote a novel cum investigation about the JFK shooting, His main points against the Warren Commission report, which he explains very well, is that (1) the damage claimed to have been caused by the bullet (passing through JFK, hitting Connolly) was almost impossible given the weak velocity of the 6,5mm round and (2) the ballistic testers could not repeat Oswald's aims without using a sight adjustment (or shiv) that has never been found.
It may not be a conspiracy theory but the ballistics evidence presented by Hunter - and he is not a crank - suggests that the official version re JFK is almost certainly untrue.
I read Case Closed years ago and found it compelling and definitive. Oswald acted alone. You'll never get 100% certainty on it but it's close enough for me.
You read one book. This guy read 200 and is “considerably smarter than you”
The guy who wrote Case Closed, Gerald Posner, has read about 2,000.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
Here’s another one that can’t be easily dismissed (unlike Baconism and QAnon etc)
Epstein. Suicide or not?
The @kinabalu school of witless middlebrow retired-accountant Radio 4 Brian of Britain skepticism will chortle and say Oh of course that’s a mad conspiracy theory
Really? There are, to say the least, quite a few jarring elements. The sleeping guards. The miraculously malfunctioning cameras. And so forth
The sleeping guards and broken cameras were notorious at that holding facility. The US specialities in having lot and lots of really badly maintained and run prisons.
And yet he was the one guy who should have been on Ultra Suicide watch and in Total Protection, given the significance of the allegations and names surrounding him
I don’t know if he topped himself or was offed. I know I can’t breezily dismiss the idea he was conveniently silenced by simply saying “oh American prisons are rubbish”
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
CIFAS warnings and the fact he has substantial income from America.
Open a new bank account with any bank* in the UK one of the eligibility questions they ask you are do you have income from America.
Not newsworthy though, presumably banks can bank for people or not as they choose, provided they don't make the decision on the basis of a protected characteristic.
But what is Coutts for anyway? It's just extreme snobbery, and now that cheques are no longer a thing it has lost 98% of its flex value anyway.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
CIFAS warnings and the fact he has substantial income from America.
Open a new bank account with any bank* in the UK one of the eligibility questions they ask you are do you have income from America.
What is the problem with that?
You have to fill in a shit tonne of paper work to send to the Yank regulators.
Thanks. So not just the punter who has to deal with US tax people, then.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
I could go into work tomorrow. I could (actually, I could ask someone I know) to put a flag on certain systems about any dealings with a certain ex-Communist former MP. This flag would be picked up several agencies used by a number of banks to decide whether you are a risk or not.
Within a day his bank would close the former MPs accounts without telling him why. He would find it fairly difficult to find a bank that would take his business, short of spending a fair bit of money on a lawyer.
Always worry about what they are doing to shitheads and scumbags.
Because they will do it, next, to black people after breakfast, Jews by lunchtime and they will do it to you before supper.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
You honestly don’t think there was a conspiracy to take out JFK?
It likely involved organised crime - mafia - and some low level government intel enemies of jfk
As I say, I found 'Case Closed' compelling. It knocked every theory into a cocked hat. Just nailed it all down. Terrific piece of work imo.
Here’s another one that can’t be easily dismissed (unlike Baconism and QAnon etc)
Epstein. Suicide or not?
The @kinabalu school of witless middlebrow retired-accountant Radio 4 Brian of Britain skepticism will chortle and say Oh of course that’s a mad conspiracy theory
Really? There are, to say the least, quite a few jarring elements. The sleeping guards. The miraculously malfunctioning cameras. And so forth
The sleeping guards and broken cameras were notorious at that holding facility. The US specialities in having lot and lots of really badly maintained and run prisons.
And yet he was the one guy who should have been on Ultra Suicide watch and in Total Protection, given the significance of the allegations and names surrounding him
I don’t know if he topped himself or was offed. I know I can’t breezily dismiss the idea he was conveniently silenced by simply saying “oh American prisons are rubbish”
QED. Weak thinking
It's helpful to analyse these questions by asking, would I bet on them? And subdivide the no bets into just don't know, or have a view but wouldn't stake money on it. For me this is a just don't know. There were an unbelievable number of unbelievably rich and powerful men wanting him dead, but OTOH if he foresaw happening to him what's happened to Maxwell suicide looks a reasonable reaction.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
I could go into work tomorrow. I could (actually, I could ask someone I know) to put a flag on certain systems about any dealings with a certain ex-Communist former MP. This flag would be picked up several agencies used by a number of banks to decide whether you are a risk or not.
Within a day his bank would close the former MPs accounts without telling him why. He would find it fairly difficult to find a bank that would take his business, short of spending a fair bit of money on a lawyer.
Always worry about what they are doing to shitheads and scumbags.
Because they will do it, next, to black people after breakfast, Jews by lunchtime and they will do it to you before supper.
Or they'll do it to you because a scumbag has tried to defraud you.
Here’s another one that can’t be easily dismissed (unlike Baconism and QAnon etc)
Epstein. Suicide or not?
The @kinabalu school of witless middlebrow retired-accountant Radio 4 Brian of Britain skepticism will chortle and say Oh of course that’s a mad conspiracy theory
Really? There are, to say the least, quite a few jarring elements. The sleeping guards. The miraculously malfunctioning cameras. And so forth
The sleeping guards and broken cameras were notorious at that holding facility. The US specialities in having lot and lots of really badly maintained and run prisons.
And yet he was the one guy who should have been on Ultra Suicide watch and in Total Protection, given the significance of the allegations and names surrounding him
I don’t know if he topped himself or was offed. I know I can’t breezily dismiss the idea he was conveniently silenced by simply saying “oh American prisons are rubbish”
QED. Weak thinking
Read some accounts of how the prison system in the US works. A few places like the Supermaxes are actually properly funded, run and staffed.
The Prison Industrial Complex, as a whole, is crap and heavily, heavily documented as that.
For example, the guards in that prison took legal action about the number of cameras that didn't work - on the grounds of personal safety. Repeatedly, over the years.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
Epstein could, of course, be explained by both theories together
Ie he was persuaded to kill himself at a certain time and in a certain way, with the inducement that some people close to him would then be spared further horrible persecution
He was assured that despite being on suicide watch “we’ll make sure the guards are sleeping and the cameras aren’t working, you will have two hours to do this”
That seems quite plausible. Explains everything
Let’s face it, a lot of extremely powerful people wanted him permanently silenced before the trial
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
I could go into work tomorrow. I could (actually, I could ask someone I know) to put a flag on certain systems about any dealings with a certain ex-Communist former MP. This flag would be picked up several agencies used by a number of banks to decide whether you are a risk or not.
Within a day his bank would close the former MPs accounts without telling him why. He would find it fairly difficult to find a bank that would take his business, short of spending a fair bit of money on a lawyer.
Always worry about what they are doing to shitheads and scumbags.
Because they will do it, next, to black people after breakfast, Jews by lunchtime and they will do it to you before supper.
Or they'll do it to you because a scumbag has tried to defraud you.
Just got to read your piece, Cyclefree. Congratulations and well done.
Of all the political scandals in my lifetime, the Post Office sickens me the most. The number of senior employees who should be put behind bars greatly exceeds the number of innocent employees who were.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Here’s another one that can’t be easily dismissed (unlike Baconism and QAnon etc)
Epstein. Suicide or not?
The @kinabalu school of witless middlebrow retired-accountant Radio 4 Brian of Britain skepticism will chortle and say Oh of course that’s a mad conspiracy theory
Really? There are, to say the least, quite a few jarring elements. The sleeping guards. The miraculously malfunctioning cameras. And so forth
The sleeping guards and broken cameras were notorious at that holding facility. The US specialities in having lot and lots of really badly maintained and run prisons.
And yet he was the one guy who should have been on Ultra Suicide watch and in Total Protection, given the significance of the allegations and names surrounding him
I don’t know if he topped himself or was offed. I know I can’t breezily dismiss the idea he was conveniently silenced by simply saying “oh American prisons are rubbish”
QED. Weak thinking
It's helpful to analyse these questions by asking, would I bet on them? And subdivide the no bets into just don't know, or have a view but wouldn't stake money on it. For me this is a just don't know. There were an unbelievable number of unbelievably rich and powerful men wanting him dead, but OTOH if he foresaw happening to him what's happened to Maxwell suicide looks a reasonable reaction.
See my later comment. A highly plausible explanation is that he was persuaded to top himself and given a specific time when he could do it, “unwatched” without anyone else getting into trouble
He was simultaneously offered far worse alternatives. A life of terror in jail and his loved ones assailed
It is rare for vast reams of data to be recorded during noteworthy events. There are often a few photos or grainy videos, some phone call data, perhaps nowadays some emails. Witness statements are often contradictory and jumbled, even from the same person.
These contradictions - and even blatant unknowns the authorities have not been able to sort out - are fertile ground for people with perverse minds or ill-intent to invent theories that proclaim that only *they* know the truth.
As an example, look at 9/11 and the way conspiracy theorists have jumped on every witness statement that backs whatever their view is that day. And the way those theories are often utterly contradictory with each other.
IMV the time to suspect something is up is when everything looks too clean and tidy, as if evidence has been invented to fit a story.
In most of the cases @Leon mentions, the evidence is muddy and unclear. That makes fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but also fits the way things usually happens.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
I could go into work tomorrow. I could (actually, I could ask someone I know) to put a flag on certain systems about any dealings with a certain ex-Communist former MP. This flag would be picked up several agencies used by a number of banks to decide whether you are a risk or not.
Within a day his bank would close the former MPs accounts without telling him why. He would find it fairly difficult to find a bank that would take his business, short of spending a fair bit of money on a lawyer.
Always worry about what they are doing to shitheads and scumbags.
Because they will do it, next, to black people after breakfast, Jews by lunchtime and they will do it to you before supper.
Or they'll do it to you because a scumbag has tried to defraud you.
This can happen to anyone. It's why I care about Post Office staff. Even though I have no intention of ever being one.
"Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Cifas markers is that your provider doesn’t have to tell you if it’s recording one. This means you may only discover its existence after having applications to other firms declined. And this in itself can dent your credit score.
Cifas is able to behave in this way because it’s a membership body for the financial industry. It has no statutory footing and little oversight beyond the FOS, which mainly scrutinises individual decisions."
