It depends what you want you child to be. If you want him/her to study medicine or engineering in a good university, private education will provide him/her more opportunity to be accepted.

Janet Murray may be the biggest hypocrite on the planet but that doesn't alter the fact that a privately educated, 'non religious' broadsheet journalist extolling the virtues of state education, at any price, when he sends his own kid to a church school, is a joke.

Surely no one would deny that private education is better, and that, ergo, if one has stewardship over a child and the right amount of wealth, you would send that child there. But that doesn't mean we have to support the system; in a like manner to opposing capitalism but being unable to simply withdraw oneself from the market. Some have criticized Lynskey for saying that Murray extrapolates her opinions from experience, when he does the same. This is prima facie true, and Lynskey doesn't really address this, but he is right - Murray has taken her particular, "accidental" experience (contingent upon a society in which massive inequalities of wealth and hence, a priori established power exist), from a particular vantage point (the "middle-class" worker who can afford this product and who acts within the confines of a nuclear family), and attempted to make it a universal principle - when, as is bleedingly obvious, the notion that education is a universal good and that people (children) are equal is contradicted by having a state/private system or market for education in class society at all. We all do, or would, as parents engineer the system, and we adhere to the system as an article of absolute faith, so where's the problem? Her previous position was not based on principle, but particular interest again - she says it was something she had always secretly aspired to; her anti-private school views were thus likely motivated by jealousy. The remainder of her arguments are so asinine and banal that they really don't merit refuting. For example, even if we accept, a priori, a system that demands a rigid social division of labour and the reification of human talents into highly particular paths, or even accept that such differentation is inherent to people, how does this equate to supporting a system that determines a child's placing by what their parents can pay; accepts a state system which benefits the most privileged children and which introduces hierarchy at the very earliest opportunity; pushes children down particular paths earlier and earlier without care to their desires, which are to subsumed under the demands of the market; and accepting a system of higher and lower standards rather than mere formal, occupational differentation? She is clearly accommodating to the needs of consumers (parents) and in accommodating to the needs of the market rather than being interested in the diverse interests of young people.

Sorry Mr Lynskey but you are being rather dishonest here - either that or you are doing a sterling job of kidding yourself.

So you were educated privately, but would not want that for your own kid. Instead she goes to a state school - but hey - it's a church school- you know; one of those ones run by those stupid Christians with their sad religion that turns out well educated and well behaved kids!

Blimey that was a bit of luck! But no. I'm sure its just the fact that it was your local school and if it hadn't have been you would quite happily have sent her to Shit Street Comp to do GCE video gaming and tourism.

Its a real bonus when you reject private education to have the virtual equivalent of a grammer school on your doorstep isn't it?

Ideological purity without any of the necessary downsides.

Lucky old you.

I went to a comp, got 4 A's at A-Level (1980s), went on to get a good degree and a Masters. Ten people from my class went to Oxbridge (I didn't). The same school still achieves roughly the same results (in fact some years better).

90% of people go to comps. They can't all be getting a crap education.

I went to a comp, got 4 A's at A-Level (1980s), went on to get a good degree and a Masters. Ten people from my class went to Oxbridge (I didn't). The same school still achieves roughly the same results (in fact some years better).

90% of people go to comps. They can't all be getting a crap education.

"It's not a hip London postcode. It's a borough with considerable poverty."
I live in E5, one of the poorest, and hippest, postcodes in London.

"Many journalists went to private school and many did not."
I know from experience that most journalists who have staff jobs on national broadsheets went to private school.

".... family background is the crucial factor"
Well, quite, and family background can change dramatically down the years through - guess what - good education. That's what grammar schools were for and look what happened to them.

And, Dorian, if you're not religious why do you send your daughter to the local church school? Is there no comp or is it because it's crap?

because private schools are more better
http://kit-electronics.org.ua/

The main thing is, has your schooling made you wise, or just another uppity person who's all for himself?Do they churn you out with the ability to keep on asking questions, or do you just accept what you've been taught as the status quo and leave it at that? Sir John Beddington is "Chief Scientific Adviser" to the government, with a string of credentials and a string of ex-wives, which may say something about his personality.

I listened to him promoting GM food as a good thing on Countryfile and he endorsed the development of trials in this country. Yet he seems totally oblivious to the experiences of farmers in USA who have grown GM crops, and have suffered all kinds of problems, not least how they have to spray more and more pesticides at even stronger toxicity to get rid of super weeds. This actually passes high levels of chemicals into the people who end up eating it. Japanese tests have discovered that organs within the body get "CONFUSED" AS TO THEIR FUNCTION and we can die of organ failure, through eating spliced grain. How many of you were taught about this in high school, as this has been going on since the 80's?

