To not give a fuck about schools?

[sensuallettuce]

AIBU to be totally hacked off with this subject every bloody year.

I don't care that Saffron didn't get into your first choice school even though the local school is varie good she just isn't "suited" to that "environment" all the council estate kids .

It's such thinly veiled snobbery and competitive parenting at its very worst. Kids should go to the local school end of and if there is a grammar system state educated kids should be permitted to take the entrance exam (not privately educated kids who are trained to pass an exam) and this should be means tested.

I live in one of the most competitive school areas of the country with a massive social divide (Poole in Dorset). Because of this I ended up with all 3 kids at 3 different schools for 3 yrs .

How can people bang on about the state providing a perfectly good education then spend an extra £50,000 on a house in the "right" area. It's hypocritical snobby bollocks.

Kids will learn if they want to. I do not believe any of them have faired any better or worse due to my non choice of school. They are fulfilling who they are.

They have a loving home and are well balanced grounded kids and they know if I believe they have been "wronged" I am behind them 100%, if they have done "wrong" I am behind the school. I a, supportive of and interested in their education.

We all need to bloody calm down about this seriously

It is true when my kids went to state primary they did only go for the social life the education came from home.
Why do children have to mix, I don't mix I hang out with people who share the same interests, out look etc. why should our children have to mix with people who just happened to be born in the same 11 months as them if they've nothing in common ? Is it fair that all the advantages some children have are laid out in front of those who haven't. I remember some snidely cow at my school making comment that I did something every weekend and should shut up about it, lovely.

Sensual I don't think Gategipsy meant they went hand in hand! But that kids with difficult homes weren't necessarily difficult kids (As is indeed true on an individual level if not a general societal level), followed by list of examples which may... or may not... go together. :)

Agree with your post outraged it is one thing to have the chance to get to know someone and hopefully lose a few prejudices - it is quite another to be trapped with them mon-fri whether they are rough diamonds...or just rough and ruining your day daily. :)

So in your spare time you are going to take your DC's to the park in the local council estate are you outraged? .

It benefits all the kids. Kids need to learn about diversity and tolerance surely and not think everyone shops at Boden and holidays in Cornwall. Wrap them up in cotton wool they will get a MASSIVE shock when they do venture out into the big wide world.

YANBU. I salute you.

No, I'm not going to hang around the park in the local council estate. and if I don't want to do that as an adult, why would I expect my children to?

I have friends from a simelar background to me, and I have friends that struggle as well as friends that I think are rich. I went to private school, I can assure you I had no great big shock when I left and started mixing with people that didn't all come from private school. Is it lazy thinking to say that children who have been brought up in a leafy middle class type school will have a MASSIVE shock when they leave school. They won't.

And even if they did, I'd rather my children had a little shock at 18 upon finding out that some people were completely uninterested in education and progressing in society than have to live with those attitudes throughout their whole school career.

sensual I think the difference with school and the big wide world is the ability to control and have power over your environment.
I was cheek by jowl with some frights at school and there was no escape, since leaving school I have dealt with / interacted / engaged with similar people but I could get away from them if I needed to.
So whether it comes as a bit of a shock that people can be big fat meanies if they want to or not - you are in a much better position to manage the problem person on your own terms than when you are stuck at school with them - you don't have to get undressed in front of them for PE if you don't want to in the big wide world for a start!!

Some of the worst behaviour I've experienced has been in schools in the best areas.It's a different type of bad behaviour but bad behaviour none the less.It's easier to teach in affluent areas but believe me m/c kids are just as capable of producing poor behaviour as any other child.

I personally want my kids to go to school with a variety of children.If I had the money I doubt I'd ever have chosen private as I've seen the end product myself as a child and now as an adult,teacher and mother and I don't like it.The best gift you can give your kids is an ability to get on with people from all walks of life.My father was highly successful in both his careers.He was grammar school educated and has always had an ability to get on, work with and manage people from all walks of life.He earns respect.

I've also heard from many teaching friends how privately educated kids can often flounder and drop out at uni. They're in bigger classes and are mixing far more with all walks of society.

I think there is a 2 tier system in the private sector too ie the cheaper private schools families who can't really afford scrape into and the top schools the uber rich can afford with bells on which automatically feed Oxbridge(a whole different uni experience).It's great if you're mega rich as your money will always protect you but those not so rich I do wonder if a private education actually gives you more in life and may actually have it's disadvantages.

I'm fortunate in that all 3 of my dc are fairly bright so are perfectly capable of doing well in any school-like I did.I had the worst education possible(forces child with continual moves) and I still got a degree,ditto dp who has 2 degrees from vgood red brick unis.I honestly think with parental support and natural ability you'll always do well.Parental support without natural ability is also a massive bonus. There is only so much a private education can buy you-imvho of course.

MrsHeffley I agree. I will still try to steer my kids away from schools where violence is rife though.

In my school there was the time of when an entire year of 15yo chased a 14yo round and round the school perimeter with a smashed bottle with the intention of cutting his ears off - he was rescued just in time. This was not particularly note-worthy.

So, yes to getting on OK with allsorts - but yes to coming home with your ears still attached.

"The first thing I would like to see is teachers being given more powers to discipline in the classroom"

What 'powers' would you like them to have?

Well run schools do have coherent and consistent programs of sanctions and rewards and teachers are supported to use them.

The difficulty comes when you have a 'critical mass' of poorly socialised children in a school. Very little learning can take place in this sort of environment - even with teachers who are good at classroom management.

