Is this the time which social historian David Kynaston has predicted to be “a long-overdue historic moment”? Known to be a private school critic, Kynaston quoted:
The temper of the times is anti-elitist. We have yet another old-Etonian prime minister as well as a cabinet two-thirds privately educated, and the resources gap between the highly funded private sector and the starved state sector has become grotesque … the current dispensation is morally rotten.
The continuous debate on the state-private schools’ separation has always been there. It is a part of the endless discursion which has always been political. One thing that stands out today in Europe’s political timeframe is the emerging of two aggressive groups committed to reforming the private school sector.
By next week, the Private School Policy Reform (PSPR), will be bound for scrutiny and debate. This will take place in the city of Manchester, England. The concern regarding resource discrepancy between private schools and state-operated schools will be a major issue to be tackled in this proceeding.
Conflict in the private school pro-reform movement
Different sectors have different say on this issue, but the loudest advocates for private school reform who co-founded this movement were Jess Staufenberg, David Kynaston and Francis Green. Though they do not wish to create conflict in the pro-reform movement, instead they want to suggest for a platform on which the discussions for reform will be researched, assessed, discussed and come out with several options.
Though the intriguing part here is a possible influence of the upcoming election on how the government will respond to the issue. There is even a hint of a possible proposition of transforming private schools into free schools or at the very least take away their business rate subsidies.The government will be able to gain more tax which will be used to fund state schools.
If some are pro-reform, they are also those who oppose the idea of reform; some of which are unexpectedly from the state sector itself. State school supporters such as Toby Young and Katharine Birbalsingh take pride in the meritocratic style which instills strong discipline and eagerness to excel among students in state schools.
On the other hand, private school pro-reform movement is not geared into showing off and boasting out pride in academic excellence, the message it wants to deliver is with the hope of having these high income generating private schools to share to the less fortunate students and low budgeted state schools a portion of their financial gains from paid education.
