"Ooooh the old local comp is full of knives argument.....
It's rubbish, it really is. The people who really, genuinely, do live in places where the local school is doing that badly are not the people who can buy their way out of it."
That, like Seeker's similar argument, is entirely inaccurate in my case. I have lived in that sort of catchment area, and no, I haven't bought my children an education because even if I'd starved I couldn't have afforded it.
I home educated instead. There was and is no way that my children would go to such a school.
Besides, the detractors to my argument have deliberately picked up on only one aspect of it, which was the most extreme one. It's not just about children in a grim catchment area being educated in a violent environment, though that happens, it's about manners, morals, standards of behaviour. It's about speaking properly, it's about discipline and respect. It's also about social graces and confidence as well as higher academic standards, smaller classes, better qualified and more experienced teachers and having a HT who knows every child's name, personality and family. But the knife thing is so much easier to take the piss out of, so do carry on.
I come from one of those odd POV, a working class South Londoner who went to a bloody good school, who believes in private education although she cannot afford it for her children .. and knows that the standards held by her own school are almost impossible to find in the state sector.
Additionally, as a South Londoner born and bred, yes, I do know what some of the less desirable state schools are like and I don't exaggerate how grim they are.