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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to think Bs at GCSE are ok?

808 replies

catwalker · 28/08/2011 21:31

Some issues with DS and GCSEs/6th form. He didn't get the grades he was predicted (As and As) but then I didn't expect him to as he doesn't put much effort into anything apart from his x box. He got mainly Bs, a couple of As, a couple of Cs and a couple of Ds. I was quite happy until I started reading the secondary education forum where people are tearing their hair out because their dc's didn't get straight As and may have blown their oxbridge chances. I get the impression that anything less than an A just isn't worth the paper it's written on. He could have done loads better but Bs are OK aren't they?

OP posts:
londonlottie · 06/09/2011 10:31

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Tchootnika · 06/09/2011 11:38

Perhaps we need to add to advice that the best thing a mother can do is work full time earning over £100k a year in terms of best benefit to her children but also move to the SE where the chidlren will get jobs, higher aspirations and the best schools.

Why only as far as SE England, Xenia? Why not to S. Korea? Or at least to any other W European country, where the chances of receiving a decent education will be far higher, and that without parents earning £100k+ to buy it? (Do either of these (the latter is at least achievable - more so for most people than earning £100k p.a.) and you'll also be improving their intellectual abilities, guarding against dementia in later life, etc. and providing other advantages gained from being bilingual.)

There is no guarantee that children will get jobs, higher aspirations and the best schools in SE England. (There's a probably higher chance that they'll fall prey to depression and other other evils of 'affluenza', though.)

londonlottie - I couldn't agree more with your post.

exoticfruits · 06/09/2011 11:53

I would agree with you, up to a point, londonlottie. Certain jobs wouldn't- (but I wouldn't want to work in PR, marketing or advertising for any money.)

I think that university is a waste for most people-they would be better off like Switzerland.

sieglinde · 06/09/2011 12:23

Sorry too to say that most schools in the SE cost more than Habs Aske.

Also MCS has topped the league tables because they've strategically ducked the more rigorous IB and pre-Us for a solid diet of A-Levels.

Curly, I'm afraid my experience is that an Ox degree is much more useful than a journalism degree in the field....

Xenia · 06/09/2011 13:34

Londonl's experience tallies with my experience with my 3 older children who have all graduated. The good jobs, the good employers all want something like 2/1 from a good top 10 ish university. It's not their fault. It is just there are so so so so many graduates they need some filters and those universities tend to g et the better people so it's sensible to recrit from there whereas if you just limited yourself to Oxbridge you wouldn't. It's just market forces. When a graduate is hard to find and employers have far too many jobs and no one to fill them then things would be different.

So it remains good advice to ensure our chdilren do k now these things and schools are not telling them a load of rubbish, Of course the averaeg UK IQ is 100 and 50% of chdilren don't get A - C in GCSE so of course for many many children those sorts of jobs are not an option anyway . It depends onthe child. But let us not dlude them into thiking their 2/2 in XYZ studies from an X poly is going to be as well regarded as from elsewhere.

The about £10k for day school fees is not too wide of the mark though nationally. At secondary level for day schools in London yes may well be £15k ish instead for a purely day school.North London Collegiate where one of mine went and is virtually always in the top 3 or 5 in the country of all schools for A levels us £11472 for juniors and is £13 572 for seniors. So if the mother goes back to work on £35k gross a year full time she gets £26k net pay which will pay for both her daughters to go to North London one of the best if not the best day girls' school in the country. Obviousyl plenty of women did not make good career choices and could never reach the dizzy heights of earning £35k a year but it's not impossbile.

Tchootnika · 06/09/2011 13:37

So if the mother goes back to work on £35k gross a year full time she gets £26k net pay which will pay for both her daughters to go to North London one of the best if not the best day girls' school in the country.

Erm, right...
Food? Clothes? Bills? Mortgage?

grovel · 06/09/2011 14:22

Tchootnika, those are for daddies to pay for.

