Public School Head Teachers
You know, the ones who are whining on and on and on that universities discriminate against them. "Admission should be based on ability" they wail, "and not one where you come from".

Well, know what, sunshines? That's precisely what universities are trying to do. Private schools have spent decades saying "Give us little Tarquin for six years and we'll get him slightly better grades than he would have got in the comp down the road" Their entire marketing policy has been based on playing a system which has been, disgracefully, based on which school you went to and not your natural ability. Now the universities are putting things right and the bastards are squealing.

Fuck 'em. Fuck the lot of them. University education is a wonderful, enriching, glorious thing and it should be available to those who are best suited to it, not to those whose mummy and daddy paid thirty grand a year to a private school for six years.

Fuck 'em.
(ubergeekian, Tue 29 Jan 2013, 22:38, 17 replies)

And they get charitable status. Fuck 'em.

( 4Q just lurking, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 1:17, closed)

No they don't
That's an option, as it is with let's say, an English as a Foreign Language School but many are run for profit.
( DinivanX Has stinging piss after drinking Pact Coffee, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 12:19, closed)

Erm
Many "private" schools may be (especially the free schools and academies popping up to suckle the public teat under the cunt Gove, but most "public" schools are still run by assorted churches and City of London livery companies as charitable concerns i.e. tax dodges.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 31 Jan 2013, 16:12, closed)

Oh aye.
A lot of the people I went to university with that came from public schools were hopeless because they were so used to getting their hands held throughout their education.

I was a lazy prick, granted, but I knew when I had to pull my finger out my arse.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 10:54, closed)

When you say "public schools",
is that as in private, fee charging schools, or state funded comprehensives?
You mention "private schools" further down, so it's all rather confusing (unless you just hate all head teachers?).
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 12:09, closed)

Public schools are a subcategory of private schools

(ubergeekian, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 14:38, closed)

Right.
Thanks for clearing that up.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 16:30, closed)

except in the U.S.A


UK state school = US public school
UK public school = US private school

Also, jam is jelly, jelly is jello and smoking fags is illegal.

I was 25 by the time i realised I had been to a public school.
(CADmonkey rollllllllled another one, just like the other one, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 18:55, closed)

Bullshit
You want better grades, you need better teachers.

Better teachers are attracted to the places where they get paid better (and don't have to deal with unruly kids with no discipline whose parents don't encourage good behaviour), just like people in any other profession.

The public schools have funding and therefore pay considerably more than the state schools, so get the best teachers.

There is no 'playing the system' or similar here, its basic capitalism in action.

You want to fix this issue, get the government to pay teachers properly, not treat them like street cleaners (I like street cleaners but they aren't considered skilled), allow some proper power to discipline the ill behaved little shits and get the value of education understood by the masses.

Edit: Also almost everyone can now go to university and get a valueless degree if they do a tiny modicum of work at school, so essentially we now have equality - Everyones degree is useless.
( DinivanX Has stinging piss after drinking Pact Coffee, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 12:15, closed)

Thank you
For supporting my point, which is that the higher grades received do not reflect greater innate ability.

Incidentally, there is a lot of duff teaching in private schools, particularly the third rate ones with no great academic aspirations. That's where the weak teachers who can't control classes in the state sector end up.
(ubergeekian, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 14:37, closed)

Yes,
Public Schools aren't subjected to OFSTED, so they can harbour some right incompetents.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 16:00, closed)

I would agree with
"higher grades received do not always reflect greater innate ability."
( DinivanX Has stinging piss after drinking Pact Coffee, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 16:28, closed)

Oh I don't know.
Higher grades do reflect some kind of ability, even if it is only an ability to pass exams, or your parents' ability to choose and pay for a good private tutor.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 20:31, closed)

For many years (certainly, to my knowledge, into the 1990s)...
...public schools did not require teachers to have obtained a PGCE or to have any relevant teaching experience. A couple of years of TEFL in Zimbabwe gave me possible the worst biology and physics teacher ever to walk the cloisters.

I would have done better if I'd gone to the local comp with my mates rather than gone along with my dad's fantasies of social mobility (they had a higher Oxbridge entrance rate for my age group than my school did) but I was a good little boy who knew no different.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 31 Jan 2013, 16:17, closed)

Would you consider...
..becoming Secretary of State for Education? Please?
( The Lone Groover has mal des nuts., Wed 30 Jan 2013, 17:12, closed)

If the goverment needs someone to draw penises on cabinet meeting notes
I'm their man.
( DinivanX Has stinging piss after drinking Pact Coffee, Wed 30 Jan 2013, 17:15, closed)

Reminds me of somebody I went to school with - let's call her Jessica
Jessica loved horses wanted to become a vet when she grew up so she could work with them. I moved from a state school to her private school at 12, and at the time one of the things I wanted to do when I grew up was become a vet too. I didn't particularly like horses (I was more interested in zoo animals) but she saw all other pupils who wanted to be vets as competition and she tried to put them off.
Every year we had to fill in a series of forms (similar to the national record of achievement) which included a question about our career ambitions. As I was filling mine in, Jessica snatched it from me, saw the word "vet" on it and immediately started loudly preaching about how I mustn't become a vet because it requires "people skills" and my people skills were somehow inferior to hers. She then hung around reading over my shoulder and commenting on everything I wrote and wouldn't go away until I erased all mention of being a vet from my form.
When we were 14, me, Jessica and another girl all came joint first in a Biology test. Jessica cried and ordered the teacher to re-mark it because she wanted to be first and couldn't stand coming joint first with other people, especially with one who had previously been (horror!) state-educated - "It must be a mistake, MC Toffeehammer can't possibly do as well as me!"
When we had to choose our GCSEs, she again hung around reading over my shoulder as I chose my subjects from the option blocks, and pressurised me into choosing biology from a different block to her so we would be in different biology classes because she really couldn't bear to be in a class with someone who do as well as her.
In sixth form, Jessica applied for a veterinary medicine course at the University of Cambridge and immediately started swanning around the school saying, "I'm going to Cambridge," and telling everyone how this made her better than them. When she got a letter from Cambridge, she decided to open it at school so everyone could see her being accepted by Cambridge... except that it was a rejection letter. She immediately burst into tears and ran home, and spent the next couple of days off school because she couldn't stop crying.
When she came back to school, she was moaning, "How could they reject me? They must have given my place to someone from a state school... how dare they, they don't deserve it, I do!" to anyone who would listen (and several who wouldn't). Most kids who were rejected by universities just accepted it and moved on, but one teacher indulged Jessica by telling her, "Oh yes, you should have got that place, they only gave it to someone from a state school to be politically correct..." when she should have been telling her that actually, loads of other pupils had the exact same grades as her, or better, and she shouldn't have expected to get a place on a difficult and competitive course at a top university just like that.
(MC Toffeehammer, Thu 31 Jan 2013, 12:00, closed)