Headmistress attacks parents in national press

CF is neither disingenuous nor deluded. She is a very savvy operator who knows exactly what she's doing - she hasn't got where she is now by being naive and a bit wet behind the ears. She has form for these kinds of statements going back years.

If I had to hypothesise about her motivation I would speculate that she knows SPGS has a reputation for attracting derangedly competitive parents, and that some families will be put off the school precisely because they are not that way inclined themselves and don't really want to engage in that particular bunfight. So my guess would be that parents who are perhaps put off SPGS might read that and feel encouraged to apply by the head so publicly critiqueing the more insane aspects of competitive W. London parenting.

Head teachers clearly see themselves as the new celebrity.

Your man from Educating Yorkshire has been flashing his yellow gnashers in game shows of late!

and blabbing to the Times is clearly the done thing at the moment
www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article4283593.ece

She posed for the photographs .....

Just reading through the thread, poised to comment and now WordFactory, RootandBranch, Sunset and Granola have stolen my thunder.

CF is either disingenuous or deluded. She has more influence over her school community than any individual set of parents. She needs to look at her own hand in the matter.

My final question is, did she intentionally put this out there? Or, was she selectively quoted?

I thought they did IGCSE English. Or us that a switch in the last 2 years?

sunset but the fever the parents get into leading up to 11+ has very little to do with the requirements of school entrance, and it is not confined to parents whose daughters have SPGS in their sights. It is based on chinese whispers and a mix of anxiety and competitiveness and has very little to do with the actual requirements of the exams. The Heads can and do, until they are blue in the face, say that they are looking for ability, not tutoring, but some parents don't want to hear that this is a process over which they have no control. I did get the impression that the SPGS exam was one that the right preparation could put you into a better position to pass (why else would one Prep, Bute, have such a high rate of success and overall SPGS have one of the lowest success rates amongst state school applicant) but girls who have not been extensively tutored do get offers based on ability, and the general frustration about the frenetic anxiety amongst parents would be shared by other London GSA Heads.

As would the concerns about affluent neglect. My DD was in a particularly dysfunctional year elsewhere and really in some cases parents not having the time to speak to their DDs in the evening is the least of it. One pastoral Head said she had not heard stories of parental self indulgence like it in thirty years of teaching, just because there is money (and indeed bitchy exclusive alpha behaviour, rampant sexuality, binge drinking ,drug taking and anorexia by attention seeking girls with little parental control, and self esteem issues) does not stop you wanting to weep for them when you know what goes on in their home lives. And it cuts across ALL West London schools, possibly more intense the further into the centre and the more selective they become.

St. Paul's was however the only West London indie that made pupils retake GCSE English Lang /Lit if they didn't get A* when the Govian sponsored grade deflation happened a couple of years ago. Wycombe went public in the Press about the impact, the rest of the West London indies, bar SPGS, pretended it hadn't happened

Granola's post is funny - if this is all because the school got pushed to second.

Bah! Are you going to withdraw your child from the school on the basis of these comments? Will it put off other parents applying? I doubt it.

She did say 'many' rather than all, and most people will assume it doesn't apply to them. If other people assume you're one of these snowplough parents and you're not -- does it matter?

I don't think heads of major independent schools with more applicants than places and long waiting lists think of parents as 'customers' they must avoid upsetting, by the way. They're the ones with the power.

I don't believe for a minute that Ms Farr's comments weren't intended for publication. No doubt she will be replying to this letter from a former headteacher which has been published in today's edition of The Times. What he says chimes with my earlier comment:

"Sir, Clarissa Farr makes no mention of her own school’s responsibility for the kind of pressure which sees students and parents unable to cope with the “failure” of coming second (“Head attacks rich parents”, Nov 29). The briefest glance at the St Paul’s Girls’ School website reinforces the “shame” awaiting if you wreck the school’s evident desire to top the league tables. “For the fourth year running no grade less than a B in 2014”. Woe betide the poor girl who gets the school’s first C grade since 2010. No wonder the parents have a “kind of ticking frenetic anxiety”. The solution is in Ms Farr’s own hands. Looking at her school website, I suspect she has as much difficulty coming second or even third, fourth, or fifth as her pushiest parents.
Dennis Richards
(Former headteacher, St Aidan’s CE High School, Harrogate)
Harrogate, N Yorks"

SPGS fosters the exact environment that CF is now complaining about. The school is highly selective, the results are generally A*/A - do not be that girl who gets a B or heaven forbid a C, most girls are heavily tutored to pass the 11+, many then continue to be tutored during their time at the school (source: parents at the school), the parents (normally mothers in my experience) work themselves up into a frenzy around now and early Jan about the 11+ entrance. What does CF expect her parent body to be like?!! The requirements of the school at entrance and then ongoing are what's caused it. It is all bonkers.

Agree with WF - save the tears for kids who really need it.

I think CF was spot on in her comments. They weren't intended for publication. I'm sure you SPGS parents will let her know loud and clear about your irritation

Maybe she could make the school a different and more balanced environment by admitting girls from families who aren't academically competitive in the first place. You know, the sort of girls who probably wouldn't pass the entrance exam at the moment. ;-)

This public worrying by HTs always makes me smile.

The USP of schools like this is excellence. So they hand pick high achieving girls from high achieving families and then worry about the girls expecting to achieve highly.

They set up school life so as to be extremely competitive, then worry about the girls being competitive.

Appearently, they worry about helicopter parenting and affluent negelct. That's quite a feat!

Seriously, save the tears for kids that really need it.

Why would she lash out?

She's the very successful headmistress of a very successful school speaking to other headmistresses at a conference. Maybe she's telling the truth about some, note not all, the parents she encounters who believe all obstacles can be cleared out of their children's lives and bugger the rest of the world.

This is surely just Clarissa Farr lashing out and having a bit of a Gerald Ratner moment after SPGS was pushed into second place by Wycombe Abbey in the Sunday Times league table last weekend. She says she has learned to cope with "failure", though. Don't take it personally, OP.

Some nuts really do require sledgehammers.

On the other hand: what on earth does she expect?

Few places + super-selective entrance requirements + huge influx of super-rich in London = an educational pressure cooker

It should be noted that she did not utter these remarks in the course of a press interview or write them in an article, it was during a conference where she might reasonably be expected to be discussing matters of school ethos etc with fellow headteachers. The problem was that someone wrote down her remarks and chose to publish them...

unheeded

I have sympathy with the OP: even if Ms Farr's analysis of some parents' parenting style is harsh but correct, the national press is not the right place to berate them, however much she may feel that previous, less public, exhortations to reign themselves in have gone unhindered.

Removing all obstacle from a child's life doesn't help them. Some things parents can't fix, regardless of the money thrown at the issue.

I would have a suspicion that there has been a change for the worse in the parent body too. We noticed a huge change at our DDs school a few years ago. The parents were just different from the previous parent body. Extreme showing off, very rude and over privileged children who wanted for nothing. Unfortunately schools exacerbate this by giving prizes to the children who raise the most for charity. They don't have to do anything, Daddy just pays up. Job done, prize won. It may well be there is a significant majority of parents who agree with the High Mistress and don't like what they see. She could have the backing of the silent majority! I bet there are not too many scrimpers and savers here but it is still preferable to have a school populated with well adjusted, resilient, and pleasant children.

Ha, ha - I'll bet they've been trying for years to deal with the problem within the confines of the school!

5 times, methinks...