To not understand people who talk about being the first in their family to go to uni like it’s a badge of honour?

[Kyrgyzstan]

Sorry if this sounds dismissive of their achievements but isn’t it less of a rags to riches tale of personal achievement and more of a generational difference? I mean barely any of our parents generation went to university and now it’s pretty much expected if you want a half way decent job.

Obviously if you were raised by heroin addicts and managed to still get good grades and go off to uni that’s different but the children of ordinary parents who just didn’t go to university talking about it like a huge achievement sounds a little strange to me?

OP, my parents were 38 and 45 when they had me. ‘Older’ parents, especially for the 80’s. Both from very working class Black Country backgrounds. Both university educated - Dr and Nurse. My mother actually ended up becoming a university senior lecturer. They were the same age as your parents were, when we did our GCSE’s. Your parent’s lack of education, or ability to help you during your own education, is nothing to do with their ‘old’ age. I don’t need you to educate me on the maternal age of first time pregnancies thank you.

One thing which has opened up access would be the foundation courses now available at some unis - those geared precisely to helping those who do not have the normal range of qualifications.

Also, the Open University provides much more support for those who have no experience of academia.

It's a whole different ball game for those who enter via the traditional routes (and was significantly harder prior to the internet where you can now find at least some guidance to form filling and studying techniques).

I remember starting uni and wondering what these 'Brodie's Notes' were that other students were talking about. [I don't think they exist now: they were akin to the more modern York Notes.]

It does because there’s 30 children in a class and only me and a few other make our kids do their homework as a result our kids are top of the class. I highly doubt the parents of the other kids are suddenly going to help them with their studies when they get to gcse age.
My point was it’s unusual to have parents helping with GCSEs let alone a levels. If that’s someone’s experience that’s great and I’m sure it helped them a lot but it’s not typical so therefore it’s not like there’s loads of competition from people who’s parents helped them seeing as those people are too much of a minority

No, it's not unusual for parents (or grandparents for that matter) to help children with their exams, @OP . It's only unusual in your experience.

You asked what I meant by old and you said my timeline didn’t make sense so I explained it

How do you know what the other 30 children in your kids class- and their parents are doing or not doing? And how do you extrapolate this data to a whole generation?

with the greatest kindness you are making wild assumptions and viewing it all through the narrow lens of your personal experience.
the sooner you get to university and acquire some critical thinking skills the better…..

Do you struggle to see things from someone else's perspective?
Just because something isn't typical for your immediate social group doesn't mean it's the same for others.

It is very, very common in my social group for parents to support their children with GCSEs and A levels. It's either direct support or paying for tutors.
I have a primary aged child and there is probably only 1 or 2 kids who don't engage with homework. In fact, our class WhatsApp has been busy this morning with parents asking for advice on how to support a particular piece of homework.

Homework doesn’t make any difference in primary school, there’s plenty of evidence to back that up, so that’s not why your kids are top of the class (though well done to them). Your attitude, however, will help enormously - you value education. Now, imagine how hard it would be to make it to uni if you come from both a family and a societal background that doesn’t value education. That you made it would be entirely down to you and you alone. That’s a very impressive achievement.

(Pre GCSEs you did either GSEs (aka O levels) or CSEs. Not optional as far as I know ( I was the last year to do O levels) but continuing in education post 16 was definitely optional.)

Do you have primary age kids? If you did you’d know spelling and maths homework is done online and there’s a leaderboard I can see that it’s only about 5 out of 30 that do it because everyone else has 0 points on it.

I also have a close friend who’s a teaching assistant and tells me a lot of people never make their kids practice reading

You said they were ‘old af’. But turns out they were just adults in their 40’s. You have a skewed idea of old if you think that makes them ‘old af’.

You are incredibly naive if you think parents don't help their teenagers in the GCSE and A level years, even if that helps doesn't look like direct one to one help, it takes other forms, like paying for a club that compliments the work at school, even things like debating current affairs around the dinner table, discussing a History book you have sourced and recommended for your child who is studying History as you yourself studied History and have the tacit knowledge to help, taking them to an Art exhibition for inspiration and discussing the pieces following the exhibition.

Do you have primary age kids? If you did you’d know spelling and maths homework is done online and there’s a leaderboard I can see that it’s only about 5 out of 30 that do it because everyone else has 0 points on it.

Not all schools do this. Ours doesn't.
Again, your experience isn't universal.

I spoke informally, I merely meant my mother was older than the average mother when she had me.

I was the first in my family to go to university. I had many advantages that others don't - i had parents who cared about education, who cared about culture and politics and could feed me and provide a safe home. However they (latterly just my dad as my mum died when i was 16) had no idea how to support me or even that they should - they both left school at 16 with few formal qualifications.

I went to all of the interviews on my own, filled out my UCAS form, applied for student finance on my own, sorted all of the accommodation etc... My dad dropped me off on the first day, gave me £50 (the first and last student funding i got from him) and said see you at Christmas. He cared but it was just he was on a very low income, was a busy single parent and had no idea about how much things costed. I spend most of the first two terms feeling like a fish out of water and terribly overwhelmed by it all.

