to think that children from low income families should have access to the best schools

[ReallyTired]

some schools have more than their fair share of erm.. Challenging children. Middle class parents can get their children a better peer group by buying an expensive house, praying or going private. Children from low income families are trapped in poor schools as their parents cannot move as easily.

I think that all state schools should prioritise 15% of places for fsm children so that poor children can have a chance of going to the best comprensive. Before I get jumped on most fsm children are NOT problem children. However they are more likely to educated at poor quality school. Children who get excluded should be given a place at the best school possible even if that means going over 30 in the class.

Children from wealthy families suffer less from attending a weak school. Middle class children can help to raise the aspirations of their classmates.

Perhaps private schools should take a few difficult children as a condition of their charitable status.

Money does not buy you back a parent that's died, or a parents mental or physical health. Money doesn't buy back the emotional stability of a child affected by a messy divorce, or the care and attention that a child misses out on because of a siblings disability.

All children that have difficulties in life should be given extra support, paid for by PP if necessary, not just those whose parents are low income. I'm not saying we should stop helping the children from low income families, just that we should find a better way of identifying children that need extra and then provide it based on need, not their parents income.

Yabu.

But on the whole, it makes the system better for many who do qualify and are categorised as disadvantaged.

Yes, possibly to the detriment of children that are more in need of extra help.

I take your point about admissions, but as all schools are judged by the same OFSTED, and they are all supposed to teach the NC, then good v bad schools shouldn't have that much influence. All schools need better support from outside agencies, and they need that more than they need a few more well educated parents at the gate each day.

"Priority for the poor means promoting benefit Britain."

so the only poor people are the ones on benefits, really
ffs only on mn

Needaholiday, my post was in response to someone saying she thought we should all be paying for state education, nothing to do with private school.

Lots of schools are desirable because their results are good. Their results are often good because their parents are supportive and take their children places, talk to them and read with them every day. If you removed 20% of those children and instead put children there whose parents didn't or couldn't help them or take them put etc, what would happen to the results?

I suspect the results are good because of the parental input and expectations, and the results would deteriorate with the abscence of this support, meaning the school's reputation would be reduced and the more supportive parents would move elsewhere? It isn't the fact that certain schools are just 'good' no matter what the pupils are like.

Apologies for typos-fat fingers!

Schools are ultimately 'good' 'middling' or 'poor' depending on their intake.Your OP smacks of inverse snobbery and a desire to pull veryone else down to the lowest common denominator.
Kids from poor families can sit the 11+ ( a kid who is half intelligent just needs a few sets of practice papers from WH Smiths to familiarise them self and get up to speed) or they can go to church.If their families can be bothered, and there you have the crux of the problem.They can't.

MrsDeVere I hope your children achieve their dreams. However having dreams and putting them into practice are different things. It is hard to put in the sheer graft to become a doctor if your peer group spends their life mucking about. It is hard to become a doctor if your teacher has not covered the syllabus and your parents cannot afford private tutoring to help you to get A*. Very few doctors come from a low income background. Infact a lot of medical students come from private schools.

WooWooOwl The problems you mention are not caused by a lack of money. I am not sure how extra funding for children who have lost a parent would help. No amount of money can bring a parent back from the dead.

This article might give you food for thought

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2463251/Class-divisions-still-blight-education.htmll

The difference comes because of the parenting, and the parents expectations of their children's achievement and more importantly, their behaviour.

Working in schools, this sums it up.

Worked in a naice school with intake of naice kids and supportive parents, teaching and learning was crap, as was the majority of policies. But 80% of kids left with gcse a*-c Inc eng and maths.

Moved down the road to a school with on paper the same levels from primary. Pass rate is 40%. Teaching and learning is lots better and whole school support it's amazing. The difference is the parents.

I can't access that article.

Money could help a child who's lost a parent by providing automatic access to counselling, and to pay for all the things that the PP can pay for, like contributions towards school trips. I imagine it's pretty hard for most families when they find themselves grieving and a wage down, or possibly two wages down when the bereaved parent has to take time off sick and rely on SSP. But the PP and FSMs arent available to families that claim the widows pension.

But I don't see how money can help that much when a child is learning to read and their parent can't or won't read with them at home, or when a parent can't or won't do anything engaging with their child at the weekends or during the holidays. I don't see how money can help make a parent encourage their child to do homework, or provide quiet space and time for the child to their work in. Money isn't going to make parents change their attitudes towards education, or make a difference in the respect they have for teachers or make them effectively discipline their children when they're at home.

So why should some children who need extra get it, and not others?

