Problems with above. Statistical significance, catchment area, FSM eligibility requires parents to register – many do not or choose not to (some schools have a ‘drive’ to encourage registration as it used to boost CVA score). Also, awareness of those parents of free schools in more deprived families and their likelihood to apply.

What are national stats and local school stats for *intake* of free schools. FSM eligibility %s aren’t flat across year groups.

Oh, and ‘about 1 in ten’ compared to a direct percentage is poor form.

Note: not saying this isn’t right, but sample sizes, broad strokes n no comparison with other startup/New schools that aren’t free schools makes it rather meaningless. Sorry

ps – if u think this is the biggest problem with state education you are very sadly misguided.

First, let me stick up a bit for Toby’s school: 23% is almost the highest proportion of any school on the list of 24.

As to the stats themselves: statistical significance isn’t an issue – this isn’t a sample. As someone pointed out this week, it is the universe.

FSM does require people to register but this is the same for every school, it doesn’t make comparisons invalid. It is likely that the proportion of children in some of these schools will rise over time. But this is the situation in these schools now and we can look at this data and try to learn lessons about the future of this policy. There is enough in the data to raise concerns. My argument is that there may be a role for free schools in some circumstances but they should be restricted to areas of genuine place shortage and priority should be given to those committing to use the new admissions code to give preference to children on free school meals.

“One in 10″ was used simply to improve readability, anyone wanting to read the actual figure can do so as all the data is there.

Thanks for your interest.

The West London Free School, co-founded by author Toby Young, just over 23% of pupils were eligible for FSMs

That seems to me a very respectable figure – and approaching the limit of tolerance.

One of the aims of free schools is to help close the achievement gap. Successive studies have shown that poorer kids perform worse when educated in an environment dominated by others with a challenging background….. and learn and achieve much better when mixed in a balanced environment alongside kids whose parents are in work or are middle class.

Around 1 in 4 kids from families with incomes under £16000 per year would, I’d say, be just about right for an inner London school.

More than that and you will find disruption, gang culture, low aspiration and middle-class flight – i.e. all the problems associated with the sink comps that everyone sensible agrees have been a disaster.

To have a go at Toby Young for ONLY having 23% of his intake from families earning < 16k is a turn up for the books. While he was planning his free school, the Left was making it sound as if he was planning a school only for the Latin-loving middle class professionals. If nearly a quarter of his pupils are that poor, it's a good bet that more than half his parents are below median earnings.

Umm, you know, this is, umm, well, an abuse of statistics really.

We need to know:

a) The proportion of those entitled to free school meals who applied.

b) The proportion of FSM who were accepted.

so that we can c) work out whether Free Schools are discriminating in favour of or against FSM.

By looking only at the number accepted we don’t know whether the discrimination is by the schools, refusing to take FSM, or by parents, refusing to make applications for their FSM eligible children.

Which is really a rather important difference I would have thought.

Am I right in thinking admission to these schools involves parents making some sort of effort in order to get their kids into a better school? If so, a middle class bias is, sadly, inevitable. Knowing that, I think the system could go out of its way to attract kids from less advantaged backgrounds. That it isn’t, potential quibbles about statistical sig aside, is a fair point against it, I reckon.

Sunny

Although you singled out Toby Young’s school, there was a far more glaring example of a mismatch between school roll FSMs and local area FSMs in the blog you link to.

This is the Nishkam school in Handsworth.

Nishkam is a school founded by the local Sikh community. Not only did local Sikhs found it…. around 120 of them helped actually build it with their bare hands, working alongside the contractors on the site.

According to the Guardian,’ Nishkam’ is the Punjabi word for altruism.

It would certainly be very odd if a school founded by local working-class people were – as your headline put it – “ignoring the poor”.

It would also be a bit odd if a school were serving only rich people in Handsworth, cos last time I was there, there didn’t appear to be any.

Anyway, Nishkam’s local area has >34% on FSM, but the school has only 9%. A much bigger discrepancy than in the West London Free School.

I bet there is a simple explanation – maybe the local mums just pitch in and cook delicious Punjabi food for free and no one bothers with claiming the FSM benefit. Or maybe everyone is so pleased to have a really good Sikh school in a fantastic new building they feel obliged to stump up the dinner money as a token offering.

