Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

[...]

"What the English _had_ ", I think -- there has been effectively no public
money going directly to private schools since the end of the Direct Grant
system (1976) and the Assisted Places scheme (1998). There remain some
exceptions, I think - e.g. a few specialist music schools.

One could argue that the current English treatment of some private schools
as "charities" and thereby affording them certain tax advantages does amount
indirectly to "public money going to private schools". The position is less
clear when one considers the disadvantages to a school of not being treated
as a business (not being able to reclaim VAT, for example).  Then there's
the matter of private schools employing teachers trained at the taxpayers'
expense (a similar argument arises about doctors who prefer private practice
to working exclusively in the National Health Service). On the other hand,
there is the very considerable saving to public funds of not having to
accommodate in State schools the children currently educated privately.

Personally, I'd be happy to see some contribution from public funds to the
independent schools, if that meant they could enrol more children from
households of modest income. My own teaching career took me first to a State
grammar school, then to a Direct Grant school, and finally to a voluntary
aided grammar school (i.e. State-financed but with some independence) that
eventually chose fully independent (i.e. "private") status. They were all
three similar in selective intake and high-level academic outcome, and the
last is now (ten years after I retired!) really very impressive academically
and otherwise, and flourishing mightily. That would be equally true of, say,
the top hundred or so of English independent schools -- most of which, by
the way, are day schools to which the old
funny-clothes-and-aristocratic-drawl boarding-school image is quite alien.

Alan Jones

Although my personal view is biassed towards having only State run
schools, it is a logical argument that each child should be given the
same amount of money whatever type of school it attends. Our present
Thatcheresque federal government believes in privatisation of everything
and has steadily increased the amounts going to private schools. The
largest part of this goes to those schools that charge low to middle
range fees, but the very rich schools have also gained. This has come at
a loss to the State system which the PM and Anderson now have the gall
to criticise.

In alt.english.usage on 22 Jan 2004 22:58:31 -0800 franbarlow@mail.com
(Fran) posted:

That is pretty much the situation with the "No child left behind"
program passed in Congress a couple years ago.  With no money given to
the school systems to do whatever was mandated.

s/ meirman    If you are emailing me please  
say if you are posting the same response.

Born west of Pittsburgh Pa. 10 years
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