Private schools and the pursuit of privilege

By Mike Ion / @MikeIon

As the economic downturn bites further into household budgets many independent schools are facing merger or possible closure – though one hopes without the call for some type of private school bail-out to keep the likes of Winchester or Eton from going under.

However many of the reasons independent schools are now feeling the pinch are self-inflicted. The fees for a significant number of private schools, which were the subject of an inquiry in 2005 by the Office of Fair Trading for potential collusion, have risen exponentially over the past decade. Why? Because in the pursuit of privilege, many well-off (and not so well-off) parents will do whatever it takes to ensure that their child starts the race for future success and prosperity further down the track than other children.

In fairness it is not unreasonable that any parent should want their child to do as well at school and in life as they have done themselves; often they want them to do better. In a free society if some parents choose to secure advantage and privilege by sending their children to elite schools there is little the state can do about it. However there are clear consequences for future social mobility that many “left-leaning” parents often choose to ignore.

British public schools have always been a production line for the class system. They employ some of the best-qualified teachers, with as many as two-thirds educated in the top 20 British universities. They can – and do – raise their fees steadily, they select their pupils, have a growing endowment income from their benefactors and some of the most impressive sporting and extra-curricular activities. What’s more they have (during the recent boom years) recruited from a middle-class obsessed by perceived educational and social advantage. And as Alan Milburn has frequently pointed out state school children are still not reaching the highest levels in influential professions.

It may well be an old fashioned (possibly even an “old Labour”) view to hold but I strongly believe that parents who espouse views about fairness, justice and redistribution but opt out of the state sector and send their children to private, fee-paying schools, choose to become part of the problem, rather than seeking to be part of the solution.

Why? Why do so many parents apparently talk left but act right, advocate change but seek to protect the status quo? One reason is that many middle-class parents perceive there to be little political mileage in calling for the reform of private schools and more equal access to universities. This is because those who already have influence, those who already have a “voice” in our society, have such a high stake in the current order they, almost subconsciously, mobilise and organise in order protect it.

When middle-class parents abandon the state sector in favour of the private, it is always conservative and not progressive politics that triumphs.