You won't get any argument from me about any of this. Finland is a beacon in education that the Anglo-Saxon world should actually be more aware of.
Private boarding schools in the UK start at around £25K and work up to around £40K, with a few outliers at either end. (Christ's Hospital is, in general less expensive, Millfield rather more so.)
In the UK you will never change the Great Public Schools. The upper classes will always send their kids to Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and Westminster, etc; because these schools have been around for many centuries, doing what they do, and tradition is one of the things which bind us together. But 99.95% of the population don't attend Eton, etc. Private schools in total educate some 7% of the population of the UK, mainly because the state system is so patchy; and geographical differences from county/region right down to streets in certain towns make state education something of a lottery over which parents have no control.
As for the 93% in state education, how do we educate them? Why... we educate them according to our budget. And unlike Finland, we spend, at most £4.5K per pupil. (And that's including extra money for special needs excepting in the cases of child criminal delinquency - when more becomes available.) This is because we have bought the "no such thing as society" crap hook, line, and sinker as a society. Which is somewhat ironic. And also because economics has actually become accountancy to politicians and our polities, rather than a useful tool in the ordering of society for the betterment of most, or at least keeping bloody revolution from our doorsteps. Gods, Maynard-Keynes was so right.
Private education is divisive. This is not to be celebrated even when, like me, hypocrisy, or maybe the desire to do the best I can for my children means that they will go to an ancient Public School, should they pass the pretty rigorous entrance exams. (Rather hoping for scholarships, actually; but I'll settle for just getting in.)
Personally I wish all of the old and established Public Schools admitted on merit, with legacy places for folk whose families have attended the school for generations. As I have said before I am a conservative of a kind.
no subject
Private boarding schools in the UK start at around £25K and work up to around £40K, with a few outliers at either end. (Christ's Hospital is, in general less expensive, Millfield rather more so.)
In the UK you will never change the Great Public Schools. The upper classes will always send their kids to Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and Westminster, etc; because these schools have been around for many centuries, doing what they do, and tradition is one of the things which bind us together. But 99.95% of the population don't attend Eton, etc. Private schools in total educate some 7% of the population of the UK, mainly because the state system is so patchy; and geographical differences from county/region right down to streets in certain towns make state education something of a lottery over which parents have no control.
As for the 93% in state education, how do we educate them? Why... we educate them according to our budget. And unlike Finland, we spend, at most £4.5K per pupil. (And that's including extra money for special needs excepting in the cases of child criminal delinquency - when more becomes available.) This is because we have bought the "no such thing as society" crap hook, line, and sinker as a society. Which is somewhat ironic. And also because economics has actually become accountancy to politicians and our polities, rather than a useful tool in the ordering of society for the betterment of most, or at least keeping bloody revolution from our doorsteps. Gods, Maynard-Keynes was so right.
Private education is divisive. This is not to be celebrated even when, like me, hypocrisy, or maybe the desire to do the best I can for my children means that they will go to an ancient Public School, should they pass the pretty rigorous entrance exams. (Rather hoping for scholarships, actually; but I'll settle for just getting in.)
Personally I wish all of the old and established Public Schools admitted on merit, with legacy places for folk whose families have attended the school for generations. As I have said before I am a conservative of a kind.