To find middle class parents insufferable?

Yeah because it happened and I didn’t even say they were poor I was 16 in a homeless shelter when my eldest was a baby, never would have let my kids have untreated lice. There’s one scruffy family in our current school who don’t treat their lice I’ve had to tell my kids to avoid (not to be mean just to avoid) because I cannot have my kids keep catching lice just to virtue signal.

Thankfully just one family at my kids school it will be a lot more at the shit schools. I’ve got no qualms about admitting I want to avoid shit like that why make life more difficult just to score nice points

Like? When my child was first beaten up in the local state school I complained to the school. They did nothing. When I they were beaten up again the school again I complained and they did nothing. When My child was beaten up again I complained to the school who did nothing and the LA who spend 8 weeks investigating (during which my child was again beaten up multiple times). The LA said there was no complaint to answer as the school were follow procedures. When they were beaten up and the bullies charged by the police and the school still did nothing I complained to my MP who seemed interested but by that stage my child was (understandably) refusing to attend so we bailed and went private where they are utterly thriving.

I still advise MPs working to reduce violence in state schools.

What more would you expect me to do?

So what do you think should happen? Ban Private education, randomly assign children to any school within 10 miles, bus them in all directions to get "equality"?

Oh give over. I became a teacher for exactly those reasons, and taught in schools where the families were economically deprived. I made no difference whatsoever and it was a constant battle, with both the pupils and the parents (who were even worse, TBH). They didn’t want their children educated and the school/teachers were “the enemy”. I don’t know the answer for turning around this ingrained culture, and would love to know what your magical solution is. In the meantime, I’ve sent my own DCs to an excellent school and owe nobody any apologies about it.

I have lived in England all my life and couldn’t agree more. I am one of those weirdos who was dragged up in a council house in the 70s and 80s(evidence shows we were much more economically equal as a country in the 70s), went to state school and have a PhD from a RG uni, expensive detached house etc now. I went to school with people who came from families like mine but also those who came from loaded and academically minded families. Eg one of my best friends went to Oxford and became a banker, another went to work on a Turkey farm, another had a baby and left school at 15. There was a really good mix. This is not the case today. A few of my old friends DCs have gone to the school and the catchment area has shrunk and shrunk until it now only takes children from the posher villages and the kids from the urban areas who I used to go to school with are siloed into newer, crappier academies. It’s basically a class apartheid system for education generated by those who are afraid of social contagion from people they deem as lower class trouble makers. It’s absolutely no surprise that social mobility has stagnated, this is part of the cause. Kids from rough backgrounds are corralled in stigmatised areas and looked down on by a society with no expectations of them other than that they are or will become workless or criminal.

this issue is not going to be solved by people lobbing their kids into these bear pit schools and hoping for the best. It’s gone too far now.

Demand more at the very very least. Don't just look at how things are and shrug and act like it's inevitable.

What do you think I should do with my (very limited) free time? I’ll add it to my to do list. Seriously. Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll see if it’s reasonable.

People struggling is normal. It is not normal to have whole areas written off and left to fall into ruin. That is created by a society that segregates and excludes.

Wow.

The fact that the 'rough' school exist is due to segregation. I don't know how many times I can say it.

The fact that your cousin's son was beaten up is due to a system created by middle class parents who avoid certain areas and create pockets of deprivation. This does not happen by accident.

Deprivation is a normal thing though. It's not nice but in any society there will always be people who suffer with poor mental health, have intergenerational trauma, are poorly educated etc etc

Yeah I have a cousin who believed this too. She put her son into one of the roughest schools in our city. Pulled him back out after six months when he was beaten so badly he was hospitalised after school one day. Because he was “posh”.

Exactly. We visited 5 schools. At each visit, I asked who was in charge of GCSE timetabling, and met that person, asking them whether the options timetable was built around what the pupils applied for (my preference), or whether pupils were told to pick one option from Block A, one from Block B, and one from Block C. I also created a spreadsheet with a scoring system, which included Progress 8 data, EBACC entries, EBACC average points, 5+ attainment in both English & Maths, and Persistent Absence %. In addition, I made a mental note of the behaviour I observed when I saw the pupils in their uniforms around town. I only shared this data with my DH and didn’t announce it at the school gates. Failing to do my research…LOL.

There are people on drugs/drink too much and can’t be assed to do basic things with their kids and look of course that’s not the kids fault and we really feel for the kids but sometimes that doesn’t just mean bad behaviour it can mean a really sweet kid who has untreated head lice and it sucks for that kid but other parents don’t want to be combing lice out their kids hair constantly. I just can’t be dealing with my children regularly catching lice.

And that’s before we get to secondary school and have mini drug dealers and thugs. No I do not want my child having a criminal record before their even an adult.

And here in a nutshell is the attitude that keeps the same shit going.

If everyone thinks 'not my problem' then nothing gets fixed.

You are part of society, along with everyone else. If you abdicate all responsibility to others to fix it, then you cannot complain at all when nothing gets fixed.

I 100% agree with what you said about not all private schools are good and not all state schools are bad. Some private schools are awful and some state schools are amazing. If I could afford it I’d probably still choose a good state school over any private school for my kids but if I lived in an area that only had rubbish state schools and I know I’d very likely be disadvantaging my kids by sending them there, I’d choose a good private school. I wouldn’t send my kids to the rubbish state school just cos I want them to be “well rounded”. Them being well rounded comes further down the list for me than them being happy, safe, and doing well academically. Plus I don’t think sending them to a good but not overly posh private school would necessarily not make them well-rounded. It’d actually probably give them more confidence to be able to interact with people from all walks of life than a state school would. Although I think that even if I was absolutely rolling in cash I’d still never consider sending my kids to somewhere like Eton or Harrow, those are the kind of places that breed entitled, out of touch people that truly are not well-rounded. If where I lived was truly surrounded by poor performing state schools I might consider moving to somewhere with a better state school, so I don’t think your friends AIBU for considering that. I want to give my kids the best possible start in life, I think that’s pretty normal.

It’s not our job to change it though. I go to an office to do my job to pay a staggering amount of tax for someone else to fix failing schools. It is in no way my fault that schools are shit.

In the UK in 2026 there should not be 'shitty' schools that people of a certain wage bracket look down on and consider to be filled with 'pond life.' That such a thing exists should be a source of embarrassment. The whole shrugging and saying 'I want more for my kid' is a huge factor in why that situation exists at all.

I'm sorry I don't know what you mean about 'introspection being required on the other side.' But of course I don't mean you just put your kids in shitty schools and that's the end of it - why would anyone suggest that?

What I'm saying is that the general attitude among certain people that they have to segregate their children leads to that word that people reference here over and over - 'deprivation.' The fact that people can talk about 'deprivation' as though it's a normal thing in a developed country shows how accepting people are of a completely biased and unfair system that is stacked against certain people.

Why are you ignoring the part about introspection being required on the other side? No? We just put our kids into the shitty schools and that’s the end of it?

Basically if you keep doing the same thing over and over you're going to get the same result.

Do not complain about crime and joblessness if you have no intention of doing anything to change it.

Is that genuinely what you get from my point? I can't tell whether you're deliberately misunderstanding, I'm not making my point very clearly or you just can't understand.

It's not about making a point, it's about the type of society you want for yourself and your child. People on this thread seem to think that 'rough' areas and schools where children have very little hope of success are just normal and to be expected. That horrifies me - the total apathy the 'not my problem' attitude. It absolutely is your problem, it's your bloody country!