I find it deeply implausible that it harms certain ethnicities less.
This reminds me that one of the best weapons against Covid was invented by a lady from Israel. She developed an inhaler that destroyed Covid whilst it was incubating in the upper respiratory tract (I believe it does this for 24 hours). An amazing invention for all forms of coronavirus and all sorts of respiratory diseases I'd imagine - it did not require a specific targeted compound. This was being tested, including tests in the UK but then all went quiet. Is there a conspiracy in that? *That* wouldn't suprise me, but not a 'racist' disease - sounds like something out of that godawful Bond film.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
Did Coutts actually claim that he fell below the threshold or was it just a case of the BBC and FT misreporting it for their own reasons?
Farage’s assumption is that the BBC and FT were replying on sources inside the bank, reported as being “familiar with” the decision, who were breaching client confidentiality to do so.
I’m sure other Coutts clients are happy to know that bank employees will tip off journalists, if they became the story.
It seems to me that after Farage made his video, journalists went to Coutts looking for a quote and were given a fairly generic statement about eligibility criteria which then became the story, even though there was never an explicit claim that this was the reason for closing Farage's accounts.
At Aber, the way emails were worked was, staff had their initials, postgrads had a double year of start next to their name (so if you started in 2005 it would be ano05) and undergrads had a single number (so ano5). It was simple and effective. (I had all three at different times.)
I'm showing my age, but in the 1990s, it was the other way around.
I was sov96@aber.ac.uk as an undergraduate starting in 1996. Post graduates starting the same year would have been sov6@aber.ac.uk
Interesting that it changed around.
I was five years after you. Thinking back, there were some who were '99' that were undergrads, so it must have changed in 2000.
The only curious anomaly was it was the date you started, not the date you started the current degree. So I was 1 then 01 all the way to 2009 when I got my one with initials only.
My fog induced brain showing. No, you were right. I don't know how I misremembered, but I did. We were sov6@aber.ac.uk And post graduates sov96@aber.ac.uk
But I have some vague recollection about not changing even if you graduated. It was all so long ago now I completely forget.
I did think, a few years ago, that there have probably been a few subsequent sov6's (in 2006 and 2016) but hey ho...........
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
I could go into work tomorrow. I could (actually, I could ask someone I know) to put a flag on certain systems about any dealings with a certain ex-Communist former MP. This flag would be picked up several agencies used by a number of banks to decide whether you are a risk or not.
Within a day his bank would close the former MPs accounts without telling him why. He would find it fairly difficult to find a bank that would take his business, short of spending a fair bit of money on a lawyer.
Always worry about what they are doing to shitheads and scumbags.
Because they will do it, next, to black people after breakfast, Jews by lunchtime and they will do it to you before supper.
Or they'll do it to you because a scumbag has tried to defraud you.
This can happen to anyone. It's why I care about Post Office staff. Even though I have no intention of ever being one.
"Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Cifas markers is that your provider doesn’t have to tell you if it’s recording one. This means you may only discover its existence after having applications to other firms declined. And this in itself can dent your credit score.
Cifas is able to behave in this way because it’s a membership body for the financial industry. It has no statutory footing and little oversight beyond the FOS, which mainly scrutinises individual decisions."
Isn't this all part and parcel of what is REALLY meant by "deregulation of the financial sector"?
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
I could go into work tomorrow. I could (actually, I could ask someone I know) to put a flag on certain systems about any dealings with a certain ex-Communist former MP. This flag would be picked up several agencies used by a number of banks to decide whether you are a risk or not.
Within a day his bank would close the former MPs accounts without telling him why. He would find it fairly difficult to find a bank that would take his business, short of spending a fair bit of money on a lawyer.
Always worry about what they are doing to shitheads and scumbags.
Because they will do it, next, to black people after breakfast, Jews by lunchtime and they will do it to you before supper.
Or they'll do it to you because a scumbag has tried to defraud you.
This can happen to anyone. It's why I care about Post Office staff. Even though I have no intention of ever being one.
"Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Cifas markers is that your provider doesn’t have to tell you if it’s recording one. This means you may only discover its existence after having applications to other firms declined. And this in itself can dent your credit score.
Cifas is able to behave in this way because it’s a membership body for the financial industry. It has no statutory footing and little oversight beyond the FOS, which mainly scrutinises individual decisions."
That comes across as cartel behaviour, blacklisting someone across an entire industry, no discussion allowed with the victim.
Plans to kill off Hundred and Blast – and launch new competition
Threat of Major League Cricket has forced ECB and counties to discuss radical solutions
The T20 Blast and the Hundred could be disbanded and replaced with one short-form competition under radical proposals due to be discussed between the ECB and county chiefs this autumn.
There are growing concerns that the domestic schedule, which has two premier short-form competitions, does not work and that the Hundred will not be able to compete with other T20 franchise leagues — particularly with the advent of Major League Cricket in America, which is due to expand next year and likely to clash with both the Blast and The Hundred while offering more valuable contracts.
The ECB and the counties are set to take another look at the future of the domestic calendar after the end of the season. One proposal, which has growing support, is to scrap the eight Hundred teams and the 100-ball format and replace it with a T20 league featuring the 18 counties — and perhaps some of the National (formerly minor) Counties — but with a different ownership model that allows for private investment.
The county membership will be happy to see the back of the Hundred, less so the county boards.
I suspect that getting rid of the Blast will be much less popular.
To the casual observer it all seems a bit deckchairs on the Titanic. Cricket suffers from the same problem that the large majority of sports do in England, other of course than the almighty football: a terminal lack of cash. Quite how replacing one T20 competition with another is going to solve that problem is quite beyond me. About the best that can be said is that at least they're not doing as badly as athletics.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
There's so much I want to say about this case but cannot but LOL at the Telegraph graphic.
If that quote is a true representation of their position it is absolutely acceptable. Organisations should be allowed to consider whether someone's reputation and views would be deleterious to their own reputation by association. It is not just his views on Brexit, it is his broader positions on immigrants and also accusations of racism that he seems not to deny (Alan Sked quote in this article) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/26/ukip-founder-alan-sked-party-become-frankensteins-monster
I wouldn't have him as a client. I value the reputation of my business.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
That's like saying that loads of people are as fast as Jessica Ennis-Hill - once you take away the training.
The actual results achieved by the state are worse than those of the private sector. This is the fault of the state system, not the fault of the private system.
The "creaming off" claim, by the way, has been debunked. There are a plenty of pupils in the state system who should be getting their 3 A* etc.
Bags of Moe Sbihi's out there, waiting for the talent scouts...
But they aren't. This isn't because of private school mind control rays - it is because they are not being trained to their potential.
The idea that the fix is somehow to get all the BrightPrivateSchoolToffMorons to go to state schools, to just lift the attainment numbers, is to abandon those who could actually benefit from the same level of education.
Give state schools more resources and see what they can do. Right now you are simply saying that someone on a motorbike can go faster than someone who is running. Of course they can. Right now the people who are being abandoned are the kids growing up under a government that is cutting spending per pupil.
What do you want to cut to provide the extra spending? Each extra 1000£ spending per head is going to cost about 12 billion
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
Or "Jews knew about 9/11 before it happened and didn't go to work that day."
Great header, @Cyclefree, it's baffling that this hasn't cut through more - surely everyone knows the local subpostmaster?
Really. Who on earth writes letters these days let alone go to a post office?
The scandal hjas been going on for a very long time, since 1999.
Many people were paid their pensions that way. Some still are.
Many more still have to, to get at banking and cash (ANABOBAZINA TRIGGER WARNING) because of bank closures.
And there are lots of things that can't be sent by a standard 1st or 2nd class stamp especially after RM monkeyed up the postal rates. It's just about possible to do it online but you need very accurate scales and be able to wait for the postie to collect.
Happy to oblige.
What do they need cash for?
Is it
a) to buy illegal drugs b) to take illegal drugs or c) to pay someone outside the glare of HMRC
?
To keep my spending private from companies like tesco's and the government. Which part do you fail to understand? It is none of their business
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
I could go into work tomorrow. I could (actually, I could ask someone I know) to put a flag on certain systems about any dealings with a certain ex-Communist former MP. This flag would be picked up several agencies used by a number of banks to decide whether you are a risk or not.
Within a day his bank would close the former MPs accounts without telling him why. He would find it fairly difficult to find a bank that would take his business, short of spending a fair bit of money on a lawyer.
Always worry about what they are doing to shitheads and scumbags.
Because they will do it, next, to black people after breakfast, Jews by lunchtime and they will do it to you before supper.
Or they'll do it to you because a scumbag has tried to defraud you.
This can happen to anyone. It's why I care about Post Office staff. Even though I have no intention of ever being one.
"Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Cifas markers is that your provider doesn’t have to tell you if it’s recording one. This means you may only discover its existence after having applications to other firms declined. And this in itself can dent your credit score.
Cifas is able to behave in this way because it’s a membership body for the financial industry. It has no statutory footing and little oversight beyond the FOS, which mainly scrutinises individual decisions."
Isn't this all part and parcel of what is REALLY meant by "deregulation of the financial sector"?
It's actually a response to regulation and scandals. You don't want to be accidentally running an account for Le Grande Fromage in Le Milieu - big penalties for the bank, you lose your bonus, rude things in the press.
So you setup a system that if you get a warning, no matter how slight, then you close the accounts instantly.
Of course a percentage of these alerts are going to be false alarms. But there is no reason to worry about a tiny percentage of people, is there?
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
Stephen Hunter - who does the bob Lee Swagger series and also a number of other excellent sniper-themed novels - wrote a novel cum investigation about the JFK shooting, His main points against the Warren Commission report, which he explains very well, is that (1) the damage claimed to have been caused by the bullet (passing through JFK, hitting Connolly) was almost impossible given the weak velocity of the 6,5mm round and (2) the ballistic testers could not repeat Oswald's aims without using a sight adjustment (or shiv) that has never been found.
It may not be a conspiracy theory but the ballistics evidence presented by Hunter - and he is not a crank - suggests that the official version re JFK is almost certainly untrue.
I read Case Closed years ago and found it compelling and definitive. Oswald acted alone. You'll never get 100% certainty on it but it's close enough for me.
