Headmistress attacks parents in national press

That's crap. Is her husband taking time off too?

Or is this critical (not critical at all) exam just the wife's responsibility?

And if she didn't take any time off, she'd be criticised for not caring. Such is the lot of successful women .

I agree with you word factory in that obviously this sort of involvement is preferable to true neglect. I agree that these children will probably be absolutely fine (they have healthy, interested, educated and wealthy parents).

However, I do think it's a shame that entry to these sort of schools has become so (or perceived as so) challenging that it's necessary to send your children to private preps, tutor them and have an on-hand educated parent freed from all domestic and professional duties so as to be able to do an hour/two hours' extra prep a night.

It does mean that the head sorry high mistress of SPGS can't really complain that when they set incredibly challenging entry exams, they get only the very most prepared children. I know they say they're all about spotting potential, but why is that all that potential seems conveniently placed in Bute House?

Personally I'd be put off any school that consistently topped the league table. I know enough mad middle-aged women who went to SPGS decades ago.

And gah, 'sabbatical'?! Most of us just call it not working.

I didn't say it did . But focusing on the eleven plus to the extent you don't go to work is extreme and wgat happens when/if the child fails or there are 100 other applicants who are just better

Parenting involves many things and covers a lot of years.

Going a bit bonkers over entrance exams does not require a call to social services!

Why is hothousing children decent parenting?

Taking time off work to ensure they get into one of about three acceptable schools. What if they don't? Are they failures at 8 / 11 / 13?

farewell whilst I wouldn't want to approach family life in the way you describe, I really don't understand the wringing of hands and collective sad faces it seems to garner.

It may be imperfect (which one of us is perfect?) but essentially, I suspect the child will be fine. More than fine .

The beady eye which likes to focus on the flawed but decent parenting of these types of parents, never alights on the parents with real challenges, or so it seems.

The parents whose parenting is hampered by poverty, unemployment, poor housing, ill health and disability.
The parents who both work every hour God sends, on NMW, without ever having a hope of 'taking a sabatical' or even opening the reading bag of their DC.

She gets to choose the kids, and she'd like to encourage the ones with sensible parents to apply.

Sounds like a good strategy to me, but she needs to combine it with an entrance assessment that levels the playing field for bright girls who come from state primaries and haven't been tutored. And then publicise that entrance assessment beyond the hot house preps.

A head of a very prestigious London prep told me recently that a good proportion of its parents were "mad".
Obviously, the remark wasn't made in public or intended for publication but there's clearly teachers are very irritated by the behaviour of SOME parents.
The old head of Latymer made some remark about (I paraphrase) being hard to completely stamp out drug taking when some parents took drugs and didn't keep an eye on their children. AFAIK, Latymer didn't see a mass exodus. SPGS won't either, in fact as GregorSamsa most astutely pointed out it may see some interest from the many parents who have decided such a pushy atmosphere is not for them or their child.

I know a very high powered lawyer who is taking a sabbatical from work to do the 8+ and 11+ with her children (inc SPGS). She has kept on the nanny and the housekeeper so that all she is doing is the academics, but there is someone else to do all the boring stuff like cooking and laundry.

I think that's madness. It's a school/certain schools not the holy grail.

And what happens if they don't get in? It's all completely ridiculous.

I know a very high powered lawyer who is taking a sabbatical from work to do the 8+ and 11+ with her children (inc SPGS). She has kept on the nanny and the housekeeper so that all she is doing is the academics, but there is someone else to do all the boring stuff like cooking and laundry.

I can see the logic in that in that a lot of the time that I spend with my children isn't particularly meaningful in that I'm doing all that domestic stuff rather than drilling them on commonly used verbal reasoning words. But at the same time, I think that being around but not in their face i.e. standing at cooker and occasionally chatting is an important part of spending time with children. This woman will go back to work when the exams are over that no doubt they will have successfully passed with this powerhouse of an on-hand very focussed educated parent to help. But I can see how this could be construed as both over-involvement and a sort of absence.

I'm not, by the way, criticising working parents, but possibly this sort of parent who is obsessed with an elite education and that all time spent with children should have an educational end.

Over-involved in the lunacy that accompanies getting into SPGS in the first place before assuming that the school will sort everything out for the future so being very under-involved in their daughters lives.

Actually, I think the school is going to the dogs. Did you know they came second to Wycombe Abbey this year? Wycombe Abbey?!!! I ask you!

True!

If it is a result of tiresome parents asking why the school is not top of the league tables this year, it could be a message made in "exasperation."

Aww, no, but you would use the word "defensiveness."

I don't think they are failing, I wouldn't even use the word.

I think there is absolutely nothing wrong in wanting to get away from the notion that you are failing unless you are top of the league tables.

I'm sure WA are happy though, I would have had no idea about it otherwise. - not that it's relevant, but still.

A message made in defensiveness is not the best way to go. Why so much £ and now we're second? Oh it's you the parents, you're doing it wrong.

Should have been some sort of buck up girls we can do it, yip yip.

Sorry. I should have added at the end of my last post.

TheWordFactory - surely it is possible to be both over and under-involved? Over-involved in the wrong areas (ie the bits the parents should leave to the school) and under-involved in the right areas (ie the bits all parents should be doing)...

Well, I guess a derangedly competitive person might well think it was sour grapes after SPGS came second to Wycombe Abbey.

I'm sure the colossal fee increase is so as to ensure that children have the facilities in which to learn to fail successfully, and to learn that failure can be expensive, but also that you can recover from it if you have lots more cash where the last lot came from.

The thing is, what exactly does she want in an ideal SPGS parent?

She chides the current parent body for being both over involved and under involved.

It doesn't seem very "savvy" to me to allow the fees to rise by 38% in 5 years, the biggest increase of any school in the UK: www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Education/article1489981.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2014_11_30

If I was a parent at SPGS, I'd be pretty cross about that. It might make me quite impatient with the head. I'm not surprised she has some difficult conversations with parents.

I still think the snowplough story was a silly headline grab and sour grapes after SPGS came second to Wycombe Abbey in the Sunday Times league table.