I've taught at schools where hardly any of the children read voluntarily in their own time, where many of the parents have poor numeracy and literacy themselves, and where the children have almost no exposure to any other culture apart from that of Saturday night TV, tabloid newspapers and football.

These schools are VERY difficult places to work. You try going into one of these schools and teaching Julius Caesar to a bottom set yet 9 on a Friday afternoon. It's pure TORTURE.

(and yes - I've seen 'Dead Poets Society' and 'Goodbye Mr Chips', and know that if you drafted in someone extraordinary like Stephen Fry to teach these children he'd probably have them eating out of his hand, but most teachers aren't amazing charismatic geniuses, they're human beings, and they find it hard to do a good job in the face of dogged resistance to learning and while being psychologically and sometimes physically abused by a room full of aggressive children).

I also know several people very damaged by the bullying they endured in their private schools.

Also rather ironically my first encounters with drugs was after I left my dire comp and went to the local highly regarded 6th form fed by all the local private schools-drugs there were rife.All of us green little comp educated kids were .

Shag I totally agree and if you shifted half the excellent tecahers from "Outstanding" schools into those you've just described they'd last 5 minutes having little experience of classroom management in these situations.

Bullying and drugs are everywhere and anywhere. A complete red herring.

If parents would properly teach their children to have respect, classroom management wouldn't be a difficult thing and it wouldn't be the big deal that it seems to be.

Like I said earlier, I work in a school. It's a villiage state primary with its outstanding OFSTED, oversubscribed, low number f children on FSM etc etc. We still have our share of behaviour problems. The difference I see is that the other children don't think it's funny, they don't aspire to be like that, they want to learn, they like (or at least dont mind!) doing homework, and the badly behaved children become the unpopular ones. We can deal with it by removing the one or two disruptive children in a class, so that the other children education doesn't suffer any more than it has to.

Then there are schools where there are a high number of disruptive children, who don't see the point in learning because their parents don't value education highly, won't help them with homework, who won't provide the things they need. The children expect punishments to be doled out regularly and they get credibility among their peers for being in trouble, bullying is rife and not dealt with effectively.

There is no way that even a very bright child would be better off in the second type of school because they get to lean and understand about other people. They get a chance to learn about very real other people in a nice school, I don't understand how anyone can say its better for children to learn about the worst type of people society has to offer while they are at school.

agree with outraged again. I intend to try to move house before ds goes to school as it is the second type of school. I might not manage it, but I can try.

Yeh, I'm very sympathetic with outrageds post too - and gins

Not sure about the worst type of people society has to offer, bit harsh IMO.

shagmund too - good to read some sympathy for the teachers. I've found teaching pretty tough sometimes too. Not sure how well even Stephen Fry would do in some classes. He's actually quite a delicate soul beneath the bravado from what he's shared on TV I would think.

@ra29 Having special needs and being highly academic are not actually mutually exclusive, actually.

I hope to god the next government put in place a lottery system for schools in London. It's like South Africa here - social and racial apartheit. It's disgusting and an international disgrace. The new Mayoral candidate Siobahn Benita is talking about changing the system (but hasn't said how).

We ought to be ashamed of ourselves that we have allowed segregation to dominate our society like this. We pretend there is equality, but the most important people in society, our children, are being segregated at school.

Well said metabilis - my dd is very bright with mild dyslexia. I think there's a lot of people actually who aren't entirely NT like me for example

@juggling Cambridge was full of people like us in my day. My DD1 - who is doing very well indeed at a very selective and famously good grammar is very dyspraxic. It makes her life hard sometimes but it doesn't affect her academic ability (although it does mean she has to work much harder than other kids to actually present her work in anything approaching acceptable condition )

One of my good friends at school was very dyspraxic but has an amazing memory - she now does things like memorise the bus timetable in her city just so she can help other people while she's waiting for her own bus

Metabilis, sorry if that's what came accross. I'm well aware of that- I'm dyspraxic and ds has had significant medical difficulties since birth. Equally, of course disadvantaged children from all kinds of backgrounds can be academic. That's not really the point, the point is that children without parental support really are much less likely to get into grammar schools regardless of their natural ability. And children that are struggling emotionally are less likely to have the resources to do as well as they could if they were more secure.
I don't however think for a second that private schools produce better mental health.
In terms of what benefit can be had for the kids who have more secure backgrounds to go to school with those who do not- I think it does enrich them. Ds really has learnt a lot about the world and the way different people live and that actually people can be more similar than it might first appear. I do not think it has taken anything away from him and I have no doubt that he will get good exam results too. The only sad thing is that so many of his friends from primary school were put in other places because of the paranoia that exists around inner city schools. If you have a child who will do well, it will impact on the whole school, apart from anything else it will raise the exam results which will encourage more parents away from the private system and therefor encourage more of a social mix.

Totally agree ra29.

This is a long thread and i haven't read it all, only some of it. Before I had my DD I taught in a huge number of different schools around the city we live in. I enjoyed teaching in nearly every one of them (I did 2 years of supply teaching) and thought they were mostly good schools in different ways. When I had my DD I wanted her to go to my absolute favourite of these schools, which, luckily for me happened to be our local school. I would have been very upset if she hadn't been given a place at this particular school. It is lovely, I only have one DC and I felt this was the best place for her. I admit I did feel like a hypocrit since my childless self would've laughed at someone like me for being so precious!