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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that a pupil premium should be paid for children who live in home where none of the parents have qualifications

592 replies

ReallyTired · 10/12/2013 12:04

I think that the education of the parents has a more significant outcome on a child's attainment than income. (Especially as many working poor don't have much more money than those on benefits.)

I feel that children who live in households where no adult has five GCSEs or equivalent should get extra support at school. Often these families aren't entitled to benefits because the parents do work so currently don't get the pupil premium.

It is harder for uneducated parents to support their children with homework than someone with a degree. Better eduated mothers are better at getting their children's needs met as they are often more articulate. For example making sure that statemented child gets what they are legally entitled to. (Getting a child assesed by an ed pych so that the child's dyslexia is spotted.)

Unskilled people often do physically hard work for very long hours for very little money. I believe that a child with unskilled working parents is at a major disadvantage as their parents are time poor as well as cash poor.

OP posts:
MrsLouisTheroux · 10/12/2013 12:50

Possibly one of the stupidest ideas I have read on MN.
HTH.

MaidOfStars · 10/12/2013 12:52

however I would suggest that it isn't parental education that is the issue, its parental attitude to education
I couldn't agree more.

MumpiresRedCard · 10/12/2013 12:53

thebigjessie i agree with you. Im still pushing water uphill to make up for doing so badly at school. Plus if u combine a couple of disadvantages, such as a dollop ofdivorce and recession then it exacerbates the effect. You are right. Life is not a hallmark movie. Rags to riches stories are too rare.

perplexedpirate · 10/12/2013 12:54

I'm the first person in my family to have a degree. They are ALL cleverer than me.
YABsoU I don't know where to start.

NigellasLeftNostril · 10/12/2013 12:55

actually i have met smarter people flogging lighters down Brixton Market than in any university....Grin

ouryve · 10/12/2013 12:55
Hmm

My parents both left secondary modern with a handful of CSEs and a typing certificate (my mum, that was. my dad spent most of his time at school fixing cars)

DH's dad left school at 14 and went straight down a mine. His mum's education was on a par with my parents' (yes, all a testament to the wonders of the old fashioned grammar school system)

DH and I both have degrees.

Your generalisation is bordering on offensive, to be honest.

Besides, the point of homework is that most children should be able to do it themselves, with a bit of thought.

manicinsomniac · 10/12/2013 12:57

I think it's a perfectly valid point.

At the moment pupil premium is given to children from low income families, yes?

Now those families may well not have children who need such support. Especially in the current economic climate, there are going to be many perfectly stable, well educated and competent households who just don't happen to have a lot of money.

It does make more sense to target support at children whose parents didn't do well in the education system either. Some of those children may be the same but others will not.

I can see why some people think it's patronising and unnecessary. And maybe it is. But it's no more patronising and unnecessary than the current pupil premium target of low income households.

SunshineMMum · 10/12/2013 12:58

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BettySwollocksandaCrustyRack · 10/12/2013 12:58

Mumpires - so do you think if your parents were real boffins with hundreds of fantastic exam results would your life be any different?

My sister is a real academic, far more so than me. However, you could fit her common sense on the back of a postage stamp, she amazes me sometimes. One of her kids is a real clever clogs, the other really struggles and finds school work really hard.

MaidOfStars · 10/12/2013 12:59

I resent your opinion that if you don't have a degree you are somehow below those that do and the insinuation that the higher the level of education you have, better the parent you would be
Also, it's not clear to me why this premise would be true.

My husband and I have four degrees between us. If any child of ours needed help with science stuff, we'd be on it.

Languages and history, um, not so much. At that point, our degrees are meaningless as we try to help our child conjugate difficult French verbs. In fact, we'd be "reduced" to level of those parents who don't have degrees faints, simply standing by and encouraging our children to study/read other books/look shit up like, you know, all parents should be doing.

Golddigger · 10/12/2013 13:01

I did think that you had a point until your last post. Now I am questioning your angle and motives.

Madmammy83 · 10/12/2013 13:02

I think you are outrageous, OP. I'm a highly intelligent individual who is more than capable of helping my child get a good education. Are you telling me that because I had a poor standardized test in 1999 and do not have qualifications in accountancy, business, mathematics, a language, or IT that I should pay money to a school so that my child can get extra support? Support in what, how to cope with the fact that your Mum or Dad has no degree? What? This is one of the most foul threads I've ever seen on MN. Pull your head out of your arse and concentrate on teaching your children how NOT to be an elitist snob. I can assure you that a degree in accountancy is no addition to a child struggling in French, nor is a German degree sufficient to aide a child struggling with maths.

Foul.

SaucyJack · 10/12/2013 13:03

It does make more sense to target support at children whose parents didn't do well in the education system either.

