Name: Should we abolish private schools?
Uploaded: 2019-06-14T18:05:22.000Z
Duration: 7 min 3 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

– The thing that is most distorting our education system is

– State school graduates are still likely to earn thousands

of pounds less than those who are privately educated.

– What we're seeing is entrenched privilege.

– Why would the people at the top, why are they ever going to want

people like you or I taking the jobs that they want to go

to their privately educated sons and daughters.

– We will have an apartheid education system in this country

– There's an endless stream of evidence that private schools

Only 7% of the UK are privately educated but

a disproportionate number occupies some of the most influential jobs

I mean, take our new prime minister, the 20th to be educated

But now a number of people asking if this is fair

– As a state school teacher why would I not want

the absolute best for the young people in front of me.

Why don't they deserve to have small class sizes, luxurious facilities,

access to this incredible network of alumni and I think that

would make our society much better much fairer

and abolishing private schools is key to that.

we need to know what private schools are and how they work.

– Well the origins of Britain's private schools date back into

the medieval period, the late medieval period with a series

of charitable bequests to educate the children of poor

So they started out as charities... – But gradually they expanded

in the victorian era when they became increasingly for the middle classes

This trend continued into the 20th century.

And to avoid being labelled elitist, in the 1960s they rebranded

Fast forward to now and how inclusive are they?

– So that's six thousand pupils paying no fees at all

out of the half million pupils in independent school council schools.

– Turns out that means only one percent of people

who go to private school are from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

For most people can't afford to go private,

rising school fees now amount to 50% of an average earner's wage,

which is why intakes are dominated by the very wealthy.

So while funding has been cut to the point that state schools

are having to use crowd funding and Amazon wishlists

to pay for basics, a tiny proportion of people get access to

the excellent support and almost unlimited resources

Plus private schools act as a direct route to prestigious universities

and networks to some of the world's most powerful people.

But discussing what to do about private schools isn't about attacking

It's about an elite system that fast track certain children.

We could do nothing, which means there's no point watching this video.

We could reform the system to try and make fairer.

Or we could get rid of fee-paying schools altogether.

And the main point here is that although they mostly educate

the well-off, over half of all private schools still operate as charities today.

– Eton: has there ever been a more deserving charity?

Many private schools say they earn their charitable status

by offering fee reductions, free places in the form of bursaries.

So a simple measure could be to demand that they offer more.

But that would still be a limited number of people

and these bursaries are often used to top up fees of people

We even found one school willing to offer financial help

to families so long as they earn less than £120,000.

Also, as charities private schools don't pay full business rates.

So getting them to pay the full whack which is something

state schools already have to do could bring an extra £105 million per year.

Another idea could be to charge VAT on private school fees

That could bring in an extra £1.5 billion to the Treasury.

Or you could just strip them of their charitable status entirely.

But what about something even bigger like abolition?

Look, let's not get too dramatic here because the idea of abolition

It's about unifying and integrating our education system.

Their education system used to be a mix of private, grammar

and state schools, not so different from ours.

But in the 1970s, the government decided to abolish private schools.

It was actually the Finnish political establishment who decided

that their segregated system was actually causing too much divisiveness.

That they needed to establish a common school.

We don't see education as an industry, we see education

That's why all education is free in Finland.

It's against the law to run a private school or private university.

– With one of the most equal education systems in the world.

Finland is an example of what could be possible.

The neighbourhood school is the best school because

all the schools in Finland, they are all equal.