In article , Andy Hall
wrote:
On Tue, 08 Nov 2005 12:02:00 +0000 (GMT), John Cartmell
wrote:

In article , Andy Hall
wrote:
It's far from misguided to send a child to a private school. The
results in terms of educational and other outcome are plain to see;

Most of the benefits are because of inappropriate fast-tracking of
ex-public school products - and this is certainly not in the public
interest.

Public schools are but a small part of the private education sector.

I know. That's why I use the term publc school and private school
appropriately.

I was talking about the individual and the educational benefits. Unless you
have actually experienced use of both sectors personally, it is difficult
to appreciate those.

I have.

Other benefits come from the freedom available to private schools to
exclude pupils and have other sanctions not available in the public sector.

All schools should have the ability to exclude pupils under certain
circumstances. This is how things work in adult life.

Private schools have it much easier in general. And never have to pick up the
pieces.

Only then do the benefits of small classes and better equipment step in.

The benefits of small classes are apparent from the outset in terms of the
attention that each pupil gets and the accelerated speed of learning.
Again, unless you have been involved in and seen the results personally, it
is not easy to appreciate the benefits.

I have.


I'd like to see all private schools closed because everyone appreciated
that the public sector schools were clearly better;

Who is this "everyone"? The trouble is that public sector schools have
been in decline for a generation or more. Not their fault by any means,
but as the result of being dicked around by the political and social
experiments in education carried out by successive governments.

The benefit of private sector education is that it has, to some extent,
been insulated from some of the worst excesses of that.

Exactly. Some might say that the National Curriculum was designed to cause as
much damage as possible to public sector schools in order to boost private
schools. It's framework was designed by an ex-public school / private school
twit with no apparent understanding of the reality of public sector school
teaching at the time and undermined many good developments.

the mere existence of private schools puts a charge on the public purse
that is difficult to calculate but is probably very high - it has
certainly contributed to the bad state of management in UK industry.

The existence of private schools (and I mean in general, not public
schools) has been to retain a quality in education despite the worst
efforts of successive governments to destroy it.

Certainly some retain *a* quality - and not necessarily a good quality. Again
from personal knowledge.

The bad state of UK industry has been for numerous reasons, predominantly
related in one way or another to government interference.

High profile cases may be exceptions but the major problem has been extremely
bad management sourced using the old boy network.

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
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