... 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!

Ah peer groups! My school friends were all naughty and we took great delight in disrupting every class in our top all girls school (It was no.1 in the results league table when I was there).The teachers were all complete wimps and couldn`t handle us tearaways at all.

As I lived about 20 miles away from school, I fell in with a crowd outside of school. The type of kids who hung around smoking and drinking and would be classed as todays "hoodies" .

DS1 has friends that he hangs out with. They all live in the village we live in. I know all of them. My parents had no clue of who I was with outside school and being an all girls school, boys of any type were an attractive prospect. Same with all my naughty school friends (one used to skive school to visit her boyfriend in prison)!

mum2sons - Clearly you were neglected by your parents. No school can sort that out for you!

Obviously even in my girls' schools (they have both left now)(Haberdashers and North London Collegiate) some girls go off the rails but most girls get to university and then pick the careers they choose. I agree money is not the only criteria. My daughter's friends are doing a lot of different things. One is working for a pittance for an auction house. Another is about to go to the US to learn how to fly planes. One is reading medicine. 2 are doing law. One is a banker. Yes, they talk about money and also about what they will enjoy. They know the deal and I hope they make informed choices.

Manipulating the peer group is something parents have always done whether it's mixing with the parents' friends and suitable children or picking the school or whatever. It certainly works although it's not fool proof.

yes but Xenia you are getting things rather muddled. you are talking about what parents can do to help their childrens' chances. yes, we know all that, though of course we don't all have the wherewithal to do all the things you talk about.
but how that relates to the "choice" we make as individuals about our own careers I have no idea! can we choose to have rich/well educated parents or choose to go to private school or choose to have parents who love us and talk to us and value education how does that work exactly?

Not quite following.... None of us choose our genetics or family. Of course we don't. But I remember as a mid teenager choosing certain courses of action that had an effect long term. The thread is about parents choosing schools for children.

What none of us can do as parents is make our children exactly as we want them. In fact it's those children pressured into that who often ultimately fail. I have a wide variety of children which is very interesting and I'm glad. I would like them all to have work they enjoy and which enables them to buy whatever it is they choose, even if that's the money to buy time off. Sending them to a good school is a good start to achieving that.

In some ways by getting children in to academically selective schools at 7 rather than 11 or 13 you take pressure off because thre's less pressure at 7 anyway and then they don't have a huge pressured thing at 11.

AND ANOTHER THING

do you really believe that everyone has precisely the same academic potential, personality type and physical robustness so that they are on a level playing field and can choose whatever career they like?
honestly, for a smart woman that would be a very silly thing to think.
and manifestly wrong-headed.
Thatcherite dogma, and pretty arrogant at that.

Absolutely not. God has made us very unequal in looks, temperament and brains right from day 1. It's a very uneven playing field. All we can do is work with what we have but often you can do more than you think you can and many people are just limited by their own low expectations of themselves.

I was referring to this post:
"I'm saying people shouldn't whinge about costs of things when they grow up when they made stupid career choices when they were younger, that's all. We all go into these things with our eyes open. I genuinely don't care what my children choose as long as they enjoy the work, really really don't care but they need to understand that one career means X and another means Y in terms of life, chances, enjoyment of the job etc. So working the counter at Tesco may not be as much fun as being on the Tesco board and gives you much less power and control in your life but if they prefer serving on the till that's fine as long as they know the implications of particular choices."

where you are saying that if people can't afford school fees it is becuse they made stupid choices in their teens and twenties, i.e. they chose to be on the tills and not on the board.
their own choices not about their children

you see, what you view as a stupid career choice is (pretty self evidently I would have thought) tied very strongly to that person's innate intelligence, their family background, family income, family's education, physical health, mental health
not one part of which can they have any influence over whatsover.
so to then accuse them of whinging and making bad choices is just illogical.
I suspect what you are really saying is, well done me, I made good choices. whereas you are just very very lucky

Oh my god, timewarp! Well done Goldenoldie for reviving this old thread, so this topic really does go in circles!

hear hear, harpsi.