But whatever the explanation, I just don’t buy your line that this school is ‘ignoring the poor’. Not least because the Sikhs in Handsworth do a heck of a lot in terms of local regeneration.

Perhaps Sunny, with your knowledge of the Sikh community, you could explain it?

@ Flowerpower

“Successive studies have shown that poorer kids perform worse when educated in an environment dominated by others with a challenging background….. and learn and achieve much better when mixed in a balanced environment alongside kids whose parents are in work or are middle class.”

All the more reason, surely, to spread the poorer children in an area fairly evenly among local schools – so that in each of those schools, the proportion of poorer pupils is no higher than it needs to be. Plainly the poorer children who don’t attend Toby Young’s school are going to have to attend other local schools instead, increasing the proportion of poorer children in those schools.

This has always struck me as being a distinctly Tory way of thinking. Rather than make things a little bit better for everyone, their inclination is always to make things significantly better for a small target group who are then held up as a ‘beacon of excellence’. So rather than ensure that six neighbouring schools each have (say) 30% of children eligible for FSMs, they will opt to have one of those schools have 23% while the others have 32%. Then, of course, they’ll want to know why the other schools aren’t doing as well as their ‘flagship’.

It’s political genius, of course. Why spend £10 billion improving every school just a little when for £1 billion you could create a few outstanding schools by which you then demand to be judged?

@ Luis

I think the system could go out of its way to attract kids from less advantaged backgrounds. That it isn’t, potential quibbles about statistical sig aside, is a fair point against it, I reckon.

As was pointed out above, you don’t know that.

The 23% of those FSM children accepted could be 100% of those that applied. We don’t know.

A full voucher system with the funds graduated towards the disadvantaged is the only sensible way to improve the social balance in our schools.

@ G.O.

All the more reason, surely, to spread the poorer children in an area fairly evenly among local schools

Yes. free schools do that. The 23% on FSM who attend Young’s school would otherwise have attended one or a number of other schools – adding to (or maintaining) what’s probably too high a concentration there.

So, by siphoning some off, WLFS has made it a bit easier for its neighbours.

The problem with the command ‘top down’ system you propose is that parents just don’t want to be ordered to send their kids to this school or that. And your system would presumably require ‘bussing’ poor kids into leafy suburbs and richer kids into poor districts, making the idea of a ‘local’ school redundant.

Better to have a wide range of schools with different styles and specialisms, but all with high standards.

As for the 1Bn vs 10 Bn – money isn’t the problem. Spending on schools has gone up hugely and is still pretty healthy. Free Schools get exactly the same per capita revenue funding as all other schools, and somewhat less capital funding than the typical local authority promoted school. So they are in no way being favoured as showcases, as you suggest.

I thought the whole point of ‘free’ schools was to slough off the FSM detritus from the middle-classes, to protect their progeny from the chavs?

pagar,

you misunderstand me; I’m saying there will be a middle-class bias because middle-class parents are more likely to apply, not because the schools are biased in how they handle admissions (although it wouldn’t exactly rock my world if that turned out to be true too).

Luis @ 4:

“Am I right in thinking admission to these schools involves parents making some sort of effort in order to get their kids into a better school? If so, a middle class bias is, sadly, inevitable. Knowing that, I think the system could go out of its way to attract kids from less advantaged backgrounds. That it isn’t, potential quibbles about statistical sig aside, is a fair point against it, I reckon.”

Why is that? Surely it’s up to the parents to make the effort, not up to the schools to try and entice them?

XXX

It’s just an empirical claim. Look it this way, what do you think determines the effort parents make trying to get their kids into the best schools? You can think of things like the education level of the parents, the perceived returns to schooling, peer group behaviour etc. These things are not distributed randomly, they have a socio-economic gradient.

People who run free schools are quite free to make an effort to “correct” for this. If you think not making any effort is a shortcoming on the part of parents, why not try to prevent children from suffering from the shortcomings of their parents?

@ 7 pagar

“A full voucher system with the funds graduated towards the disadvantaged is the only sensible way to improve the social balance in our schools.”

Agreed, but who pays for these vouchers? How does it square with your complaints about a cowardly state extorting money at gunpoint?

and in other news: pope found to be a catholic and bear found shitting in woods.

@3 – Right, so, the poor only qualify for 23% of school places in your world. As the numbers soar well above that you want to…what…exclude the excess from school? Stick them in dead-end schools with 100% poor people?

