"if you worked a bit harder, you too could afford to be me."

It is hot and sticky in Auckland, people are drifting back to their day jobs and I am fighting the realisation that my summer break is nearly over ...instead of preparing for the hiss and roar of the professional development days we are booked for in January I have been distracted by thinking about what sort of education system I would develop if on top of the fees I could charge I had 100 million pound in tax breaks a year to educate 7% of the wealthiest children in Britain.

Or 7% of the poorest children in the country? Or 7% of the [fill with your own gross demographic ] children in the country?

The new Charities Act 2006 public benefit test will require independent schools to prove that they are providing educational services to children who cannot afford their fees. And I am enjoying reading the debate over the charitable status tax advantages offered to independent schools in Britain and the possible outcome of calls for greater accountability.

Do more for poorer children or lose your charitable status, private schools are told

Independent schools forced to be more open

Seems there are tough times ahead for Britain’s independent schools who also cannot have enjoyed the recent academic research claims that private schools reproduce inequalities

Researchers discovered that while independent schools have increased their share of the available teacher pool by 14%, they were responsible for teaching less than 8% of the pupil population.

Teachers in independent schools are more likely to have postgraduate qualifications than their colleagues in the state sector, according to the results of two studies.

Private schools are also more likely to have teachers who specialise in subjects such as maths and science - where there is a national shortage of qualified staff. Their pupils are also more likely to be taught in smaller classes compared to the state sector.

Co-author Stephen Machin, research director of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and professor of economics at University College London, added: "Since selection into the [independent schools], despite some bursaries and the assisted places scheme, is primarily based on families' ability to pay, and given the substantial returns achieved, it is hard to escape the conclusion that private schools have served to reproduce inequalities in British society."

And then there is the private school head who has described as misguided private schools' attempts to justify their charitable status through offering bursaries to children of the poor.

“Private schools are perpetuating an "apartheid" system of schooling, creaming off the most able students and leaving state schools to flounder, according to an influential independent school head who today launches an outspoken attack on his colleagues in the independent sector.”

"They ... pluck children out of their social milieu as well as taking them away from their state schools, depriving those schools of their best academics, musicians, sportsmen and women, and future stars," The Guardian January 15 2008

Tracking the opinion pieces on both sides of the discussion could be black comedy in different circumstances.  Take Dr Martin Stephen High Master at St Paul’s highly risible or frightening (I cannot decide which) comments in the Telegraph

It is folly to assume that teachers joining the independent sector would be equally likely to join maintained schools. A major reason why top graduates choose the independent sector is not pay or discipline, vital though these are. It is because those graduates see their strength as teaching pupils who have the ability to study their subject at university.

It is not about class, or privilege. It is simply a recognition that certain teachers are brilliant at inspiring those of similar ability, but far less good (and far less satisfied in their job) when asked to teach the less able. Dr Martin Stephen

So the state sector in the UK (check the nuance in the use of the descriptor "maintained schools") is bereft of able students ...to the point that no one who loved their subject disciplinary knowledge would want to teach there.  Wealth equates to ability - and poverty to being "less able"  - I just cannot imagine any educator in private or state education in New Zealand who would feel comfortable about making a claim like this.

What is happening in Britain makes me want to track more carefully the reported rise in independent school enrolments in New Zealand – as discussed in Conversations over incinerating meat .  Luke and Dorothy’s comments on the post made me realise that sanctimony over what you can provide for your children extends beyond the schools they attend to the food that you feed them.  This was affirmed when I read Zoe Williams lovely piece in the The Guardian about the perils of being sanctimonious about chickens.   

It is, frankly, obnoxious to see a rich person demanding impoverishing consumer choices from a poorer person. These chef-polemicists consider themselves outside politics, because they're being straightforward - let's eat what came out of the ground naturally, what was raised in a happy way. Let's just do as nature intended, and by gum it will be tasty, and what could possibly be political about that?

They're right, it isn't political, in that it has no consistency of ideas, indeed, doesn't even comprehend its own implications, but it encapsulates rather well what happens when rhetoric becomes unmoored from structured ideology: you get all the worst bits of the left - the proselytising, the sanctimony - and all the worst bits of the right - the I'm-all-right-Jack, the "if you worked a bit harder, you too could afford to be me".

The fact is, ethics that come out of your wallet are not ethics. All these catchwords that supposedly convey sensitivity to the environment, to animals, to the developing world - fair trade, organic, free range, food miles etc - are just new ways to buy your way into heaven, the modern equivalent of the medieval pardon. Anyone with a serious interest in this would be lobbying the legislature; arguing to tighten laws on animal cruelty. When we just preach to each other, it turns into the most undignified scramble - who can afford to be the most lovely? Well, you can, Jamie and Hugh. You've got loveliness to burn.  Zoe Williams  Wednesday January 16, 2008  The Guardian

Ahh the worst bits of the left with the worst bits of the right .... there’s a thought ....how easily environmental sensitivity (aka being sanctimonious about chickens) becomes twisted into consumerism games for the affluent – becomes just like the meat on the bar b cue and the private fee paying education system - an opportunity to flaunt “if you worked a bit harder, you too could afford to be me" thinking.