More insiduously, we are in danger of losing organic crops altogether, because of cross contamination, and Greenpeace has been right to try to stop these field experiments. As you probably know, GM food is sterile, which means the farmers would then have to buy new seed from suppliers at ever increasing rates. Many are also sued by the main suppliers, as GM seed gets blown onto organic farming land, even if there are only one or two plants that are GM. The main culprit in the States seems to be MONSANTO, but some of the subsidiary groups like Du Pont and Bayer come under their wing, so they have a monopoly on not only GM seed, but they buy up all reserves of organic seed as well, and any farmer wanting to return to organic growing, have to buy organic seed at exorbitant prices. Traditionally, farmers retain seed from their harvest to grow next season, but there are all sorts of other clauses that Monsanto has managed to persuade the government to pass, like having to use their pesticides with their seed etc, and getting patent for seed. So the farmers become trapped into not owning their own yield, and many give up as it's no longer a good living for them. They lose their vocation and way of life, land and often their farmhouse as Monsanto aggressively persue their rights, which are a heinous monopoly on world food production.
There have not been enough trials to prove without a doubt that GM crops are not harmful to eat, and I'm totally disgusted with Beddington for allowing false reports on the merit of growing food in this way. He seems oblivious to the Japanese findings, and I'm wondering if he has a vested interest in a seed company, as has mid-Norwich MP George Freeman who has allowed trials in his constituency to go ahead. Sainsbury also has an "interest", probably invested a lot into the John Innes seed trials. At present farmers are not allowed to grow GM crops in Britain, and I think, in view of the heavily weighted arguments against them, that we should continue to ban their growth.
You may be city born and bred who read this mag, in the main, but this is why I'm appealing to you to support farmers in Britain staying organic. The implications of running out of bread for the world after only one season of failed GM crops due to vagaries of the weather as has happened in USA this year, bringing about a shortage of flour for next year, and seed companies stockpiling fertile seed to supply farmers at 50 -60 times the price he can grow for himself, means many farmers will simply give up, rather than be serfs to the seed barons.

It has not been proved that GM crops end starvation in the world, quite the opposite, yet it has been proved that the world does not need GM crops, that organic farming is as efficient and totally healthy for us, being natural and as God intended. I would ask that you look at the following videos on youtube, as they give more detail and analysis than I can write here:

~ GM Crops, Farmer to Farmer
~Forum - Genetically Engineered Food - Failed Promises and Hazardous Outcomes
~David versus Monsanto (The Globalist Slow-Kill Bio-Weapons Division)
~Indian Farmer Beats up Monsanto Rep for Failed Genetically Engineered Cotton
~Monsanto Cancer Milk: Fox News Kills the Story and Fires the Reporters

Some of our animals in this country have been given Bovine growth hormone, which is passed through, not only in the meat, but milk and hard cheese as well. I mean, who wants to eat this stuff? The problem is that there is no mandatory labelling as yet. We must demand that GM and genetically modified meats and dairy products, fruit and veg - all foods - are labelled accordingly. I will only eat organic, even though it's more expensive, as that is labelled, presumably so that those in the loop, know what they're buying. It's time that we all do.

Most of the current cabinet went to private school. It doesn’t show them in a good light tbh.

And this: "My daughter goes to a local state school. It happens to be a church school but there was no “lying or cheating” (Murray again) involved. We said we weren’t religious; they let our daughter in anyway; it happens sometimes."

Does it? How often does he think *it* happens if you're one of the unfortunates who don't have a hip London postcode? Then again he probably doesn't. What a joke.

The London media set are SO clueless, it's scary. Christ, I'm almost as mad as Dorian Lynskey now.

I went to a comp in south London. The standards of teaching were frankly extremely low, and the comprehensivisation of the system meant that lazy violent stupid kids were able to bring the others down: the convoy had to move at the speed of the slowest ship. I want my kids to go private if I can afford it, or I will move to a county where they still have grammars, or organise some sort of home schooling rather than send my kids to a comp.

For quite litelaay as far back as I can remember I have been reading stuff like this: guilt tripped bourgy kids like Lynskey decrying their own privileges. He states:

" it is far and away the major obstacle to class mobility and equality of opportunity in Britain"

Evidence? You could usefully read "Social Mobility Myths" by Prof Saunders of the Uni of Sussex.

