Do you think we should abolish private schools?

It's not about abolishing public schools but according to me it's more about the mindset that "the poor go to public schools and the education differs"
As soon as this mindset is changed the work is done..no need to argue on this topic anymore...as simple as it is..
on the other hand the fact is that 90% of childern {india} would prefer going to private school just for repo.... horrible to hear but true..I myself have seen my friends make faces on the name of government schools...
Coming back to the point abolishing public schools will not do any wonders..one who doesnt wanna study in public school has many more alternatives.."abroad" probably.. so why taking so much effort to abolish them and also kicking off many stomachs.. and overcrouding public schools..

I can buy a house in whatever area I like, providing I can afford it.

This.

I live in Bedfordshire where there is quite a big private-school culture, but the state school I attended got better results than all of them for GCSE and A-Levels.

And someone can spend his money on his child's education all he likes, providing he can afford it.

I never said they couldn't? Just that I wouldn't

Which School did you go to? I went to one of the private school's (Harpur Trust) and we always got better results than the states.

Sharnbrook about five years back now, it might have changed but when I was there we had the best results in the county.

You seem to delight in ignoring the point.

Not just I have called you out on the idea that buying your way into a good catchment area is morally superior to paying for education directly, and you have conspicuously not responded to this point. I'm going to assume this is simply because you don't have any good response.

I said nothing about legal representation, only legislation. Some lawyers are better than others, deal with it.

Lol'd

I thought it may have been, and my Dad did give me the option to go there in year 8, but I didn't want to as all my mates were at the school I was at. I left last year, and I'm pretty sure that the 3 main HT schools have been above Sharnbrook recently, maybe not the Girls' school though.

Even if you did abolish them I think you'll still have some degree of inequality because wealthy parents can still afford private tutors, extra materials etc. I went to a comprehensive and although I did very well, this was mostly due to the fact that I had private tutors for almost every subject that I was even slightly struggling with.

The whole system is completely flawed anyway in my opinion. Disruptive students need to be permanently removed from a classroom within a few lessons of misbehavior. Also, funds need to be reallocated desperately; how the hell did it get to the point where our music department was buying new macbooks when the maths department couldn't afford to print off revision materials for our GCSEs? This is from an "outstanding" rated school. Problems like this don't even need much money to fix, just common sense.

I also agree with the other poster about schools being more selective too, at least internally. The number of occassions that my time has been competely wasted by teachers have to teach other students basic numeracy or literacy instead of the higher end of the syllabus was staggering. I remember being told several times "if you want to get an A or B, you'll have to teach this topic to yourself". You simply can't ask people to send their children to comprehensives that are as dysfunctional as my "outstanding" one if they have the money to go private.

Speaking from personal experience:

I went to a private school for most of my life and can say from experience that the private school system is incredibly outdated and really isn't worth the money you pay for it in most cases.

I found that bullying was much worse since especially at the secondary school level, students spend a large amount of time away from tutors and teachers, so there are lots of opportunities for some pretty awful verbal and physical bullying. Bullying was a huge problem at mine, as there was a divide between the 'rich' and 'poor' students - kids would get bullied for not having expensive phones/games consoles/clothes/etc. If you didn't live in the 'rich' part of town, you got bullied - some kids are raised with this idea that their privileged upbringing makes them superior to others and it was awful some of the old-fashioned, racist, sexist, generally terrible narrow-minded views they were brought up with - and still held when they left at 18.

That's interesting to note that you've found private school kids responsible for bullying kids who are poorer than them. I went to a state school where I was teased for apparently being too posh (I'm from an ordinary low-income household and I just happen to be posh-voiced). Still, I can also imagine being ostracised by posh kids too. Having been to an ordinary state school and a Russell Group university, I've found that both ends of the class spectrum tend to hate my guts for opposite reasons and completely shun me from ever daring to join their proud little cliques, lol.