Antonia Tam
English, St Hilda’s
People who are privately educated only make up about 7% of those in British schools and yet a disproportionate number gain places at the top universities. In 2007, a third of Oxbridge admissions were from just 3% of elite independent schools.
We often hear about access initiatives for those in state education, but the very fact that there is such a divide in the first place is disheartening. If private schools were to be abolished everyone would have a similar starting ground. Not only would state education improve, with pressure on the government to ensure high standards, but society would be better integrated. I wouldn’t suggest that we abolish private education immediately-there is a huge but necessary input from the government into the public sector that would take time. However, in the long run, society would be better off if a child’s education wasn’t determined by its family finances.
From an early age privately educated pupils mix almost exclusively among those 7% of similarly educated people, mostly from the middle classes. This results in a small network of people with favourable connections in the jobs market, who are ignorant of other social groups. How can equal opportunity and an integrated society become a reality with such divisions? Education should be as much about acquiring social awareness and mutual understanding as it should be about academic or vocational work. There should not be an option to pay more for an education that makes it easier for one to secure a place at the more sought after universities. State education is, in many cases, exemplary. I was lucky enough to attend a fantastic state sixth form college which thoroughly looked after all of its pupils. Such schools are an example of what is possible, but the state education system is constantly undermined in its efforts to improve, because private education is supported by vast financial resources. Were there only state schools, the wealthy would invest their energy into ensuring that the standards of state schools were consistently driven up. I object to the unnecessary and misinformed snobbery that sometimes seems to come with having attended a private school. One’s ability to fork out thousands for something everybody should have ready access to does not strike me as something worth being especially proud of. When discrimination hits a child the moment school begins, you know there’s a problem.
David Merlin-Jones
History, Exeter
For many, private education is the root of much evil in society, the cause of gross injustice. It is argued that much of the inequality in society can be traced back to it, one way or another. Everyone seems to be in favour of equality, in principle. But what exactly do we want to achieve when we talk about it? Equality of ‘opportunity’ means everyone gets to start from the same scratch line. After that, how things turn out is left up to the individual. Private schools give the rich a head start, their parents already having run half the race. Yet to aim at equality of ‘opportunity’ is totally unrealistic.
Try to overcome the accident of birth and it simply won’t work; some are born rich, some are born poor—the failure of Communism has more than proven that. What really matters for people is equality of ‘outcome’; that at the end of the day, they have as much as anyone else. Private education need not be objectionable to those who believe in equality. This is because equality of outcome aims for equality at the other end of schooling, through the balancing out of eventual material differences in society.
While the type of education you receive in school may have a large impact on your later choice of and access to well-paid careers, the solution to this is government intervention after education ends, not while it is happening. Those who benefit from private education should have to compensate society at large for their hand up in life once they enter the working world. This means taxing the rich to give to the poor—old fashioned redistribution of wealth.
Private education then benefits everyone, not only those individuals who enjoy its advantages directly, but also society as a whole through greater tax revenue, better public finances and, eventually, better welfare for all. It cannot be a bad thing for the country as a whole to have some who are educated to a superior level, many of whom will take up jobs in public service that benefit all. This is the best way to settle the issue of private education.
Phoebe Thompson
Philosophy and Theology, Keble
Private schools benefit from having able staff, superior facilities and motivated pupils who learn in small-sized classes. They also encourage their pupils to believe that they can achieve places in top universities and that they deserve them. Little wonder then that Sir Peter Lampl’s recent report for the Sutton Trust discovered that pupils from just 200 (mainly independent) schools make up half of Oxbridge entrants; the remaining 3,500 make up the rest. It also discovered almost half of those holding the top jobs in law, politics and the media had attended a handful of the most selective, research-led universities. So if the key to life opportunities is attendance at a good university, why don’t state schools just improve?
The reality is that many lack the motivated students, the teaching expertise, and the parental involvement that are bound up in the private school system. Because of this divide, parents will continue to pay for the opportunities that private schools offer. However, were private schools abolished, parents would no longer have the choice of the ‘better’ school, and would be forced to put their children into state education.
Over time the state schools would become those ‘better’ schools’ with the introduction of students who would raise the bar among their peers. Access to the top universities would no longer be skewed towards applicants from the ‘best’ schools but would truly be available to the best and most able candidates.
Since access to the top universities is directly linked to opportunities in the top legal, educational, political and business jobs, this country would at last get the leaders it deserves. For this reason and because, if we truly believe in fairness, we should agree that everyone deserves the same life chances, the private school system should be abolished. This would give schools the opportunity to combine the best of the current state and private systems and to offer a stronger and fairer state education to all.
Marc Kidson
PPE, St John’s
Any government knows that to abolish private schools would be political suicide. I can see the Daily Mail headline now: ‘The Abolition of Achievement’. Yet this is not because the average Daily Mail readers can afford to privately educate their children, most cannot, but the editors of newspapers, the CEOs of companies, top civil servants and government ministers themselves can, and do.
Admittedly, there would also be a grassroots backlash against closing the 2,500 private schools—the middle-class parents who have opted-out of the state system are not likely to take favourably to being forced into it – but there is grassroots opposition of some size to ID cards, the Iraq war and Trident, all of which went (or are going) ahead.
Rather, what would stay the hand of even the most progressive government is that such a move would kick to the heart of what the sociologist C. Wright Mills branded the ‘power elite’ (he was talking about 1950s USA but the phenomenon translates all too well to modern Britain). It is irrelevant that most of the 600,000 students at private school do not have parents of such lofty influence. It matters far more that the limited network of those who are in positions of power almost all send their children to such schools.
I admit that I went to comprehensive school and an FE college, but I do not have a vicious antipathy to the private sector. In fact, I think that there are plenty of things that are laudable about it and should be emulated in the state sector.
My biggest grumble is that between private schools, grammar schools and the social stratification of state schools by postcode under the New Labour “choice” agenda, all too many state schools are anything but comprehensive. Instead, they have ‘difficult’ intakes concentrated in areas of social deprivation and, as a result, lack the culture of demanding, hectoring middle-class parents able to drive improvements from below. Abolishing the private sector would just bloat the grammar schools and prosperous suburban high schools further; it would not cure the malaise at the heart of the system.
Perhaps we should try making the comically named ‘comprehensives’ actually comprehensive, with proper representation of all sections of the community. Wouldn’t it be fun to see how quickly the state sector improves if the sons and daughters of this country’s media barons and commercial leaders actually had to go to them?
