Mumsnet Talk

<Muse playing in the background, Alex Turner poster on wall>

It does make me annoyed when people post that the middle classes should put their children in state schools and that it would result in their improvement. It is simplistic and ignorant.

Some of us would love to but we live in boroughs who have a deliberate strategy of deterring parents into the private sector. Our borough only has school places for half the school age children. Come allocation day hundreds of families find themselves without a school place for their children. When this happened to us and I was in the midst of the rigmarole of appeals etc. I uncovered the Council Education Committee minutes that said that given the 120 surplus pupils in just three local wards the proposal was to set up an extra class in a portacabin at an unpopular ofsted failing faith school, because it's numbers were low as a result of parents fleeing it in the older year groups, and it would ensure that the numbers of surplus pupils would reduce to the level that the class could provide for. The strategy wasn't then even implicit, it was explicit. Now they are a little more careful what is said in public but the proportion of pupils in private education in this borough is one of the highest in the country. If the proportion leaving state primary schools and going on to private school was the average for the ten most affluent London boroughs (and it isn't one of the most five most affluent) then it would need two new five form entry secondaries. If it was everyone forced into state schools they would need to double the number of school places!

This problem is going to become a crisis in the next two or three years as a population bulge hits the London secondaries which Councils have failed to plan for and school place provision is now subject to the vagaries of the Free School process

Nor are the middle classes the magic pill that will improve schools. Ofsted highlight that some comps in deprived areas are able to be outstanding, so there is no excuse for a school in a deprived area to be four times more likely to be failing. In London they are demonstrating that the gap in attainment between poor and middle class children can be narrowed. In fact Ofsted are highlighting that their biggest worry is the attainment of poor children in schools where they are the minority i.e otherwise filled with middle class children

<stomps off singing "They will not force us,
They will stop degrading us,
They will not control us................ "

I thought that it would be interesting to engage parents who had bright kids but were put off going private

Why does state-private choice matter more if the children are bright (or not)?

Are we all supposed to buy into the myth that state schools don't cater for "bright" children?

People go private for all kinds of reasons. The private school DS attended had low attainment levels (below state school avg, even). DS still shakes his head in disbelief about it. Not supposed to be a low achiever specialist school, either, just turned out that way.

I was going to say I know an indie family because they don't own a television or a mobile phone
That's not what this thread is about, is it?

Ooh, do we have a flouncer!!

I have to say that the responses you have had are, in part, due to the condescending tone of your posts.

And also for deliberately picking a controversial topic.

Not sure what else you expected really!

Try next time posting about cake baking or the uses of industrial fertilisers if you want fewer people who don't happen to share your particular opinion 'lunatics'

I know several "indie" families, some of whom I like better than others, but on the whole are nice enough groups of people. I also know some awful people who send their children to state school.

None of that has any bearing whatsoever on my views on private education. Its rather simplistic to suggest otherwise.

Of course, there are a great many who would view aspiring to be a dentist or accountant as a bit of serious social and economic climbing, which they would love to be able to achieve. I'm not so sure about the estate agent bit, though... When you think you are a "mere" dentist who cannot climb the social ladder and who is "ordinary albeit well paid," I think you must have confused your status with someone else's considerably lower down the social ladder and therefore have fooled yourself into thinking you mix with "ordinary" people - risking making you a snob who actually thinks that the vast majority of the population are in fact, "underachieving DCS born to unsupportive WC parents," because they aren't ordinary dentists and accountants.

What Mintyy said in the last sentence.

Why are you only asking the parents of 'bright' children?

Mine are at fee-paying school (cringes at Indie description or overt suggestion of little club) they are there because they are not very bright as it happens.

I know lots of people (obviously) who send their children to private school and none of them do so for snobbish reasons. Maybe it's because we don't live in Surrey <muses>.

Indie my a****!