If state schools are so great, then why do the NuLab hypocrites: Harperson, Bliar, that fat blackird from Hackney etc not use em? The Labour leadership believe in comprehensive ed: for other people's kids.

Like the Labour Party, The Guardian has never had policy of abolishing commercial schools, and Harold Wilson used them as a parent while he was Prime Minister. It is altogether another question whether or not they are any good, since they are merely adept at putting pupils through the examination system that they are the first to castigate as deficient and defective.

They are often also the most anti-family institutions imaginable, founded on the assumption that the relationship between parents and children is thoroughly distant and purely financial, organised towards the living out of adolescence in single-sex residential environments, and unsurprisingly producing politicians of the sort that voted through Thatcher’s Children Act and other such legislative attacks on family life. In addition to all of that, what one now thinks of them is essentially what one now thinks of the takeover of this country by Arab princes, Russian oligarchs and global money men.

They are merely good at doing something that is in itself bad. They are not necessarily good schools in any absolute sense. They are somewhere for the global megarich, who are increasingly taking over this country in all sorts of ways, to park their progeny without worrying that they might be subjected, as they would be abroad, to export strength English examinations based on the old O-level.

Such as those very successfully sat in Saint Helena, for example. And in the West Indian schools to which British Afro-Caribbean parents sometimes send their children in order to see that they are properly educated. Commercial schools have the right to offer those qualifications rather than Thatcher’s GCSEs. Very tellingly, they almost never do so. Just as, very tellingly, the global megarich do not send their offspring to schools that do so.

But there has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish them. Perhaps there now ought to be? At the very least, a policy to tax them as the businesses that they are, unless a certain proportion of their pupils was from homes on median earnings or below, and unless a very high proportion was made up of British Citizens whose parents were resident in the United Kingdom for tax purposes.

That would be as thoroughly conservative and Tory as the articulation of any concept of English identity, and the defence of the Union as a first principle, of a universal postal service, of the Queen's Highways (again, against rule by Arab princes), of Her Majesty's Constabulary, of the National Health Service, of keeping Sunday special, of the historic regimental system, of aircraft carriers with aircraft on them, of the State action necessary in order to maintain the work of real charities and of churches, and of the State action necessary in order to maintain a large and thriving middle class, together with a free vote on the redefinition of marriage, and together with a referendum on continued membership of the EU.

Without VAT, the commercial schools have deliberately priced out the old bourgeoisie in favour of those from the ends of the earth who were willing and able to pay vastly increased fees, and who very often preferred snob value to academic excellence. How you regard those institutions is not now about how you regard the middle class or even the upper middle class, but how about you regard that class's evisceration by global capitalism and by its consequences.

Ed Miliband and Jon Cruddas, over to you.

A few years back, I was at a party discussing various things with a former teacher who spent 30 yrs teaching in south London. Someone asked him his opinion of the idea floated by Trevor Phillips that Afro-Carribean yoof ought to be taught separately from others.

"Well," the aged pedagogue mused: "It would certainly be a lot better for the white kids..."

If you use private schools or healthcare instead of local authority schools / the NHS you're also wasting some of the money you pay in tax (unless you don't pay tax)

style of thing

Internationals mathematics competitions are almost always headed by state school kids from mainland China, the old Soviet Union etc.
Public schools think it is so vulgar. No public school world heavy-weight boxing champ - ever so vulgar.
The educational dice are loaded. Watch this Tory government cave in when a shortage of intellectual and capable graduates comes up in the near future. Asia and Africa to the rescue.

Owl of the Remove

My son is at the local state primary school and having a great time. I was a governor there and know the school well. I'd like him to stay in the state sector.

He's somewhat fortunate to have all the social capital that the author mentions as both my wife and I are still together, university-educated, etc etc. However, I do wonder how far that social capital will take him when compared to other children with similar levels of social capital but access to the sciences taught as separate subjects by specialist teachers with a deep knowledge of them, the opportunity to learn Classics or modern languages as literary languages, organised regular sporting activities which don't depend upon having a high enough level of attainment and ability to get you into the youth programmes at Yorks Cricket Club, Leeds Rhinos or Leeds United.

I'm not sure that access to doing those sorts of things ought to be seen as a privilege. More that the withdrawal or denigration of them can seem a penance.