The Roysse Room was the site of Abingdon School (then ‘Roysse’s School’) from 1563. Since moving to a much larger site, in Victorian times, near the Albert Park, the school continues to be developed. A new sports complex opened in 2008. A new Science block was added in 2015.
Hoardings have been showing pictures of the new Sixth Form, Library and Art Department that will be opening in 2018.
During development the emerging building has been encased in scaffolding – decorated by yellow and red safety walkways.
The scaffolding has now started to come down to reveal the new building – visible from Bath Street and the walled walkway between Bath Street and the Albert Park .
The new building will not only increase the space for the library and sixth form, it will free up space elsewhere for other departments, and students.
How wonderful. Hopefully, what with a new library…. perhaps our school might get a few hand-me-down books. See….we all win.
Aye. Trickle-down education.
Oh goody. Private school bashing.
not really ‘bashing’ Sarah. I have no issue with excellent education…I don’t want ‘their’ education’ to be as hindered as ‘ours’…I would merely like ‘ours’ to be as brilliant as ‘theirs’.
I think the independent schools and state secondaries could form stronger and more effective partnerships. Progress has been made over the past few years, but more could be done.
No-one should be embarrassed by the disparity in quality of facilities and funding. I am certain that the teaching in state secondaries is as good.
I would hope that conversations take place about re-deploying old science equipment, PCs, books, sporting and other redundant assets. It seems like common sense to me. There is very little money in the state sector and almost none for capital assets. There just needs to be a will on both sides and a sensible conversation.
Great school. How the place has developed in the last 10 years is quite amazing.
Hugely over-subscribed, Abingdon School really is a great asset to the town.
Good idea, ….They might be in Latin though, Daniel?
The Abingdon school outreach has really improved in the last couple of years, and as a state school governor I really hope that continues, it helps greatly.
The issue Daniel highlights is correct. It’s not the fault of independent schools, or their staff, students but is the result of the crisis in state school funding and unfair funding across the country.
To give you a flavour of the issue:
Abingdon School’s fees are about £18000 pa
The best funded state secondary schools in the country receive £6500 pa
The national average for state secondaries is £5500
State secindaries in Oxfordshire receive £4300 per student
You can see the challenge!
remember, it’s a charity (lol!)
funny how it’s the kids of the ‘donors’ to the charity that benefit.
Charity begins at home, remember
@rudi – remember, those Abingdon School parents also pay for a place at state schools which they don’t take up. If the state sector had to absorb 700,000 private school pupils with no extra funding, it would collapse.
People must be free to spend their own taxed income on what they choose. Some like holidays abroad, Sky TV, expensive mobiles, new cars. Others value education above all of those.
It is shocking and a scandal that the VAT ‘avoided’ per pupil on the fees for Abingdon School (and other similar establishments, due to their ‘charitable’ status) is only slightly less than the amount actually received per pupil for Oxfordshire state funded secondaries. (£3600 against £4300)
I agree with pjh64….my son attended an independent school and it involved enormous sacrifice for us as his parents and for my son also.
In response to Reductio and to Iain…the figures you quote are not a fair comparison. First of all, as pointed out, the Independent School parents have already paid their dues in taxes. Secondly, this costly sum quoted (per capita for independent pupils) actually has to fund not only educational provision, but also the care and welfare of the pupils/students for 24/7. Including: meals, linen, laundry, living accommodation, supervision, health, welfare etc etc etc. Plus the upkeep of the buildings (school and living accommodation), heating etc etc.
Added to which, from my own experiences, apart from the basic fees, the parents’ committees had to put many hours into fund-raising in order to help provide extra equipment which the fees income could not cover.
Iain, you have not broken down the sums quoted for the State sector into proportionional costings thus a simplistic comparison is misleading and , in my opinion, unfair.
Hope all of this is intelligible….my 1960s Grammar School education did not equip me for the screen-based forms of communication!!
The fees quoted for Abingdon School are, I think, for day boys not for boarders. Boarding doubles the cost.
