Taking Out The Trash

One rule....

Just a little addendum to my post yesterday about private schools.
While researching something else I came across this from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Public authorities, including state education providers, must comply with certain legal responsibilities set out in the following duties:

• The race equality duty
• The disability equality duty
• The gender equality duty

The duties apply to the governing bodies of all maintained schools (community schools, foundation schools, voluntary aided and voluntary controlled schools), city technology colleges, city colleges for the arts, city colleges for technology and city academies.

 Are independent or private schools subject to these duties?
Private or independent schools are not required to comply with the equality duties, although they are strongly encouraged to do so as it will help them to establish and maintain good practice in promoting equality.

So, go private if want to less protection from discrimination: can't see that appearing in any of their brochures.

private school myths

I'm not usually a fan of the I, I, I school of journalism (especially set in London) but Arabella Weir has good piece in today's Guardian about why middle class families in the capital choose private over state for their child's education.

A friend of mine who lives in London and has a boy approaching school years was shocked at the snobbery which suddenly surfaced among her fellow mums. Let alone the sudden Catholic conversions.

You can see some of the same divisions even in my village. There are people for whom the primary school (which is not a star performer but absolutely fine) is not even on their radar. Freedom of choice for parents is something that middle class families exercise to the detriment or working class ones by creating an apartheid between the 'will argue' and 'wilfully ignored'.

And if you can't afford private then where's the choice? (Don't even get me started on the charitable status of private schools).

Anyhow Francis Beckett, in a sidebar to the main piece in the Guardian, answers some myths about private versus state education which is well worth a look.

Those on the right go on about class envy and the left hating people wanting to succeed. If anything breeds class hatred it's a segragated education system which rewards people because of where they were born. I don't hate the parents of pupils at public schools for wanting their children to succeed - I hate the waste of talent that happens because working class children don't get the same opportunities.

The title of this blog comes from an episode of The West Wing and there's a nice line Sam Seaborn has in one when asked about education policy.

"...education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense."

(Just for fun trivia fans: which episode did Sam utter these words?)