to be amused that the more exclusive a school is..

[seeker]

.. by faith, fees, ability, aptitude..whatever- the more diverse a community the school's parents say it is.

God yes. Fucking hilarious. My ribs may not recover.
I am also amused by people who are relentlessly fucking snarky though, so perhaps my sense of humour is odd.

I saw a video promo for one school. I almost peed mysef. They were all 'naice' students - going on about how they have students from all backgrounds there (I think not) and one pupil stated that actaully everyone she knows goes to school by public transport! Shock horror! As opposed to limo or helicopter, I assume. These were about 16 year olds. They are all "Vair streetwise" too apparently. Yup, I'd drop them in Brixton Hill and see how far they get without their i-phones.

They did come across as nice, smart, intelligent... But a but out of touch (obv repeating what they hear at home/school).

I don't think I know any parents of children in an exclusive school.

Frontpaw You are so right - that's exactly why my ds got mugged last night. No idea of the concept of "dodgy" or danger and thought he was invincible. Was a hard lesson but he got home without his phone on public transport - bit bruised and quite upset but he knows a bit more now about diverse dangerous.

Maybe those parents are speaking from experience?

Maybe diversity means more than just high income families mixing with low income families? Because diversity is about more than that, yet some MNers don't seem to think so going by recent education threads.

My ds is at a SS school, it is diverse. In his class photo of 30 children, 17 of the children are non white. I just checked. I think I have every reason to be confident that my ds is learning about diversity and other cultures from his friends.

Married your poor DS. How horrid for him

Poor guy. Hope he's ok.

I don't know anyone who goes on about how diverse their DCs schools are.

Thanks HandMade you and me both then.

I don't know anyone that sent their kids to an exclusive school.

Actually what is an exclusive school?

I am always amused by people with a personal axe to grind looking for more reasons to bleat on about stuff.

Well, I have 2DCs at selective private schools and one at a super selective grammar. So, I would say these are pretty exclusive, compared to a state comprehensive school. But, I have never heard anyone going on about diversity in the schools. (Although obviously there is diversity at all of them, as you would expect.)

But that's just my experience, obviously.

Our "exclusive" school was pretty aware of diversity - but because we were on the same road as a fairly rough comprehensive school (various of my junior school friends went there). Having said that, we were quite amenable to "taking them on" - I remember well the day a gang of 5th year girls from our school set out to meet a gang of 5th year girls from the comp with a view to a big fight - luckily for all concerned, teachers got wind of it and it was nipped in the bud. There were also frequent fights at the bus stops - it was Educational enough.
God alone knows what it's like 30 years later though...

AIBU to be surprised that a) people who aren't interested waste their time posting and b) people don't seem to know what exclusive means?

I am surprised that nobody has explained to me what exclusive means yet.

I suppose they say it because what data sets there are, support it: here is the Independent school census which shows that ethnic diversity in independent schools is in line with the national profile. CofE school also have diversity profiles in line with national profile and RC are slightly more diverse.

It would be interesting to see if the less diverse schools are actually community state schools sited in affluent areas or in poor areas. I'm not aware of any good surveys attempting to answer that question (for it would be challenging, to put it mildly should the hypothesis be proved), but interested if anyone here knows of any.

I can't say our school is more diverse than local state one, (both vast majority kids from abroad) and haven't heard any parents say that it is diverse at all. Are we talking class, money or nationality here?

Frankly, I think everyone should just chill out.

I think this should me moved to 'Education'.

....which I appreciate makes me sound like a twat

Sparkling, I would say exclusive means that it excludes. So in the case of a grammar, it excludes those who don't pass the test, a faith school excludes those not of that faith, a fee paying school excludes those who can't pay.

Exclusive in this context means tending to exclude (either directly or indirectly) groups within the population so that there is a significant discrepancy between its demographic profile and that of the population in general.

It was explained in the OP what exclusive meant in this context surely?

the more exclusive a school is by faith, fees, ability, aptitude