You read one book. This guy read 200 and is “considerably smarter than you”
Lol. So insecure. Try the book when you have the time. Case Closed. It's best of breed.
Great header, @Cyclefree, it's baffling that this hasn't cut through more - surely everyone knows the local subpostmaster?
Really. Who on earth writes letters these days let alone go to a post office?
The scandal hjas been going on for a very long time, since 1999.
Many people were paid their pensions that way. Some still are.
Many more still have to, to get at banking and cash (ANABOBAZINA TRIGGER WARNING) because of bank closures.
And there are lots of things that can't be sent by a standard 1st or 2nd class stamp especially after RM monkeyed up the postal rates. It's just about possible to do it online but you need very accurate scales and be able to wait for the postie to collect.
Happy to oblige.
What do they need cash for?
Is it
a) to buy illegal drugs b) to take illegal drugs or c) to pay someone outside the glare of HMRC
?
To keep my spending private from companies like tesco's and the government. Which part do you fail to understand? It is none of their business
Too right. A chap purchasing plutonium for his own deterrent is no-one else's business. Pshaw!
Plans to kill off Hundred and Blast – and launch new competition
Threat of Major League Cricket has forced ECB and counties to discuss radical solutions
The T20 Blast and the Hundred could be disbanded and replaced with one short-form competition under radical proposals due to be discussed between the ECB and county chiefs this autumn.
There are growing concerns that the domestic schedule, which has two premier short-form competitions, does not work and that the Hundred will not be able to compete with other T20 franchise leagues — particularly with the advent of Major League Cricket in America, which is due to expand next year and likely to clash with both the Blast and The Hundred while offering more valuable contracts.
The ECB and the counties are set to take another look at the future of the domestic calendar after the end of the season. One proposal, which has growing support, is to scrap the eight Hundred teams and the 100-ball format and replace it with a T20 league featuring the 18 counties — and perhaps some of the National (formerly minor) Counties — but with a different ownership model that allows for private investment.
The county membership will be happy to see the back of the Hundred, less so the county boards.
I suspect that getting rid of the Blast will be much less popular.
To the casual observer it all seems a bit deckchairs on the Titanic. Cricket suffers from the same problem that the large majority of sports do in England, other of course than the almighty football: a terminal lack of cash. Quite how replacing one T20 competition with another is going to solve that problem is quite beyond me. About the best that can be said is that at least they're not doing as badly as athletics.
But there isn’t a lack of cash in cricket per se. T20 means money is flooding into the game, and lots of English players are doing very nicely
The ashes shows that the right Tests can still generate major money
Etc
The problem is the structure of English cricket hasn’t caught up with the Indian revolution
We need to accept that the domestic season (internationals apart) will now revolve around the Indian calendar. Just as other continents have had to accept that europe is supreme in football and the EPL dominant on top of that (for now)
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
That's like saying that loads of people are as fast as Jessica Ennis-Hill - once you take away the training.
The actual results achieved by the state are worse than those of the private sector. This is the fault of the state system, not the fault of the private system.
The "creaming off" claim, by the way, has been debunked. There are a plenty of pupils in the state system who should be getting their 3 A* etc.
Bags of Moe Sbihi's out there, waiting for the talent scouts...
But they aren't. This isn't because of private school mind control rays - it is because they are not being trained to their potential.
The idea that the fix is somehow to get all the BrightPrivateSchoolToffMorons to go to state schools, to just lift the attainment numbers, is to abandon those who could actually benefit from the same level of education.
Give state schools more resources and see what they can do. Right now you are simply saying that someone on a motorbike can go faster than someone who is running. Of course they can. Right now the people who are being abandoned are the kids growing up under a government that is cutting spending per pupil.
What do you want to cut to provide the extra spending? Each extra 1000£ spending per head is going to cost about 12 billion
If we sell the DfE into slavery, how much would that raise?
Wtf is the ‘Ashkenazi Jews (Fauci anyone?)’ stuff about? Is she implying he’s Jewish?
I think so.
However he's Italian/Swiss heritage.
There's also this conspiracy theory that says the Rothschilds invented Covid-19 and made trillions from the vaccine. Said Rothschilds virus was designed to not infect Jews.
On that last point, it's obviously a shite job of virus design: just noticed this
Anyway, I now have a regular column in a Regulatory/Compliance newsletter, with a worldwide audience. With my first column tomorrow - on crisis management!
Of course I have to endure the indignity of American spelling but the photo they've taken of me is rather nice. So I shall endure this as stoically as I can.
If anyone is professionally interested just VM me.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
That's like saying that loads of people are as fast as Jessica Ennis-Hill - once you take away the training.
The actual results achieved by the state are worse than those of the private sector. This is the fault of the state system, not the fault of the private system.
The "creaming off" claim, by the way, has been debunked. There are a plenty of pupils in the state system who should be getting their 3 A* etc.
Bags of Moe Sbihi's out there, waiting for the talent scouts...
But they aren't. This isn't because of private school mind control rays - it is because they are not being trained to their potential.
The idea that the fix is somehow to get all the BrightPrivateSchoolToffMorons to go to state schools, to just lift the attainment numbers, is to abandon those who could actually benefit from the same level of education.
Give state schools more resources and see what they can do. Right now you are simply saying that someone on a motorbike can go faster than someone who is running. Of course they can. Right now the people who are being abandoned are the kids growing up under a government that is cutting spending per pupil.
What do you want to cut to provide the extra spending? Each extra 1000£ spending per head is going to cost about 12 billion
If we sell the DfE into slavery, how much would that raise?
If we go on the value of their capabilities, about 38p?
Here’s another one that can’t be easily dismissed (unlike Baconism and QAnon etc)
Epstein. Suicide or not?
The @kinabalu school of witless middlebrow retired-accountant Radio 4 Brian of Britain skepticism will chortle and say Oh of course that’s a mad conspiracy theory
Really? There are, to say the least, quite a few jarring elements. The sleeping guards. The miraculously malfunctioning cameras. And so forth
'And so forth'
I'm with milkybar on this one actually. Maybe suicide, maybe not. But if pushed I'd say yep suicide. God knows he had reason.
As for middlebrow, you flatter me there. I'm more nobrow really.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
Stephen Hunter - who does the bob Lee Swagger series and also a number of other excellent sniper-themed novels - wrote a novel cum investigation about the JFK shooting, His main points against the Warren Commission report, which he explains very well, is that (1) the damage claimed to have been caused by the bullet (passing through JFK, hitting Connolly) was almost impossible given the weak velocity of the 6,5mm round and (2) the ballistic testers could not repeat Oswald's aims without using a sight adjustment (or shiv) that has never been found.
It may not be a conspiracy theory but the ballistics evidence presented by Hunter - and he is not a crank - suggests that the official version re JFK is almost certainly untrue.
I read Case Closed years ago and found it compelling and definitive. Oswald acted alone. You'll never get 100% certainty on it but it's close enough for me.
You read one book. This guy read 200 and is “considerably smarter than you”
Lol. So insecure. Try the book when you have the time. Case Closed. It's best of breed.
I’m not claiming I’m smarter than you. We know this. I’m claiming I have a hunch that HE is smarter than you. Which he is
Without giving his identity away the fact he he a multi multi millionaire from an ongoing career in TV and movies and you are a retired accountant with a golf handicap gives me the sense my hunch might just be right
Anyway, I now have a regular column in a Regulatory/Compliance newsletter, with a worldwide audience. With my first column tomorrow - on crisis management!
Of course I have to endure the indignity of American spelling but the photo they've taken of me is rather nice. So I shall endure this as stoically as I can.
If anyone is professionally interested just VM me.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
There's so much I want to say about this case but cannot but LOL at the Telegraph graphic.
Wait: didn't Farage campaign that businesses have the right to choose their customers?
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
Stephen Hunter - who does the bob Lee Swagger series and also a number of other excellent sniper-themed novels - wrote a novel cum investigation about the JFK shooting, His main points against the Warren Commission report, which he explains very well, is that (1) the damage claimed to have been caused by the bullet (passing through JFK, hitting Connolly) was almost impossible given the weak velocity of the 6,5mm round and (2) the ballistic testers could not repeat Oswald's aims without using a sight adjustment (or shiv) that has never been found.
It may not be a conspiracy theory but the ballistics evidence presented by Hunter - and he is not a crank - suggests that the official version re JFK is almost certainly untrue.
I read Case Closed years ago and found it compelling and definitive. Oswald acted alone. You'll never get 100% certainty on it but it's close enough for me.
You read one book. This guy read 200 and is “considerably smarter than you”
Lol. So insecure. Try the book when you have the time. Case Closed. It's best of breed.
I’m not claiming I’m smarter than you. We know this. I’m claiming I have a hunch that HE is smarter than you. Which he is
Without giving his identity away the fact he he a multi multi millionaire from an ongoing career in TV and movies and you are a retired accountant with a golf handicap gives me the sense my hunch might just be right
So you are backing a chap whose skill is in making stories sell... OK.
During the year-long period of lockdown, researchers scrutinized misconduct reports relating to 162 traders. The resulting data unveiled a startling truth: traders working from home had a modest 7.3% chance of sparking a misconduct alert, while their office-going brethren had a spine-chilling 37.6% probability.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
That’s not a ‘kernel of truth’, but rather a wild conclusion drawn from a result of no great statistical significance.
The idea that it’s possible to engineer a virus with such a purpose is even madder - since even if we had the required knowledge of worldwide population genetics, which we don’t, and the technology to target pathogenic viruses in such a manner, which we don’t, any such virus will start to mutate as soon as it’s released anyway.
If viruses can jump species, what kind of hurdle is the minor variation across difference groups of people ?
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
Stephen Hunter - who does the bob Lee Swagger series and also a number of other excellent sniper-themed novels - wrote a novel cum investigation about the JFK shooting, His main points against the Warren Commission report, which he explains very well, is that (1) the damage claimed to have been caused by the bullet (passing through JFK, hitting Connolly) was almost impossible given the weak velocity of the 6,5mm round and (2) the ballistic testers could not repeat Oswald's aims without using a sight adjustment (or shiv) that has never been found.
It may not be a conspiracy theory but the ballistics evidence presented by Hunter - and he is not a crank - suggests that the official version re JFK is almost certainly untrue.
