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.

No posts?

   Someone asked me why I hadn't posted for some time. There are two reasons, the first of which was that I felt I was getting repetetive  the other was that my right shoulder muscle was hurting and typing was painful.  When I finally went to a physiotherapist, on the NHS, it was the trapezius muscle that was the cause of the pain. I know have some exercises to do and that definitely  helps. What I could not understand was that this was also causing me to have severe headaches. But apparently the muscle goes to the top of head so cutting down the amount of typing helped. I am sure that the minor ailments of an ageing man are not really of much interest except to himself.

  This is a thought that goes back to me brother when the new head of the Bank of England was appointed. Mr Osborne said that there were no Brits good enough for the job. Is this the reason why our government is so bad? There are no Brits who are good enough for the job. This is certainly true in football, how many English Premier footballers and managers are English, after all it is the English Premier league. As an aside how many of the English premier league clobs are even owned by Brits?

   Compare this with House of Commons, 600+ Brits and we have to find among this motley crew someone good enough, for example, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. What are the odds of finding someone good enough amongst them. Would Mr Osborne appoint himself to the job or would he argue that there are just are not enough people of the right quality in Parliament.

  Perhaps we need more people in Parliament rather than less as Mr Cameron is suggesting.  Perhaps we should double the number of MP's in the the hope that with 1300 we might find one or two who would make competent ministers. After all when we choose our Member of Parliament do we vote for them on the basis that they would be a good minister. We could even go further and propose that job of MP's is to choose ministers and then make sure they do a good job. It is interesting to observe that Margaret Hodge is brilliant as Chair of the Public Accounts committee holding various government and agencies to account. Was she as good as a minister. The problem is that nothing in our methods of selecting MP's that guarantees their competence at anything other than convincing to local party faithful that they are one of us.

  What we need is more immigration so we can have competent ministers just like Mr Osborne wants to run the Bank of England, we obviously need them to run the country. Do we have your support Mr Osborne.