Only if you accept the massive and offensive generalization that people who didn't perform well in their GCSEs at the age of 16 are inherently thick and lazy and have not gone on to have productive or rewarding working lives.

sashh · 10/12/2013 13:04

Education and qualifications are different things. Ability and qualifications are also different things.

NigellasLeftNostril · 10/12/2013 13:05

what saucyjack said, spot on

SignoraStronza · 10/12/2013 13:05

YABU. I jacked in A-levels and went to work instead. Ended up working with some right thickos, who'd spent three to four years gap yahing and getting pissed studying anything other than common sense and how to actually work.

Just because I am 'uneducated', please do not assume my dc are at an educational disadvantage. I'll make sure they aim to achieve at exams, but only because it widens the options for them in life.

ouryve · 10/12/2013 13:05

manic - the pupil premium isn't for targeted support anyway - it's for schools to spend as they see fit.

dashoflime · 10/12/2013 13:06

I get where your going with this but there are practical problems- the school would have to ask all the parents about their qualifications!

FSM are a rough indication but its info that's easy for the school to gather because the criteria is very simple and its in the parents interest to supply it so that they can get a free service.

I'm a bit Confused at all the people claiming to be insulted at the idea of allocating by education though. The pupil premium is not supposed to imply anything about the individual families. The premium is for the whole school to spend as it wishes. The counting of individuals (on any criteria) is only supposed to be a broad indicator of the overall demographics of the intake.

Its a bit of an odd thing to take personally.

ouryve · 10/12/2013 13:07

Bloody hell SaucyJack. I wholeheartedly agree with something you said Shock

GhoulWithADragonTattoo · 10/12/2013 13:08

YABU - this is a terrible idea. You might well actually be encouraging people to do badly at school because their children will benefit finanically in due course!!

fruitpastille · 10/12/2013 13:08

It's definitely true that the pupil premium could be more fairly administered. For a child to qualify they need only to have had some free school meals at some point in the last 6 years. Clearly this could include families who only needed them for a brief time and are not necessarily disadvantaged in terms of supporting their child's education.

The idea of supporting children whose parents are less than average in terms of their literacy and numeracy skills might be one way to make it fairer but it's true that many people without qualifications are not necessarily in that group. But how else could you measure it??

Much better to scrap the pupil premium and put the money into supporting children in schools where there is a proven need.

And pp can't be spent on swimming pools etc, the school has to prove that they are getting value for money by showing the impact of the pp on the chikdren it has been spent on.

And for all those graduates with less educated parents, surely that is a matter of statistics? In the older generation, far fewer people went to university than do now.

manicinsomniac · 10/12/2013 13:08

but saucyjack , how is that different from the current massive and offensive generalisation that parents who are poor must have children who need extra help to succeed to in school. I'd say the first generalisation is likely to have more truth in it than that one.

Madmammy83 · 10/12/2013 13:11

It's not, necessarily, just about homework support, as the OP acknowledges, but about everything. I've said this before on here - a parent that can negotiate paperwork and complex admin systems, can write formal letters well, can support and comprehend new systems of learning (phonics, anyone?), can talk on a level with a teacher without being intimidated, can expand a topic through their own interest in it, etc, etc, etc, obviously advantages their child over the parent who can't.

I am a bit offended that you would automatically assume that because a person hasn't had a good formal education that they cannot excel in all the above. I did a year of hairdressing after a really poor final year in school and never went into education after that. What I did do was gain as much work experience as was possible, I did my husband's accounts for years, have liaised in writing with solicitors, schools, banks, company managers, and as part of one particular job was in charge of teaching a new system of learning to a new employee. I had never heard of phonics until my eldest child started school, but it's hardly rocket science to pick up, is it? Of course I was able to comprehend it. Two of my SILs have quite substantial degrees and are absolutely thick as planks when it comes to learning new information or any kind of technological advances. I'm aware that I'm taking this rather personally but is this really what people think of us? I should mention that I've been a SAHM for the last 5 years too, that probably makes me bottom of the pile altogether.

shadylane · 10/12/2013 13:13

Don't get why she's being flamed so much. I worry about being able to help with my kids homework in the future although I do have a degree, because I really didn't like school and found the sciences painfully hard. I had no support at home as my mother was poorly educated- I would have loved extra support. Why is this such an awful idea? My husband doesn't have a degree but has highly skilled job still he always says he wished he'd properly educated himself to give himself more options.

NigellasLeftNostril · 10/12/2013 13:13

the school has to prove that they are getting value for money by showing the impact of the pp on the chikdren it has been spent on
really well that certainly didnt apply when mine were on FSM about 4 years ago, they saw no benefit from it whatsoever, but the swimming pool got a new roof.