Private schools? A ‘luxury’? Well I never… July 25, 2013
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Education, Irish Politics, Social Policy.trackback
According to the Insolvency Service guidelines…
Mortgage-holders who cannot repay their home loan will be warned today that they must be prepared to forego sending their children to private schools and give up luxuries such as a second car and satellite television if they seek to enter an official insolvency arrangement to settle the debt.
And…
One of the cornerstones of the package is the release of official guidelines on a “reasonable standard of living” for insolvent debtors and “reasonable living expenses”. These are expected to prove contentious given the expenditure limits they will impose on insolvent debtors.
It will, no doubt, be informative to see how the proponents of such schools deal with this given their enormously entertaining line in the recent past of how they’re really doing the state some financial service by keeping those children who attend them out of the public system. I await their letters pointing out this contradiction with the insolvency guidelines with some interest.
Moreover it cuts directly across the trope some would like to see take hold more widely that private education is simply an additional extra, something that is entirely ordinary. Of course it is not. In the main it is indeed a luxury, available broadly to only those who can afford it.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
George Alexander Louis Windsor, future man of the people:
The queen was educated at home, in keeping with royal tradition. But she sent her own children to boarding schools, and Charles and Diana did the same with William and his younger brother Harry — choosing Eton, one of the biggest and most prestigious boys’ schools in the country.
“William’s childhood was normal by upper-middle-class standards— private schools, expensive holidays, McDonald’s in a smart part of town as opposed to a grotty part of town,” said royal historian Robert Lacey. “I think really one is going to see more of the same.”
Lacey thinks Kate’s middle-class background will also help ensure her son gets a broader world view than some of his royal predecessors.
The baby’s maternal grandparents, Carole and Michael Middleton, are self-made millionaires who run a party-planning business from the village of Bucklebury, west of London.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/royal-baby-named-george-alexander-louis.php?ref=fpb
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an interesting feature in the undergrowth of this issue is that a student is worth money to a school even if they don’t pay a fee.
In the current situation, with a PTR of 23:1 in fee paying schools, each student is worth 1/23 of a teacher. Thats something in the region of 1500 – 2000 a year.
If the school loses numbers, they also lose teachers. they have to replace them with their own money or scale down.
If a current student announces that they can no longer pay fees, the school can tell them to go, but if they do so they lose not only the fees but also the government subsidy. I think that what is happening is that schools are making private arrangements with large numbers of families to let them stay without paying, or with a very reduced fee.
It has the ‘benefit’ of making sure that only the right types get to the school in question, whether ot not they pay, maintaining the elitist system without costing the elite too much.
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money is not the only criteria in fee paying scools, to give a few examples. an old friend of mine approached the Reverened Mother of a fee paying school in the 60s , because it was a “a very good school ” by reputation. the R.M, asked him what he worked at , when he replied ” a labourer”, she said, NO!
he wasprepared to pay, but that would not do He wes the wrong class!
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Not having a Dort accent is a social handicap sometimes when individuals want to get kids into certain schools or themselves into certain golf clubs; but don’t overlook the Dublin accents of Gerry Ryan (deeply regretted by the drug trade) and loudmouth Bob Geldof.
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The same order of nuns had another school for “common” (low income families) on the opposite side of the street. But the girls never mixed. My wife went there after her dad died. When free education came in the schools weren’t combined; the students in tehe scholl for poor were given one year only to the Inter and Leaving Certs, then the school was shut down. ‘Twas class apartheid. Today grind schools perpetuate a ruleing caste, hardly a suprise that the golden circle
have their tentacels in so many spheres, i,e. highef civil service, upper echelons of banking and (in the past) top brass military.The ruling class hate free education and want to limit it to give thier kids an advantage but also to allow enough technical grads for the pharma and I.T. industries. More “hi-tec” wage-slaves for the modern version of Blake’s Dark Satanic Mills. There’ demolition and building to be done, methophorically.Beir bua!
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All fair points but what is the Left position on Education? Should working class children be given a rigorous academic education?
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And, indeed, should the sons and daughters of barristers and CEOs be given a practical education. If mobility worked in both directions — up and down — so that a judge’s second eldest was as likely to become an office cleaner or van driver or check-out operator as any other worker’s son or daughter was, and if that mobility was asumed to be a given, then some of the inequalities we see would not be so severe.
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Unfortunately barristers and CEOs will not be offering up their offspring to the joys of a practical education. So what is the left perspective on education for working class children? In another post I bemoaned the fact that the teaching unions in England were resistant to giving children in state maintained schools a more rigorous education. Leading to the ridiculous situation where Murdoch’s gimp Gove was positioning himself as the champion of the aspiring working classes.
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