Some are unfortunate not to have had various ASC's available to them, or tutoring, or to have suffered adversely to the effects of hormones.

Choices are great - if you have them.

harp, true to some extent. But whether you're at a rough comprehensive or Manchester Grammar in your teens you can decide whether you're going to follow one career path or another and one will be well paid and one won't. It is certainly harder for children from difficult backgrounds or who are rich but not very clever to do as well as other children but even within the limitations of your IQ there are still ways to do well, whether it's building up the market stores to a chain or whatever.

Most schools have some careers advice and most children exercise some kind of choice even if it's limited by their background. If I could find out about careers on my own when I was 14 I don't see why other people can't. I don't particularly remember being at all spoon fed about it.

Xenia - you tread on very dangerous ground if you go down the route of "if I can do it, anyone can".

Again, you are presuming that all children had the same opportunities, influences, options and choices available to them that you did.

Well done you for getting where you did. But dont think for a second that if circumstances had been different for you in one way or another, you'd still be where you are now. Wherever that is.......

Yes, but in over 20 years of advising huge numbers of business people if you look at their class, their brains, their backgrounds there is rarely a common denominator except drive and hard work. I have seen so often people who want to succeed going ahead and doing it and others just sitting back wingeing about things but then never doing anything about it. I do think a lot of people are limited by their own low expectations of themselves (and perhaps even worse of their children).

My children haven't even started school yet but my focus is on saving money for them to go to uni. If they turn out not to be academic then I'd like them to learn a trade. However, the key to success is confidence.

Oh, should I, shouldn't I? Here goes... Xenia, Firstly - I'm pretty much in the opposite camp to you in most of what you've said, but do admire how you remain pretty cool under fire! My main problem with what you've been saying is that much of your approach perpetuates the "right address" element of personal success. Yes, people who go to private schools and then to Oxbridge do tend to be more successful in terms of career and finance, but that's not necessarily a result of a better education, but of a perception of a better education - the "right address". This doesn't do anything to improve society, business, education, etc, as perception will be in some cases overriding other candidates who have had a genuinely better education elsewhere.

Let me try an example. I've worked in several universities, and at one point was in a discussion with colleagues from York (which is a cracking university) about a candidate who had applied to study English there. She was apparently brilliant, but they were saying that she would be better off going to Cambridge as it's "the right address". Now, English at York is seriously good, pg opportunities offer many things that Oxbridge doesn't, and she'd have been lovely to teach. I could not understand why, when they knew they could offer her an equivalent or better education than Oxbridge, they would want to lose her to perpetuate the myth that Oxbridge is always automatically better.

I think if you want to choose a school, or help your child choose a university which you think will help your child, fine, but it grates with me if you choose something that will help because of how it's perceived, rather than how it is.

Oh Lord - if you're all still here, well done...

And yes, all those links were meant to be italics. So much for my education.

I hope Talulahsmum doesn't read these posts (see heated debate re. MN being forum for class-obsessed toffs). Just to stick my oar in, went to boarding school and oxbridge, relations went to westminster (very academic london school) - all rife with drugs/heavy drinking/general bad behaviour. My friends at state school were much more well adjusted and well behaved.

tinton...erm...this was one of the threads she mentioned in her op, that got her back up...

dont think so, we bought our first house (BC - before children) cause it was beside good primary/secondary schools

PrincessPeaHead, at your post about Xenia.

This is not the first time you have posted that about Xenia. You posted that EXACT same post on another thread that Xenia was in. I remember it because it was unnecessarily bitchy and petty and so beneath any decent person to write that about another. Do you follow Xenia around mn and cut-and-paste that post?

Honestly, you need to get a life.

you do know this is a old and revived thread, and the comment you are on about was made in 31st march 07...so, maybe this is the original one you saw then...
don't worry if it is....I was caught out by this thread