@8 – Ah yes, so even the richest parents can syphon off cash for their private schools. 1%er.

@9 – “So, by siphoning some off, WLFS has made it a bit easier for its neighbours.”

No, it has NOT! Because their funding has been dropped to pay for WLFS.

Chaise

Agreed, but who pays for these vouchers? How does it square with your complaints about a cowardly state extorting money at gunpoint?

If the cowardly state has extorted my money, the least it can do is give me back a voucher that will provide me with a degree of choice in where and how my child is educated. As it is, my choice is the school system provided by the state and the national curriculum selected by it. If I don’t like that I can lump it, I’m not getting my money back!!!!

A graduated voucher scheme, with larger vouchers provided to disadvantaged children and those with special needs, would create a system in which schools prospered by competing to add value to their pupils, thus attracting more pupils and more money.

I actually think most state funded schools would aim for a balanced social mix (and a balanced budget) under such a system but the “sink schools”, if they were to continue to exist, would have the benefit of additional resources.

Leon Wolfson @ 16

Your comment displays many of the false assumptions and plain misunderstandings that the Left has about this subject.

their funding has been dropped to pay for WLFS.

Rubbish.

Hammersmith & Fulham don’t have enough school places. According to their website page celebrating the opening of 3 free schools:

“More H&F children are starting secondary school in the borough than ever before. That figure stands at 61 per cent – an increase from 2006, when just 45% of local children attended a secondary state school {in the borough}.”

So, in fact WLFS is supplying much needed extra places in a borough where there has been a shortage.

Right, so, the poor only qualify for 23% of school places in your world.

Not sure what you mean by that, but they account for 16.7% of the real world population in this country.

you want to…Stick them in dead-end schools with 100% poor people?

No. That’s precisely what I don’t what, as you’d see if you actually read a thread before ranting. But it more or less encapsulates the legacy Labour left.

@17 – No, the OrgCrime you want instead of a state will extort your money. You’re free to leave the country if you don’t want to pay the tax here, which is part of the social contract.

A voucher scheme will drain cash from state schools, as seen in parts of America, allowing the 1% to pay less for the private schooling their kids get.

Moreover, the voucher CAPS the spending, meaning that even “graduated”, parents of disabled kids will have to pay out to have their kids attend suitable schools rather than there being free schooling as a principle. It’s attacking the disabled again, under cover of “cutting the state”.

“I actually think most state funded schools would aim for a balanced social mix”

Nope, what actually happens is that it becomes FAR less diverse, with middle-class parents clumping children in schools with small additional fees, which discourage the poor. And of course the rich get money back which they promptly sit on.

A typical 1%er anti-society call on your behalf. And, note, it allows the voucher values to be slowly frozen or reduced, introducing payment for ALL kinds of schools, and cutting into the ability of the poor to send their kids to schools at all in the longer term, which is of course the long-term goal Pagar has in mind.

Flowerpower

“The 23% on FSM who attend Young’s school would otherwise have attended one or a number of other schools – adding to (or maintaining) what’s probably too high a concentration there.

So, by siphoning some off, WLFS has made it a bit easier for its neighbours.”

You could just as well argue that WLFS has made things harder for its neighbours by ‘siphoning off’ the 77% of its pupils who are better off, hence reducing (or maintaining) what’s probably already too low a concentration. Which suggests to me that the argument is duff.

If these schools are so good, surely it would make fantastic sense for them to take a large number of pupils from underachieving schools in poor areas?

Similarly, those schools in pleasant areas that are graded as outstanding by OFSTED clearly have much more able and skilled teachers than those teaching at Gluesniffer Comprehensive where the results are poor. Either kids from Gluesniffer should be transferred to the ‘nice’ school or the teachers from the ‘nice’ school school could be transferred to Gluesniffer Comp. Then everyone would benefit as results rise across the board.

Or we could just name change under achieving schools into Academies, dumb down the syllabus ludicrously and watch results rise almost instantaneously in a fashion that only a dim-witted member of a Senior Leadership Team would think meant anything.

Still, nice holidays though…

A small sample and its early days however it looks as though these will be social exclusion units for middle class kids who don’t want to mix with their oiky/ secular neighbours

@ 23

it looks as though these will be social exclusion units for middle class kids who don’t want to mix with their oiky/ secular neighbours

Middle class parents who don’t want their kids corrupted by oiks use their economic power to buy houses in posh area with good schools and tiny catchment areas, insome notorious cases only a few hundred yards.