I read Case Closed years ago and found it compelling and definitive. Oswald acted alone. You'll never get 100% certainty on it but it's close enough for me.
You read one book. This guy read 200 and is “considerably smarter than you”
Lol. So insecure. Try the book when you have the time. Case Closed. It's best of breed.
I’m not claiming I’m smarter than you. We know this. I’m claiming I have a hunch that HE is smarter than you. Which he is
Without giving his identity away the fact he he a multi multi millionaire from an ongoing career in TV and movies and you are a retired accountant with a golf handicap gives me the sense my hunch might just be right
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
During the year-long period of lockdown, researchers scrutinized misconduct reports relating to 162 traders. The resulting data unveiled a startling truth: traders working from home had a modest 7.3% chance of sparking a misconduct alert, while their office-going brethren had a spine-chilling 37.6% probability.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
There's so much I want to say about this case but cannot but LOL at the Telegraph graphic.
Wait: didn't Farage campaign that businesses have the right to choose their customers?
During the year-long period of lockdown, researchers scrutinized misconduct reports relating to 162 traders. The resulting data unveiled a startling truth: traders working from home had a modest 7.3% chance of sparking a misconduct alert, while their office-going brethren had a spine-chilling 37.6% probability.
That’s because the ones WFH can get up to all kinds of shit, unnoticed.
Remember - a drop in reported crimes can me that crimes are not being reported.
Exactly. The headline should be that they are five times less likely to trigger a "misconduct alert", whatever that is. No statistics on how often misconduct is actually happening.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
Stephen Hunter - who does the bob Lee Swagger series and also a number of other excellent sniper-themed novels - wrote a novel cum investigation about the JFK shooting, His main points against the Warren Commission report, which he explains very well, is that (1) the damage claimed to have been caused by the bullet (passing through JFK, hitting Connolly) was almost impossible given the weak velocity of the 6,5mm round and (2) the ballistic testers could not repeat Oswald's aims without using a sight adjustment (or shiv) that has never been found.
It may not be a conspiracy theory but the ballistics evidence presented by Hunter - and he is not a crank - suggests that the official version re JFK is almost certainly untrue.
I read Case Closed years ago and found it compelling and definitive. Oswald acted alone. You'll never get 100% certainty on it but it's close enough for me.
You read one book. This guy read 200 and is “considerably smarter than you”
The guy who wrote Case Closed, Gerald Posner, has read about 2,000.
People are (understandably) reluctant to accept that a Sun King was blotted out by a no-mark dweeb but such is life sometimes.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
His account with the Coutts was closed by the bank, and he’s been unable to open an account with any other bank. Coutts apparently briefed the media that his account was closed because he was insufficiently wealthy, but internal documents disclosed to Farage under freedom of information laws suggest that he was specifically targeted for account closure because of his political views.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
Or "Jews knew about 9/11 before it happened and didn't go to work that day."
Father of a friend of mine got into conspiracy theories via 9/11. It was his gateway drug
Was perfectly sane before that. No interest in crackpot theories. Then he started to read around 9/11, became convinced it was hoaxed, and is now so far down Lunatic Boulevard he’s beyond Flat Earth and he believes the entire universe is a Hoax and nothing existed before 1920
He laughs at QAnon-ers as “gullible dupes swallowing establishment lies”
All this is only going to get worse as AI makes objective truth redundant. It’s a serious problem (on top of deepfakes etc)
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
The more perturbing part about this story is not that Coutts closed his account - which given their rules on amounts was probably inevitable - but the suggestion he can't open an account elsewhere.
There are two possibilities:
1) That he's lying about being blacklisted to get sympathy; 2) That he really is being blacklisted for some reason.
In the case of the latter, it's worth remembering banks have always been able to refuse clients. My grandfather was once offered a large case of whisky to take a client whose account he had refused to transfer from Barclays, because the manager of Barclays was so desperate to get rid of him.
But he still refused. Bad payer, always in overdraft.
I have no idea which of your two possibilities is true. But having learned from PB today about the existence of the CIFAS markers - something I was unaware of before now - the second possibility goes from being 'unikely' in my mind to at least a reasonable possibility. Mainly because it stops being a 'conspiracy' which was how I would previously have interpreted it and now becomes the possible result of the action of an individual person or institution which then has far reaching knock on effects with otherwise un-involved institutions.
Lloyds (to pick a bank at random) don't have to be actively working against Farage. They merely have to be following the guidance of the CIFAS marker. I still have no idea of whether that is what actually happened or not but the fact it is a possibility does seem disturbing to me.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
There's so much I want to say about this case but cannot but LOL at the Telegraph graphic.
Wait: didn't Farage campaign that businesses have the right to choose their customers?
You know the meme about face-eating leopards?
Thinking about it, you could make an appropriate bank for Farage by taking the name Coutts and simply removing one vowel and replacing one consonant.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
That’s not a ‘kernel of truth’, but rather a wild conclusion drawn from a result of no great statistical significance.
The idea that it’s possible to engineer a virus with such a purpose is even madder - since even if we had the required knowledge of worldwide population genetics, which we don’t, and the technology to target pathogenic viruses in such a manner, which we don’t, any such virus will start to mutate as soon as it’s released anyway.
If viruses can jump species, what kind of hurdle is the minor variation across difference groups of people ?
Also, Covid picked off the weak. The 'worst affected' populations would, in theory, receive the biggest evolutionary boost.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
Stephen Hunter - who does the bob Lee Swagger series and also a number of other excellent sniper-themed novels - wrote a novel cum investigation about the JFK shooting, His main points against the Warren Commission report, which he explains very well, is that (1) the damage claimed to have been caused by the bullet (passing through JFK, hitting Connolly) was almost impossible given the weak velocity of the 6,5mm round and (2) the ballistic testers could not repeat Oswald's aims without using a sight adjustment (or shiv) that has never been found.
It may not be a conspiracy theory but the ballistics evidence presented by Hunter - and he is not a crank - suggests that the official version re JFK is almost certainly untrue.
I read Case Closed years ago and found it compelling and definitive. Oswald acted alone. You'll never get 100% certainty on it but it's close enough for me.
You read one book. This guy read 200 and is “considerably smarter than you”
Lol. So insecure. Try the book when you have the time. Case Closed. It's best of breed.
I’m not claiming I’m smarter than you. We know this. I’m claiming I have a hunch that HE is smarter than you. Which he is
Without giving his identity away the fact he he a multi multi millionaire from an ongoing career in TV and movies and you are a retired accountant with a golf handicap gives me the sense my hunch might just be right
Generally I have no time for conspiracy theories; and notice that their increasing popularity is extraordinary. Cock up is a far better bet.
Here are a couple of suspicions that have a bit of legs:
JFK: The single fact that LHO was placed in a position in which a randomer could effortless kill him before he talked when at that moment he should be the most protected person in the world shouts out.
Post Office: I find it almost impossible to believe that with all those prosecutions going on of 'people like us' and presumably so many more than usual that somebodies didn't know perfectly well they were sending innocent people to prison.
Wealth orders: Why are unexplained wealth orders so little used against the unconvicted Mr Bigs?
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
His account with the Coutts was closed by the bank, and he’s been unable to open an account with any other bank. Coutts apparently briefed the media that his account was closed because he was insufficiently wealthy, but internal documents disclosed to Farage under freedom of information laws suggest that he was specifically targeted for account closure because of his political views.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
That’s not a ‘kernel of truth’, but rather a wild conclusion drawn from a result of no great statistical significance.
The idea that it’s possible to engineer a virus with such a purpose is even madder - since even if we had the required knowledge of worldwide population genetics, which we don’t, and the technology to target pathogenic viruses in such a manner, which we don’t, any such virus will start to mutate as soon as it’s released anyway.
If viruses can jump species, what kind of hurdle is the minor variation across difference groups of people ?
Also, Covid picked off the weak. The 'worst affected' populations would, in theory, receive the biggest evolutionary boost.
{Mr Morden has entered the chat, creepily drinking tea with invisible friends}
Really hard to disagree with @Cyclefree. This was a clear opportunity to support the little guys and girls, take up a populist stance and, oh yes, do the right thing. It’s sad it was not taken up.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
Stephen Hunter - who does the bob Lee Swagger series and also a number of other excellent sniper-themed novels - wrote a novel cum investigation about the JFK shooting, His main points against the Warren Commission report, which he explains very well, is that (1) the damage claimed to have been caused by the bullet (passing through JFK, hitting Connolly) was almost impossible given the weak velocity of the 6,5mm round and (2) the ballistic testers could not repeat Oswald's aims without using a sight adjustment (or shiv) that has never been found.
It may not be a conspiracy theory but the ballistics evidence presented by Hunter - and he is not a crank - suggests that the official version re JFK is almost certainly untrue.
I read Case Closed years ago and found it compelling and definitive. Oswald acted alone. You'll never get 100% certainty on it but it's close enough for me.
You read one book. This guy read 200 and is “considerably smarter than you”
The guy who wrote Case Closed, Gerald Posner, has read about 2,000.
People are (understandably) reluctant to accept that a Sun King was blotted out by a no-mark dweeb but such is life sometimes.
Yes, disappointing from Badenoch. Despite disliking her politics I'd formed a tentative impression of her as a tough, independently minded, able person. Turns out she's none of those things. Or if she is, the evidence isn't there to demonstrate it. The evidence is more that she's a shallow egotistical politician looking to surf culture war nonsense for advancement in the party. Ah well. It's the easier way, I suppose.
Yes - I had thought that she might - possibly - be worth paying attention to. But her silence over this has disappointed me.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
Or "Jews knew about 9/11 before it happened and didn't go to work that day."
Father of a friend of mine got into conspiracy theories via 9/11. It was his gateway drug
Was perfectly sane before that. No interest in crackpot theories. Then he started to read around 9/11, became convinced it was hoaxed, and is now so far down Lunatic Boulevard he’s beyond Flat Earth and he believes the entire universe is a Hoax and nothing existed before 1920
He laughs at QAnon-ers as “gullible dupes swallowing establishment lies”
All this is only going to get worse as AI makes objective truth redundant. It’s a serious problem (on top of deepfakes etc)
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
But those are exceptionally silly conspiracy theories
How about
JFK Royal pedo island UFO Lab Leak
In order:
1. Probably true. There was likely some conspiracy beyond Lee Oswald
2. Sounds mad but - Prince andrew and Epstein??
3. The senate Democrat majority leader is demanding the pentagon release all its data on UFOS - or else
4. Probably true, and certainly not the “baseless conspiracy” alleged by the Lancet Letter
I'm going to make your day. Of those 4 there is just the one that has a decent chance of being true. Lab Leak!
