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

If you are honestly naive enough to think that it is as simple as opting for your closest school, for some areas, then yabvu.
If only

the ultimate naivity in my book is to believe that buying education or moving house is a solution. I totally agree with op

I agree with the Op, on primary, my Dc go to what was considered a terrible school last year, now the middle classes are going mental to get their children in it, I have a friend who WORKED in said school 8 years ago, and left and I always think she had good grounds for compensation on 2 things, being attacked by a parent in the class room by a Dad at 30/40 preg and bodily breaking a window with her body and her witnessing a hammer attack on a mother by 2 or 3 other mothers in the play ground...great school! ( I think you would find this on google if you look I remember the daily fail going mental on it)
said friend (teacher) is trying to sell her house 10 miles away to move closer, so her children can go to attend the same school, I totally lucked out because she had told me to forget league tables and go for the "feel" of a school. and this school had a great feel all the children seened happy when we visited.
my totally posh bestest friend, had her eldest put in this school not on her wish list to the LEA, but it was she who said, brilliant school, she didn't want it but proved wrong, the HT is great, teachers great, the problem parents are a problem but all the children are learning. also they have a great SN centre.
there is so much fun in the school, but bad behaviour is not tollerated and both my sons have been exclued for a day at 6, I could get all titty on this, but for one he really has improved, and the other we worked with the Ht and found out the reason for his melt down and he is dyslexic.
On the 11+ I failed, I really enjoyed for the first time in my life being top of the form at secondary I am dyslexic as well, but I only got diagnosed at 31 unlike my son at 7.
I really agree with grammar schools if the money is distributed equally on pupils numbers rather than school. so my secondary modern had as much as my friends grammar.
My reasoning, well proud boast, I manage a small department me is da boss, 2 doctors, 2 nurses, 4 techs, 1 admin, , 1 physio, 4 private/boarding schooling, 3 Grammar, their is only me, 1 tech and a doc who are from a thicko secondary comp

you do the math

I rest my case. Your kids were excluded. Because they were badly behaved. People were attacked, with hammers. Yep, i'm totally going to send my chldren to a school like that.

That last post of mine came across very wrong. What I was trying to say was that my ds has sen but he's scared of his own shadow...he would not do well in that kind of environment.

I went to shit schools. I would crawl over broken glass to get my kids into a school where they were not shouted at in the halls or threatened with violence for being white and in the 'clever' classes. I don't give a screaming fuck if that makes me a snob.

I agree with you about the snobbery, I don't really care either unless there is bullying. I have lived in Poole and I think it's fair to say that the area has some outstanding schools. Two, in particular, take kids from as far away as Blandford. I agree that this has created a state school snobbery amongst parents but not all of the area is naice, I would think twice about going for petrol in some places (you know where) let alone allowing my kids in those schools.

I don"t think this is about MC snobbery. I think it's about wanting the best for your children. It may even be about WC parents wanting more for their children. Like I do.

I also don't give a fuck about schools. Ofsted levels are a load of shite thy and I hate the way people scramble for the better graded ones when your local one if probable just peachy.

Dc school was marked as satisfactory and I disagreed with everything they had written. I never check out the school before they went I just sent them. Secondary school is due to be applied for in the autumn and I'm gonna send him to the one he want to go to.

Kids will do what they will do wherever they go.

My neices went to a very well thought of school based on ofsted and results. Drinking drugs sex and pregnancy was rife through it.

Gosh I don't know the area that well - where should I be avoiding getting petrol? I just stop when I drive through places without really thinking about it...

My DH believes kids benefit from having to work hard to achieve, and 'good' schools spoon feed to such an extent that they churn out a good proportion of entitled little brats who expect to swan into a top paid job and sit there, incapable of thinking for themselves. He sees this first hand in the work place, and although there is a very rigorous equal opportunity recruitment system those that perform best are usually from tough comprehensive schools.

Personally I keep out of it as what parents choose is none of my beeswax, but I thought you might be interested in DH's view point, as he is currently on a massive recruitment drive for a city firm, and if he is looking at something other than the number of A*s and the quality of the school, you can bet others are as well.

LeQueen

'Hungry' is exactly how DH phrases it too!

I do agree that kids who work hard will do well wherever they go, even if the school they go to doesn't have a great reputation or an outstanding ofsted report.

I do think some people are very snobby when it comes to schools - there is one school in my area that I was warned away from by several people because 'that's where all the asian kids go' despite the fact that that particular school did have an outstanding ofsted report and very high levels of acheivement from the pupils.

I rejected a place offered to my DS1 at a school which is well known in the area for being awful - not because I'm a snob I'm too poor to be a snob but because I honestly felt like my DS1, and by extension DS2 would not learn well there :(

Logistically it must be tricky having DCs at different schools.