Toby Young and many other free school promoters are siting their schools in areas with high deprivation, and in WLFS’s case, the catchment area is a circle with a three mile radius.

Also, the free schools policy would be an odd one to choose to effect the end you mention, not least ‘cos the DfE gives preference to projects that serve areas in the lowest 30% of the deprivation index.

Apart from a few Jewish primaries in North London and some former private schools that converted, I’ve yet to see a free school project that isn’t focused on BMEs and FSMs. Every time Gove makes a speech, the schools he invites free schoolers to emulate are academies that transformed education in places like White City and Hackney.

How have these schools in Hackney etc been ‘transformed’?

If by that you mean their education has been ‘changed’ then I’d agree. In my area two or three local schools became ‘acadamies’ and their results went from 30% 5 A-C up to 90+ 5 % A-C in a year. All a complete charade of course.

@ 17 pagar

“If the cowardly state has extorted my money, the least it can do is give me back a voucher that will provide me with a degree of choice in where and how my child is educated.”

So vouchers aren’t the best system, then? You’d presumably prefer a world where everyone had to pay full rate for their children’s education, let alone school meals?

@ 24

How have these schools in Hackney etc been ‘transformed’?

Well, Hackney Downs was a failing school. It became Mossbourne Academy. It’s results got better. This year 6 pupils were offered places at Cambridge.

A charade for you, life-changing for them.

@ Chaise

So vouchers aren’t the best system, then? You’d presumably prefer a world where everyone had to pay full rate for their children’s education, let alone school meals?

Ah, yes.

A world in which people take moral and fiscal responsibility for their actions and those who choose to raise children take responsibility for providing their education. If you are asking me whether such a world would be better than the one we have, my answer is yes.

But since you are always telling me we can’t have such a world, an educational voucher system at least offers the opportunity for parent and school to enter into a voluntary contract rather than to have the state compel me to send my child to the local chav factory under pain of imprisonment, as now.

@ 27 pagar

I’m curious: what part of your libertarian philosophy says that it’s correct for children to suffer for the sins of their parents? Which is to say, if the parents “fail” to become rich, or don’t care enough to send their child to a good school, why do you think the child should suffer for that?

Guys, you can have as many vouchers, or Toby Young’s as you want – but it will make little difference.

The problem is not so much the schools (in the main) rather a loss of responsibility for bringing up children, which many parents seem to think should be out sourced in various ways.

The kids who get ahead do so because their parents read books to them, or help them with arithmetic, etc – once these two skills are consolidated progression in other areas of the curriculum tend to be less problematic – it’s not exactly rocket science, is it?

According to this study “The most important finding from the point of view of this review is that parental involvement in the form of ‘at-home good parenting’ has a significant positive effect on children’s achievement and adjustment even after all other factors shaping attainment have been taken out of the equation. In the primary age range the impact caused by different levels of parental involvement is much bigger than differences associated with variations in the quality of schools. The scale of the impact is evident across all social classes and all ethnic groups”.
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/files_uploaded/uploaded_resources/18617/Desforges.pdf

Any parent worth their salt should not require a boffin to tell them as much.

^ All that.

@ 29

“The problem is not so much the schools (in the main) rather a loss of responsibility for bringing up children, which many parents seem to think should be out sourced in various ways.

The kids who get ahead do so because their parents read books to them, or help them with arithmetic, etc – once these two skills are consolidated progression in other areas of the curriculum tend to be less problematic – it’s not exactly rocket science, is it?”

No, but what can we do about it? You can’t snap your fingers and turn all parents into responsible, caring, well-informed people (and even when parents are all those things, they still might not be able to help out their kids as much as they like due to time constraints and so on). There are long-term solutions that take gradual effect, but in the meantime, trying to provide a decent and equal education to all children sound like the way forward.

Pagar writes

A graduated voucher scheme, with larger vouchers provided to disadvantaged children and those with special needs, would create a system in which schools prospered by competing to add value to their pupils, thus attracting more pupils and more money.

I actually think most state funded schools would aim for a balanced social mix (and a balanced budget) under such a system but the “sink schools”, if they were to continue to exist, would have the benefit of additional resources.

