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.

I believe to get round to Xenia's you have to have your daughter spending the summer on a yacht in the Carribean.

This is what she said on a recent thread:

"So I suppose not only have I enjoyed the lakes (and we have by the way had lovely family sailing holidays and one daughter spent summers working for a sailing company in the EU and Caribbean solely because of that sailing experience)..."

why are you C&P xenia response from an unrelated thread?is it a lame attempt at taking the piss?

imo,bad form to traipse posts from one thread to another to try substantiate some point

100 lines for you, ABD

"Why are boy disporting themselves to the detriment of fair minded men ... etc.

"Why are boy disporting themselves to the detriment of fair minded men ... etc.

you need a hyphen there too..

Why does it have to be either/or? To be an excellent school (IMO) you need the teaching staff first and foremost but the rest does, without a doubt, add to the whole educational experience. I would never choose a school based solely on their facilities but I would discount a school which offered little in the way of them.

Oh and I'm actually an AST teacher which is one of the reasons I have taught in so many schools. So, good teaching matters to me too, thank you very much.

What does AST mean?

advanced teacher status

well, schools, both state and private, in inner cities very rarely offer all those extra facilities...so if you live in an inner city discounting them for that reason makes no sense.

abd,do use C&P to do those lines.given your digression was a C&P

Advanced Skills Teacher. Graded as outstanding across the board (though maths is my thing) way back in the day when OFSTED did whole week inspections. They put you forward and you end up with a stack of extra work. Still, you get a pay rise so can't complain.

yeah, punishment fitting crime, and all that..

Don't get me wrong, BuckR, I think all that stuff is lovely too...just not an essential.

And sorry if I offended you. Of course you care, both as a teacher and as a parent, it was a thoughtless comment on my part.

Well my state school had a lake and sent a fair proportion of its pupils to Oxbridge (Xenia would no doubt be horrified and confused at that one). Due to my background I can't help but think the independent school thing is abit emperors new clothes. As long as your school is fairly decent and you are well brought up most likely you will fulfil your potential. Most of DH and my friends were privately educated and we have all ended up in the same place (without wishing to be bigheaded we have done alot better academically than many of our privately educated friends ).

Also surely swanky features like lakes/lovely old buildings are utterly wasted on teenagers. I didnt notice how beautiful the surroundings of my school were until I went back for an open day 20 years later.

Well, for some people, discounting them for that reason would make no sense anyway because that is not what they are looking for. Which is absolutely fine!

I would discount them because it's the extras and facilities that I wish to pay for. I don't give a fig who else is there or how much of my fees go towards helping those less able to pay. I am not elitist nor am I a snob. I want my kids to love school and for their education to be all about the ethos of learning rather than the ethos of passing exams or becoming big in the City.

Fair enough, Buck! And we are totally on the same page regarding the love of learning versus the exam passing/big job in city ethos.

My ds is, according to his last report, "an enthusiastic learning with an extremely positive attitude towards school" I love that his new (private school) have been able to pick up and appreciate this and feed it back to him, so increasing his confidence. At his old school he was ignored because he was quiet, and that was such a relief in a class of, um, 30 big personalities. Yes, they praised him, but for being quiet. Not for working hard. So all he learnt was is was 'good' to shut up.

Scottishmummy/MadameDefarge - were you two bossy prefects at school?

I could always tell when a boy had taped 10 biros togeter and copied his lines. Same mistake in same place on every line.

Tragically no. I was never considered responsible enough. And I had an odd kick to to my gallop which meant I could never be relied upon to toe the party line.

would you like us to be bossy prefects?
i was quiet,geeky

Sadly, I see far too many quiet, sensible kids go through primary school receiving what can only be described as a pittance of attention.

IMO, it is one of the state system's dirty little secrets. There is always pushing and attention for the more able, support and attention for those with additional needs and attention for those whose behaviour is difficult. The schools' finite resources mean something has to give and in the main, it's regular, good quality input for the reasonably able good kids in the middle.

I haven't met Xenia but I do know she is real - she was outed once on a thread that was deleted and it was an easy matter to look her up - we're in a vaguely similar line of work. And she is absolutely who she says she is.

Yes, BuckR, I was told very clearly that ds would fail at secondary, because that dirty little secret was well known. Average performing children (especially boys) would go on to fail at secondary because no resources were allocated to challenging them and helping them achieve their potential.. those critical years were thrown in the bin. All they learn is that they are not important.

That is why I moved him. And Xenia's bonkers rant about letting him stew but teaching him boxing shows a lamentable lack of knowledge of both children and education.

These two years are turning him around. Everyone remarks on the change in him, how much more confident and outgoing he is.

People like xenia would bury my son because they are not worth the trouble. Unless they can pay. And even then, why bother? Rather teach him to be an aggressive little shit than teach him to stand up for himself based upon a genuine belief in his worth.

Good one Xenia.

And actually (apologies for rant!) when he was tested before going to the new school they found out that aged 8 he had a reading age of 10.5 and a comprehension age of 11.1.

Not exactly a failure.

I was interested in the psychology of it. It seemed better he go to primary with the children he'll move to state secondary with and get him toughened up for that experience. But if your local state schools are rather genteel leafy middle class ones that may well not be an issue. I have over the years seen children struggling who are moved between the sectors for various reasons, that's all I was trying to say.

I've never sort snobby schools at all. I like the academically selective ones and I don't like boarding schools. I do think those top 20 private date schools confer huge advantages in all kinds of areas. The lakes and fields are neither here nor there although I do remember some lovely moments walking in a forest by a lake at one of the schools with the children and a pretty good time was showing at daughter 1's 21st dinner against a whole wall of the restaurant she and 2 of her friends (now 21) when they were 11 doing country dancing at school and Haberdashers school excells at just about everything so it was some of the best country dancing I've seen. Of course that may well be available in the state sector.

Other precious moments are things like the quality of the singing. I'm very into music and I just don't think I'd have had the chances to sing Purcell, Handel etc in parents' choirs at most state schools and had parents who were good singers, some in professional choirs. I enjoyed that. Money well spent but all of that stuff is on the periphery.

The essence is to pay so they are at academcially selective places where I, being a capitalist, am a paying customer with the control and power that that gets you rather than a humble supplicant of the state grateful for that which is provided "free". It's a massive psychological difference.

Are beautiful surroundings wasted on teenagers? No teenagers pretendt o hate most things but what you are doing is etching beauty on their souls, showing them what pure plainsong sounds like, showing them good architecture (although to be fair Habs and MTs have appalling architecture), opening their minds to lots of experiences. And I think the girls' passion for show jumping really came about because of a school club when they were very little and that's been a huge part of their lives.

But we're just a normal middle class family. I am nothing like a Central london, child with the oligatory 11 A* (what a lot of them aim at) St Paul's parent.