... to think it slightly odd that so many of my school mum friends are hung up about secondary schools already, when their kids are only 5!

[sandyballs]

It seems to be the sole topic of conversation lately - how good/bad the local comp is, how extra tuition will be needed for the local grammar etc etc.

The kids are 5/6 years old! Let them be kids!

I'm sure our parents never had all this school angst!

ok, I don't know enough Italian for what is going on between you two

eh! the 'prof' used to make us find the 'parole chiave' nei promessi sposi!!

why? what does it say about my education?

(aren't you supposed to be packing?)

Liceo: high school
"promessi sposi" long XIX novel by Alessandro Manzoni, which every Italian student was supposed to know in depth by the time he/she was 18... (starting with reduction at middle school)... enough said...
No, nothing pippi, key words in England are the words that little children are forced to learn at a glance when they start school.
so pippi, are you a classico or scientifico?

sorry reduction wrong word, you want "abridgement" there

classico. I know my latin and my greek me but do not ask me about a division !!

you?

classico, of course.

the best!

this is becoming our thread, I think we should retire! I must - DH will divorce me otherwise!
night night and have a nice trip again!! ciao.

sorry, sorry for the hijack .
It's very interesting, after all I should surrender and get into this whole secondary school thing...

I wouldn't bother, you'll be in milan by then.

Well, I'd say that most state school pupils also do pretty well in life. Of course, there are some who fall by the wayside but all of my friend's state educated grown-up children have decent jobs and lifestyles.

As for that apartheid, we don't have it in our local schools. Maybe that's what makes them successful for virtually all.

I agree with the sentiments of Ahola and Oliveoil; they speak a lot of sense.

Xenia - for someone seemingly so well educated your views are rather narrowminded, bigoted and not to mention stupid (since when was 'black' the opposite of 'posh'?)

I am fairly new to MN so am still finding threads like this rather amusing (as, I am guessing, does Xenia). Let me introduce myself. I am a statistic. Well, rather, I was. I grew up in the bottom socioeconomic environment (gasp, horror, a council estate) and went to a school that in my final year was deemed in the top five worst schools in England. Not something I normally like to broadcast, but still. By 21 I was jobless, single and pregnant. But then when my child was 2 I went to work (factories, retail etc) but thought I deserved a better life for myself and my child so I put myself through college and university while single-handedly raising my child (and only missed a 1st by 2%, fancy that) and now I run my own business and am currently "coaching" my child so that he can sit the 11+ exam. Not everyone who was not born with a silver spoon is a lost case, you know. Attitudes like those spouted by people like Xenia just serve to worsen our country as much as they might think their education improves it.

Dear God, don't tell me someone still does 11+ exams do they?

I dont really understand this as in scotland children tend to go to their catchment school and not 'THE BEST SCHOOL NEARBY'

gf, I don't mind criticism of me on here but only if it accurate says what I said. I really never said black was the opposite of posh. My children's schools are thankfully much more racially mixed than the state schools around here as the parents presumably are less racist in the private sector. The schools have loads of Chinese, Indian ets applicants but not many Afro-Caribbeans. It may just be a time issue. The Ugandan Asians came here and worked very hard and want the children in private schools and worked their way up. The more recent Somalis around here are too poor to afford fees. So may just be a time lag.

It seems that for some people, private education isn't only about trying to give their child a "better" education. It's about the quiet satisfaction and sense of being a step ahead of "those poor souls" that can't. I send mine. Question is, would they do as well (or perhaps better) in the local state primary? Actually, I don't know and so opt for the option that lets me sleep easier at night. Am I contributing to the problem of a two-tier system where real choice is only available to those who can afford to exercise it? Probably.

Yes it is a time lag Xenia. I had rich Pakistanis, Iranians and Arabs in my school too. Not any other nationalities. If more of the recent immigrants could afford private school fees, some would put their children into one. I don't know a thing about state schools, but in my school racism, whether from students or teachers was very effectively dealt with. It meant that the minorities were treated fairly, obvioulsy in some situations you have to pay to be treated well, which is a damned shame.

Xenia - you suggested that city institutions employ black people from public schools in order to fulfil ethnic diversity quotas rather that on merit. In haven't seen it.

