Some thoughts on private schools and education

My basic view on private schools is they should be banned basically because they present an unfair advantage to some people which in the competitive world means a disadvantage to someone else and at the same time I believe they reduce the quality of education which the state schools are able to provide.

Just to make clear what I am talking about here is private schools for people up to the age of 18 not further education at university or private tutors to supplement schooling.

The first problem with private schools is the negative impact they can have on state schools in the area, this is because state schools are required (rightly) to let anyone in their catchment area attend whereas private schools can be selective. This means that the private schools can refuse to admit anyone who is disruptive or has a “bad attitude to work” which is fair enough until you realise that this means all these “tricky” kids are left in the state schools which has the result of concentrating the harder pupils to teach in a one school. Also parents who send their children to private schools obviously care about their children’s education (I’m not implying that people who send their children to state schools don’t care about their education only that someone who is willing to spend thousands of pounds on something probably does) and generally children’s attitude to education, especially early on, is a reflection of their parent attitude.

Some what is the effect of having a higher concentration of unmotivated, disruptive children or children who’s parents don’t care about their education in state schools? Well firstly its creates a greater drain on resources and reduces the amount of time the teachers have to spend on the children at their school. But more importantly as people get older they have a tendency to “fit in” and adopt attitudes similar to those around them which means that children who would have been motivated to work hard and do well in a school surrounded by other people who work hard will be more likely to give up or mess about whilst at school.  Hence, some parents seeking to do what’s best for their children are making it harder for others.

We must also remember that all these people will be competing against each other in the job markets when they leave school and since some will have had a private education they will be given an advantage over the others, for the reasons outlined above. This is unfair as there is no underling reason why these people should be more employable and, coming to my next point, it was out the their control which school they went to.

Now, you may be reading this thinking that if someone has worked had for their money and they value their child’s education they should be allowed to spend that money on that child’s education and any benefits are a result of the work put in in earning it; compared to someone “who couldn’t be bothered to work” and if they don’t care about their education why  should they get the same one as someone who does. However the flaw in this argument is that it is the parents deciding to spend the parents money on the child’s education. That is the child may be willing to work hard to earn money, may care about their education and be willing to spend the money they would have earned in the future on it but its not their decision because at five years old they don’t know about work and don’t have the thousands of pounds they would need to spend on their education.

This is where I believe education is fundamentally different to other markets, such as health care. In most market places people are making informed decisions about goods and services which though they may not fully understand are capable of measuring the benefits and deciding how much they are willing to pay. In education it is someone other than the person who benefits paying for the education and the money was earn’t by the parent, not the child, so the amount they “deserve” their money through their work is not related to the child, hence it is unfair for children whose parents don’t care about their education to be at a disadvantage to those whose parents do.

So to conclude this long rambling post, removing private schools would increase the quality of state schools, ensure that upon entering the job market everyone is judged on their on merits and not their parents and ensure no one is disadvantaged by a decision their parents make.