Against private schools and arguing against the article called ‘Would I send my children to an independent school? You bet I would.’

Para No.

You suggest that…/You state that... / An interesting idea that you raise is...

Show that you think that their idea is a nice one

connective to show that you disagree

Your argument(examples given: use this and / or write your own)

1 Independent school have ‘beautiful buildings’ that are ‘steeped in history’

It is important that we send our children to a place that feels important and if it looks ‘beautiful’ then it is easier to assume that it is effective

but/however/yet We need to try and look beyond tradition and beyond history as we no longer wish to send our children to a place that is more concerned with the past than the future. The danger with independent schools is that the values are prehistoric… many are single sex (instead of teaching children how to socialize with the opposite gender we segregate them…?) many allow the older members of the schools to maintain order through systematic bullying of the newer, younger members.

The fees paid are being spent, in part, on the aesthetic maintenance … really important?

2 The teacher s in independent schools are more ‘committed’ and that there are no bad teachers as they ‘just go’.

It is in may ways commendable that this is your experience of how the independent schools maintain a high quality of teaching and that they will no tolerate anything below good.

but I wonder if these are the kind of teachers that we want teaching our children?

Teachers choosing to work in an independent school because they will have less work because of the small class size. Who will be paid more and have longer holidays… they might be ‘committed’ but to what? Making your child a happier, more well rounded person…?

Teachers who find no objection in the notion that it is acceptable for parents to insist on ‘value for money’ and if they don’t get the results from their child that they have paid for then the teacher is replaced.

You ask if parents ‘dare’ to remind a teacher in a state school that ‘their taxes are paying their saler[y]’ and the answer is that I hope not.

Teachers should be teachers for better reasons than results or money…

What are values that you want to see modeled? Do we want robots or humans with our students? If a teacher is struggling then the school community should be supporting them to improve and not simply replacing them without a moment’s thought.

3 Class size is smaller and in your experience has been 15 in independent schools and 35 in state schools.

This is certainly an advantage of independent schools as the amount of teacher time available to the students in the smaller class would be greater

However, Research by John Hattie shows that that class size makes no difference to the quality of the learning and the progress made my a child. It might make life easier for the teacher but their ability to develop a rapport is not affected.

Class sizes of 35… rare…average is 25… Small classes = ‘close knit community’ but I work in a school of 2,000

and on each site I speak to every child in the playground… etc. More confident… too confident? A false sense of what the world is

like? Contribution – speaking in class is not the only way to engage? What

about those who are introverts? What about group work? This assumes a very traditional method of engaging with the learning in class with the teacher at the front and the class answering questions. Education has moved on from then…