I resent the whole idea of public schools. What I see as the principal aims for attending a public school – paying for what people perceive to be professional success, possibly being transported away from the riff-raff and being spoon-fed to the top – are things that can be deemed so anachronistic they belong in the days of Tom Brown’s Schooldays; certainly not the 21st century.
Millions of people across the country could not dream of sending their children to public schools; Eton College’s fees are just under an astronomical £30,000 per year. Having attended a comprehensive school, progressing through my education with people from varied background, was a benefit – not a hindrance. To a degree, I am insulted that people within society seem to feel that the state sector is not good enough for them. It is, and it’s there for everyone.
The LSE, in terms of ethnic diversity, is unique in the UK, and this is obviously positive. However, the degree to which the LSE self-regulates and takes people from certain socio-economic backgrounds is greatly disappointing.
In some outrageous data easily available through the LSE website it is shown that in 2006, twenty-six pupils from Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School were offered places at the university; in 2004, 30 offers were made to pupils studying at Westminster School. From my year at secondary school, only three people got offers from any constituent college of the University of London. Something’s going wrong, somewhere down the line. Things just don’t appear to be fair here. Of course, geography could be a factor – both Westminster and Haberdashers’ Aske’s are within twenty miles of the centre of London, whereas students from a school in Staffordshire may not immediately think of the capital as their first destination – but such an uneven distribution should be worrying for any university, or institution for that matter.
Something must be done about this. People from low socio-economic strata are already less likely to apply to universities, and the LSE’s attempts to attract people from such groups may begin to look tokenistic if the university continues to admit independent school students in such dizzying proportions.
Even the slightest possible hint that these students are brighter than the rest of the applicants would appear to be utterly ludicrous. Although it is conceivable that students from independent schools may be afforded better opportunities through a school’s infrastructure perhaps, and their applications may be better on the face of it, this must surely be acknowledged when applications are taken into hand by the university. For example, the mere thought of a school having a newspaper or magazine is something completely alien to what may have been offered in my school.
I am not illiberal on this issue; I do not wish for all public schools to shut down, though I would not support them where that choice is concerned. But our university should admit the best candidates, and at the moment it seems that these aims may be in some ways compromised.
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on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 7:21 am and is filed under Comment.
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Social engineering gone mad? – 2
by Nathan Briant on 23 Oct 2009 in Comment
I resent the whole idea of public schools. What I see as the principal aims for attending a public school – paying for what people perceive to be professional success, possibly being transported away from the riff-raff and being spoon-fed to the top – are things that can be deemed so anachronistic they belong in the days of Tom Brown’s Schooldays; certainly not the 21st century.
Millions of people across the country could not dream of sending their children to public schools; Eton College’s fees are just under an astronomical £30,000 per year. Having attended a comprehensive school, progressing through my education with people from varied background, was a benefit – not a hindrance. To a degree, I am insulted that people within society seem to feel that the state sector is not good enough for them. It is, and it’s there for everyone.
The LSE, in terms of ethnic diversity, is unique in the UK, and this is obviously positive. However, the degree to which the LSE self-regulates and takes people from certain socio-economic backgrounds is greatly disappointing.
In some outrageous data easily available through the LSE website it is shown that in 2006, twenty-six pupils from Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School were offered places at the university; in 2004, 30 offers were made to pupils studying at Westminster School. From my year at secondary school, only three people got offers from any constituent college of the University of London. Something’s going wrong, somewhere down the line. Things just don’t appear to be fair here. Of course, geography could be a factor – both Westminster and Haberdashers’ Aske’s are within twenty miles of the centre of London, whereas students from a school in Staffordshire may not immediately think of the capital as their first destination – but such an uneven distribution should be worrying for any university, or institution for that matter.
Something must be done about this. People from low socio-economic strata are already less likely to apply to universities, and the LSE’s attempts to attract people from such groups may begin to look tokenistic if the university continues to admit independent school students in such dizzying proportions.
Even the slightest possible hint that these students are brighter than the rest of the applicants would appear to be utterly ludicrous. Although it is conceivable that students from independent schools may be afforded better opportunities through a school’s infrastructure perhaps, and their applications may be better on the face of it, this must surely be acknowledged when applications are taken into hand by the university. For example, the mere thought of a school having a newspaper or magazine is something completely alien to what may have been offered in my school.
I am not illiberal on this issue; I do not wish for all public schools to shut down, though I would not support them where that choice is concerned. But our university should admit the best candidates, and at the moment it seems that these aims may be in some ways compromised.
This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 7:21 am and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.