There were no ethnic minority diversity policies in any of the City law firms I worked in nor in any of the merchant banks my friends worked in. In fact I had friends tell me they kept getting refused interviews on the basis of having the wrong (foreign) surname or the wrong postcode. If they changed the spelling of their name and moved house, low and behold they started to get more and more interviews !

I know many who are desperate to get AAA (A level), Oxbridge 2/1s, well spoken black candidates. I would hope however we never get to a position of positive discrimination on any grounds in the UK. My daughter (blonde) and her friend UK public school black and from the Carribean both got job offers at the same time a month ago., I hope they both got them on merit. The problem for firms is they often have 1000 candidates who could get in on merit alone and if your clients are clamouring for more women, more non whites and lots of gays on your staff then you meet client need and if all those candidates were equal then that's fine. Someone rang me up this week cross the EOC hadn't taken seriously the fact 200 white males were excluded from a police job. Fascinating issues.

Amusingly I was sent a diversity policy document from a publisher today. I was looking at one professionally last week too as my client, the service supplier was obliged to comply with it. This is diversity in terms of race, sex, disability also class, homosexuality etc. On the law firm point head lines in one legal paper last week was a bank requiring all its law firms to give their policies on sexual orientation protection - things like whether they monitor who is gay etc in the workforce. The diversity document I just read in today's post which I then threw out interestingly said that there was not yet convincing evidence that if you employ more working class or gay staff etc you make more profits. I would have thought it was fairly likely - if you recruit from white men from one school you are choosing from a narrow band so don't choose certain people. If you choose from a broader range you'd get a cleverer bunch but the document says it is a pity there is no clear research which shows diversity leads to more profits.

Does diversity pay?

Xenia - in fact I don't agree with positive discrimination, or whatever it is called these days. I think we should all be taken on on merit and generally are.

I was just stating that in my experince, most City istitutions do not practice it any way. People are taken on merit yes, but SOMETIMES there is prejudice at paper application level, re. surnames and postcodes and later at interview there may be those who don't take you on the basis of how you sound or look. People get rejected for some legal jobs beacuse they don't sound posh enough ! It is a fact.

I sort of agree about banks,my firm pimps at the top end of graduates, and the banks really don't give a stuff about skin or sex.
The contrast with publishing & media where I've also done stints is quite stark.

As pimps we are required to keep track of various crap about candidates. We are mildly offended by that. As some MNers may have noticed, I'm not the most politcally correct person around, but we place people for money. That's our ethic, we don't care who you sleep with, colour of skin, or age, just so long as we can sell you.

JP Morgan actually actively promote gay groups, and I was quite taken aback by the offensive way they told me about their need for getting away from stereotype white males.
It was demented since there are whole groups in my game which have not one single white english male in them. We don't have many women (about 3%) but that's not sexims in banks, but in British schools and we can't fix that. Our database has about 12% females, but that's because we hunt globally, if we only had to deal with the detritus of the British "education" system for girls, the % would be far less than 1%. As I recall we have about 4 British women on our "smart" list. In perspective, we have well over 100 Algerians, about a dozen of whom are female. There are so many smart Algerians that we've been trying to think of a better way of getting them.

I wrote our "equal opportunity" policy, which is not an inspiring work because some banks require us to have one, even though they know our ethic of greed is good.
That's actually the point about the modern City.
Of course there is sexism, racism, ageism and a few prejudices that haven't even got names yet. But it's like football. Easily the most racist segment of our society are football fans. Yet they pay for shirts bearing the names of foreign born coloured players, who earn vast sums.
Same with the City, it's a people based competitive sport. If you don't pick good players, you will be utterly shat upon.
As a pimp I can tell you that errors are made, and I had the case last year where I'd personally recommended a black bloke as being exactly right for a job (big badge to wear). He didn't get the job.
Turned out the way they interviewed people for this role was a complete fiasco.

I don't understand how discrimination can ever be positive.

I am one of the many who say that they don't believe in "positive discrimination" . But we should perhaps reflect on why the notion of "positive discrimination" came about.

All sorts of other biases creep into personnel selection (naturally) but in practice I haven't seen positive bias towards black candidates at the point of selection. Perhaps a lot of monitoring and increased consciousness of late but not bias at interview selection.

Frankly, I see positive discrimination often being used as code for expressing a feeling that "black people don't work hard enough to get to the top". A big subject, but somewhat tangential to this thread.