Last Friday I was reading a Guardian article about private schools.
"Abolish private schools? Not enough of us want it badly enough" by Ian Jack
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/18/abolishing-private-schools-wont-happen)
In this, it says that "[Michael] Gove attended Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen, a day school that charges £10,215 a year". Anyway, this got me thinking. The RAC seems to think that it currently costs £6689pa to run a new car, or £4724 for a used car, (http://media.rac.co.uk/pdf/rac-cost-of-motoring-index-2011.pdf). In terms of economic costs, social segregations, acquisitions of cultural capital and environmental impact, how does suburbia measure up against private school?
For example, how much difference is there between a rich family in a gentrified area who decide to keep a one or no-car lifestyle and send their kid(s) to private school, vs the family which moves to a very exclusive suburb like Chipping Norton? Just how socially mixed are suburban comprehensives in expensive areas? How much does it cost to move into the catchment area of a suburban school with high A-level results, once you've counted housing and transport (time and money)?
Although I'm studying cycling and gentrification, I'm not really looking at suburbs or education, so this is really an attempt to have an evidence-led coffee-break conversation, rather than an attempt to source a reading list.
Best,
Pete
PhD Student,
Department of Geography,
The Open University,
http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/about-the-faculty/departments/geography/postgraduate/profiles/peter_wood.php
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