On Tue, 08 Nov 2005 12:53:34 +0000 (GMT), John Cartmell
wrote:

In article , Andy Hall
wrote:

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.

.... and why I was talking about the private sector in general, and not
particularly about public schools.



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.

In the sense of having paid to have a child educated in one?



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.

That isn't quite true. They still have to deal with a lot of
unnecessary state interference.

In terms of pastoral care when needed, that is certainly a significant
aspect. There is also the time to make sure that the child is
equipped to deal with how to think and how to approach issues rather
than just dealing with curriculum.




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.

Then I am sure that you will understand the benefits.




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.

Some might, but that is something of an extrapolation.

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.

Public sector schools were semi-reasonable when there was proper
selection into appropriate schools for the child. Comprehensive
education and the National Curriculum together have screwed that up
quite effectively.




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.


I know. The sad thing is that a lot more used to before the setup was
meddled with by the educational theorists.


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.

I know a lot of people in middle and senior management in a variety of
organisations and very few come from the "old boy network".
Ultimately, if what you say is true, then natural selection will
resolve the problem.


--

..andy