Headmistress attacks parents in national press

If the proportion of pushy and unrealistic parents in a school increases to 5% from 2.5% that will already have a horrendous impact on a Head's time (and nerves). And these things tend to snowball (no pun intended).

I suspect that her problem is not so much that all parents are pushy and unrealistic, but that those that are take up a disproportionate amount of her time.

Also, if you are restricted to parents who live in London and can afford those school fees and you are selective academically, you are unfortunately ruling out both the

"She's thick as 2 short planks, just keep her out of mischief between 9 and 3.30" parents and those who are able to let their children experience real hardship. You are also relatively handy for people working in the city.

Oh well, everyone has their cross to bear.

I think she sounds quite sensible.

Going to SPGS is a 99% guarantee of learning all about coming second anyway - there will practically always be some precocious genius who's much more brilliant than you in all your subjects!

The thread moves on but just like to point out to Bonsoir that much of this debate on the wrongs or rights of Clarissa Farr's comments is not based on hard evidence except from a few posters. My 'insinuations' were continuing a line of reasoning from some anecdotal evidence from Needmoresleep. There are of course 'snowploughing' parents who both work but it is natural that those not working but still driven are able to focus more effort into managing their DC's lives. That may obviously be a benefit for their DCs but for some personalities less so, particularly if they gage their own achievements by how well their DCs are doing

MN164 all very well trusting those with direct experience at the school but as my experience demonstrates you can have entirely different experiences even three years apart, and plenty of girls will not tell their parents the half of what goes on. I had to sit there smiling sweetly to the mother telling me what nice friends her daughter had at 14 and what fun they had, knowing full well it involved drugs and sex, presumably she continued to think that right up until her DD dropped out of school, and involvement in a national sports squad, after AS. I know CF has direct experience of some of the families My DDs have encountered. Of course you hope, probably rightly if you are thinking at all deeply about it, that your parenting can prevent your own children becoming influenced but I certainly think it is an issue that CF should be addressing.......

Talkin in my experience these schools allow a lot more individuality, plenty of girls pursued arts, drama or, or even , AND music at GCSE, even to the extent they would in a state school not qualify for Ebacc because they did not keep on History or Geography, and even to A2, and then carried on with them at Uni, Art School or Drama School. In fact that flexibility to persue those subjects, or Classics or RS in preference to the rigid Ebacc is something that completely undermined Gove's assertion that he was providing the same opportunities as private schools. What they will not allow is girls racking up 15 GCSEs so they can include arts and music or keep on other subjects. For girls who are not aiming to specialise they recommend one art / drama / tech / music subject because it gives a chance to indulge their interest, but only one because the coursework load is so great. And my DD is a seriously committed Scientist heading for a career in research but in discussion with her teachers only studied double science precisely so she could keep up the breadth of 2 MFL and 2 Humanities and RMT (woodwork and metalwork in old money), alongside the guildhall Drama exams considered equivalent to an AS. They reasoned she would have 4 Science AS in the bag (as it happened all with 100 % UMS) by the time she applied to uni and the breadth would only help her application. Cambridge didn't mind one bit but would a state school have allowed her that individuality?

It's not just the current level of fees that's crazy, it's the enormous increases that have happened in just the last few years.

Parents plan and save, decide they can just afford the fees on their net salaries, but by the time their DC has been at the school a couple of years, it's several thousand more pounds a year that's suddenly being demanded from them and that they've got to find from flat-lining incomes. So what was affordable at the start is no longer affordable. Dream turns to nightmare. The strain is terrible.

Some heads like Andrew Halls have twigged that this is a disaster but the solutions being offered are not realistic. Cut costs to cut the fees, that's got to be the answer.

Where I live, the state grammar schools have about 3% free school meal children. I would love to know how St Pauls could recruit 33% of suitable girls using this criteria!! Absolutely impossible. Also, many Doctors are not middle income and obviously earn more than nurses. Why would the children of highly paid Doctors be more deserving than the children of ordinarily paid Civil Engineers for example? Where my DDs went to school, the day fees are more than St Pauls. In fact their fees looked reasonable by comparison!

Tiny class sizes do, indeed, drive wage costs upwards very fast indeed.

MN 164 Who's going to judge what a "valuable profession" is and how? You risk getting plenty of "formerly wealthy" amongst your 2nd group, as well as parents who are clever with their accounting.