Stephen Hunter - who does the bob Lee Swagger series and also a number of other excellent sniper-themed novels - wrote a novel cum investigation about the JFK shooting, His main points against the Warren Commission report, which he explains very well, is that (1) the damage claimed to have been caused by the bullet (passing through JFK, hitting Connolly) was almost impossible given the weak velocity of the 6,5mm round and (2) the ballistic testers could not repeat Oswald's aims without using a sight adjustment (or shiv) that has never been found.
It may not be a conspiracy theory but the ballistics evidence presented by Hunter - and he is not a crank - suggests that the official version re JFK is almost certainly untrue.
I read Case Closed years ago and found it compelling and definitive. Oswald acted alone. You'll never get 100% certainty on it but it's close enough for me.
You read one book. This guy read 200 and is “considerably smarter than you”
Lol. So insecure. Try the book when you have the time. Case Closed. It's best of breed.
I’m not claiming I’m smarter than you. We know this. I’m claiming I have a hunch that HE is smarter than you. Which he is
Without giving his identity away the fact he he a multi multi millionaire from an ongoing career in TV and movies and you are a retired accountant with a golf handicap gives me the sense my hunch might just be right
Generally I have no time for conspiracy theories; and notice that their increasing popularity is extraordinary. Cock up is a far better bet.
Here are a couple of suspicions that have a bit of legs:
JFK: The single fact that LHO was placed in a position in which a randomer could effortless kill him before he talked when at that moment he should be the most protected person in the world shouts out.
Post Office: I find it almost impossible to believe that with all those prosecutions going on of 'people like us' and presumably so many more than usual that somebodies didn't know perfectly well they were sending innocent people to prison.
Wealth orders: Why are unexplained wealth orders so little used against the unconvicted Mr Bigs?
On the Post Office - the Boiled Frog. The new system was supposed to find fraud. It did. Awesome. Senior people attached themselves to its success. More fraud found. Even more awesome. The few doubters are just haters. And so on, until the shattering realisation that they bet on bullshit. Than the coverup.
Wealth orders - they are a blunder bus capable of creating massive injustice. See the US, where such confiscations have become legalised theft by the police.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
Or "Jews knew about 9/11 before it happened and didn't go to work that day."
Father of a friend of mine got into conspiracy theories via 9/11. It was his gateway drug
Was perfectly sane before that. No interest in crackpot theories. Then he started to read around 9/11, became convinced it was hoaxed, and is now so far down Lunatic Boulevard he’s beyond Flat Earth and he believes the entire universe is a Hoax and nothing existed before 1920
He laughs at QAnon-ers as “gullible dupes swallowing establishment lies”
All this is only going to get worse as AI makes objective truth redundant. It’s a serious problem (on top of deepfakes etc)
Does it not concern you that you are on a similar slippery slope? I would say you are quite vulnerable to such journey. You are not a scientist (clearly) so do not follow Scientific Method and generally stop at the hypothesis stage because the scrutiny and objective data analysis is too unexciting for your journalistic mind. You also spend a lot of time alone. This enables your creative mind to look at anything fanciful and hope that it might be true so much that eventually you convince yourself.
@kinabalu may well be an accountant (for which I have cruelly teased him - it s a professional peril that he must endure), but I suspect that while you might consider him boring and unimaginative, his analysis is more reliable, probably by a factor of several thousand.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
Or "Jews knew about 9/11 before it happened and didn't go to work that day."
Father of a friend of mine got into conspiracy theories via 9/11. It was his gateway drug
Was perfectly sane before that. No interest in crackpot theories. Then he started to read around 9/11, became convinced it was hoaxed, and is now so far down Lunatic Boulevard he’s beyond Flat Earth and he believes the entire universe is a Hoax and nothing existed before 1920
He laughs at QAnon-ers as “gullible dupes swallowing establishment lies”
All this is only going to get worse as AI makes objective truth redundant. It’s a serious problem (on top of deepfakes etc)
There are of course crackpot theories and crackpot theories. It is central to Kant's thinking that time and space don't really exist outside of our experience of them. The great empiricist (and bishop) Berkeley didn't believe any material objects existed at all. Hume believed there was no objective moral difference between destroying the world and scratching his finger.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
Or you've noticed that funding per pupil at private schools is double that at state schools, or that many state schools are in danger of actually falling down, or that teacher retention is at record lows, or... Life must be so easy when you can just harrumph "socialist" and not engage your brain in the slightest.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
CIFAS warnings and the fact he has substantial income from America.
Open a new bank account with any bank* in the UK one of the eligibility questions they ask you are do you have income from America.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
Or "Jews knew about 9/11 before it happened and didn't go to work that day."
Father of a friend of mine got into conspiracy theories via 9/11. It was his gateway drug
Was perfectly sane before that. No interest in crackpot theories. Then he started to read around 9/11, became convinced it was hoaxed, and is now so far down Lunatic Boulevard he’s beyond Flat Earth and he believes the entire universe is a Hoax and nothing existed before 1920
He laughs at QAnon-ers as “gullible dupes swallowing establishment lies”
All this is only going to get worse as AI makes objective truth redundant. It’s a serious problem (on top of deepfakes etc)
Why 1920?
I honestly have no idea. Nor does he as far as I can see
This kind of theory is not unknown. A university friend of mine has fallen down the Zeitgeist hole (the movie) and is now a serious anti semite (amongst other sad things - it’s caused family ructions). One of his theories is that all history between 400-800AD is “fake”. Charlemagne etc
Yes, disappointing from Badenoch. Despite disliking her politics I'd formed a tentative impression of her as a tough, independently minded, able person. Turns out she's none of those things. Or if she is, the evidence isn't there to demonstrate it. The evidence is more that she's a shallow egotistical politician looking to surf culture war nonsense for advancement in the party. Ah well. It's the easier way, I suppose.
Yes - I had thought that she might - possibly - be worth paying attention to. But her silence over this has disappointed me.
I couldn't believe the PO details when I took the time (belatedly) to read properly about it.
Well done on your various headers about it - and on your new column.
Really hard to disagree with @Cyclefree. This was a clear opportunity to support the little guys and girls, take up a populist stance and, oh yes, do the right thing. It’s sad it was not taken up.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
Interestingly, independent schools have engaged in a kind of arms race over the years that have pushed up fees dramatically so that the cost per pupil is probably massively distorted anyway. This "arms race" was/is for more and more luxurious facilities, often in the sporting or arts areas. Many parents I have known have questioned whether another floodlit astroturf hockey pitch or revolving stage and theatre lighting that would rival the West End was really what they wanted their fees spent on. I suspect that even with Starmer's cynical socialist raids on the independent sector they will (hopefully) survive, though probably with a lot less bursaries and community benefits that their charitable status currently requires. The facilities arms race will not be missed.
“Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
“Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.”
I struggle to find Coutts's policy on customers interesting. I'm equally fine with them giving Farage an account or not giving one. I don't care if they have political views, or what they are, and I only mildly care if they allegedly told a fib to him.
What am I missing?
His account with the Coutts was closed by the bank, and he’s been unable to open an account with any other bank. Coutts apparently briefed the media that his account was closed because he was insufficiently wealthy, but internal documents disclosed to Farage under freedom of information laws suggest that he was specifically targeted for account closure because of his political views.
Great header, @Cyclefree, it's baffling that this hasn't cut through more - surely everyone knows the local subpostmaster?
Really. Who on earth writes letters these days let alone go to a post office?
The scandal hjas been going on for a very long time, since 1999.
Many people were paid their pensions that way. Some still are.
Many more still have to, to get at banking and cash (ANABOBAZINA TRIGGER WARNING) because of bank closures.
And there are lots of things that can't be sent by a standard 1st or 2nd class stamp especially after RM monkeyed up the postal rates. It's just about possible to do it online but you need very accurate scales and be able to wait for the postie to collect.
Happy to oblige.
What do they need cash for?
Is it
a) to buy illegal drugs b) to take illegal drugs or c) to pay someone outside the glare of HMRC
?
Oh do fuck off dear boy (in the nicest possible way) about this.
I paid cash at the butcher's today because he does not take cards for purchases less than £10. I paid cash last week for some home-grown plants at the local village Plant Fair (raising money for a local hospice). I pay cash for coffee and cake at our regular Make Do and Mend meet up (our version of The Great British Sewing Bee).
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
Or "Jews knew about 9/11 before it happened and didn't go to work that day."
Father of a friend of mine got into conspiracy theories via 9/11. It was his gateway drug
Was perfectly sane before that. No interest in crackpot theories. Then he started to read around 9/11, became convinced it was hoaxed, and is now so far down Lunatic Boulevard he’s beyond Flat Earth and he believes the entire universe is a Hoax and nothing existed before 1920
He laughs at QAnon-ers as “gullible dupes swallowing establishment lies”
All this is only going to get worse as AI makes objective truth redundant. It’s a serious problem (on top of deepfakes etc)
Does it not concern you that you are on a similar slippery slope? I would say you are quite vulnerable to such journey. You are not a scientist (clearly) so do not follow Scientific Method and generally stop at the hypothesis stage because the scrutiny and objective data analysis is too unexciting for your journalistic mind. You also spend a lot of time alone. This enables your creative mind to look at anything fanciful and hope that it might be true so much that eventually you convince yourself.
@kinabalu may well be an accountant (for which I have cruelly teased him - it s a professional peril that he must endure), but I suspect that while you might consider him boring and unimaginative, his analysis is more reliable, probably by a factor of several thousand.
Let me think. Ok I’ve thunk
In answer, no, no, no, no aaaaand…… No
I have a imagination, I keep an open mind, I travel the world all the time
@kinabalu, bless him, has no imagination, has an absurdly narrow mind, and hasn’t left Britain in fifteen years, apart from a weekend in Antwerp
Really hard to disagree with @Cyclefree. This was a clear opportunity to support the little guys and girls, take up a populist stance and, oh yes, do the right thing. It’s sad it was not taken up.