Change the attitude of some of the parents

I have just read the appalling over reaction of Sydney Russell School to a child not having £1 to pay for charity. ( I Know the article is in the Mail but surely excluding a child for this is appalling)

Sydney Russell School in Dagenham asked for a £1 donation to charity for a non uniform day. Ternic Aciro 12 did not have the money so was excluded for the day. This is just terrible a punishment based on not having a pound either forgot by the pupil, or maybe her mother could not afford the pound .

The school is not a well off school either, 31.1% eligible for FSM and 48% deemed to be disadvantaged. This is showing up who is poor and who is not.

Forgot to pay the donation but didn't forget to dress in normal clothes . Non story, the school appear to have been quite clear in the rules re non uniform day.

Wow, what an abundance of DM readers. Pity your educations haven't allowed you to see through the stereotypes pushed by the media.

I know lots of poor people. I don't know anyone that doesn't work.

I work really hard, I've always worked really hard. I did really well at school and university and have lots of qualifications. I still have a low income. Most people I know are in the same position as me.

I see very little difference between the money people receive in benefits and the money they receive through work. This is because I enjoy work and because even if I wasn't to earn a penny more working than I would on benefits I would still prefer to work. A life of no work is no life at all as far as I can see. I can't image there are many people not working who wouldn't want to work if they were able. Rich people have taken more out, they possibly had to do a bit more work compared to say a disabled person who isn't able to work, but so what.

I don't agree with the point in the first post that if a child is excluded it gets moves to the bed school in the area. If it's excluded segregate it with other trouble makers in special schools and don't let it go near children who actually want to work and whose education might get disrupted.

Happy I find your thinking really woolly on that point. It's not about rich and poor, it's about circumstance. We're well off. We only have one dc. We all enjoy good health. We really don't take that much 'out' and we put a lot in through tax.

Next week I could get cancer. So that would probably tip the scales back to taking more out. Or we could have 6 more DCs. Or, conceivably, we might not have had any DCs. (In which case not only would we have taken less out wrt to his birth, education etc, but we'd have put a hell of a lot more in as I wouldn't have had time off, worked part time, etc).

Luck (and to a much lesser extent, opportunity) is what decides how much an individual puts in or out. Which is why our imperfect, but still wonderful welfare state, is universal.

My DC all attended academic private schools on scholarships/bursaries. We were are poor. Not FSM though as DH worked but very low income. FSM was only available for those on income support (or its predecessor, can't remember the name now)
DH grew up in care and is semi literate, I was in a single parent household with a DM on low income and went to the local comp. I wanted to go to university but DM married and 'D' not SF told me I had to get a job or get out. So no more education for me.

The private schools on the whole were very good but DS1 was 'difficult' as a mid teen and eventually was asked to leave. He has since been assessed as ASD and a MH disorder. My concerns when he was young were dismissed as they knew I couldn't have afforded the assessments. They are/were chargeable in the private sector.

With hindsight I would have sent him to the local school at senior level..he would have been helped and not vilified as 'bad' rather than ill/SN. The school wouldn't have been able to wash their hands of him.

Although we had high expectations/aspirations, as did they as youngsters, so far none of them have really used the education as I would have hoped. They do have the confidence/poise around people that is often apparent in privately educated adults though.

Greengrow There are not many special schools for children with behavioural problems left. If all the troublemakers were in one class with no well behaved children then it would not be so bad. The problem is that many children who are forced to attend sink schools are well behaved and cannot learn because of a few really distruptive children.

Do you think an "OFSTED inadequate School" can cope with a child who has complex emotional needs? I feel that a child like feckitall ds needs a school that is at least rated as "OFSTED good". There are plenty of OFSTED good or even outstanding schools that don't have stellar results as education is far more than results.

Putting a child with complex behavioural/ special needs into a failing school is asking for disaster. I feel children should not be set up to fail.

As an aside OFSTED suggest giving poor pupils priority at top primaries.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10742076/Ofsted-give-poor-pupils-priority-places-at-top-primaries.html

There are many reasons a school might be inadequate. Inadequate doesn't mean it's Garunteed that they can't meet a child's emotional needs. Plenty of so called good schools are crap on reality with their treatment of difficult children

My point is that unless support is in place for DC that need it then even putting them in the 'best' schools won't necessarily help. DS1 was in a top high achieving school but when push came to shove they wanted shot of him rather than help him. He met your criteria of poor child and later challenging teen.

No child should have to attend a failing school, complex needs or not.

Every school should be enabled to deal with children who are best suited to mainstream, and there needs to be significantly more places available in the various types of special schools.

Sink schools are not created by inadequate teachers, they are created when enough parents who don't support education send their children into one place which then doesn't recieve the support to effectively deal with the challenges they have to face.

Even outstanding schools will need help to deal with the most challenging behaviour, no regular state school is fully equipped to deal with every type of behaviour they might have to cope with with. Just sending the few children with the very highest needs to top schools won't solve the problem, and it won't improve social mobility.