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OK, and?

Private schools have been accused of “virtue signalling” over bursaries as a new analysis has found that the majority go to middle class families.

Bursaries do “remarkably little” to make fee-paying institutions more socially inclusive, according to a report presented to the British Sociological Association (BSA).

An organisation spends its own money its own way. Why should that be done in a manner that the British Sociological Association approves of? Why must that be done in a manner which promotes social inclusion?

Rather the point of private property is the “spends its own money its own way”…….

11 thoughts on “OK, and?”

  1. It rather depends on whether they have been awarded charitable status based on them offering bursaries to children from low income households.

  2. Quite a significant chunk of bursaries – are awarded when someone starts off ok being able to afford fees, then mid education, something happens, illness or bankruptcy. I suppose it is an example of status being somewhat sticky in the down direction. But yeah as a social policy it is designed to get fewer piers morgans.

  3. Maybe the random genetic variation from one generation to the next isn’t that great? Maybe middle class parents are more tapped into and talk about private schools.

    Bursaries etc are, roughly speaking, ringers to boost the private school results. How would it be in their interest to not pick some Einstein born to a checkout girl?

  4. Kommie Komrade Kedgeree or whatever–public schools exist to ensure that plebs are always with us. Stunting whatever wit and talent gets past shite upbringing.

    Which is why state education needs to be ended soonest. And why it wont be. Talented but poor moving upmarket is so 20th century. Peasantry forever is the new edict.

  5. Perhaps the bursaries are awarded on merit – terrible thing, not fair, I know – and middle class children aren’t as thick as children of povs.

  6. Under Blair, one of the arguments that Labour MPs advanced against a govt scheme of scholarships for children of families with low incomes was that the scholarships went to children from the Wrong Sort of poor families: the children of vicars, for example.

  7. The whole point is that they aren’t private property, though.

    They’re charities, which are granted charitable status on the basis that they achieve public policy goals – in the case educational ones.

    So it’s fair to ask whether they are meeting those goals. Note that if they are not, they would (ultimately) lose charitable status (obviously they’d be given warnings and so on), but that doesn’t turn them into private either; charitable assets don’t, indeed, can’t, turn into private assets. They’d have to transfer their assets to another charity that is prepared to meet those goals.

    Private property is a relatively narrow category; there is lots of property that is not private property but is not public sector either.

  8. Let’s get one thing clear – Bursaries are allocated according to need, Scholarships and Exhibitions according to merit.
    OTOH you can’t get a bursary if you have failed the entrance examination.
    So this reflects the costs of Public School education rising far faster than middle-class incomes thanks to well-meaning governments (whatever you say about Sir Humphrey he was always well-meaning) trying to improve the minimum standards of hygiene etc in state schools by legislating that “all schools must do X, Y, Z, …) and to reduce inequality.
    If the British Sociological Association wants to increase the “inclusivity” of Public Schools then they might try to improve the IQ of the lower classes in order to enable them to pass the entrance exams before applying for a bursary.
    Of course, when we had Grammar Schools, most of the bright working-class children could get a decent education for free and, when I was up, a majority of Oxford undergraduates came from Grammar Schools.
    Now, nitty-gritty, the Telegraph says that “fee remission” was granted to 32% of pupils – that’s a staggering number, and the claim that “only” 44% went to less well-off families [WTF? any family given a bursary is less well-off than one that doesn’t need one] does so by assuming that all scholarships for sporting and musical talents were given to children of the rich and ignoring all discounts to children of staff (are schoolteachers rich? news to me!). If you’re including music scholarships in the 56%, then it’s not just bursaries but *bursaries and scholarships* in the denominator (and I strongly suspect they are ignoring academic scholarships to those who could otherwise get bursaries in their 44%).
    So BSA is guilty of bullshit.

  9. John77- yep plus one from me. The support goes to peeps who otherwise wouldn’t be able to send their little uns to the school (give or take the odd pointy elbowed ruse). and the issue moaned about is that most of them are middle middle or lower middle rather than another favoured group. I suspect that’s as equally much as a function of application base as it is the entrance qualification base.

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