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

The really top state grammars are still nothing like as selective as Westminster babybarrister. I understood that the Head Master at Westminster wants to know why pupils aren't considering applying to Oxford or Cambridge if they aren't - it's a totally different culture of expectation.

Things change all the time though and the universities are trying to foster and encourage that change.

The vast majority of boys attending Westminster attended the better (and more expensive) prep schools. The entrance exam is not for the faint of heart of the underprepared!!!
And the fees of the school themselves are hefty.

I'd say the family's finances would certainlty be a factor in getting in.

I understood that the Head Master at Westminster wants to know why pupils aren't considering applying to Oxford or Cambridge if they aren't

Yes, my school was the same.

yellowtip I suspect most grammar pupils are in a good position to apply also. They have the ability and the teachers have the experience. The culture is there too.

It's the schools where no one applies that need looking at. How do the universities get those pupils to apply? Some of the ratios at other RG unis are worse than Oxbridge vis a vis privately schooled pupils.

Agree, agree, agree. People need to get a grip, and stop thinking obsessively about their own arses.

@Yellowtip I'd imagine that you go to Westminster kind of expecting that it's the first step on a path towards Oxbridge or maybe these days, Ivy League. I'm not sure that's the case with most state schools. The one area where I think that posh schools are streets ahead of state schools is confidence. And ability to front down fears of hubris.

metabilis DS was asked at his interview if he was aiming for Oxbridge or Ivy League.

If you could see him at this moment you'd know how daft such a question sounds. He's just a little boy!!!! But fortunately someone told us this often comes up so DS did a bit of digging on the internet.

It's their kids jane, not their arses.

word, it's still not the same culture yet, but it's shifting. There are some really interesting initiatives out there for the types of school you're talking about, specifically Oxford and Cambridge focussed.

Cross-posted Metabilis. Completely agree. I do think the sands are shifting though, not before time.

@Yellowtip I suspect DD1, while doing great AFIAC, isn't doing well enough for this to be an issue for her The only people who have said anything to her about what she might want to do after school are music staff. Which is fair enough

well yellowtip, i'm not convinced they know which they're really concerned with ...

I live in Bristol, we have more than our fair share of private schools and shockingly shit state schools. ALL private schools get 100% 5A-C GCSEs, the best a state school does is 72% (and that is a church school). We don't have ANY state selective schools... so many really really able pupils are still sharing their school with children who will never achieve anything, but contribute to the culture of the school.

I am really surprised in this day and age that people don't accept that wealth creates opportunity, even at the tender age of seven!

I do wonder how a culture can shift with massive fees and a new culture of being fearful of debt!!!

Oh well no-one can slag me off, I just stuck all mine in the nearest school.

Everyone can slag me off as I'm about to rent in a great catchment so my dcs can go to one of the only decent secular state schools!!

I wonder too whether the early focus on options/universities etc at private schools has an impact.

If the vast majority of your cohort stay on for A levels and the vast majority are aiming for university, the school pretty much knows where it's headed and can plan accordingly.

DD's school is not particularly selective but all, excepting a tiny minority, do A levels and go on to university. A very good amount to the most competitive universities given the relatively mixed abilities.
It seemed to me that even during the interview process we were discussing DD's future with school and from day one of year seven we were moving towards it.

There's no reason a grammar can't take the same approach given it's cohort I would have thought.

But a bog standard comp has to juggle a lot more differing aims and expectations.

There is a difference between not accepting that wealth creates opportunity, and maintaining that lack of wealth doesn't necessarily mean all opportunities are therefore closed off.

I think I was lucky to get to Cambridge, not superwooperdooper clever. I think that people who went to oxbridge around the time I did, from the private schools in my part of London, probably had to be a lot cleverer than I was, to get in - because they weren't filling any kind of quota and I was. But still, even if it was fully deserved or not, I was offered opportunity and I took it. If I had heard people saying 'no chance' rather than 'why not' then maybe I'd have not looked for then taken that opportunity. Because I'm not the most optimistic of people.

Who said that without wealth there is no opportunity?

@babybarrister So do you think that the people who go to Westminster are not wealthy, not from London or the SE, or not boys?

All this talk of Oxbridge seems to have the undertone that no one is truly successful in life unless they goto a RG uni, and if they didn't, then they must have had a poor education. I don't suppose that is intentional, but it's how the last pages of this read to me.

I think we need to remember that people can have a successful education and choose not to go to university at all. Not everyone is suited to it, and again, that doesn't mean they didn't receive a high quality education, it just means they didn't want to go, or the carreer path they chose doesn't require a degree. School isn't just about preparing students for university, it's about preparing them for work too. Unfortunately people's success in that is not as easy to measure as how many students got accepted to Oxbridge, but it is equally as valuable.

@babybarrister no arguments there then!

outraged I think that's fine so long as we are talking about such pupils having and making a real meaningful choice.

If you are able, have been properly encoraged and prepared, and have the finances to go to a good university but choose not to, then that's fine.

But if you choose not to go, having been given no encouragement, or having been badly prepared , or because you can't afford it, then that choice is rather illusory no?

The reality is that pupils who are able, encouraged, well prepared and can afford it do all seem to go. Or the numbers that don't are vanishingly small. I just don't buy it that lots of able students from less advanatged backgrounds are all making a fair choice.

I see what you are saying but if they are less advantaged you have to realise there is only so much the school or the state can do. Being encouraged and well prepared is something that parents have to do,not only the schools. Because schools can encourage and prepare till the cows come home, but if the same isn't happening at home then it's futile for all but a few especially intelligent and determind students.

I don't think we can blame schools for everything.

I didn't go to university, but I can still encourage my children to go. I think we need to measure young people's outcomes against more than the type of school they went to.

Haberdashery - I have a feeling we may know eachother if our vintages are similar

Eek! I am 43.

Agree that not everyone is suited to university, or even if they are suited academically not going may suit them better on a personal level. I do often think that given how my life panned out later, I would perhaps have been suited to doing something a lot more practical even though I found university fairly easy from the academic point of view.