On a grunk so don’t know where this will end up and someone may have already made the point..This is a very 1970s viewpoint so it’s probably come from Big Dave. He’s around the same age as me and I remember this sort of codswallop being said when I was at my state comprehensive. It was only a couple of years after the 11-plus was scrapped and this was how the press spoke about the comps. We still took a variation of the 11-plus and pupils were streamed with the g-streams (grammar equivalents) supposed to be destined for the ‘professions’ or managerial jobs and the lower streams for factories or military. In our city, it was the navy.
Looking at my contemporaries, that turned out to be absolute rubbish - lots of them have done very well and very few joined the forces or worked in low skilled jobs.
Wasn’t about in the 70s so forgive me for ignorance it’s not malice - but we’re in a very different world now, surely? The British economy was very different, largely production / ergo physical labour based (aka menial to Jack) with high paid jobs limited to a small number of industries largely centralised in London. Things have changed massively, tech has been such an equaliser even in terms of improved transport connectivity of literal tech jobs or remote working in terms of giving non-elite bg people access to well paid work!
Awfully gauche dahlings as I know it’s a prestige/MC lifestyle thing not a ROI thing but we’re not from money so I modelled this after viewing one of Jacqui’s coveted schools (atrocious btw - not my
tit was husband’s) and the opportunity cost of that money in fees vs cash savings would necessitate the toddler earning 2.8 times more over her lifetime (these are truly fag packet calculations pls don’t put faith in these). And that is “only” for a normal young persons standard of living owning a 2 bed flat in a city centre (so a privileged young person lol), that’s not including the orangery or a year’s mat leave etc!! And if you have the privilege of that spare cash surely you’d sooner spend it so that your child doesn’t need the stress of averaging earnings of >£100k pa for their entire working life, or at the very least their 30 year mortgage term? The housing market is so fucked now that it’ll be these schools’ biggest competitor. Jackie doesn’t know she’s born as she has the immense privilege of inheriting at least part of the empire, her dad may not have spent out on school fees but he’s certainly protected her financial future which is far, far, far more than she can say for her and SB!