Russell Coker wrote:
On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:21:01 Andrew McGlashan wrote:
Private schools are a lot like many other modern day "products", the money is in the marketing, so you pay more for the product and quite often get nothing better in return except a warm fuzzy feeling that you must have bought the best (or better at least). I think that private schools do provide a better service than government schools.
The analogy he uses is "flying to London"; which seems to equate to getting one's kids into University. One can fly first-class (private schools) or tourist-class (state-schools); the facilities at the former are better; but apparently don't make much difference to the end result. He claims private schools can often look as though they are doing better; ie getting a higher percentage to university; but on closer inspection they are just selecting their students more carefully. What is really contentious is his claim that class size really isn't all that significant ether. It is this claim, plus his other claim that 'teacher quality' is significant; which really puts him at odds with the teacher unions and received wisdom. He even suggests 'teacher quality' is not strongly correlated with qualifications ! I haven't read his book, but the conclusions he reached seemed to be more than just opinion; ie he seemed to have done quite a bit of research. Which encourages me to check out his book ; though I will try to get a free copy ! regards Rohan McLeod