tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7985429043801017839.post8973480647530311933..comments2023-10-27T07:50:27.411+01:00Comments on Next Left: Let's engage with Simon Hughes on private schools and stalled mobilityTom Hampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05917325958130851128noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7985429043801017839.post-78685895993040410082011-01-08T15:49:36.518+00:002011-01-08T15:49:36.518+00:00Regardless of how you paint it quotas on access to...Regardless of how you paint it quotas on access to education is deeply illiberal. You are talking about barring people from universities on the basis of the type of school their parents sent them to because there are too many of 'their type' there. Why not go the whole hog and go for their race, gender, religion and sexual orientation as well? Too many Jews in the legal profession? We better have a quota to stop them taking all the good jobs. It is a disgrace.<br /><br />The division between state and private schools is arbitrary. There are plenty of private schools that are no better than good state schools. Why should parents who move home, fake religion, bribe schools or use any of the other dubious methods employed to ensure children get into a good state school be rewarded just because they have not gone down the route of the 'evil' private schools? Your rhetoric is simplistic and takes no account of the complexity of actual reality. Any such measures would overwhelmingly help good state grammar, faith and other schools in rich areas and not those pupils from genuinely worse social backgrounds.<br /><br />Unless you haven't noticed, parents who choose to send their children to private schools are already paying taxes for state school places for their children, taxes they don't get back for places they don't use. The existence of the private school sector effectively subsidises the state sector by billions of pounds a year already.<br /><br />The other unfortunate factoid you may have missed is that university places are not just some way of rewarding 'merit' or social deservedness. You also need to actually have the grades and skills to be able to flourish at university. If you haven't got the grades you can't go to a top university because you don't have the knowledge (and probably intelligence) to do the course, not because of some scheme of handing out social rewards to the deserving. Universities already have to spend far too much time bringing students up to speed to do their degrees without forcing them to take pupils who don't have the grades.<br /><br />Instead of looking for ways to restrict private school pupils, what might actually help is looking for ways to improve state schools, increasing the culture of achievement and making sure that good state school pupils get the encouragement and support they need to apply for university and good universities. <br /><br />Maybe forcing universities that want to charge higher fees to pay for people to go to state schools to identify, encourage and tutor people with the capability/wish to apply for top universities like Oxbridge.Stephen Wigmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15604582974059809054noreply@blogger.com