Dear Jeremy
I believe the best education is one that provides enough time, support and learning resources to allow a talented, well qualified teacher to help a student learn and love to learn.
For me, one of the key factors is time. The Independent Schools Council's All Round Excellence report found that prep schools have a teaching year 100 hours longer than the recommended minimum for state primaries. Think how much can be accomplished in those extra 100 hours: more actual teaching time, opportunities to support weaker students and provide more stimulation for those at the other end of the ability scale. More time, too, for art, music and sport as well as for the three Rs and for pastoral care.
The private sector generally also enjoys smaller class sizes creating yet more time. Not just for the student. Remember the teacher. If you want to create an environment where a gifted professional can give his or her best, a sufficiently favourable teacher-to-student ratio is needed. More teacher time gives more chance for staff continue to hone classroom skills and pursue curricular development.
Yours
Gillian duCharme,
Headmistress, Benenden School
Dear Gillian
I hope everyone agrees that education must provide enough time, teaching and support for children to learn. However, education should also be an extension of our community where children can learn together and play together near their homes, with children of different backgrounds.
You say a lot about the 100 hours per year more teaching in prep schools. Apart from probably being deeply off-putting for children, isn't it too much pressure? Aren't you really just pushing them towards entrance examinations? Children need to explore and play, not be pushed so hard, so young. Creative play allows all very young children to develop social skills and the obviously vital basic skills of communication and reasoning.
I agree that small classes for young children are a good thing. A teacher giving proper individual attention to 30 children and more is, at best, very stretched. If any child needs special attention due to behaviour, trauma or language difficulties this is not possible.
However, all things are not equal, and private education enables parents to buy their children an education apart from the majority of the community. In my constituency the vast majority of parents are too poor to buy education. Others who could, don't; they value the community and their participation in it.
Wouldn't it be better if all children went to schools provided by the public sector? We would all benefit and get better equipped and staffed schools. Don't you think our society is too divided already?
Yours,
Jeremy Corbyn,
MP Islington North
Dear Jeremy
Community is not at issue in this debate. What is, is best education practice. I believe the main goal of education is to bring out the potential in each child and to prepare him or her for a fulfilling life in a global society.
The extra time I mentioned is not just for academics, but for many other activities including learning to play creatively and to socialise successfully. Small classes are not just helpful for young children, but throughout school.
In my view parents do not buy private education in order to be apart from the community; they go private because they want the best for their child and because they believe it to be the very best available.
In my ideal world, every child would have access to an excellent education and high standards would be the norm. This is not so at the moment and experience does not convince me that by abolishing private education, where some of the best practice is demonstrably found, we would all, as you argue, benefit.
Yours,
Gillian
Dear Gillian
It is not possible to separate education and community. We want children to learn and develop and be part of our community.
It is sad to see children leaving security-protected mews homes to travel in large estate cars to distant private schools. They grow up barely knowing their neighbours, community, or children attending local state schools.
Don't private schools thrive on an illusion of being better because they put children under huge academic pressure to pass entrance examinations for public schools? Don't they also encourage children to believe they are somehow "special" or "different" from the rest? Doesn't this lead to unfairness later on?
I do accept that state schools vary a lot, and clearly schools that have problems should improve. We need the good quality of state schools enjoyed by some to be available in all schools.
You talk of the high standards and good academic record of the private sector. It simply is not a fair comparison. Private schools don't take children living in desperately overcrowded housing where bronchial conditions are chronic; they don't have traumatised children fearful of violence at home, and, in general they do not have to deal with the behavioural problems of a small minority of pupils.
Shouldn't we bring all our children into the family of state schools and let them learn together?
Yours,
Jeremy
Dear Jeremy<
Like you, I have no wish to separate education and community, indeed a good school is a beacon in any community. Whilst the community aspect is wholly desirable, it alone will not educate our children. What will educate them are good teachers, supportive parents, appropriate facilities, an atmosphere of study and a programme geared to their educational needs. This is what the private sector can offer.
Many of those who attend private schools have parents who are first-time buyers, who want for their children a better education than the state gave them, who do not live in secluded affluence but remain fully participating families in their community, and for whom finding the fees is a sacrifice.
Statistical evidence shows, sadly, that it is no illusion that private schools are generally achieving better results. They certainly do inculcate the message that all children are special (but not "different from the rest") and that each one has talents to develop.
I agree that we need all state schools to be of the good quality enjoyed by some. I concur wholeheartedly with the government's determination to raise standards, and I support freedom of choice. In particular, I endorse the partnership schemes in which maintained and independent schools work together and share ideas and resources. Initiatives such as the Sutton Trust, which has helped to fund these schemes and is also providing funding which will allow talented students to attend an independent girls' school in Liverpool, help to spread good educational practice more widely throughout both sectors.
Schools are not first and foremost agents of social change; their job is to educate. Overcrowding, violence at home, the high divorce rate and other such issues pain us all, but they must be tackled urgently as discrete social problems. Teachers are looking to this government to support the sterling work they are already doing.
To sum up, we need best educational practice, which I believe the Government's task force for excellence is currently seeking. Only through such firm educational strategies can the maintained sector hope to overtake the private sector.
Yours,
Gillian
Dear Gillian
I am really glad you accept that a good school is a beacon in the community. Since we are agreed on that, is the concept of private education in distant schools not anathema to that concept?
I don't doubt that some parents do make enormous sacrifices to put their children into private schools where they can be removed from many of the realities of life and prepared for tough selection to secondary schools or universities.
My question is: what are we doing to the children in all this and whom does it really help?
I have followed the "education debate" since my teens and what continues to shine through is that private schools campaign tooth and nail to keep their privileged place, the selective entrant schools likewise, and teachers get the blame for all society's ills.
The Tory governments of Thatcher and Major went one better than Macmillan and Heath and introduced a subsidy for private education through the assisted places scheme. I was pleased to be able to vote for this money to go to all under-fives instead.
The Sutton Trust and others sound like the assisted places scheme run by private benefactors. If philanthropists really want to help education, couldn't they follow the example of Andrew Carnegie who had libraries built for all the people to use?
We all welcome commitment to good standards in education. It pains me to have witnessed the public sale of playing fields and buildings and state schools then being forced to hire the facilities from private schools. Surely the vast majority of our children who go to state schools deserve better.
I don't think you should so lightly dismiss the social role of schools. They can't solve all our social ills, but a sense of responsibility and community can help future generations to do that. Private schools seem to perpetuate so much that is so divisive in our society and harm the state schools that the majority attend.
Best regards,
Jeremy Corbyn