Cassandra’s point is worth making. The school will have paid for its science and library blocks out of its own revenue. It will not have come from HMG’s education budget.
Parents who send their children to independent schools learn very quickly that everything costs and it will be included in fees or added as an extra cost (Mediaeval History trip to Carcassone to investigate the Cathar story? £1000, please; Rugby tour of Australia? £2000). These are not Abingdon School figures, but come from another independent school.
Funding for all our public services: hospitals, schools, emergency services, the justice system etc etc is hugely problematic. Raising taxes is a sure way of losing votes, so we politicians tell us that “it’s not just a question of funding” when it clearly is. For as long as the electorate votes against tax increases, we will be fed the same untruth.
I’m sorry Cassandra but it’s you that presents the simplistic and misleading comparison. According to their website Abingdon day school fees are £19,275. Boarding costs an extra £19,695. Once you add on the not charged VAT that’s the average UK wage (with two adults working) that whole families have to live on, not just one highly privileged boy..
To your other points do you think that the paltry sum Oxfordshire schools get per pupil is on top of running costs or that the parents of state school children don’t give up their time to raise money for things like books and equipment? Any system that allows people, however much of a financial burden they will try and tell you it placed on them to do it, to buy privilege and a better chance in life for their children is immoral and divisive and needs to be stopped. If the wealthy can afford to pay £20k a year to send Tarquin to school they can afford to pay £20k a year extra in taxes to help fund a proper state eduction system and health service.
Not going to turn this into a battle of words Reductio. I can only quote from my own experience. I can only say that my husband and I managed with one ancient car and public transport whilst neighbours with less ‘privileged’ children had the norm of 2 good cars on the drive. We chose to invest our hard-earned waged in education.
By your hypothesis any family with a couple of decent cars ( ca. £15k each) should be driving small bottom of the range saloons and donating the surplus NHS and state education.?
I repeat…. We did not have surplus money…..we saved it by denying ourselves things which other people took for granted. The majority of Ind School parents were like us. Furthermore, not every Ind School is as expensive as Abingdon.
Reductio: You are right; state school parents have to pay for extras, too. I agree, too, about the need to pay more tax – but we are shouting into the wind on that one, I’m afraid.
Cassandra, don’t get me started on unnecessary car ownership!
You clearly perceived some potential benefit from your self inflicted privations. I want to live in a society where a child’s future is not determined by the wealth or sacrifice of its parents. Don’t you?
All things are relative. Very many people can’t afford a house, never mind one with a drive or one or more cars to put on it. Don’t their children deserve the same chance in life?
ppjs I take your point re taxes but I fully intend to keep shouting into the wind in the hope that one day the wind will change.
it is an interesting conundrum. However just to point out that like Cassandra, we too go ‘without’ as well. We don’t have Sky TV,and we don’t holiday in Florida, and we don’t have two £15k cars on the drive. We go “without” so that our kids can have a clean school shirt, new shoes when their feet grow, and school lunches. We also work hard enough so that we can just about “pay our way” in general.
On top of working as much as possible, we also regularly get involved in school fundraising events – not to go to Canada for rugby, or to buy a new Janousek rowing boat…but so that there is enough money in the PTAs funds so that the kids who can’t afford to go to the Pitt Rivers museum trip can be subsidised – and so no one misses out.
pjh64….the state sector is pretty close to collapse already…
Iain, my kids have been involved in the ‘outreach’ that you speak of…and I am unsure whether I agree with it or not. My kids loved it…but it made me feel a sense of “boys, look at what you COULD have won”…if only dad worked harder…. But perhaps that’s my own personal issue – although when I have discussed this with others, there is a mix of “how wonderful” and “how patronising”…but, as ever…can’t please everyone, no matter how well intended.
I do feel, in general…the teachers at our state school(s) and the schools themselves do a fantastic job DESPITE the circumstances…contrasted with the private schools who do well BECAUSE of the circumstances.
It is an interesting educational issue – “we are not all equal”.