Tchootnika · 06/09/2011 14:37

Thanks, grovel, will try not to be so naive in future... Wink

Interesting to see that seemingly in SE England it's possible to earn £100k+ without any apparent aptitude for basic maths, though. Perhaps this really does demonstrate advantages available to private school children. How sad.

Yellowstone · 06/09/2011 14:58

I'm not sure that opting not to do the IB or Pre-Us is regarded as a strategic ducking sieglinde, plenty of seasoned HTs are keeping on with A Levels as a policy of strategic good sense. I can't see that it's fancy footwork for league tables, the best schools are bigger than that.

Yellowstone · 06/09/2011 15:03

But Xenia I can't see that the experience of your three eldest DC at employment level leads to the conclusion that there should be mass middle class immigration into the already suffocated SE.

Xenia · 06/09/2011 16:43

I was writing to housewives who don't earn a penny and wonder how school fees can be found. Obviously my own experience is women out earn men many times and have no difficulty paying school feesl but I was trying to show how a woman who doesn't go to work could return and afford 2 places at one of the best girl's school in the UK if she can earn gross £35k.

titchy · 06/09/2011 16:53

I think she would also need to find the cost of childcare as well as fees out of her £35k a year as well though Xenia!

Yellowstone · 06/09/2011 18:08

Her kid would also have to move to Barnet or Hendon or wherever it is and then pass the test to NLCS. Might as well go to Henrietta B if you like NW London enough to shift. I'd far rather my kids went there, money or no.

Backinthebox · 06/09/2011 20:44

Ahahahahahahahaha!

Your views of the wider world are so narrow you cannot see out of the tunnel you are in, Xenia, Londonlottie and the rest of the SE posse.

Perhaps we need to add to advice that the best thing a mother can do is work full time earning over £100k a year in terms of best benefit to her children but also move to the SE where the chidlren will get jobs, higher aspirations and the best schools.

My parents are working class, I was raised and educated in the North, our school was crap - my siblings and I should have stood no chance by your standards. So how do you explain that I managed to obtain a degree in a hideously difficult subject and went on to become an airline pilot and now live wedged between a retired Blue Chip company multimillionaire and a TV presenter known for a program with the word millionaire in the title. (Obviously when I say 'wedged between' what I actually mean is my land butts up to their land. We wouldn't want to actually have to see each other!) My brother has made his way in the world starting on a market stall in a Northern town market with few qualifications and now lives abroad in one of the most exclusive addresses in the world - his 6 figure salary allows him that luxury. My sister has opted for freedom over income and in running her own company she can both earn enough to live well on and spend as much time as she wants with her children and pursuing her hobby, which she is a national grade judge in as well as a successful competitor. I have competed in my chosen sport at national level, and my brother is an advanced instructor in his sport. None of us compete in a sport that you would find being offered at a state or a private school. My brother's predilection for the foreign laydeez means he is now fluent in Spanish and Russian.

I like to think we are a fairly unusual family. The aspirations and ambitions of my parents, my housewife mother in particular, meant we worked for our lot, and found that sheer bloody hard work and determination can fill a gap left by our lack of SE private schooling. And I know that although we are fairly unusual, there ARE other people out there who didn't go a fancy school and who are Northern (and you can't even tell with some of them! Not a flat cap or whippet in sight,) who have achieved more than your 'I'll send them to an expensive school - that should be OK, right?' gang. Frankly these families' children ought to have better school grades, because the parents have no life now they have moved to the SE, mortgaged their souls and have nothing else in their lives than working, writing cheques to a school and spending time with their children.

So, what is the end ambition that you are aiming for here? Say you work your fingers to the bone, buy that north London house, send your daughter to Haberdashers' Askes, and what will that actually gain her - a comfortable life full of enjoyment and a sense of achievement? or a desperate worry that she will also have to sell her soul to gain the same advantage for her children? WTF is the point of that?

There are more things in this world than money. There are more things than the South bloody East of England (a hellhole, in my opinion.) There are people out there who develop themselves through travel, adventure, hard work, ambition and many, many other inventive ways. But you are so stuck running on your that you are unaware of this. I pity you your lack of imagination, but generally your loss is my gain so hey, ho.