Similarly when I came to graduate he had no idea at how to guide me to get a job. I was spat out in to the world with a degree from a very good university but no idea was wasn't really qualified to do anything much. I had no idea about the world of graduate schemes, internships etc.. I just needed a job ... and fast. My CV was thinner than most of my peers as I had to spend every holiday working to pay off my overdraft - n time for work experience, travelling or CV improving volunteer work

25 years later I have a decent, well paid career and am successful in life, but those university years and first few years after graduation were hard and i have always felt several steps behind those who come from more middle class families.

Having parents with money and time and who know who to support you and guide yo to get the best of of university matters.

I could say the same for you, your friends clearly put a lot of interest into their children’s education and that’s great but it is not the norm for the general population

No TT rockstars? Really? I know a fair few people who’s kids all go to different schools and thought this was a super common thing

If you're one of the only parents at your dc's school that is in any way engaged with your children's learning, and you yourself have stated the view that parents don't need to support kids doing GCSEs because that's for teachers to do, then that can only point to one thing - you are living in a certain type of community where parental engagement is very limited and where aspirations are very low. And the children growing up in that kind of community will be at a huge disadvantage, whether you can see that or not.

None of this is your fault, and the fact that you think it's totally normal merely reflects the limitations of your own experience. But it might benefit your children if you are able to realise that, actually, your experience isn't the norm for a lot of the children that your kids will be competing alongside in the future. A lot of kids will have highly educated parents who are incredibly invested and engaged in their education, and that will make a massive difference.

I'm not trying to bring you down, here, but you need to see that there is a huge gap between the environment that your kids are inhabiting and the environment that a lot of other kids regard as "normal". Do you really want your kids to be at a disadvantage?

There is absolutely no point in this thread. The OP isn’t really interested in learning why their initial, and subsequent, statements are wrong. No one is going to change this mindset.

.yes and selected out of doing homework for the entirety of primary school.
High achiever academically.
my point is you see one bit of information and make an assumption.
just because that platform says a certain number have not completed a task does not mean those parents are not engaged with their child’s learning

You never know. She might change her mind if you make the same comment enough times!

Sorry, just teasing- I know it must have been a technical glitch!

Your close friend can only tell you about the school where she works. Moreover, the likelihood is that she primarily interacts with the children who need a bit more help.

My college pushed and pushed everyone for Uni, their ONLY focus was UCAS points and applications and personal statements etc. To the detriment of people like me who didn’t want to go to uni. I was the one let down by the education system, there was no careers advice whatsoever! All uni, uni, uni (in a deprived town where most people’s parents didn’t have degrees either, I don’t think any of my peers parents had degrees or high flying jobs). It wasn’t considered unusual for those kids to be applying for uni though.

The funniest thing is, it’s all pointless anyway. I went through clearing to get my uni place a few years later, didn’t apply, no statements - just said I wanted to do a degree and they enrolled me there and then!

Had a moment of panic about 5 years later, thinking of retraining which would require a degree and did the same thing again! The uni was telling me it was so busy and I couldn’t possibly get a place on the course via clearing. Within 24 hours they were calling me up offering me a place. I declined it thankfully, and things worked out for me, but goes to show that it’s really not difficult at all to get a uni place.

People think I’m being derogatory here, but I’m not at all. This is just lived experience of myself and my peers, all in the situation described, and they all trundled off to uni like it was the norm. I actually feel like a fraud if I try to use my socio economic background as either an excuse for any failures, or as though I’ve “done better” than someone else. That’s just how I feel.

Thank you!

I spent 40 years working in schools in areas with "Multiple Indicators of Disadvantage."

The fact of the matter is that - by and large - the middle class children in the school had parents who absolutely did help with exam coursework and so on.

God bless her, when I was at school my mum tried her best. She paid up a set of encyclopaedia for me before I started primary school and encouraged me to read them. She used to read out the English side of my MFL and Latin vocab lists for me and I'd give her her the MFL or Latin.

However, I wasn't allowed to study in my bedroom (once I had one to myself) because it would have meant putting the heating on in there...until I was 16 and the 'Doc's Page' in the Sunday Post had an article explaining why it was important for children to be allowed to have a space where they could study in peace.

There has been a huge amount of information on this thread, on topics such as capital and social mobility, and also on the actual barriers that people from more disadvantaged backgrounds face. You seem to have a real difficulty with reflecting on these issues and accepting that society is incredibly diverse. I’m really struggling to understand why you even made this post tbh, because you certainly aren’t interested in broadening your mindset. I’m from the worst type of deprived background, was in the care system and left school with no qualifications. I now have a masters degree, yes it was challenging and yes I am proud of it. What you probably don’t understand, is it isn’t just academic ability, if you come from a background where education is seen as ‘not for you’ that does become internalised very early on. The care system most certainly doesn’t set people up for academic success. You seem incredibly naive about just how many barriers there are which means that the uk education system, whilst free at the point of access certainly isn’t a level playing field. Those are shaped by external factors such as socioeconomic class, gender and race.

But that’s a very limited amount of data from which to extrapolate that a) parents at your school are not supporting their children in their studies, and b) it applies equally to all schools across the country.

I never enforced the completion of TT rockstars, etc., but we did read every evening, visit places and museums relevant to the current school topic, discuss those topics, practice spellings, practice the times tables (offline), etc. This would not have been visible to anyone.