Well folks sounds as if I am not destined for the high ground….but condemned to a ‘warmer ‘ place. ( Not Can Cun or Florida) by the way. I wonder how the doyen of The Left and Equality feels about his start in life at the fee-paying Independent Adam’s Grammar School.
Isn’t the general consensus normally that ‘someone else’ should be paying more tax.
I’d actually happily pay more tax….my fear though is that it won’t result in any better services.
I think it’s perfectly ok to pay a lot…and simply expect a lot in return.
People ask whether I was trying to buy advantage for my son with an independent school education.
My answer is “no”, but I’m not trying to handicap him with a state-run, dogmatic schooling that will allow him to sink without trace. At independent schools, it’s ok to be a swot. It’s good to get great exam results. It’s cool to be clever.
On no account do I want amateur politicians that win a popularity contest every four years i/c my child’s education. The sum total achievement of decades of state education is to turn out the least literate pupils in the developed world. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/english-teenagers-are-the-most-illiterate-in-the-developed-world-report-reveals-a6841166.html) UK education sector – hang your heads. Who would willingly put their children into that system if there was any possible way to avoid it, including going into debt and making other sacrifices along the way?
Does this mean all state schools are bad? Of course not. It’s just that when they’re bad, they’re really bad. Unlike a business that goes bust when it’s product is poor, state-run things carry on, and normally demand more money or other resources rather than making wholesale changes.
Many people in the UK seem to want the government to run everything. The trains, healthcare, education – you name it. Yet when the state does, it makes a complete hash of it, because there’s no grasp on the true costs, and worse, nobody wants to give the customers the real invoice at the end.
The state sector should be copying the independent sector, not trying to shut it down. Only in this country do people get cross with the things that work and those that use them, rather than the things that don’t.
pjh64 The state sector copying the public sector in education is a great idea. Can we start by tripling the education budget please?
Oh and as far as state run vs private organisations go, can I just say Polly Peck, Northern Rock, RBS, Barings bank, Carillion, not to mention the numerous companies investigated by the SFO e.g. Tesco, Chemring, BAT, Airbus and so on.
As I said in my earlier post, I do not criticise any parent, student or teacher for choosing to opt for the independentbsystem, although it is not a choice I would make myself. Having said that we are fortunate to have good state schools in this town, and it’s difficult to know how I would feel if I lived elsewhere.
I do however criticise the government (not just this one but previous ones of all hues) for:
A) allowing a two tier system where children are segregated from other children in their communities and have very different levels of resource given to them based on what their parents can afford/choose to spend
B) starving schools of the level of funding they need to provide a good education and distributing what they do soend unfairly
What’s anyone’s opinion, following the digging up of Tilsley Park to (thankfully) rescue the dog trapped there, of Abingdon School’s statement that they would have to consider who would pay for it? Surely a gesture of good will is needed?
…I’m quite sure Kelly if we all rally round, we’ll all be able to make such a gesture.
Money’s too tight to mention … of course it is if the politicians sanction fortunes for drones to vaporise wedding parties in the Arabian Peninsula, bail out reckless financial institutions to the detriment of society in general, wave a magic pen which transforms arable land into housing projects for their mates, etc and etc … and the etcs go on … and on.
Rubbish politicians frittering away other peoples money.
Reductio – ask why the state sector never funds anything properly? It’s because no politician ever wants to add up the real cost of providing these services, since to do so would entail real choices being made about what can and can’t be afforded.
Much simpler to promise “free” things, blather on about being the sixth biggest economy in the world as if that’s a given and we can sit back and relax (as a meaningless statistic, it’s hard to beat).
“Free stuff” always wins votes. (By “free”, we of course mean getting someone else to pay for it, and failing that, passing the debt on to our grandchildren.)
I am poor at football, (shockingly so), but I can’t blame it on the Barcelona players for being so good and so well funded. Their success doesn’t adversely affect me or make me worse; I am responsible for my own performance. Abolishing FC Barcelona and making them play in the local park will not improve my game or my club one tiny bit. This is not a zero-sum game.
