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

That sounds like a really positive story ra29

I can honestly say that my children have learnt a lot about the world in their villiage with inflated house prices primary school too though. I still really can't see how going to a worse school would somehow be better for them.

My words the worst type of people society has to offer probably is a bit harsh, so I apologise. It wasn't meant in a derogatory way. It was just mean to illustrate that primary school children can learn about how others live at nice schools too. They do not need to know about those who are significantly worse off than they are when they are still in KS1, and there are other ways to learn about other people that don't involve them being in a class with disruptive children who have unsupportive parents in a badly achieving school.

Outraged what do you men by a 'nice' school?

I think children should always be brought up to know that there are others more disadvantaged than themselves and they should never take what they have for granted.

I mean the stereotypical OFSTED good or outstanding school that serves average families, has an active PTA and parents who support the school and their children's learning. Where teachers can spend time teaching, not doing crowd control or classroom management for half their lessons, and can work with parents to find solutions to problems.

Just normal schools that aren't satisfactory (because satisfactory in OFSTED terms isn't really satisfactory) or in special measures.

I agree that children should be brought up to know that there are others more disadvantaged than themselves and they shouldn't take what they have for granted. I just think there are other ways to give children that understanding than sticking them in badly achieving schools.

But outraged some people have no choice but to use those schools and that's not fair - ALL children should have the same opportunities.

The only truly "fair" system would be lottery, with help with transport for those who needed that.

Requiring everyone to use their closest school leads to bubbles / ghettos, people who can afford to buy / rent near "best" schools. In places like london there are not enough school places for everyone to go to a local school.

I agree with you that its not fair that some very good parents have no choice but to use those schools. It's wrong that any child is being offered a sub standard education, let alone whole schools full of children that are being offered that.

But the problem won't be solved by children from supportive families attending the worse off schools. All that will happen is that a child who had a chance of a good and happy school life will have that taken away from them. You can't blame parents for wanting their children to have that chance.

But you can blame parents who don't support their schools, who won't support their children in reading and doing homework, you can blame those who would rather sit back and complain about the system instead of becoming parent governors, or helping on the PTA. You can blame the parents that don't teach their children to have respect for their teachers.

Dozer I disagree in many school areas and towns the local school is the hub and one of the most important parts of the community.

In our small town parents work hard at supporting the the toddler group,pre-school,school and community.Everybody knows everybody and have done for years,our kids have been together since birth,many of us support each other with childcare/playdates,all the childminders are mums at the school.The kids all go on to the local secondary by and large together etc,etc.

If all the children in our town were bussed out all over the place the damage to the local community would be immense.Kids need strong communities,they're highly beneficial.

Personally, outraged, I find it hard to 'blame' those parents either knowing that they are often the product of these cycles of deprivation themselves. I think it takes those of us lucky enough to believe that we and our children can make something of ourselves to join with those who have less self worth and belief in order to not just keep perpetuating the cycle.

Am not advocating lottery system, it wouldn't be workable or even necessarily desirable for many reasons, but it makes me laugh when people argue that sending all children to the local school is somehow fair.

Is often people from "nice" communities who argue that schools is vital part of thr community etc etc. while not thinking about the wider community. For example, our local "honeypot" school has entrance criteria that puts those for whom it is the nearest school above siblings, on "community" grounds. The immediate area is full of v expensive houses, expensive cars etc etc. Only those who can afford to buy or pay very high prices for housing over many years can send their children to the school - so the bubble is impenetrable for those outside it. Similarly village schools in villages where housing is expensive, lack of access to the school for outsiders from less "nice" areas.

I see way you are saying ra29' and I agree to an extent. But I wouldn't want to take the chance with my children. They could end up showing other children that self worth is a valuable thing to have, or they could end up being shown that the best way to get through life is to bully. They could inspire other children to learn how to read, or they could end up deciding there is no point in working hard because they don't seem any better of for it than the child that messes around throughout their lessons and messing around looks like more fun. Especially if it's going unpunished because a school has weak discipline strategies.

Outraged - you think your kids never mess around in lessons?! That's a pretty naive way to think.......

Dozer not everywhere is like that,far from it.

Our town has very mixed housing from council housing,loads of rental tiny and big to privately owned houses tiny and big.

We all work hard to support the school(some parents went to the same school as children),grandparents often pick up their grandchildren etc.It's the same in the surrounding villages-everybody just goes to the local school and there is a huge variety of housing.Wages are low here too(SW).Anybody could live in our town if they wanted to.

