The idea that quality is primarily linked to expenditure needs to be addressed. In a nutshell I don't think the link can be demonstrated.
The article drifter linked says 7% of UK students go to private schools. There is an article here
Class size, teacher's pay and spending: which countries spend the most and pay the least in education? | News | theguardian.com about the PISA education study. This says 30% of the money spent on education in the Uk comes from private sources. I assume that means money spent on private educational establishments, since very little private money goes towards state schools. So 30% of the money goes to educate 7% of the pupils privately and 70% goes to educate 93% publicly. I make that 5.6x as much money per head for privately educated pupils.
Perhaps there is some correlation at the extremes of the scale - but for most schools, quality and expenditure are NOT linked.
Why do you believe that? on what evidence? it does not apply in any other field. Sure, you can get a bad expensive plumber and a good cheap one, but in general a good plumber is also a more expensive one. time after time you have argued that the only way to get good management of companies is to pay high salaries.
If we want to increase the quality of schools we have to first identify the features that create that quality.
I would agree with you that throwing money at something is not in itself a solution. There are plenty of people out there who will take your money and squander it. But the government acknowledges that higher pay incentivises performance, even when cracking down on costs. The government has an interesting experiment in progress with its new academies. Some have already failed disastrously, but others may yet be models of high performing schools which are cost effective. Whether any lessons will ever be learnt from this is another matter, given the ideological bias likely to be overlaid on outcomes by politicians.
However we already have models of high achieving schools in the private sector. The obvious and clear distinction is the amount of money spent per pupil. i am sure they could provide accounts showing where it goes: on more staff, on better staff (or maybe even on more, less qualified staff, or vice versa), on buildings, on resources, on food, on links with other establishments, whatever. I absolutely do not believe they could achiev the same results on the same level of funding as state schools, and nor do they or the parents concerned.
In the UK system there is a sharp divide in teaching practices between state and public systems. The state system has embraced the comprehensive ethos of whole-class needs with child-centred teaching; the public system supports individual pupil needs with teacher-directed teaching. This is the area which it seems to me must be tackled.
Haha, yes. Didnt you notice what you said? More individual teacher attention per pupil. that means more teachers and more teachers pay!
I think grammar schools are a good thing, but they are naturally set up to get better results.
It might be that what Grammars really have is groups of children motivated to learn, who therefore do well under the state system of large classes and minimal individual attention.
However, I do believe that the one size fits all system is not effective. Pupils should be taught the basics and the majority of other things should be elective (within reason).
I agree. But again, this conflicts with the need to make economies, which will naturally be easiest with large classes all doing the same thing.
The one size all system does not allow for children who are not academic and may want to do more hands on work, or entrepreneurial skills.
It also does not allow for children who are particularly academic and thus would benefit from different education to the average. Again, a potential benefit of grammars. All state schools now acknowledge the need for streaming by ability, and a grammar is merely this done on a larger scale achieving better differentiation.
At the very least courses for which we have a skills shortage and which would benefit the economy should be offered for free.
They rather should, shouldnt they? In reality Some of the more important skills cost students more.