Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Original poster

Children at private and grammar schools criticising comprehensive schools

108 replies

redpicturelamp · 11/02/2023 16:21

My DD attends the local 'good' comprehensive school, which has a great reputation and gets good results, but is a big, diverse and scruffy school. She's now in year 8, and over the past 2-3 years a few of her friends have gone the grammar and private school route.

DD knows there are many reasons why people opt for different schools, and that it's not her place to pass comment on other people's school choices, but she seems to be regularly on the receiving end of critical and nasty comments about the school she goes to e.g 'all the kids take drugs' / 'are badly behaved' / 'the teaching is terrible' (they don't, and it's not!) and even 'my parents wouldn't send me there over their dead bodies'.

DD is happy at school and is doing well academically, but at times these comments have really upset her, and on one occasion she tearfully asked me why we'd chosen to send her to such a bad school. A couple of times these comments were made in front of the parents (on lifts home from outings at the weekends), and they said nothing. 😟

I've explained to DD that her friends are likely just expressing adults' views, and to try not to take it personally, but I find it depressing that DDs friends can't see how upsetting these comments might be for DD. Speaking to some of my other friends, their children at local comps have had similar experiences.

I wonder if this is the beginning of a lifelong 'them and us' attitude for these quite privileged kids. Maybe it happens the other way around too ('why are your parents paying for private school when the local school is so good?') but it feels like even if it does, the connotations are different.

Is this all to be expected, and a case of DD just needing to 'toughen' up to the real world? Perhaps naively, I expected a bit better of 12 and 13-year-olds 🙄

OP posts:
Hoppinggreen · 11/02/2023 16:57

That isn’t nice and maybe she should avoid anyone who says things like that.
DD got called a snobby bitch by supposed old friends from Primary for being in the opposite position

StrictlyAFemaleFemale · 11/02/2023 16:54

I went to a grammar school and it was hammered into us that we were the best. It came as a real shock when in y11 one teacher said "don't think that you're going to waltz these exams because you're at a grammar. There are bright kids in comprehensives too". It's not necessarily that comps get talked down, but talking grammars up kind of implies that the others are less good.

theveg · 11/02/2023 16:43

OP does your dd know that only 7% (I think?) of people go to private schools? Maybe that would put things in perspective for her. Not sure of the figure for grammar.

Orangetapemeasure · 11/02/2023 16:39

@Janedoe82 I’m originally from NI and the grammar /comprehensive divide in NI is very different from the comprehensive /private school divide on the mainland.

OP we are on the other side. I went to a private school and learned very quickly how to avoid telling people where I went to school - we were ‘the rich bitches’ (I was on a full assisted place). DC are at an indie. DD has already left one out of school club because of the bullying she suffered simply because of the school she went to.

Sadly it’s not just isolated to the kids. One mum friend lectured me on all the wonderful facilities of the local state school and finished off the lecture with ‘I mean, it’s fabulous….why on earth would you pay?’ She knows we pay. I just find it really rude; I don’t pass comment on the 5 figure holidays she goes on or tell her that cornwall is equally beautiful.

our DC regularly get told how fortunate they are to go to the school they are at, and I’d be horrified if I learned they had been mean to other children about their school.

I’m sorry your DD has had horrible comments.

Decisions23 · 11/02/2023 16:35

This is sad. Children are horrible sometimes, they say things that they are too immature to really understand. I will say though, that it does happen in the other direction and I know a number of children/families who went to private prep but state secondary and were on the receiving end of equally nasty comments from peers who mocked them for being ‘posh’ or privileged.

DistrictCommissioner · 11/02/2023 16:26

YANBU.

shame things haven’t changed. I remember horrible attitudes from privately educated kids (I was privately educated) in the 90s.

starpatch · 11/02/2023 16:24

You are not being unreasonable OP the other children are expressing prejudice which is just as bad as any other type of prejudice in my view.

Janedoe82 · 11/02/2023 16:24

I live in NI. Which still has academic selection. Your daughter is spot on- there is a stigma around comprehensives. Really not sure what can be done about it though.

Swipe left for the next trending thread