Iain – I do respect your choice, but should people be allowed to spend their money on nicer hotels for their holidays, bigger houses or better cars just because they choose to prioritise them when others in their community can’t? Where does it stop?
I preferred it when we were talking about bins.
But is your bin subsidised or privately bought…? JOKE ALERT
I think it’s good that backstreeter’s forum brings up the kind of ‘discussion’ that we have illustrated above.
In the main issues are discussed without much anger and can be quite informative. This day’s argument about private education is an example. I think posters have been quite open about their motives/feelings and I can find empathy with both sides of the argument. That said, I grew up in a mining village in the North East and was headed for a life ‘down the pit’, but was saved by a miracle ‘pass’ into a grammar school and got an education my parents could never have afforded. I’m in the middle of this argument, but err on Daniel’s side. I’m often really ‘informed’ by people who didn’t have the accidental access to education I had, but come out with stuff that illustrates a practical intelligence that you can’t buy with an education. These are the assets who are slipping through the net.
There’s a lot of highly educated people who are only good at waffling … who could I be thinking of?
I think that the move away from the three r’s was a big mistake and was interested to read a bit of ‘cod journalistic research’ (?) the other day mentioning that the tech-billionaires on the ‘West Coast are having their kids educated the ‘old way’ … by teachers … with no access to computer help.
Good idea … self-starting effort-after-meaning instead of googling the answer to everything.
Education has been destroyed by becoming a political football. Its funeral is being organized by the handmaidens of capitalism.
Pjh64, your analogy is meaningless. The fact that you are bad at football and FC Barcelona are not, bears no logical comparison to a system that allows some to buy into an educational establishment that simply by virtue of their attendance there gives them significant advantages in later life.
As far as honest costing of public services goes I think it a great shame that when a party did produce a fully costed out manifesto, many people chose to read the opinion of those with a vested interest in describing it differently rather than the document itself and to focus on the genuine mistakes of a politician put on the spot in order to reinforce a poisonous, unfair and entirely inaccurate rhetoric of her supposed incompetence and by association to question the competence of any person who supported her.
I would imagine that trials are necessary to get into FC Barcelona so the analogy does hold. Independent schools are selective. You have to qualify by passing an entrance exam and interview. As these schools are judged by their public exam performance, it is unlikely that they would let a place be bought for a child without that child having the potential to achieve academically (and no, not all children do, and yes, the examiners are expert in spotting potential in uncoached “non-privileged” children, to whom free or assisted places can be offered). Teaching staff are dismissed if the school’s collective grades are not up to scratch.
No, I’m sorry but even though some public schools have selective entry and football teams have trials it’s still a rubbish analogy.
If we must be football based, might I suggest the following.
2 children (A and B) live in the same town and they love playing football which they are both good at. When the time comes for trials the parents of child A decide that they will pay for the train fare so that their child can go to the FC Barcelona trials. The parents of child B, while they might be able to scrape together the fare for the trial, know that even if their child gets in at the trial, they can’t afford the regular train fare to Barcelona for training or the expensive boarding options on offer never mind the cost of the expensive kit and regular trips abroad to train with other clubs so they send their child to the local team. Both child A and B get in and begin training with their respective clubs. Being a wealthy club FC Barcelona have more coaches and better training facilities. The local club has a smaller number of very skilled, committed and hard working coaches and the parents of the children training at the club work hard to raise funds for equipment but at the end of the day they cannot match the small training group sizes of FC Barcelona. When the time comes for selecting the national side, the selectors, many of whom are ex FC Barcelona players themselves decide that they will give FC Barcelona players a chance to try out first because they’ve had some great players from that club in the past and they know they’ll fit in with other people in the national side (because lots of them are from that club too). Being a great player whose had one to one coaching and lots of support child A is selected. Unfortunately before the smaller local clubs get chance to send their star players to trial all the places are filled with players from FC Barcelona and other wealthy clubs and so child B doesn’t get the opportunity even though he has always been potentially as good, if not better than child A.
So, the national team loses out because they don’t get the best possible players.
Child B loses out because he doesn’t get chance to fulfil his potential and dream of playing for his national side.