Chaise writes

I’m curious: what part of your libertarian philosophy says that it’s correct for children to suffer for the sins of their parents? Which is to say, if the parents “fail” to become rich, or don’t care enough to send their child to a good school, why do you think the child should suffer for that?

Pagar sighs.

Chaise replies to Pagar’s post @ 27.

Pagar pretends Chaise is replying to Pagar’s post @ 17.

Chaise sighs.

@ Chaise

You can’t snap your fingers and turn all parents into responsible, caring, well-informed people

No, you can’t.

But you can have a social system that does not encourage the congenitally irresponsible to top up the gene pool.

Pagar pretends Chaise is replying to Pagar’s post @ 17.

What does the order matter?

My point was that individual freedom is not incompatible with belief in a meritocracy.

you can have a social system that does not encourage the congenitally irresponsible to top up the gene pool.

When did they isolate the gene for irresponsibility?

@ 34 Pagar

“But you can have a social system that does not encourage the congenitally irresponsible to top up the gene pool.”

This is hard to do without hurting the blameless (i.e. kids born to irresponsible parents). And I’m not sure how big a factor genes are here.

“What does the order matter?”

Because (unless I misread you), you suggested two systems. System 1 was the voucher idea, and was your ideal given the assumption that you had to pay tax. System 2 was the libertarian one and appeared to be your ideal system. In other words, you wanted System 1 if you couldn’t get System 2. Or are you actually happy to pay tax? That seems to go against your previous comments.

I was criticising System 2. By pretending I was replying to post 17, you made it look like I was criticising System 1, presumably to avoid addressing the problems with your preferred system. So yes, the order does matter. It’s called a straw man attack.

“My point was that individual freedom is not incompatible with belief in a meritocracy.”

It is if you treat both those ideals as absolutes. You can support a reduced form of both simulatanously.

Libertarians have a near mystical belief in the power of the voucher – the voucher presumably signifies a proxy for choice – but you can’t choose to ignore, and certainly not escape all of the social dimensions that must be factored into the overall education equation.

What are most parents really ‘choosing’ when we consider school preferences?
The short answer is an environment that is most free from the kinds of social problems that make school life so miserable for those kids who are trying to engage with the education system despite a significant percentage of cohorts who are so far behind in their learning that their main pleasure seems to be derived from disrupting the progress of those who are trying to learn.

So what really determines choice?
The usual mechanisms are economic advantage, or paying for a posh school, the selection route, in other words middle class parents (mostly) coaching their kids to pass the necessary entrance exams, or by post code, in other words those with enough cash or luck to live in a catchment area of a good state school (which are mostly found in middle class areas).

Of course there are the grovelers who try to worm their way into religious schools, perhaps their child’s exam success is worth the loss of dignity such an approach often requires?

The voucher argument only makes sense if vouchers have the power to alter these fundamental social dynamics yet apart from a small minority of children I think it is an idea that is unlikely to have much effect if we consider the bigger picture?

“Am I right in thinking admission to these schools involves parents making some sort of effort in order to get their kids into a better school? If so, a middle class bias is, sadly, inevitable. ”

Luis, I don’t think anyone addressed this point directly. Free Schools require exactly the same effort from parents as all other schools in an area, so there should be no barrier there. All parents will have to apply somewhere. It is true that te middle classes tend to be better informed and be better prepared to take advantage of innovations an so we might expect them to be first adoptees of free schools, but tat should even out over time since these schools are non-selective. The fact that Toby Young’s school has 23% FSM is pretty impressive in the circumstances and critics appear increasingly shrill and mean-spirited on this issue. I know some people loathe Toby Young but it is difficult to see, on the current evidence, his school a anything else but a huge benefit to the families in that area of west London. I wish people would calm down on this issue and wait and see what the benefits and disbenefits are instead of taking strident partisan positions.

@34 – There’s a word for that. What was it…

Ah yes. Eugenics.

Who practised it, Pagar?

“Ah yes. Eugenics.

Who practised it, Pagar?”

Socialists largely. The Swedish Social Democrats were still at it in the 1970s, in the UK it was mostly Fabian types who supported it (Shaw, Wells etc).

@ 40 Leon

“Who practised it, Pagar?”