What these schools need to do is take a reality check and start cutting some costs. For a start, what's with these seminar size classes? Make them a little bit bigger and they could save quite a bit.

The fees just need to get back down to affordable levels. As they stand at the moment, they're a death knell for these schools. While journalists, civil servants, MPs and other opinion formers can no longer afford them, the abolition of charitable status can't be far away.

Sure, but you cannot do that by charging pro rated fees - it's too crude to segment your pupils into "poor" "middling" and "rich suckers who deserve extra tax". Schools have to be more subtle to make these things palatable.

Actually, I believe both St Paul's schools have stated their intention to aim for needs blind admission asap. They want to educate the brightest and best, not the wealthiest.

You would find that the wealthy parents would move to another school and where would that leave you?

Perhaps SPGS should take the lead in their admissions policy and their bursary funding.

Why not split admissions into 3 groups, all of which will be able to meet the academic standards given the oversubscribed status.

1 A third of intake from state primaries with full bursaries (all costs) for low/no income parents

2 A third of intake on 50% or more bursaries with valuable professions or middle incomes (teachers , doctors, nurses , welfare workers, etc)

3 £30k+ a year fees for everyone else to subsidise the bursaries above.

That would limit the snowploughs to a third of intake and bring back the sort of parents that could add to the ethos of the school along with students that deserve a unique springboard in life.

It would win huge support and be leading the way as a "tax the new elite to teach the poor and middle classes policy." (Robin Hood bursaries)

Having known MS Farr at her previous school, I can tell you, she taught all the girls in year 7 and definitely knew the vast majority of girls in the school. She was a regular visitor in the boarding houses, attended everything, (sport, music, drama, house events, suppers, chapel, parents' evenings, and much more) and talked to the girls, regularly. I doubt very much that she does not have a similar personal involvement at St Pauls. I bet she does know the girls!

New Head teachers tend to want new staff in areas they think need improvement. Some people will agree and others will not. Some teachers want to move and challenge themselves elsewhere. This is utterly normal and staff turnover, unless absolutely stratospheric, is not a problem. It can be very healthy.

Upset - would you mind posting how many teaching hours your DD has per week?

10h30 of homework certainly doesn't sound excessive but of course if she has 35 h of lessons the overall volume is high.

It's good to hear the school's still like opo recalls, OP. Ignore my last post, which crossed with yours! I'm sure you're a more reliable source of info than the notorious RMT.

Here's the latest post about Ms Farr on Rate My Teacher:

"Numerous teachers have disappeared under her reign. Often these were the best teachers; the ones who actually knew all the students by name; the ones who cared. Meanwhile miss farr could probably name at most 20 people in our school. "

Perhaps it's rubbish but there are quite a few other posts in similar vein on there.

I will form my own opinions about people as individuals from the way they behave in real life, not from some silly newspaper article

Good idea. Me too.

This doesn't stop the fact that I will form my own opinions about people as individuals from the way they behave in real life, not from some silly newspaper article. So long as particular parents weren't named and shamed, who am I to say which of them are "snowploughs"?

I agree, rabbitstew.

The former proprietor of DD's school has left an unfortunate quotation about the skirt lengths of some mothers (and their example for their daughters) in cyberspace. It is never good to publicly shame parents for their parenting when you are a head and it makes you very vulnerable to loss of respect and retaliation.

ps that's addressed to MN164.

I'm not being defensive: I'm pointing out that you are making false insinuations that are not supported by any evidence.

I loved the school I went to and the interest I got from my teachers. You would only have heard positive things from me. To my surprise, quite a few of my friends didn't love it at all. What's more, some felt their teachers didn't take enough interest in them. The words of a select few parents or pupils from the dim and distant past may help reinforce your prejudices, but unless you get a colossal vote the other way, they are not really going to change the opinion you had formed before you even started communicating with them.

At least the High Mistress has, or certainly ought to have, met all the parents at her school, and will know all sorts of things about them and their children that those people wouldn't admit to a stranger asking them whether they like St Paul's. That's why so many parents are, apparently, upset by the publicity in the newspapers - because the High Mistress actually knows them and has said that many of them are deeply flawed parents.

Bonsoir are you being a tiny bit defensive. I did n't mention SAHMs at SPGS, another poster did. There are a lot of non working mothers whose prime focus is not to push their DCs to be high achievers.