The whole thing is self perpetuating and so unless there is some fundamental intervention the country and many of the individuals who are part of it will continue to lose out.
The End.
Not the end at all–i’m hugely enjoying our exchange. And yes, you are quite right. The analogy has indeed broken down, at line 4 of your post where you mention a joint love of football for children A and B. Educational choices are made by parents, not children. Those parents who want their children to attend independent school have worked hard towards that goal for the entire seven years of their children’s primary education to prepare them for it.
I would love to hear you explain why it’s not possible that both children might enjoy football without their parents choosing that they do? Are you so strongly in the nurture camp that you believe a child is a blank page waiting for its parents to fill it in through their educational choices? Surely that flies in the face of your assertion that ‘ the examiners’ are able to spot un coached non privileged children?
Absolutely a child is a blank page. An empty sponge. It’s a parent’s duty to fill that void with as many experiences and as much information as he or she can. That way the child is provided with the luxury of choice as he or she embarks into adulthood. Examiners can only assess the children that pass before them. Presumably you filled in the forms for your own children as they moved to senior school. Was that not your choice based on your own values? In what way are we different?
Are you saying that all children have equal potential and that the choices their parents make are the only thing that makes them different?
If that is your viewpoint then, yes I can see why you might support private education since in your model it is not denying a child from reaching its latent potential, merely facilitating the advancement of a chose few. I believe that each child is an individual and that the financial wealth of its parents or their ability to play the system is an immoral way to decide if it has the opportunity to explore and attain its true potential. It denies some children of their future and denies society of the person that child may have become.
Children have vastly differing potentials. That is why it is crucial for parents to work out where their children’s talents lie, and steer them accordingly, whether that means an education that is academic, or practical, or dramatic or artistic. It does not mean anyone has the right to judge, much less villify, anyone else for the choices that they make for their children.
I’m sure you’ll have noticed that I’ve very carefully described the system as immoral not the parents who choose to use it. I can fully appreciate that for very many parents it’s a very difficult choice to make both ideologically and financially and that for most of them it is absolutely about doing what they believe is best for their children but that doesn’t alter the fact that a two tier education system such as we have is, in my humble opinion, divisive and immoral and leaves us as a society and very many of our children the worse for its existence and thus I feel duty bound to advocate it’s abolition. While it exists I would never vilify a parent for using it but it’s not a choice I believe we should allow or expect parents to make.
Well, that’s alright then! Looking forward to our next sparring session … This is such fun!
May I question the notion that the newborn infant is a blank sheet?
In the womb a child hears its mother’s heartbeat – and some research suggests that these as yet unborn infants hear sounds outside their mother’s body: human voices, music etc. Presumably, the brain and nervous system are developing as a result of these stimuli. So, patterns are being identified and processed before birth.
It is certainly true that a child learns more in the first two years of its life than it does in the entire remainder of its lifespan – which suggests that our brains absorb information (like a sponge). However, unlike a sponge, the brain processes that information.
We may put a lot of information before a child; but if the processing centres are not engaged there will be very little learning or development. Within the one family, one child may latch on to maths while another does not. Nature and nurture are crude binaries and there are probably all sorts other stimuli and conditions which enable one child to learn while another doesn’t.
The commodification of education (making it something we buy and sell) distracts us from the idea that education may not be about fact-learning but about curiosity. Of course, governments (of all stripes) want education to be about training – something rather different.
Absolutely! Every experience, every subject, every activity. How else can you discover your strengths and preferences? A good education is not simply a question of fact storage and retrieval.
So why have we privatised education at every level – and why at the tertiary is education not free at the point of entry for anyone?
Is it because an educated proletariat is a dangerous thing and education is actually about social control? Thus it is politically expedient to have it as much as possible in the control of those with a vested interest in maintaining a system that supports an elite who also have those same vested interests?
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/headmaster-of-east-end-eton-our-school-raises-aspirations-its-a-genuine-case-of-social-mobility-a3160931.html
I wonder if this new elite will act any different to the old elite.