Why hasn't she, do we think?
Take a look at the resistance Cameron and others encountered with respect to Hillsborough.
She’d have to go to war with a chunk of people who were either involved or see the people involved as, like them, Good And Proper People Doing a Difficult Job.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
Or the bursar at a private school, given what's happened to school fees over the last decade and a bit.
For the first time in 70 years, British passports bearing the title of ‘His Majesty’ will start being issued this week in the name of His Majesty King Charles III, the Home Secretary has today (18 July) announced.
I might get one of the first passports with "His Majesty" on as my renewal was approved today.
Really hard to disagree with @Cyclefree. This was a clear opportunity to support the little guys and girls, take up a populist stance and, oh yes, do the right thing. It’s sad it was not taken up.
Because nobody in current HMG and today's "true" Tory Party gives a blind fiddler's final farewell fuck about "the little guys and girls"?
More likely, the kind most likely to get their jollies, by Bullingdonian trashing small post offices. . . or better yet, getting the PO to do it for them.
For the first time in 70 years, British passports bearing the title of ‘His Majesty’ will start being issued this week in the name of His Majesty King Charles III, the Home Secretary has today (18 July) announced.
I might get one of the first passports with "His Majesty" on as my renewal was approved today.
How comes your passport renewal had to be "approved"?
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
Or you've noticed that funding per pupil at private schools is double that at state schools, or that many state schools are in danger of actually falling down, or that teacher retention is at record lows, or... Life must be so easy when you can just harrumph "socialist" and not engage your brain in the slightest.
That's one kooky belief - that private schools get better results due to their 'ethos'.
Still, we are discussing softhead conspiracy theories so I guess it's bang on topic!
Really hard to disagree with @Cyclefree. This was a clear opportunity to support the little guys and girls, take up a populist stance and, oh yes, do the right thing. It’s sad it was not taken up.
Why hasn't she, do we think?
It may prove expensive and the RM is tottering as it is. But that is a poor excuse.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
Or you've noticed that funding per pupil at private schools is double that at state schools, or that many state schools are in danger of actually falling down, or that teacher retention is at record lows, or... Life must be so easy when you can just harrumph "socialist" and not engage your brain in the slightest.
Throughout my long teaching career all of those things were true for much of the time. Throughout what stood out for me is that good leadership and good teaching were way more important than money. No need for the abuse btw. We view the world differently, that's all.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
Or you've noticed that funding per pupil at private schools is double that at state schools, or that many state schools are in danger of actually falling down, or that teacher retention is at record lows, or... Life must be so easy when you can just harrumph "socialist" and not engage your brain in the slightest.
That's one kooky belief - that private schools get better results due to their 'ethos'.
Still, we are discussing softhead conspiracy theories so I guess it's bang on topic!
Isn't it just a simple case of incentives? Public schools need to produce pupils who perform well academically and get into good unis, otherwise nobody would pay to put their kids through. Schools that are are funded centrally have targets and inspections and suchlike, but fundamentally, will still exist if pupils fail, and indeed perversely may be given more funding.
Is there a setting on Twitter allowing me automatically to block anyone using the phrase "just let that sink in"? That's a feature I'd be willing to pay Musk to roll out.
I’d be curious if there is any evidence to back up this apparently outlandish claim. Covid sparing East Asians and Jews?!
Seems unlikely. But is there a kernel of truth from which they’ve confected the walnut whip of nonsense?
If there is, that's a dramatic break from their usual modus operandi.
I disagree. Most conspiracy theories have a tiny seed of truth at the heart - from which vast orchards of bollocks are grown
And of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true
I hasten to add that I exceedingly doubt that this one is true. The Covid death rate of East Asians in Hong Kong was horrific
The conspiracy theories I came across are Holocaust Denial, the Eleanor Butler pre-contract, the Christ Myth theory and Shakespeare authorship.
None of them have a 'tiny seed of truth' in them.
Or "Jews knew about 9/11 before it happened and didn't go to work that day."
Father of a friend of mine got into conspiracy theories via 9/11. It was his gateway drug
Was perfectly sane before that. No interest in crackpot theories. Then he started to read around 9/11, became convinced it was hoaxed, and is now so far down Lunatic Boulevard he’s beyond Flat Earth and he believes the entire universe is a Hoax and nothing existed before 1920
He laughs at QAnon-ers as “gullible dupes swallowing establishment lies”
All this is only going to get worse as AI makes objective truth redundant. It’s a serious problem (on top of deepfakes etc)
Does it not concern you that you are on a similar slippery slope? I would say you are quite vulnerable to such journey. You are not a scientist (clearly) so do not follow Scientific Method and generally stop at the hypothesis stage because the scrutiny and objective data analysis is too unexciting for your journalistic mind. You also spend a lot of time alone. This enables your creative mind to look at anything fanciful and hope that it might be true so much that eventually you convince yourself.
@kinabalu may well be an accountant (for which I have cruelly teased him - it s a professional peril that he must endure), but I suspect that while you might consider him boring and unimaginative, his analysis is more reliable, probably by a factor of several thousand.
Let me think. Ok I’ve thunk
In answer, no, no, no, no aaaaand…… No
I have a imagination, I keep an open mind, I travel the world all the time
@kinabalu, bless him, has no imagination, has an absurdly narrow mind, and hasn’t left Britain in fifteen years, apart from a weekend in Antwerp
For the first time in 70 years, British passports bearing the title of ‘His Majesty’ will start being issued this week in the name of His Majesty King Charles III, the Home Secretary has today (18 July) announced.
I might get one of the first passports with "His Majesty" on as my renewal was approved today.
How comes your passport renewal had to be "approved"?
The ability to discern interesting if surprising/challenging new truths, as against conspiratorial nonsense, is going to be a prized skill in the future
Because obvious objective truth is coming to an end. You won’t be able to rely on photographs, videos, “your own eyes”; the voices of your own children will be faked, supposed experts will turn out to be deepfakes, and besides we now know experts lie, when it suits - lab leak
So where you will get the actual truth? It’s going to be incredibly hard. You will need intuition. It may even then be impossible
As everyone on PB will be slightly bored by, I usually share John Redwood's stuff here - I find his solutions populist and sensible. He's done a series of posts on what he wants in the King's Speech - I don't agree with them all (eg I don't see the point of selling off Channel 4) but in totality I would be extremely impressed if the Government launched a programme like this, and all of it is possible if not downright reasonable. If this were the programme, the next election might be in contention again.
Yet once again we're likely get a total pile of toss from the SKS seat warmers.
1. Stop all overseas aid to any country with a nuclear weapons programme or with a defence budget greater than 2.5% of GDP. We should not be grant aiding rearmament by the back door.
2. Allocate more of the Overseas Aid budget to meet first year set up costs of asylum seekers and economic migrants.
3. Renegotiate the Windsor Agreement so that the more important Good Friday Agreement can be restored, with Unionists returning to Stormont.
4. Tell the EU that if they put a tariff on our cars exported to the EU for insufficient local content we will place one on their exports of cars to us.
5. Strengthen the small boats legislation by adding a notwithstanding clause to exclude further legal challenges
6 Intensify actions to arrest and prosecute people smugglers.
7 Return more foreign prisoners to their own countries.
8. Decriminalise non payment of tv licence fee
9. Raise income thresholds for economic migrants
Part 2 - Boost economical growth
1. Postpone ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2040 from 2030 to allow investment and continued use of existing factories.
2. Postpone the ban on new gas boilers for home heating
3. Cut Corporation tax to 12.5%
4. Switch wilding and sustainable farming grants to grants and loans to grow more food with more labour saving machinery
5. Issue licences to produce more oil and gas from known North Sea fields and reserves
6. Keep all existing fossil fuel power stations to help meet demand in periods of low wind and sun
7. End grants for anti motorist schemes that cause more delay and congestion on main roads
8. Put in more bypasses and roundabouts in place of more traffic lights and road restrictions
9. Amend Housing Bill to avoid losing more landlords
10. Remove 2017 and 2021 changes to IR 35 to foster more self employment
11. Raise VAT threshold for small business to £ 250,000
12. Get regulator to allow more reservoir capacity by water companies
13. Suspend carbon tax and emissions trading to cut energy costs for high energy using industries like steel
14. Auction government run rail franchises to get better service for lower subsidy
15. Sell Channel 4
16. Work with private sector to complete roll out of fast broadband
Part 3 - Productivity in public services
1. Repeal the independent management of NHS England, as everyone still blames Ministers for management failings.
2. Reduce layers of management in NHS and strengthen powers of Trust CEOs and Boards
3. Strengthen rights to free speech in universities and Colleges
4. Amend public procurement rules to give proper recognition to the tax and job contributions to UK made by UK based suppliers
5. Require Ministers to hold annual meetings with quangos to 1. Set objectives for the year ahead and agree budgets; 2 to review annual report and accounts; 3 to review performance.
6. Grant NHS patients the right to free treatment in the private sector if the NHS fails to deliver in a stated time
7. Block loans to Councils wanting to make commercial investments given the big losses some of them are recording on past attempts at property and green ventures
8. Review and consolidate government property holdings to cut costs and reduce dominance of expensive London
9. Cut energy use in public sector
10. Charge foreign visitors for using public services
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
Or you've noticed that funding per pupil at private schools is double that at state schools, or that many state schools are in danger of actually falling down, or that teacher retention is at record lows, or... Life must be so easy when you can just harrumph "socialist" and not engage your brain in the slightest.
That's one kooky belief - that private schools get better results due to their 'ethos'.
Still, we are discussing softhead conspiracy theories so I guess it's bang on topic!
Isn't it just a simple case of incentives? Public schools need to produce pupils who perform well academically and get into good unis, otherwise nobody would pay to put their kids through. Schools that are are funded centrally have targets and inspections and suchlike, but fundamentally, will still exist if pupils fail, and indeed perversely may be given more funding.
No that's not it. Damn. I was really hoping it would be.
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 don't really understand the logic of this. A levels are the bit of your schooling that really matters, surely - it's what gets you into a good Uni. If you're willing to entrust your child to the state system for that, then why not the whole lot, save yourself a load of money (and, for some, guilt) and give your childten the enormous benefit of learning among a diverse cross section of their fellow citizens?
