AIBU to think upper middle class professionals downplay how much they game education?

[MyCyanAnt]

I can’t be the only one who has noticed this. I went to genuinely average comprehensive schools and had parents who just dgaf like most in UK. I went to medical school where it seemed like this upbringing put you in a small minority, now an ultra high earner from own business but still do part time work as a GP. DC are 12 and 14.

Whenever the topic of education comes up with other doctors/professionals they will say stuff like it’s the child not the school who determines the outcome, we’re not pushing DC, we’re letting DC pick their school etc

However when it comes down to it none of them ever put their money where their mouth is. It won’t always be Eton but it will almost always be either a private, grammar or high performing comp in expensive catchment area instead of a genuinely average comp.

It’s a similar story with paying for tutors and other parents DC being interested in prestigious but completely unrelated careers e.g. Doctor or investment banking who have obviously been guided by parents.

I do the same but I feel like I’m an outlier in that I don’t lie about it, I’m obviously paying/gaming things so DC are much more likely to get a top job. I don’t see what’s wrong with admitting it yet it’s such a sensitive subject with some.

Having money will always give benefits.

Whether that's private school, tutoring, paying for resources, a bigger house so children have own rooms to study etc.

Even things like exam appeals - you have to pay per paper. As I said to my dc, if we had to appeal every paper, we could afford to risk money on doing so; someone who doesn't have £40 (I think that's the minimum) might say to their child, that yes, they could see that they should have got another point and gone up a grade, but they don't have £40 to pay upfront - and they certainly can't risk losing £40. So they won't appeal.
Our dc's (comprehensive) school did have a pot for people in that position, but it was limited, obviously. But you could had the right to appeal if you could pay for it, so that immediately you can see how people with money can get two bites of the cherry.
I'm glad that the appeals system changed to reduce down the above, but it still will have the element of money talks.

Thing is, you can't take away that advantage totally. And, as someone who couldn't afford private school, I have no resentment on people who do choose to pay for it.

What I think is lacking now, is there is an attitude of, at best, apathy towards education. I'd say a lot of the times it tips into contempt. No longer is education seen as a way out of poverty, and something children should aspire to. I suspect removal of the grammar schools (and those that are left becoming very much sharp-elbowed middle class) has contributed to that attitude.

I remember talking to someone who ran a charity out in the Philippines for children. They'd bought new computers for the school, and someone asked that surely in such an area of poverty, a lot of drug use, crime etc wasn't it almost certain that someone would break in to steal them for money. No, there was such a respect for education and knowing that it could take the children out of the situation their parents (and the potential thieves) were in, that they wouldn't touch the school.
We've lost that respect for education.

I don’t see any of this as gaming any system. Gaming the system is leveraging loopholes in a system to your personal advantage.

Do you mean your friends are hypocrites instead?

Making your own choices doesn’t mean choosing from every experience available. They are talking about which courses and extracurricular activities the child might prefer.

The question in the OP isn't why do people do it. Its why they pretend they're not doing it.

I think your own parents were unusually uninvolved in your education @MyCyanAnt. You should also try to do something about the chip on your shoulder too

I think recognising unearned privilege takes away from your own achievements.

Many people often like to think they are well off or own their own home or whatever, due to their hard work and wise choices. Not because e.g. they were lucky to be born in a period where they experienced the most favourable ratio of earnings to house prices in history, or because their socio economic background by lottery of birth meant they ended up in high paying graduate jobs post university.

Most people will acknowledge of course that it's a unmeasurable combination of your background/privilege/lack of privilege, how hard you work, how clever you are, the times you live in, how determined you are and what your stress responses etc are that determine where you end up.

Some people have so much drive and capability that overcomes their background, and this is what people like to identify with. On the other hand there are thick numpties from upper middle class backgrounds who end up in jobs way above their capability level because they sound clever than they are due to their accent and know how to handle some situations with bullshit.

It's just mentally more comforting to put less emphasis on the unearned factors because it allows you to feel superior to those who have or achieve less (as they must be less hard working, less clever or arseholes).

And I think this inclination extends to the conversations about their children that you mention.

