private schools

Yesterday, whilst tidying the kitchen, I caught part of a discussion about private schools. It is always surprising the justification that private schools and their adherents come up with. They are always the same and they are always self-serving and hide the true reason.

It is an essential part of the class system in Britain, parents buy their way into a small select segment of society, less than 10%, to establish their offspring into a charmed life, or at least that is what they hope. They will claim that they get a better education, for the price they pay, they should. If we spent the same on all children there is no doubt the standards of all childrens' education could be improved. There is the claim that the society cannot afford it, it is more that we choose not to afford it. We choose to pay a banker a £1.5 bonus instead. Mr Cameron wants to give the LIBOR fines to servicemans' charities, he could choose to give it to education or even to Credit Unions who are trying to offer people, especially at the bottom, affordable simple banking.

There is also a claim that they are obviously good because look at the numbers of people from independent schools who get onto Oxford & Cambridge. Unhappily that s part of the class system. Whilst spending time as a visiting fellow at an Oxford college it was fascinating to listen to informal discussions of applicants. One fellow said, and I quote, " I know who will get a first and who a third when I interview them". When asked why he would admit someone who would get a third there was a sort of embarrassed silence. Also overheard and admitted the view that we will have to teach them in our rooms and they have to be the sort of person that they would want to teach. Notice the emphasis on the wishes and preferences of the fellow, not concern for the prospective student.

This is sometimes justifies by trying to argue that if they are from the wrong background they would find it hard to fit in. Perhaps it is the colleges responsibility to do more to help. None of this would matter except for two reasons, one is simply finance. If all universities had the resources to provide the level of teaching that Oxford and Cambridge then it would matter far less where a student went. If all students could have weekly session with faculty on a one to one or two to one basis that might help. Then there are also the level of facilities, every college has a library which means the availability of books for students is much greater than in most universities as well as providing much more space for libraries.

The second reason that could mean that access to Oxford and Cambridge was less important if as a society we placed less emphasis of where someone went to university. An ex-student of mine who went to work for a prestigious city from was told that they had great difficulty in finding first class mathematicians. She pointed out that if they looked at universities other than Oxford and Cambridge they might find it easier.

The private schools now exist to buttress the class system and by letting in a few less prosperous students it looks like they are less exclusive than they are and keeps improving the breeding group for the upper classes.