As said above, you tutor on the side to deliver the grades, and rely on the Oxbridge college wanting to maintain its decent 'not from public school' percentage to deliver the offer
Why not just encourage your child to work hard, trust their teachers and let them find their own level? Kids who are hot-housed and spoon fed to get into top Unis will typically underperform there. I never got any tuition and we've not got any for our children.
Ah yes, the "hot-housed and spoon fed" argument.
Jessica Ennis-Hill shouldn't have bothered with all that ghastly over training. Once round the track on a weekend does just fine.
If you want state schools to catch up with private school results, effort and money will be required.
Take a look at the educational rankings internationally. Then look at the what the state schools manage.
Money is up to the government. If you think that teachers at state schools aren't putting in any effort then I'm afraid you are showing your ignorance. Their dedication in the face of terrible pay and conditions is incredible. Private schools aren't training their kids to become great athletes, they are more like a combination of performance enhancing drugs and letting some competitors start the race half way round the track. That's why state school kids tend to do better at uni. I saw it when I was at university, some private school kids were very bright, but a lot had obviously been coached over the line and really shouldn't have been there.
It's not about individual effort by teachers. it's about numbers and resources.
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
The private sector creams off an advantaged intake and then spends far more per pupil. Of course this leads to better results. If you adjust for these factors to get a fair comparison their results are not better. They are, in fact, worse.
And if you think that schools should have more resources, vote for that to happen for every child, don't simply secure it for your own child and vote for a real terms per pupil spending cut for everyone else.
But who is offering it?
Last time Labour was in power real spending per pupil went up. Under the Tories it has gone down. Draw your own conclusions.
My point is that although Labour did some steps in that direction, ultimately they still failed to make spending per pupil rise to the levels where the state sector would seriously rival private schools.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Yes you are probably right. Education isn't a priority especially as many of those for whom it is a priority have opted out of the regular school system and vote for parties that cut schools spending. But equally I am sure that education is much more of a priority for Labour than for the Tories and that is a major motivation for me to vote Labour, as it is for many people. Which party do people with school age children vote for?
Plenty of Labour MPs educate their children privately. And who can forget Harriet Harman who sent her child from Dulwich to St Olaves Grammar a super selective grammar. She had the gall to say she wanted every state school to be like St Olaves!😂
This kind of shit pisses me off too, believe me.
I do. I'm more comfortable being a cynical Conservative than any of the alternatives I've encountered on the political field.
Anecdotal experience: I went to a bog standard comp which was shit. Good fortune in my business career meant I was able to privately educate my kids. My view based on that limited experience (but also through speaking with others) that the gulf of difference between the sectors has a lot less to do with funding (though this obviously has influence) but more to do with attitude. Bog standard comps are happy with mediocrity. The school I went to revelled in it! Independent schools have higher expectations and this (together with more pushy parents) results in a cumulative advantage. I suspect if you experimented by giving a crap comp the same funds per pupil it would still remain a crap comp.
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Correct. The idea that more money is always the answer means you're asking the wrong questions, or you're a socialist... and probably both.
Or you've noticed that funding per pupil at private schools is double that at state schools, or that many state schools are in danger of actually falling down, or that teacher retention is at record lows, or... Life must be so easy when you can just harrumph "socialist" and not engage your brain in the slightest.
That's one kooky belief - that private schools get better results due to their 'ethos'.
Still, we are discussing softhead conspiracy theories so I guess it's bang on topic!
Isn't it just a simple case of incentives? Public schools need to produce pupils who perform well academically and get into good unis, otherwise nobody would pay to put their kids through. Schools that are are funded centrally have targets and inspections and suchlike, but fundamentally, will still exist if pupils fail, and indeed perversely may be given more funding.
No that's not it. Damn. I was really hoping it would be.
One new spanish poll from Key data their first since 6th July. PP lead identical at nearly 7% but both extreme parties Vox and Sumar are down while both PP and PSOE are up. The squeeze continues.
As everyone on PB will be slightly bored by, I usually share John Redwood's stuff here - I find his solutions populist and sensible. He's done a series of posts on what he wants in the King's Speech - I don't agree with them all (eg I don't see the point of selling off Channel 4) but in totality I would be extremely impressed if the Government launched a programme like this, and all of it is possible if not downright reasonable. If this were the programme, the next election might be in contention again.
Yet once again we're likely get a total pile of toss from the SKS seat warmers.
1. Stop all overseas aid to any country with a nuclear weapons programme or with a defence budget greater than 2.5% of GDP. We should not be grant aiding rearmament by the back door.
2. Allocate more of the Overseas Aid budget to meet first year set up costs of asylum seekers and economic migrants.
3. Renegotiate the Windsor Agreement so that the more important Good Friday Agreement can be restored, with Unionists returning to Stormont.
4. Tell the EU that if they put a tariff on our cars exported to the EU for insufficient local content we will place one on their exports of cars to us.
5. Strengthen the small boats legislation by adding a notwithstanding clause to exclude further legal challenges
6 Intensify actions to arrest and prosecute people smugglers.
7 Return more foreign prisoners to their own countries.
8. Decriminalise non payment of tv licence fee
9. Raise income thresholds for economic migrants
Part 2 - Boost economical growth
1. Postpone ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2040 from 2030 to allow investment and continued use of existing factories.
2. Postpone the ban on new gas boilers for home heating
3. Cut Corporation tax to 12.5%
4. Switch wilding and sustainable farming grants to grants and loans to grow more food with more labour saving machinery
5. Issue licences to produce more oil and gas from known North Sea fields and reserves
6. Keep all existing fossil fuel power stations to help meet demand in periods of low wind and sun
7. End grants for anti motorist schemes that cause more delay and congestion on main roads
8. Put in more bypasses and roundabouts in place of more traffic lights and road restrictions
9. Amend Housing Bill to avoid losing more landlords
10. Remove 2017 and 2021 changes to IR 35 to foster more self employment
11. Raise VAT threshold for small business to £ 250,000
12. Get regulator to allow more reservoir capacity by water companies
13. Suspend carbon tax and emissions trading to cut energy costs for high energy using industries like steel
14. Auction government run rail franchises to get better service for lower subsidy
15. Sell Channel 4
16. Work with private sector to complete roll out of fast broadband
Part 3 - Productivity in public services
1. Repeal the independent management of NHS England, as everyone still blames Ministers for management failings.
2. Reduce layers of management in NHS and strengthen powers of Trust CEOs and Boards
3. Strengthen rights to free speech in universities and Colleges
4. Amend public procurement rules to give proper recognition to the tax and job contributions to UK made by UK based suppliers
5. Require Ministers to hold annual meetings with quangos to 1. Set objectives for the year ahead and agree budgets; 2 to review annual report and accounts; 3 to review performance.
6. Grant NHS patients the right to free treatment in the private sector if the NHS fails to deliver in a stated time
7. Block loans to Councils wanting to make commercial investments given the big losses some of them are recording on past attempts at property and green ventures
8. Review and consolidate government property holdings to cut costs and reduce dominance of expensive London
9. Cut energy use in public sector
10. Charge foreign visitors for using public services
TV license fee is not foreign policy. Tax rates are for a budget, not a King's Speech. The only way NHS patients could get free treatment in the private sector is if we imported an extra half a million health care workers and raised taxes to pay the costs, which seems to be the exact opposite of his other putrid points.......
I'd like to say otherwise all good, but that is a step too far. All for cutting energy use in the public sector though, so well done John, better luck next year, eh?
Comments
https://press.which.co.uk/whichpressreleases/some-banks-wrongly-closing-customer-accounts-in-more-than-three-in-10-disputed-cases/
I don’t know if he topped himself or was offed. I know I can’t breezily dismiss the idea he was conveniently silenced by simply saying “oh American prisons are rubbish”
QED. Weak thinking
But what is Coutts for anyway? It's just extreme snobbery, and now that cheques are no longer a thing it has lost 98% of its flex value anyway.
Within a day his bank would close the former MPs accounts without telling him why. He would find it fairly difficult to find a bank that would take his business, short of spending a fair bit of money on a lawyer.
Always worry about what they are doing to shitheads and scumbags.
Because they will do it, next, to black people after breakfast, Jews by lunchtime and they will do it to you before supper.
A more informal Which piece on the problem.
https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/locked-out-how-your-bank-could-shut-down-your-financial-life-aKeMd1g3G2XH
The Prison Industrial Complex, as a whole, is crap and heavily, heavily documented as that.
For example, the guards in that prison took legal action about the number of cameras that didn't work - on the grounds of personal safety. Repeatedly, over the years.
Ie he was persuaded to kill himself at a certain time and in a certain way, with the inducement that some people close to him would then be spared further horrible persecution
He was assured that despite being on suicide watch “we’ll make sure the guards are sleeping and the cameras aren’t working, you will have two hours to do this”
That seems quite plausible. Explains everything
Let’s face it, a lot of extremely powerful people wanted him permanently silenced before the trial
Is that suicide or murder?
This can happen to anyone. It's why I care about Post Office staff. Even though I have no intention of ever being one.
Of all the political scandals in my lifetime, the Post Office sickens me the most. The number of senior employees who should be put behind bars greatly exceeds the number of innocent employees who were.
He was simultaneously offered far worse alternatives. A life of terror in jail and his loved ones assailed
It is rare for vast reams of data to be recorded during noteworthy events. There are often a few photos or grainy videos, some phone call data, perhaps nowadays some emails. Witness statements are often contradictory and jumbled, even from the same person.
These contradictions - and even blatant unknowns the authorities have not been able to sort out - are fertile ground for people with perverse minds or ill-intent to invent theories that proclaim that only *they* know the truth.
As an example, look at 9/11 and the way conspiracy theorists have jumped on every witness statement that backs whatever their view is that day. And the way those theories are often utterly contradictory with each other.
IMV the time to suspect something is up is when everything looks too clean and tidy, as if evidence has been invented to fit a story.
In most of the cases @Leon mentions, the evidence is muddy and unclear. That makes fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but also fits the way things usually happens.
"Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Cifas markers is that your provider doesn’t have to tell you if it’s recording one. This means you may only discover its existence after having applications to other firms declined. And this in itself can dent your credit score.