This is such a funny thread - a common-or-garden doctor, who has to work for a living, in a hierarchical structure, being shouted at by the managers, having to fill in forms, shaking in their shoes about a disciplinary hearing and being struck off by the GMC for using hurty words, and googling symptoms being a GP is referring to herself as 'upper middle class'. Priceless.

Is part of this not because on medicine there can be 2 extremes.

I’d argue that if your parents dgaf they are at one end.

At the other end there would be medics who’s parents very much expected them to become doctors, were strongly pushed in this directions and frankly never really had a choice.

I went to a grammar school for 6th form and remember a friend who had got pretty much full marks in maths, further maths, physics and chemistry absolutely besides herself because she got a B in biology. All her parents could do was tell her that she could never be a doctor now and she’d let herself and her family down. She’s now a paediatrician in a London hospital.

But I can see why people who grew up with that level of pressure to go into medicine would think they weren’t pushing their children whilst still giving them a high level of educational privilege.

It depends what you believe the system to be.

Part of the narrative of our system is that we are a meritocracy where people in positions of wealth and power are there because of there hard work and intelligence. This is very much the story told by those who benefit most from the system

The loophole in that system is that parental wealth buys unearned privilege, in education and elsewhere.

I absolutely recognise this OP - there is a trend atm where people like to appear super casual, super free amd easy and non pushy with their kids, while quietly/behind closed doors being very pushy. For eg most if asked would claim they only did very modest amount of tutoring for 11+ purely to ensure dc familiar with the style of questions.... Its lies they are often tutoring from year 3 or at least using online tuition programmes or doing additional work at home themselves with kids.

You hear a lot of 'we just want the dc to be happy' etc and then it turns out they've tutored for years to ensure dc gets a grade 9 at maths instead of a grade 8

Quite.

When I lived in the UK, virtually every doctor I came across was either an immigrant / ethnic minority or white but noticeably working class. The idea that it’s a profession reserved for elites who went to top schools is laughable.

It’s clearly touched a nerve!

@MasterBeth Of course, that does assume that "the system" is designed to give a equal chance to every child, regardless of their background, or have we just abandoned that idea?

Increasingly that does seem to be the case. There's a school of thought in the States - particularly neoliberals and libertarians - who would like to see a "voucher system" for education.

Every child gets a voucher from the government that buys them the bare minimum of schooling. If the parents can afford to top it up, and want to, they can apply the voucher to a fee-paying school or a specialist one, and make up the difference themselves.

No school gets any government funding apart from what they receive from the vouchers. So state schools that fail to attract enough pupils will (in theory) be forced to up their game, just to stay in existence. Market forces will (again in theory) bring up performance all round.

It's easy to see that this would entrench societal inequality across the board - but in some circles, consumer choice is king.

I think most people are unaware of the Matthew Effect and in particular of the Matthew Effect in education.

Well i didn’t game the system for Dd at all. Im middle class with a very professional job (university lecturer)

She went to the local crappy comp where something like 34% of students get 5x GCSE inc maths and English. She got mainly 6s and a couple of 7s at gcse. No tutoring. Do I think she’d have got better grades if she’d gone to a better school? Probably.

I didn’t guide her once towards a career or degree. In fact when she said she wanted to be an architect I tried to suggest graphic design as an option as I was worried that architecture is a really tough and long degree. But she got a first class degree and is now doing her Masters at what’s probably the 2nd best university in the U.K. for architecture.

So yes I do think an intelligent kid will find their way. Obviously she has still had privilege which other kids won’t have had. Growing up in a house where books and reading/learning are celebrated I think makes a difference. Going out at weekends to museums, etc.

We could have afforded private school but chose not to. We could have gamed the system and moved nearer the grammar in the next town (she passed the eleven plus but then didn’t get in due to distance). I know people who “rented” a crappy terrace in town and put it down as their address, to me that did not feel right.

i also don’t like we aren’t rich we went without things to send our kids to private school. You are rich. As want can we cut out to send our kids to private school. Food and bills!!

