to think many parents who send their children to the lower quality independent schools are so pretentious it is cringeworthy?

[Barrelofloves]

Is it due to insecurity? Because I have found the seriously loaded/titled folk are not like that at all.

agree lequeen but infact just looked ours up .....at A level

comp 851 points
private 928 points
state grammar 1106point

discrepancy between comp and private at gcse was 76% A-C compared to 97% private

once the less academic crowd has left -the picture is very different and much more realistic impression of the school can be gained imo

LeQueen- would much prefer to see really bright children from poor backgrounds given the opportunity to go to University and develop their potential. The current system makes it so difficult. I do believe that University should be free but only available to the academically gifted. Nowadays, academically gifted has v little (if any link) to earning potential.

PLUS those students might go off and do something that they are more suited to, and end up earning much more money and being much happier.

On the subject of comps. I was quite happy in the knowledge that if DD doesn't get into the super competitive grammar nearby, then she can go to the comp down the road which has an "excellent" OFSTED. Then as a N London middle class mum, I naturally started looking into things closer (BBC results thingy) and found that the school in question has a 55% score for 5 GCSE A-C including maths and english.

How on earth can a school be judged excellent if 45% of its pupils are leaving without the bare minimum for most jobs - Grade A-C in maths and english?

I had an argument discussion with a friend (who works for govt and so may have bought into the schpiel) who said it's to do with value added. My response to her was bollocks. A school cannot be excellent with those results. That is not excellent. Call it good if you must, but not excellent.

rants

Why are the expectations so low in the state sector? Yes people have problems etc but this particular school is in a nice middle class area, not a deprived one. I think many schools simply set their sights too low and have low expectations of their students. It is the exact converse to the private school situation. In one you are pushed and pushed and it's sink or swim - maybe too much for some students. In the other it seems that no-one expects you to be able to do much at all if those results are applauded as marvellous.

Christ almighty, can't believe people actually agreeing with me, obviously apart from Xenia. Can't be arsed to read her post (have had wine)

Ha. My response to my friend was "bollocks" but it may have been bollocks too

Certainly social mobility is going backwards now.

I wonder if it's all a big con. Give people the choice, and the option to go to uni. But forget to tell them that unless it's this university, and that course, that they won't have any advantage at all.

So as ever the people in the know carry on getting all the best stuff, and the others don;t. The difference now being that people are pretending this isn't so, and students are bankrupting themselves to find out the hard way.

Xenia - I understand your love of all things 'beautiful' in the private sector as one who is about to remove her children from such a privileged school life and plunge them into what is actually a very nice (if not a little less grand) state school. My question to you is (as you weren't around when I was thrashing this dilemma out on MN), if money was tight would you still do it? Would you work nights/'round the clock if things were different to give your children the same opportunities that you can apparently easily afford?

Or would a good state school suffice?

thedollyridesout xenia not the person to ask that

That rather suggests that MrQueen is a bit of an idiot/snob/lazy though, as he is disregarding a large number of applicants, who might be just what he is looking for. Rather like never employing women, or people with disabilities or ethnic minorities. Just because a university is Russell Group doesn't mean all it's courses are good, or all it's graduates are gifted. There are non-Russell/Oxbridge (or whatever group you like) universities that excel in particular areas - especially some of the ex-polys that have the best vocational courses because they have very good links with industry (things like architecture or IT).

Unless you are recruiting direct from university, then what school someone went to, or what university they attended are very quickly irrelevant, as you will be looking for what skills and experience they have, where they worked and what they did there, and then what relevant qualifications (usually post-grad or specialist) they hold.

Social mobility is going backwards - the Sutton trust found that. In the 60s the poor clever child had the grammar school route which is now denied them. They were plucked from the sink estate into a middle class life in a sense. now it may be going backwards because all the very not clever people are going to stay where they are because the bright poor ones have moved up so eventually (now even) you've got the dregs who will stay there genetically and the rest who have already risen up - one theory but I doubt that's the entire answer as IQ tends to move towards the mean etc.

"My question to you is (as you weren't around when I was thrashing this dilemma out on MN), if money was tight would you still do it? Would you work nights/'round the clock if things were different to give your children the same opportunities that you can apparently easily afford?"

Ah but this is the interesting point. I often do work extremely hard and sometimes all night but that's more because I love the work than anything else. I worked 23 hours the other weekend although I didn't need to to earn the school fees.

I suppose I'd try to think smart if money were tight. My children's father taught at a school where one of them went so we paid 15% fees. A friend has a son just starting at his other half's school and they are just paying 15% of school fees because of a teacher discount. There are other ways to get into good fee paying schools too. I might if I were poor use our musical genes which seem to mean most of us get 3 or 4 grade 8s, perfect pitch is amongst us and we seem able to sight sing etc without too much effort so if I were very poor I suppose i would have just put a bit more effort into getting a child a music scholarship (one of ours did get one but more could have if I'd have put in more parental effort).

My parents went to state grammars in the 1930s. But my siblings and I went to fee paying schools and all 9 cousins are at them on my side of the family It will be interseting to compare the life consequences for the cousins on the other side who are in the state sector and have regional accents and indeed when we met my mother's famly at her funeral from whom she'd grown mostly apart over the years it was a massive class and income gulf - lovely people and some quite clever but like a completely different world achieved by in effect her brains really, that's what got her where she got in a generation and the fact she worked.

Or would a good state school suffice?

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I email the worst to my student daughter confidentially. They often won't even state their GCSE results because they are so bad and they use it's when they mean its and cannot be bothered to use a spell checker. They are usually at places like Middlesex ex poly rather than Bristol or Durham etc

'some quite clever' but 'with regional accents'. Oh dear. Does having a 'regional accent' stop one from being clever??? (BTW I DO NOT have a regional accent but nevertheless.... etc etc, I can't stand this anymore).

I don't state my (all grade A ) O level results on CVs or application forms either. And I did go to a Russell group insitution. Three of them actually.

Hmm. Having attended a number of Russell Group institutions, I have known a fair few very, very able students who achieved firsts after disappointing at A level for any number of reasons. Would MrQueen rather take on the person who merely took advantage of what was available rather than the person who fought harder to make something of their careers? How interesting.