I'm sure there are snobs out there who don't want their DC to mix with DC who are poor.

But that is not the case for everyone who doesn't choose their local school.
I was brought up on a huge and most of my family stuill live there.
I ma as far from being middel class as you can be.

I did not avoid the local school because I'm afraid of poor people or that their terrible ways would rub off on my DC. I didn't choose it because it's rubbish. And the school I did choose for them I liked a lot better.

I'm sorry other folk don't get the choice. I wish they did.

I'm a way off from my ds going to school but I am hoping he won't go to nearest. We live in rough area and the way the parents speak to the children on their way home I F'kin' told you t' shut the FK UP etc and the way the children behave, flicking V's or eggs at passing cars, fighting etc I don't want my DS to go there. He is being brought up with no bad language, consideration and thought for others and p's and Q's - he would be eaten alive!!!! It is not snobbery, just reality - I don't want my son to either turn into one of those children (who I think have a really hard time) or get ground into the dirt. :(

If it is just a matter of a few positions on a league table it is probably petty to get too het up, but if it is the difference between a child who can associate well with the rest of society or have very narrow horizons due to not being able to mix with anything other than toe-rags as adults and think anyone who doesn't swear is totally weak then it's another matter.

I do hate snobbery though.

I just wish we had a school system in britain which encouraged a level playing field throughout - we don't.

lequeen DH and I often talk about how you ensure your DC have the hunger when, frankly, they have all the advantage anyone could ask for.

He too, won't employ anyone who doesn't have it. He says the telling question is what you would do if you couldn't be a lawyer. Anyone saying a farmer, or run a restaurant, or a bookshop or a journalist or whatever gets the red cross .

That said he still employs a good number of posh boys and girls. Some of them are still highly driven.

I see it among DC's school friends. They are virtually all extremely advantaged. But some are still highly competitive and ambitious, especially the boys. There are some girls in DD's school who don't work teribbly hard and spend a lot of time shopping. They certainly don't have the hunger. They'll be bank rolled by Daddy until they can be bank rolled by hubby. Fortunately not too many of them. And they're not in DD's circle.

My biggest fear is that I bring up two entitled lazy little shitbags!

I went to "good" school which turned into the "shit" school while I was there (coincidence). I got ok GCSE's and went on to college and fucked up my A'levels as I was more interested in men, drink and drugs. Messed everything up and lost everything and ended up homeless and addicted to drugs.

Decided that wasn't for me so cleaned up my act.0, got a job where I met my ex husband and moved abroad and had children.

Came back here and found myself a single mum with 3 small DC's. Took night classes and retrained and in the last 8 years have worked my way up my chosen profession.

I am now in a post which a degree was required for and I was up against 5 other people who all had degrees angst my experience and drive won me the post.

When some of my colleagues who are the same grade as me realise I am not at the same level of qualification as them some of them look down on me which pisses me off as I wouldn't have been given the post if I wasn't capable of doing it - and I am good at my job and have the full support of my line manager.

DS is bright but I have never pushed him, his teacher suggested I put him in for Grammar, I got him some NVR tests and the first one he did he got them all right. He is naturally bright and naturally studious.

I fully believe if we have healthy attachments and encouragement and love at home we will reach our potential. I respect others opinions though and realise my way is not the be all and end all or for everyone.

LeQueen, surely your DH is making the same sweeping judgements about independently educated DC as some people might do about a candidate whose address is the local council estate.

Many of the DC at my sons private school, including him, have ended up there because they were failed by their previous schools, usually bullying or SEN issues. Not because they are pampered princes and princesses.

It's great that your DH is clever and got a good grammar education but it's not the only or right way. Our area doesn't have a grammar school system, just three comps with varying degrees of success and social problems.

My own experiences echo what Shagmundfreud said earlier in the thread. I was a v middle class child who went from a nice mc primary to a horrid comp where I was in top sets but bullied everyday.

By year 10 it was too much and became a case of if you can' beat em...I started smoking, drinking, not doing school work. In my teenage brain my future didn't matter as I was finally being accepted as one of them and the bullying subsided. I did badly in my GCSEs as I was 3 months pregnant at the time. I often wonder what might have been if my parents had moved me by yr 9 to somewhere that valued academics.

I have learn't my lesson with my DC and am one of those parents that the OP probably hates but I feel justified when I look at my now 19 yr old DD who has excellent gcses, is at uni and is not pregnant (to the best of my knowledge). I will continue to use every advantage I can to ensure my DSs are in the best school (for them) even if that means travelling long distances/ moving or going private.

A lot of people will disagree with my choices but they are driven by my own experiences which have had far reaching effects for me. I don't want the same for my DC.