It might be funny to you, but that just shows you've never thought very hard about how malleable a phrase like "upper middle class" is.

If the minor royals think of themselves as upper middle class, the lower middle classes like me struggle to articulate what those with greater social status than ourselves can be classified as. Could you help us, oh great social scientist?

At the other end of the scale my child has sen and went to a school that doesnt do gcses as one the whole the children arent capable of them. He has done other things like life skills and animal care and they do a barrista course with a charity cafe.

When i mention his schooling people literally rave on about all the things he does at school and how all children should do things like that and how its much more useful than gcses, how well set up he is for life, how lucky we are he can do animal care and make a coffee. how gcses are pointless and you dont need them anyway. But those same people pay for gcses tutors for children who are set for a 6 or 7 but could get an 8, get the revision guides, get themselves in an anxious mess about whether history and French is the right combination over geography and German.

I know they just trying to make me feel better that my son doesnt have gcses but it would be much more believable if they didnt live there life like gcses matter a lot.

I dont think peoole do it consciously.

Hmmmm, we fall in the middle of all this. Working class BUT due to working in education we know the system a bit.

Ordinary school BUT we picked the best one in the area and were lucky enough to get in.

We pay for tutors, paid for SEN testing, are chasing the NHS for diagnoses and support.

Half of the parents of DC's school are just the 'send them to the local school' types. They think we are nuts getting tutors in, have looked at us as if we're weird for paying for private testing. It isn't on their radar to think about this stuff. Then there are a few in the middle that ARE aware/concerned, but either can't afford or don't want to invest the finances in the extra support themselves. And finally, there is the 30% or so that do game the system, as I suppose we do. They picked this primary because it's exceptional and are sending their kids elsewhere (either grammar or private) for secondary because our feeder secondary is shite.

That's not an accurate description of Brits I know at all. Everyone I know goes above and beyond to get into a good school, living in shittier houses/flats so they're in an expensive catchment area etc. And I've never heard of anyone letting their kids decide where they go to school.

Yes. Until the big leveller comes out when uni applications are due.

Because the most popular courses (STEM, economics, medicine) at aspirational universities might be out of reach for those who gave the best opportunities to their children (who wouldn’t?)

• the student can’t show widened extenuating circumstances in their UCAS application
• the student hasn’t put in the above mentioned 4 hours of study every night

But I wouldn’t point the finger at those who are trying.

Well it's obvious really. But there's a whole sliding scale from those who both go private and get tutors for their DC, and use their networks to gain them advantage, to those parents who aren't focused on education at all.

Amongst the parents whose kids are going to a comprehensive, there will be a big variation.
I know one family that are on the wait list for their nearest goodish comp. If their DC doesn't get in they will start at the poorer school and move to the better one once a place becomes available.

the OP is talking about * downplay how much they game education? *

they are not GAMING education, they are just parenting.

I have never met one parent who didn't admit that they only live where they are because of the catchment, or that they were heavily tutoring if they wanted to push their kid to take the 11+.

If the OP is a GP she is likely a partner in the practice and very well paid for the hours she chooses to do.

Good doctors don’t tend to shake in their shoes about the GMC either.

You have a very strange viewpoint.

And whilst the boundaries of middle class vs upper middle class can be opaque being a well paid professional at least in income terms would tend to make you UMC even if you have had to buy your own furniture.

I think maybe the people you are talking about are saying that they are ‘relaxed’ within the spectrum of people that they know at their school? I’ve said the same sort of thing myself.

My children went to private school. Within that school there were parents who were incredibly pushy. I was very much more relaxed - constantly telling them that they should take a rest, have a break, that whatever they wanted to do was completely fine with me etc etc. They got plenty of subliminal message from school and schoolmates about the importance of giving it all your best shot so you can choices about how to earn your month in your adult life ahead.

They both pushed themselves (competitive with their peers and a general environment where it’s cool to do well and embarrassing to not care) and went into professional jobs after good universities.

But I am still always championing rest, balance, cutting themselves some slack. They - and life - put enough pressure on themselves. I always try balance that out those messages. It’s important to stay well and not take good physical and mental health for granted.