Thursday 4 August 2011

Simply the Best


I was privately educated, spending the formative years of my life at Wycombe Abbey, a boarding school for girls near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. The environment was excellent, educational, social and sporting.

While there I made some friendships that have proved lasting, including one with a girl who attended thanks to the Assisted Places Scheme (APS). This was introduced by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in 1980, enabling thousands of pupils from less affluent backgrounds to benefit from the kind of experience that the independent sector has to offer.

No sooner was the government of Tony Blair elected in 1997 than the whole thing was abandoned. It was ‘elitist,’ so the mantra went among the appalling inverted snobs of the Labour Party, elitist to allow clever children from poorer families access to the best that the country had to offer.

I’ve never disguised the contempt I have for socialists and Labourites in general, always attempting to reduce everything to a lowest common denominator. Their actions were all the more wretched because Blair went to one of the most prestigious public schools in Scotland; all the more contemptible because Dianne Abbot, a former leadership contender and all round left-wing loud mouth, chose to send her own son to a leading independent school in London, while denouncing private education as ‘elitist.’ It’s alright for me and mine; it’s not alright for you and yours.

The APS is long gone but people, even people of relatively modest means, still have far greater faith in the fee-paying independents than they do in the state sector, the arena of so much that is bad, the arena that Abbot was so anxious to rescue her own child from. According to a recent report I read, parents in Britain spend far more educating their children privately than any other country in Europe, almost double the level, for example, of France. Household spending on education is also higher here than it is in the United States.

The reasons for this are not hard to understand. More and more parents are concerned about issues of discipline and about the general dumbing down that has been such a feature of state education in England. Commenting on this Philip Davis, the Tory MP for Shipley in West Yorkshire, said;

Parents who send their children to private schools are not all rich and snobbish. They are people who make enormous sacrifices because they do not think state schools are up to scratch. Private schools are popular because of the ethos they have which state schools seem to lack. It is to do with discipline, standing up when the teacher comes in to the room, turning out nice people who treat people with respect. And there is the fact that exams have been dumbed down so much.

The problem is worse in the inner cities, places where a high number of immigrants have settled, people whose first language is not English. Rightly or wrongly, many parents feel that their own children are being held back when teachers have to concentrate in the first place in conveying the rudiments of our language.

It all comes down to one thing, namely how important it is to give one’s children the best possible advantage in life. Despite the steady drip of cultural socialism, of notions of equality, of welfarism, of expectations that the state will always provide, we live in a competitive world, a world where excellence will always show. For that reason and for so many others if I ever have a daughter she will go to my old school. There is no doubt at all about that.

26 comments:

  1. My Dad feels the same way about parochial schools. "We pay school taxes, public school is good enough." Not really. The drug dog sweeps were fun though.

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  2. Ana, I am just of a different generation, sent to Eton in the 1960s. Education then was hit and miss, some wonderful teachers, some dreadful, but you did learn the best lesson of all from the dreadful ones: no excuses, if you don't do the work yourself, you won't make Cambridge, my own goal!
    My own children, went between private and state but my younger daughter was pure state. Her Sixth Form hot-housed the bright ones, pushed them through five "A" Levels , for which she got straight 'A's and she has just got a First and full funding for her Masters. There is absolutely no reason why the state system, which will always educate more than ninety per cent of our children, cannot be first class. The danger is that we use the existence of an excellent fee-paying system as a get-out clause and divert attention from where we must work harder- on getting education valued for its own sake for everyone who can benefit from it.
    For many years I was a Senior Examiner with the International Baccalaureate and would mark English private (and some state) schools against schools from across the world. We are still quite insular in comparison say to the top Australian schools (always my favourites to mark) and sometimes one was staggered by the quality of work coming out from, say, Polish schools, by students working in English as a second language. No room for any of us to slack!

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  3. That could have been written about the situation right here in Western Australia or any other State of the Commonwealth. The current Premier of WA, Colin Barnett, was Education Minister in the government of Richard Court. Barnett became very distressed in the course of the 2001 State election when challenged by his Opposition counterpart in a radio studio debate as to where his own son was being educated. The question wasn't answered in so many words, but he did commit a minor assault afterwards by slapping the guy on the arm with his papers and crying, "Leave my little boy out of it!" Yes, just as he was no doubt left out of the State schools that the Minister was presiding over.

    This may be another one for the Ministry of Unsolvable Problems. What the feegle is it about public education anyway? It's wrecked in every country you look at. Isn't it possible for a government to manage schools? I'm sure they weren't all hopeless a hundred years ago.

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  4. Aha! I suspected that you had received a better-than-average education in your youth! (altho' you might want to correct a typo in the 4th para). I at least started my education in a private school, and (being precocious) by the second level, I was reading in the sixth. I deeply resented (when I was later moved there) that the American Public school system ignored the educational needs of the gifted, and devoted its resources to educating the mentally challenged (in an attempt to immerse them in the educational "mainstream").

    Perhaps I am being excessively cynical, but I suspect Polititians (whose children AREN'T publicly educated) don't want the "general public" to be any more educated than absolutely necessary for them to function in the modern workforce. Public newspapers are written so 8th graders can understand them, and Army manuals (for enlisted men) more closely resemble graphic novels. I am amazed that Hamilton/Madison's "Federalist Papers"(which read like University-level Poli-Sci papers) were originally published in common broadsheets for the consumption of the average American colonist. Have times ever changed for the worse :-(

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  5. Hey! Found you on Book blogs and following. Very interesting viewpoint about your state run systems. I lived in England for awhile and I didn't meet anyone who questioned the state taking care of everything.
    After teaching nine years in public school here in the states I just can't in good conscious work in a state run school. My son has been going to a private school since the 6th grade and the education just doesn't compare. Look forward to reading more posts.