Of course they do! Well, the younger one will do anyway, the older one has AS and just doesn't do messing around.

All children will mess around in lessons at some point, but in some schools there are lots of children doing it for the entire lesson, in some schools it's two or three children at a time doing it and they stop as soon as they are told.

I don't see what point you are trying to make with that. It's a given that some schools have significant behaviour problems that never seem to go away and some schools have regular behaviour problems that are effectively managed.

Mrsheffley, am mainly thinking of London / SE "hotspots".

If there were a lottery system, outraged, and your children were sent to one of the schools you describe as not being 'nice', what would you do?

OK - here's my solution:

The more children on free school dinners a school has, the lower the pupil/teacher ratio.

And the funding for schools should be tagged to the average income of the parents of children attending it.

So schools in massively deprived areas would have classes of no more than 18, and there would be enough money to provide a massive extra curricula programme of activities to widen out these children's experience of life and to help them develop their confidence.

Schools in deprived areas would also have a member of staff whose only job was to liaise with parents and encourage them to take an active part in school life.

These schools would also offer educational programmes for parents during school hours.

The money for this would come from removing the charitable status of private schools, and from reducing funding to schools in well off areas. Also funding to grammar schools, whose intake is disproportionately well off compared to the intake of non-selective schools.

If grammar schools wanted to get more money from the government they'd have to prove that their intake was reflective of the social demographic in the catchment area their pupils were drawn from.

What do ya think?

Vote Shagmund!

Dozer that's precisely why a lottery system is the only way to sort this problem out. Once people realise that they can't buy or rent their way into the honeypot schools, they will either take their kids to private schools or they will bite the bullet and accept the fact that it's a complete myth that schools that don't get top results, result in a bad outcome for children.

To stand by and watch while our young people are segregated and driven apart in the name of parental choice makes mockery of our country's claim to support equal opportunities of any kind.

Shagmund, there is already a pupil premium attached to children who get FSMs, schools who have a high percentage of children on FSMs already get a lot more money than schools who don't. The schools who don't aren't exactly over funded, why would you want to take money away from any child?

Many grammar schools get less money as well, as they have been academies for longer. These schools that you want to take money from still have children in them. Children who's parents pay tax and have as much right as anyone else to have their school properly funded.

Jifnotcif (I like that name), if my children got placed in a lottery system and ended up in an underachieving school, I don't know what I'd do. I'd probably have worried about it happening so much that I'd have tried to live in an area where none of the options would be terrible. But I was quite PFB like that when I knew no better. I'm lucky to live in an area like that anyway, when we looked at primary schools 8 years ago we were in such a location that we had five options that we had a good chance of getting a place at, and none of them would have been bad. That's the way it should be for everyone, if they built some more schools it would be possible!

But I suppose you're asking as if I really had no choice, and if that happened I would have to make sure I could provide a lot of educational support at home.

Shagmund a lot of what you say is already happening. Schools in deprived areas are going to get a lot more money. In our area this happened a few years ago, and the honeypot schools heads protested angrily and then turned to the parents, whingeing about how they have lost money because of the nasty riffraff schools and their nasty sub-standard teaching quality. So the honeypot school parents, who had thus far saved themselves private school fees (for years, for several children at once), dug into their pockets and came up with remarkable amounts to keep their elitist school going.

It's great to make changes through funding, but it doesn't solve the issue of racial, class and social segregation.

So sorry Shagmund I won't vote for you this time!

I also think its wrong to assume children are segregated if they are at selective schools. The ds I have that's at grammar school is surrounded by loads of different cultures and belief systems from the children he is friends with. That's not segregated.

I'm sorry - well actually I'm not - but what is wrong with wanting to give your child a good start in life? I want my dd to go to my old school. It is one of the top non fee paying schools in the country and it has an excellent reputation (which I know is deserved) and I would be more confident in trusting my child's education to them as opposed to one of the other schools in my area which has an awful reputation for bullying and violence. At this school I felt that my teachers actually gave a damn about my education, genuinely wanted me to do well and often went above and beyond (in my opinion) to help myself and fellow pupils. Now I'm not saying there are not teachers like this in other schools but considering when I talk about school days most people seem to say oh that would never have happened in my school. I do agree that people should be able to send their child to any school and have them receive an excellent education but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. I for one will not take a stand against the unfairness of the system using my childs education and risking her future. I really don't see how it's snobbery to want your child to have the best you can give them.

So, Shagmund, you suggest that parents have to declare their income to the school authorities? What else will they have to declare to make it 'fair'?

Your spelling mistakes annoy me, so YABU.