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To which must be added that children in private schools are a self selecting group (selected by their parents, anyway) that usually do the necessary work to get a good education, if only because their parents give them grief and the schools are able to boot them out otherwise.
State schools – and the pupils in them – have to cope with the children who don’t want to be there, get no support from their parents, and generally make life difficult for teachers and those students who do want to learn.
Until that fact is dealt with, state schools aren’t going to get better in the U.S. or England.
Thanks for link, John B haggled me down to about £7,000 per pupil, a smidge less than private school fees.
Where’s the article, Mark?
Matthew,
Try:
http://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/2008/02/average-spending-per-pupil-in-state-and.html
Given that Labour’s university fees are now accepted by the NUS would it not be sensible to introduce school fees at state schools to make parents and pupils value education more. But which party would reduce taxation to compensate?
When we moved our daughter we were mindful of the ample green playing fields around the school, the smaller class sizes and the swimming pool. But we thought we’d still leave those behind and send her private.
I love how Mark’s ‘they probably get only a bit less than a cheaper private school’ turns into Tim’s ‘they get the same amount of money’.
In fact Mark’s figures put the private schools at about 39% higher.
Matthew, we have haggled further over at mine, as a matter of fact, spending per State pupil is maybe 10% or 20% less than the cheapest private schools.
Average private school fees is a meaningless figure as it is skewed by nonsense like Eton and boarding schools at £25k a pop.
To add to Mark Wadsworth’s comment, not only do boarding schools distort (upwards) average independent school fees, but school fees do not give a good indicator of cost per pupil. Remember, about 30% of independent school pupils get some sort of assistance with fees, so the cost per pupil is much lower than the fees would suggest.
Try this 2007 annual census from the ISC:
http://www.isc.co.uk/Publications_ISCCensus.htm
Page 7 is interesting.