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  6. I would love for my future kids to have a top-notch education but in this economy (US) with its millions of lay-offs including people who have the highest of education, does it really matter? Deep inside I do believe that the benefits of being educated are immeasurable--but right now, I'm a little jaded. Teachers are getting laid off, schools suck and the educated can't get a job. I guess, more than jaded, I'm just scared of what the future holds.

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  7. Gosh, do I relate to this.
    What will your choice be for a son?
    :-)

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  8. Charles, I absolutely agree: there is no reason why the state sector cannot be excellent…if it is left alone. There are some excellent state schools; several of my friends at university, some of the cleverest people I know, were educated in that way. The experience of your youngest daughter is added proof. I suspect that the schools here have a very high level of pupil commitment and parental support, that they do manage the best they can, ignoring what needs to be ignored. But the state sector in general has been the arena for one muddle-headed experiment after another, of increasing attempts at micro-management by central government. In attempting to make things better they have generally made things worse. The problem now, as I see it, is less to do with resources and much more to do with confidence.

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  9. Retarius, it really is quite depressing that politicians here, there and everywhere think that schooling is something they can tinker with endlessly and without consequence. As I said in my response to Charles, there is a serious crisis in confidence over public institutions - all too often the arena of the second best - a feature, clearly, of a good bit of the Anglo-Saxon world.

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  10. CB, I see I missed out a ‘to’ but nothing besides. Help; I’m too close to the rock face!

    Speaking of The Federalist Papers I’ve been dipping in to them in preparation for an article I intend to write on America’s present financial and political woes. How utterly amazing those men were, those ‘demi-gods’, who could absorb so much of the legal, philosophical, political and literary tradition of Western civilization to create a more perfect Union. How distressed they would be to see the way things have turned out. Keep watching!

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  11. Anthony, it's all each and everyone of us can do.

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  12. Sharon, a very warm welcome. Well, now you have met someone who questions the efficacy of the state over so many areas of public life. I'm a rebel you see!

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  13. Shahroah, I quite understand. I know how bad things are at the moment in the States - I have good friends there - but it won't be forever. It's always best to look to the future and there is no greater investment than education. Besides the world gets smaller by the day. There will always be opportunities of one kind or another for talented people, no matter where.

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  14. CI, the same school as Charles Freeman above ( a super historian, incidentally), the same school as daddy and my late grandfather - Eton. It's where I would have been sent if I had been a boy. :-)

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  15. And what is wrong with Hogwarts?

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  16. Households spending on education is much higher here than it is in the United States. Surprisingly, majority of it has be accounted on Private Primary Schools in London.

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  17. This is a very spicy post...most provocative to the issue bone.

    I reckon the most useful things I learned at school were in the first 2 years, in which I learned to read and do basic arithmetic. Most of the succeeding ten years were just incompetent child-minding. I've been giving that some thought and the more I exercise my memory, the more true it seems. What I can't figure is how so many can do all of those twelve years without even acquiring that much.

    About ten years ago, I met a young woman of Vietnamese ancestry who was working behind the counter of a local deli. She was often minding her child who was three years old and was teaching the kid to read in her spare moments. No trauma of the "Tiger Mother" type, just cheerfully ploughing through the basic illustrated ABC books. By the time "real" school was in, the kid would have been about up to grade 4 level. At that point I had an epiphany: Why does anybody need to go to a school to learn to read, write or do basic ciphering? Assuming they have a parent who can do the three, most of the formal process is redundant.

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  18. Ana, that "to" was the only thing I thought was missing - I just dread the thought of my being one of those horrible "Grammar Nazis" that latch onto the most trivial of errors. I only mentioned it as there were other good candidiates for the missing word. :-)

    I'm pleased to learn you are studying the Federalist Papers, and am looking forward to your insight on them. Using the term "demi-god" might be a little much, but I am amazed at the reality that such a collection of brilliant, well-read political scientists came together at the right time (and place) in history to create a new nation with such a stable and beneficial political system.

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  19. Retarius, I was taught to read before I went to my first school. Some parents just make the extra effort. Most, I suspect, would not or cannot. But there is the social side of things. Would you really have wanted to miss out on that? :-)

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  20. CB, I'm glad you did. I think much faster than I write!

    Actually it was Thomas Jefferson who first used that expression writing to John Adams, describing the Philadelphia Convention as "an assembly of demigods." :-)

    I'm going to draw on the Papers for a new post I will be publishing as soon as I have finished here, but I intend to return at some future stage with a more dedicated analysis.

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  21. I myself did not go to a private school but I spent the best days of my life at the one I went to - It was an old Victorian building with an old-fashioned headmaster. If one was ever summoned to his office one's knees would shake, one girl wet herself. I have endless stories to tell from those days. I learnt a lot of the stories from the Bible from his assemblies, he used to have a huge family Bible which was so big it even had its own lock and key. I can say with my hand on my heart that I seldom enjoyed learning so much as in those days.

    Blair saw the APS as a waste of public funds! I'm truly lost for words. The Labour Government is a waste of public funds!

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