Take a look - you don't need a private education and an Oxbridge degree to fly high. It would appear - shock horror - that you don't need any kind of degree at all, and even a B grade is good enough.

Backinthebox · 06/09/2011 20:47

Oh yes, me and me Northern Mam are just having fish and chips. Your chippies in the SE are shite too.

londonlottie · 06/09/2011 20:53

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Tchootnika · 06/09/2011 20:54

Be kind to the southern jessies, Backinthebox, or you'll bring on their affluenza - and you know how nasty that can make some of them.

Xenia - if you want to take your DCs where the jobs are, you'd be better off in Northern Ireland or SW England than SE. Think you can handle that?

exoticfruits · 07/09/2011 08:01

I don't think that you were that unusual BackintheBox-speaking as someone who went to a northern secondary modern with a housewife mother. I had parents who were passionately interested in my future, which makes the big difference. Failing the 11+ was just seen as a stumbling box to be overcome. People that I was at school with have become very successful.
People are missing the point that failure early on, or less than perfect conditions, can spur you on and give you drive and ambition.
I think we all know people who are very successful against the odds and they then achieve a more than comfortable lifestyle, their DCs get it all on a plate with the best schools etc and they do nothing with their lives.
Getting good results to get a high paid job to afford school fees to get a high paid job..............seems a treadmill to me. At some point someone is going to want to get off and say 'actually I want to go to Cornwall and be a potter/sail yachts around the world for owners who don't want to do it themselves/help street children in Brazil etc etc.
If you are only counted as a success if you get at least a 2:1 from a top university you may as well not compete-most of the population is doomed to failure.
We have had to live in the SE for work, but there are far nicer places to live!

wordfactory · 07/09/2011 10:05

I'm sure there are many of us who did well back in the day, crap comp, uneducated parents yadda yadda.

But the reality is that the world has changed beyond all recognition. We can't look at how we achieved things and think it will apply today. It won't. Hell, the world is a more difficult place than it was three years ago let alone thirty. Saying how it was in our day makes us sound like our grannies.

I think we do our DC a huge disservice if we don't at least tell them how it is now and give them good advice. They can then take action accordingly. Or not. But at least they will have been armed with the correct information. Knowledge is power and all that.

adamschic · 07/09/2011 10:31

Back in my day [granny emotion] it was worse imo. Very few people even went to university. Mainly middle class children of highly educated parents, where expections and encouragement were high.

Nowadays, or at least up until 2012 (tution fees putting people off) I think there has been better opportunities for a wider range of people to get an education.

Myself and many off my very bright peers thought of university as not being for us.

wordfactory · 07/09/2011 13:59

See adamschic I'm not convinced of that. There are more people attending university, but far too many are taking degrees that will not serve them, other than to get them into debt.

I think it's pointless to tell our DC that going to university in itself will ensure a well paid job at the end of it. That's just not the case. The job market is adsurdly competitive at the moment.

sieglinde · 07/09/2011 19:10

Yellow, I also don't see why it makes sound strategic sense to stick to A-levels unless it boosts you in the league tables - and by bigger do you mean in spirit, or just numerically?

Yellowstone · 07/09/2011 21:36

I didn't mean numerically sieglinde! The league tables are only important up to a point and not more important than the pupils in a HTs' charge. A Levels are thought by some to make strategic sense for the pupils: they're 'mainstream', they offer depth and as much breadth as a pupil wants to take on, the EPQ is available to showcase independent learning and research, and not everyone is in agreement that the other qualifications on offer are superior - especially since there can be a downside with the IB of offers from universities which are overly high.

sieglinde · 08/09/2011 07:51

Thanks, Yellow. Interestingly both the independent tutors we've hired do think the Latin and Greek pre-Us are much better preprataion for university -0 but perhaps that's just those subjects. What do you think of the History pre-U? Ds would have done it, but I said 5 was ridiculous enough.

sieglinde · 08/09/2011 07:51

Bother. My emoticon didn't work. Was meant to be Confused