Cifas is able to behave in this way because it’s a membership body for the financial industry. It has no statutory footing and little oversight beyond the FOS, which mainly scrutinises individual decisions."
This reminds me that one of the best weapons against Covid was invented by a lady from Israel. She developed an inhaler that destroyed Covid whilst it was incubating in the upper respiratory tract (I believe it does this for 24 hours). An amazing invention for all forms of coronavirus and all sorts of respiratory diseases I'd imagine - it did not require a specific targeted compound. This was being tested, including tests in the UK but then all went quiet. Is there a conspiracy in that? *That* wouldn't suprise me, but not a 'racist' disease - sounds like something out of that godawful Bond film.
No, you were right. I don't know how I misremembered, but I did.
We were sov6@aber.ac.uk
And post graduates sov96@aber.ac.uk
But I have some vague recollection about not changing even if you graduated.
It was all so long ago now I completely forget.
I did think, a few years ago, that there have probably been a few subsequent sov6's (in 2006 and 2016) but hey ho...........
I wouldn't have him as a client. I value the reputation of my business.
So you setup a system that if you get a warning, no matter how slight, then you close the accounts instantly.
Of course a percentage of these alerts are going to be false alarms. But there is no reason to worry about a tiny percentage of people, is there?
The ashes shows that the right Tests can still generate major money
Etc
The problem is the structure of English cricket hasn’t caught up with the Indian revolution
We need to accept that the domestic season (internationals apart) will now revolve around the Indian calendar. Just as other continents have had to accept that europe is supreme in football and the EPL dominant on top of that (for now)
Of course I have to endure the indignity of American spelling but the photo they've taken of me is rather nice. So I shall endure this as stoically as I can.
If anyone is professionally interested just VM me.
I'm with milkybar on this one actually. Maybe suicide, maybe not. But if pushed I'd say yep suicide. God knows he had reason.
As for middlebrow, you flatter me there. I'm more nobrow really.
Without giving his identity away the fact he he a multi multi millionaire from an ongoing career in TV and movies and you are a retired accountant with a golf handicap gives me the sense my hunch might just be right
During the year-long period of lockdown, researchers scrutinized misconduct reports relating to 162 traders. The resulting data unveiled a startling truth: traders working from home had a modest 7.3% chance of sparking a misconduct alert, while their office-going brethren had a spine-chilling 37.6% probability.
https://fortune.com/2023/07/18/new-research-suggests-bankers-are-5-times-less-likely-engage-financial-misconduct-working-home-careers-finance-gleb-tsipursky/amp/
https://twitter.com/GenomeNathan/status/1680492167331020800
That’s not a ‘kernel of truth’, but rather a wild conclusion drawn from a result of no great statistical significance.
The idea that it’s possible to engineer a virus with such a purpose is even madder - since even if we had the required knowledge of worldwide population genetics, which we don’t, and the technology to target pathogenic viruses in such a manner, which we don’t, any such virus will start to mutate as soon as it’s released anyway.
If viruses can jump species, what kind of hurdle is the minor variation across difference groups of people ?
In the end, whether businesses or state sector institutions, it is all about ethos. I am sure there are plenty of state schools (I can think of at least one in my area) that get equal results to some independents even though they have lower funding. It is achieved by good leadership and ethos and teachers with high expectations.
Remember - a drop in reported crimes can me that crimes are not being reported.
Was perfectly sane before that. No interest in crackpot theories. Then he started to read around 9/11, became convinced it was hoaxed, and is now so far down Lunatic Boulevard he’s beyond Flat Earth and he believes the entire universe is a
Hoax and nothing existed before 1920
He laughs at QAnon-ers as “gullible dupes swallowing establishment lies”
All this is only going to get worse as AI makes objective truth redundant. It’s a serious problem (on top of deepfakes etc)
Lloyds (to pick a bank at random) don't have to be actively working against Farage. They merely have to be following the guidance of the CIFAS marker. I still have no idea of whether that is what actually happened or not but the fact it is a possibility does seem disturbing to me.
Here are a couple of suspicions that have a bit of legs:
JFK: The single fact that LHO was placed in a position in which a randomer could effortless kill him before he talked when at that moment he should be the most protected person in the world shouts out.
Post Office: I find it almost impossible to believe that with all those prosecutions going on of 'people like us' and presumably so many more than usual that somebodies didn't know perfectly well they were sending innocent people to prison.
Wealth orders: Why are unexplained wealth orders so little used against the unconvicted Mr Bigs?
Wealth orders - they are a blunder bus capable of creating massive injustice. See the US, where such confiscations have become legalised theft by the police.
@kinabalu may well be an accountant (for which I have cruelly teased him - it s a professional peril that he must endure), but I suspect that while you might consider him boring and unimaginative, his analysis is more reliable, probably by a factor of several thousand.
Life must be so easy when you can just harrumph "socialist" and not engage your brain in the slightest.
However, it’s v interesting that, inter alia, LHO had dealings with the Russians, the Cubans, and perhaps the Mafia. And LHO’s own death is very odd.
America bombed Afghanistan after 9/11 on more tenuous connections.
I wish someone would take up this issue but while the Business Minister has her attention elsewhere that is less than likely to happen
This kind of theory is not unknown. A university friend of mine has fallen down the Zeitgeist hole (the movie) and is now a serious anti semite (amongst other sad things - it’s caused family ructions). One of his theories is that all history between 400-800AD is “fake”. Charlemagne etc
Again I’ve no idea why
Well done on your various headers about it - and on your new column.
Plenty of very, very rich people I know have First Direct accounts.
I paid cash at the butcher's today because he does not take cards for purchases less than £10. I paid cash last week for some home-grown plants at the local village Plant Fair (raising money for a local hospice). I pay cash for coffee and cake at our regular Make Do and Mend meet up (our version of The Great British Sewing Bee).
And so on.
In answer, no, no, no, no aaaaand…… No
I have a imagination, I keep an open mind, I travel the world all the time
@kinabalu, bless him, has no imagination, has an absurdly narrow mind, and hasn’t left Britain in fifteen years, apart from a weekend in Antwerp
CASE CLOSED, as, I believe, they say
She’d have to go to war with a chunk of people who were either involved or see the people involved as, like them, Good And Proper People Doing a Difficult Job.
For the first time in 70 years, British passports bearing the title of ‘His Majesty’ will start being issued this week in the name of His Majesty King Charles III, the Home Secretary has today (18 July) announced.
I might get one of the first passports with "His Majesty" on as my renewal was approved today.
More likely, the kind most likely to get their jollies, by Bullingdonian trashing small post offices. . . or better yet, getting the PO to do it for them.
Still, we are discussing softhead conspiracy theories so I guess it's bang on topic!
Because IF you haven't then basically a waste of time, yours and ours.
Because obvious objective truth is coming to an end. You won’t be able to rely on photographs, videos, “your own eyes”; the voices of your own children will be faked, supposed experts will turn out to be deepfakes, and besides we now know experts lie, when it suits - lab leak
So where you will get the actual truth? It’s going to be incredibly hard. You will need intuition. It may even then be impossible
Yet once again we're likely get a total pile of toss from the SKS seat warmers.
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2023/07/15/the-kings-speech/
1. Stop all overseas aid to any country with a nuclear weapons programme or with a defence budget greater than 2.5% of GDP. We should not be grant aiding rearmament by the back door.
2. Allocate more of the Overseas Aid budget to meet first year set up costs of asylum seekers and economic migrants.
3. Renegotiate the Windsor Agreement so that the more important Good Friday Agreement can be restored, with Unionists returning to Stormont.
4. Tell the EU that if they put a tariff on our cars exported to the EU for insufficient local content we will place one on their exports of cars to us.
5. Strengthen the small boats legislation by adding a notwithstanding clause to exclude further legal challenges
6 Intensify actions to arrest and prosecute people smugglers.
7 Return more foreign prisoners to their own countries.
8. Decriminalise non payment of tv licence fee
9. Raise income thresholds for economic migrants
Part 2 - Boost economical growth
1. Postpone ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2040 from 2030 to allow investment and continued use of existing factories.
2. Postpone the ban on new gas boilers for home heating
3. Cut Corporation tax to 12.5%
4. Switch wilding and sustainable farming grants to grants and loans to grow more food with more labour saving machinery
5. Issue licences to produce more oil and gas from known North Sea fields and reserves
6. Keep all existing fossil fuel power stations to help meet demand in periods of low wind and sun
7. End grants for anti motorist schemes that cause more delay and congestion on main roads
8. Put in more bypasses and roundabouts in place of more traffic lights and road restrictions
9. Amend Housing Bill to avoid losing more landlords
10. Remove 2017 and 2021 changes to IR 35 to foster more self employment
11. Raise VAT threshold for small business to £ 250,000
12. Get regulator to allow more reservoir capacity by water companies
13. Suspend carbon tax and emissions trading to cut energy costs for high energy using industries like steel
14. Auction government run rail franchises to get better service for lower subsidy
15. Sell Channel 4
16. Work with private sector to complete roll out of fast broadband
Part 3 - Productivity in public services
1. Repeal the independent management of NHS England, as everyone still blames Ministers for management failings.
2. Reduce layers of management in NHS and strengthen powers of Trust CEOs and Boards
3. Strengthen rights to free speech in universities and Colleges
4. Amend public procurement rules to give proper recognition to the tax and job contributions to UK made by UK based suppliers
5. Require Ministers to hold annual meetings with quangos to 1. Set objectives for the year ahead and agree budgets; 2 to review annual report and accounts; 3 to review performance.
6. Grant NHS patients the right to free treatment in the private sector if the NHS fails to deliver in a stated time
7. Block loans to Councils wanting to make commercial investments given the big losses some of them are recording on past attempts at property and green ventures
8. Review and consolidate government property holdings to cut costs and reduce dominance of expensive London
9. Cut energy use in public sector
10. Charge foreign visitors for using public services
Tax rates are for a budget, not a King's Speech.
The only way NHS patients could get free treatment in the private sector is if we imported an extra half a million health care workers and raised taxes to pay the costs, which seems to be the exact opposite of his other putrid points.......
I'd like to say otherwise all good, but that is a step too far. All for cutting energy use in the public sector though, so well done John, better luck next year, eh?
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/musk-tesla-board-to-return-735m-after-being-sued-for-overpaying-themselves/