How and when will that change if the children of the wealthy and a few of the brighter or better coached kids from more ordinary backgrounds are taken out of the state sector? What’s the incentive for the ruling classes to give working class kids a boost up to the same standards? Exclusivity is as much the point as better facilities or lower staff to student ratios.
I reckon a good proportion of our parliamentarians are either privately schooled themselves or send their own children to private or selective schools.
The same arguments apply to public transport, housing, and health, probably other sectors too. If you can personally avoid the consequences of underfunding you‘re less likely to be very motivated to make meaningful or widely beneficial changes.
I don't see how putting the 6% that go to Private school (and I don't agree with brighter) back into the state sector helps anyone.
The wealthy will always spend money to work around and above the status quo to deliver an advantage in whatever way they see fit.
The nations energy should be put into raising the standards in the rest of schooling such that in the 'best' of the state sector, moneyed advantage in terms of educational attainment becomes at best marginal.
Nobody is going to ban politicians that use private schools/health systems and nobody is going to abolish any kind of private education or health system either. All we can do is use our votes, protest, lobby, support our kids and our kid's teachers and our kid's schools. I'd still vote for an extra penny in the pound tax ring-fenced for education.
I was at private schools until around 13/14 years old and then went to state school - I basically span my wheels for nearly 2 years waiting for everyone else to catch-up. The gulf probably still exists.
Rudimentary stuff like, more teachers, more schools, more equipment, smaller class-sizes etc. will take vast amounts of money and will take more than a 2 term government. So we need a long-term cross-party strategy for a modern nation - I see no party offering that.
There is also defining 'best' in terms of education in such a diverse nation? In the the private sector it's easy - narrowly focussed in it's aims their task is pretty simple. Do we have a one-size fits all or do we design a variety of different education systems to mirror the different the needs of communities and people of different background and ambition? What's the role of the parents in education - in the private sector parental engagement is very high indeed. How do we drive ambition and motivation - the desire to learn? What is it we need to be teaching for the world we are entering? What are our competitors doing? What are the barriers to attainment and how do we dismantle them?
Big questions - no focus on answers that I can see other than Private is bad.
