Charity for the rich

Education Apartheid

'Why do you want to remain as part of the dependency culture when you could gain some self respect and stand on your own feet?’ I asked Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas who is spokeswoman for subsidised Independent Schools Council.

Sadly we did not see the Chief Executive of the Council, Chris Parry, who said in his short reign that "State schools are struggling with unreachable children, ignorant parents, staff who don't want to be there and a shortage of leadership." understanadly he has been sacked. Dame Judith was stubbornly silent on this comment but confessed that she was the board that appointed Chris Parry.

But it was still a lively afternoon at the Public Administration Select Committee’s probe into Charities. Simon Jenkins of the Guardian rightly said that to most of the public the idea that public schools are charities is laughable. ‘They are pretend charities.’ The perks from the taxpayer to just one school is worth £1.5 million  a year.

 Why subsidise institutions whose role is to give further privileges to the privileged? Dame Judith has a practised line in not answering questions. The affable Master (head) of Wellington School told us his school has 400 acres and was set up to teach the orphans of soldiers killed in the Napoleonic Wars. Very few of his pupils now are poor orphans, yet they still get rich picking from the taxpayers.

 

I became so irritated by their air of superiority that I told them about Caerleon School. The standards achieved there in musical ability is matched only by full-time professional music schools. They do all the charitable things in the local community that public schools are supposed to do (and better). All without a £1 million bung from the taxpayers.

We are fortunate in Wales with few public schools. There is little of the educational apartheid that seeks to cream off the best teachers and pupils from the state sector. In Finland they achieve fine standards with a one status education service. The head of Wellington was right to say that bursaries given to bright state schools to attend public schools were damaging. The future leaders in the state schools, top thinkers, musicians and sports people are pitch forked from their own element in a local school into the alien world of public schools. The loss of the natural leaders as exemplars and pace setters in state schools is immeasurable. Bursaries are not examples of charitabel work. They help public schools by damaging state ones.

I asked about the practice of the upper class in sending their seven year olds into residential schools. No working family would dream of expelling a seven year from the bosom the family. I asked whether they thought this practise was a form of child abuse that should have a state subsidy. The witnesses were flummoxed by this.

Over £100 million is handed over to public schools in tax allowances and other favours.

 

There is no case for subsidising the rich.

 

Reefer madness

The Welsh Office Ministers have a hard task of answering for many departments on subject on which they have little knowledge. Huw Irranca Davies was asked today unanswerable questions about the hideous scandal on drugs in prison. I asked how it made sense to reclassify cannabis and increase the maximum jail sentence from two years to five years when every jail in the country has heroin and cocaine freely available. Won’t this mean, cannabis users going in and heroin addicts coming out?

 

Over a cup of tea outside, I am sure Huw would agree. Poor dab had to read, more than once, the script he had been given, that lots of money had been spent of drugs in jail. More this year and even more next year…..

 

But we still have no drug-free jails. It’s a hard life answering Welsh Questions.

 

 

 

Comments

[Greg]

Hello Paul

Always a fascinating blog to read, even when I find myself in total disagreement with you! Today however, I think you were spot on.

As an ex-comprehensive school pupil, I would find myself in total agreement with your opinions on private schools, and frankly have always been amazed one of the most blatant forms of class inequity hasn't been attacked with more vigour by Labour!

When I went to university to pursue a profession with a fair degree of competition for a 'spot', it came as a great surprise just how many students had attended private as opposed to state schools; I'm sure that this hasn't changed in the years since I graduated.

The continued existence of these institutions simply encourages parents to 'buy an edge' for their children over similarly bright children from less-advantaged backgrounds; conversely, an influx of affluent, middle-class children into comprehensive schools if nothing else would serve to concentrate their parents' minds on improving education for society as a whole, not just for their offspring.

Incidentally, I had to take the bus past Caerleon every day on the 1 hr commute to St. Joseph's, so whilst you're at it, please try and abolish sectarian education.

Regards

Greg

PS apart from Dianne Abbott, how many Labour MP's send their kids to state vs private institutions? Not being flippant, genuinely interested!

[Huw O'Sullivan]

It's easy to understand why the education system in the UK has two tiers.The people who get the advantage in a divided system are darn well going to keep it and the people who succeed despite being disadvantaged will always feel they've done the work to justify their kids having an advantage. There will never be agreement or consensus to do away with the advantages of the wealthy, we need a left wing government that will at least stop using taxes to give further advantage to those who least need it.
Pity there is not one in power.

It is impossible to understand the government and oppositions attitude to drugs. If everyone in the country had had their memories wiped and we had no history to read then it might excuse current drug policy as ony by the ignorant for the ignorant. For so many to stay so wilfully ignorant for so long beggars belief, I can only assume that on drugs, Paul, you and I must be insane. The appalling vista (new microsoft slogan[tm]) that we would otherwise be facing is that the front benches of Westminster are crammed to bursting with dribbling idiots.
Perhaps the air is just clearer where you sit Paul.