Budget 2024

Harben’s school is nothing like that. It produces entirely balanced individuals. We wouldn’t send him anywhere like that.

Part of the problem is that people think every fee paying school is like Eaton, most are nothing like it.

The thing abourt Norwegian education is that it has Norwegian children and Norwegian parents, not anglo saxons.

I went to state schools throughout, as did my wife. My secondary school was average at best. My primary school was amazing. We wanted somewhere like the latter for H. St Johns College was the closest we could find. The parents are not super wealthy by any degree. There are no “trust funds” in H class. There are a lot of professionsl parents. It is incredibly diverse. H class has Iraqi’s, Iranians, Chinese, Hungarian, Indian & Pakistani.

We live in Wales with the worst education system in the UK. Labour have been in power here forever.

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Genuinely the best policy they came up with. Should have happened years ago :+1:

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Cool beans. You can pay VAT on it like nearly everything else :+1:

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I would point out that while most of the idiots at my college were from that background, there were some good public school types and the biggest knob was a socialist worker fanatic.

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True of my college as well, although not of all colleges in my experience (Oxford). For progressive admissions reasons* my college had fewer public school entrants and (obviously) more state school ones, including me.

*I was lucky enough to have Neil Tanner as my undergraduate tutor.

I’m conflicted over private schools.

I went to a private school but my parents decision was based on the early 80’s when teachers were going on strike and my local comp was very rough with class sizes of 35+. It was raided for drugs at least twice a month and was falling apart. The classrooms were oil heated wood floor portacabins as the 1940’s buildings were falling apart and condemned.

As an example of how bad my comp was I was there for the first two years before my parents made the decision. I initially failed the entrance exam for the private school so they had to get a tutor. In the space of 3 months I went from middle of the class average in maths to the top of the class.

My private school was by no means a posh one and many of the kids there were in similar positions to me. My best mate at school had parents who were a social worker and a teacher, I don’t recall any kids having massively rich parents.

My parents were not rich by any means, both came from council estate homes with little money. My dad had to take a job in Baghdad as the company would then pay 50% of the school fees. They made some big sacrifices and gave up a lot to give us a good education so I get particularly narked when when cunts say all private schools just produce “snobs”

I tried explaining this to TonyL on pfm years ago and his response was just to call my parents elitist bullingdon snobs. If I ever get the chance to meet him his nutsack will be taking a day trip up to his chin by way of my boot :rage:

I don’t agree with private schools and ideally there shouldn’t be a need for them but many schools just can’t provide the time/resource that some kids need. Not all private schools are pure education some also provide specialised care for kids with learning difficulties etc.

Personally I blame successive govts for raping the education budgets and not the private schools for being required.

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Nothing against private schools, they just should never have been VAT exempt.

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This also raises the selective vs comprehensive issue.

The practice of private schools selecting their pupils means that they can end up with a disproportionate number of children who are naturally academic and/or naturally gifted. Some (most ?) of the children also understand the sacrifice their parents are making and are motivated by that.

A neighbour of mine has just (i.e. this term) started as a teacher at the local private girls’ secondary school. She’s spent a couple of years, I think, in state schools while she was training and also has some experience working with seriously disadvantaged children. I asked her how her job was going. As I recall she just smiled and said “Oh, the children …” then made a face that said ‘keen to learn’.

On the plus side the lucky kids get to be stretched further than would have been possible if the teacher had had to pace things to accommodate the strugglers too. On the minus side this creaming off of at least some of the brighter kids means that the strugglers don’t have them to pull the whole class along.

I can imagine it must be a tough call to decide, if you have the option, between giving your kids the very best possible chance or putting them into the mix with all the others for the greater common good. I don’t have kids so I’ve never had to make that choice.

Most definitely not the case with my old school, I’m as thick as pig shit and (finally) passed the exam.

In the interests of slight balance, I was privately educated 7-18 (As an army child I was at the tail end of the curious Cold War hangover where army families were given money to send their children away to lower the drag on the overseas forces school system). I went through the process with boys and girls who’s intellectual capacity would have historically set them up for the role of dying in the first 24 hours of a colonial scuffle (boys) or incubating 2 or 3 kids and settling into good natured, gin soaked Country Life shinanegans (girls). They were as thick as mince but their parents paid full fees and they were generally quite sporty so who cared?

Isn’t funding for the private schooling of military families’ children who’d otherwise potentially be dragged all over the world still a thing?

It shows :grinning:

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It is but the thresholds for receiving it are significantly higher and, as fees have gone bonkers in recent years, it doesn’t cover that much of the cost so it’s of little tangible benefit.

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A system designed to get people off a dangerous habit (smoking) should not in itself become a new habit which can be monetised.
No one is addicted to nicotine free patches for instance,
Most of rest of the activities you post are hobbies and have health benefits but are not ‘addictive’ in the same way.
Of course anything can become an obsession for certain people.

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Were any types of cables taxed in the budget?

This may help the debate about which are better, factoring in cost.

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Thing is vapes taste nice, some folks find a hobby in it (See mod vapes, coils, mixing flavors etc etc etc etc) Historically people did get addicted to nicotine replacements, particularly gum for example.

Dopamine is not really just ‘a good feeling’ in terms of brain chemistry it acts as the primary motivator - Do something like eat, it makes you feel good so you continue to eat (Handy or we die) same with sex (Handy or we become extinct) etc. Whilst evolution makes dopamine a necessity good old humans have found a myriad of ways to trigger dopamine (Some worse than others) one of them is vaping.

Vaping from a douche flute is as ridiculous as obsessing about putting a small ball in a hole in the rain on a field, but when you get that dopamine from a hole in one people wish to repeat it and trudge about in the rain wearing god knows what hoping / practicing / dreaming about putting a ball in a hole.

Whilst vaping is suggested by the NHS as a replacement for cigarettes I know lots of people like it for what it is. I stopped combusting Virginian leaves eleven years ago. I stopped nicotine a few years ago but I still vape in the same way many golfists haven’t had a hole in one for years but still play - They enjoy it.

Yes but it is (or used to be) down to the Commanding Officer to approve and tended to be ruperts first. The Signals was extremely transient where postings were a max of 4 years (or 2yrs for NI) but I never knew anyone below the rank of Sgt who had CEA approved :frowning:

It used to be that 10% of the fees were deducted from pay but don’t know if that is still the case.

so give it up then? cigarettes and vapes aren’t necessities. Food, healthcare and local services are. If you want to fill your body with poison (as i do with alcohol in great great quantities) then be prepared to pay for the luxury of doing so IMHO

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I’m no expert so I can really only pass on the experiences of people I’ve chatted to.

Checking the local results (52 schools ranked by A-level points per pupil) there are indeed independent schools spread across the whole results spectrum. But of the top 14 schools 12 are independents and my neighbour’s school is in the middle of those. My niece went there and she feels she was stretched more than she would have been in her local state school, although that school is now doing pretty well among the state sector ones.

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I already said tax the nicotine. Don’t tax the medium the drug is delivered through. It’s like taxing tonic cause most people will put gin in it with zero tax on the gin itself. It does nothing to encourage people to use less nicotine or wean themselves off it.
Sad to say it but the tories had a far better plan for a three tier taxation system that actually taxed the amount of nicotine in the liquids encouraging people to move to lower strengths.