Some light reading for you, Leon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation

@26
re Mossbourne

from comments http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/sep/17/michael-wilshaw-interview:

1) CLAIM: Wilshaw is commited to comprehensive education
FACT: the intake at Mossbourne has far more middle class types than most other Hackney schools (if you dont believe me, look at the hair cuts, and also at the skin colour of the majority compared to other schools in Hackney). Wilshaw used to tell me regularly that keeping the high numbers of middle class was key to their success.

2) CLAIM: Mossbourne has vastly improved the life chances of 1500 kids so far.
FACT: Many Mossbourne kids have gone to prison, been convicted, got excluded or simply ‘disappeared’ with ‘managed moves’. This is despite the FACT that Mossbourne takes less kids from troubled backgrounds than some other local schools in the first place.

3) CLAIM: no Mossbourne students were arrested during the riots.
FACT: other local schools have also said this. in reality, there were many ex-students from Mossbourne who were at the heart of the riots (surely what happens to students after they leave also reflects on the school). Also, most of the rioters got away – the ones who got caught were the ones stupid enough to reveal their faces! Finally, does Wilshaw believe Mossbourne has no responsibility for how the excluded students get on in life? Its easy to wash your hands isn’t it, but some other people and organisations need to pick up the pieces.

THE REALITY:

Mossbourne has more funding to pay staff more (eg £200-£300 for running a Saturday morning class). The facilities are much better than some other schools.
It started with just a year 7 intake and staff-pupil ratio MUCH lower than average.
It takes a significant number of students from troubled or more difficult backgrounds, but these numbers are manageable because there are also many kids from more stable backgrounds who would achieve in most schools. The Free school meal figure is also misleading – many of those at Mossbourne are poor but from communities such as Turkish or Muslim, where the families structures are geared towards educational achievement. (I wont go into the tricks amd methods used to skew the intake in this response)

And that’s the flagship run by the head of OFSTED. I have also found it very difficult to discover the exams/courses taken by the students. These dramatic increases in results are always partly due to new ‘Mickey Mickey’ courses.

@ A&E

The voucher argument only makes sense if vouchers have the power to alter these fundamental social dynamics

Of course it depends on the detail of the system that is implemented, but there is no doubt a voucher system could have that effect.

But rather than discuss this from an ideological perspective, let’s consider the outcomes we would all, I hope, like to see.

1) Greater parity of opportunity for children from different socio-economic groups.

2) Greater choice in the types of education made available to all.

3) Breaking of the the cycle of deprivation endured by the children of the poorest.

4) Additional resources for those children with special needs.

5) Improvement in the overall value for money we get from the system.

At the moment, if your child is compelled to attend a poor quality school, there is very little you can do about it. Under a voucher system you would be able to take your voucher, and the resources it represents, elsewhere.

Therefore each school would have to perform well in order to thrive, and so would have a real incentive to provide the best facilities and standards of teaching it could. The present culture in much of the state education system, where schools and teachers take the attitude that they are doing you and your child a favour by teaching them, because there is no direct cost to you, would be ended.

The efficiency benefits ensuing from such a market type system would more than pay for the additional resources that, I would advocate, should be attached to the vouchers of those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

@42 – Your invocation!

And it’s no less true for it. It IS eugenics, and he IS pushing it. Stop whitewashing things.

@41 – Revisonism as usual I see.

@44 – No, the *evidence* where this had been tried shows one thing: Poorer people get shitty, underfunded schools as cash is drained off to give the rich an effective tax cut.

Moreover, it ties spending strictly to head count and not need. And would punish the disabled, and…

@ 45 Leon

“Your invocation!”

So you weren’t trying to draw comparisons with the Nazis, then?

“And it’s no less true for it. It IS eugenics, and he IS pushing it. Stop whitewashing things.”

It is indeed eugenics… but of a very different kind to that practiced by the Nazis. So stop equivocating. Do I need to provide the link again?

[44] while we are in broad agreement about outcomes I strongly disagree with your claim, “The present culture in much of the state education system, where schools and teachers take the attitude that they are doing you and your child a favour by teaching them”.

According to this item at least 1 in 5 teachers are working an average of 19 unpaid hours of overtime every week – more than any other professional group.
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6036987

Or maybe I misunderstood you – do you mean they are doing us a favour in the sense they put in hours and hours of unpaid work while acting as punchbags for all of the children who do not know how to behave civilly because they have been inadequately parented?