I send my child to private school because....?

[jabed]

Well, I don?t actually, I just work in one. But it seems to be a constant source of questioning on MN and given the current news articles (I have been reading the DM and Tory graph online) about how many of our left wing leaders hypocritically claim to be egalitarian and socialist whilst buying education for their children , or have had education paid for by their own parents. I just wondered, what is it we expect from education, and why is it some of us are willing to pay for whatever that is and how they see that as worthy of their money.

There you go. :)

The beer and curries point certainly helps to confirm our stereotypes about state school parents.

The beer and curries was a joke. Fgs.

However we all know perfectly well that he was 'tongue in cheek' and his DCs will have done well. I very much doubt that all his money has been frittered away!

Cross posted- glad I wasn't the only person to think so!

@Xenia yes. They have senses of humour.

The whole point of comps is that they take all kids, including the ones like my 11 year old and her mates who have just emerged from primary with a clutch of level 5s. The point of a GM/SM split is that the kids like DD1 would be in the grammar. I want that inclusiveness.

I like beer. And curry.

I do not think he really spent it on beer and curries.

Sorry Jabed, you had a shit time. Bloody stupid to say that every state secondary is the same as yours all these years on though. Ask my lovely bright daughters.

The big difference between secondary moderns and comprehensives was that a lot of people wrote off the children within the SMs before they'd even started, because they didn't happen to have passed the 11 plus - the children themselves often felt written off and some behaved accordingly, in some SMs, the teachers translated 11 plus failure into an assumption that academic subjects needn't really be bothered with, and parents often took the same attitude. Basically, the schools carried the big stigma of "failure." Some SMs rose above this and worked hard to cater for the brighter children, too, in an attempt to show them that the 11 plus failure was just a slight stumbling block along the way, others just didn't provide any sort of good education, and others worked at providing what the alternatives to grammar schools were actually originally intended to offer: something different from the grammar schools, more practical and vocational, and pretended that they didn't contain any children who might be more suited to a grammar-school style education. You could say that these were the schools being true to what SMs were supposed to be - not poor cousins to grammar schools, but schools which offered a completely different educational experience, aiming for entirely different post-school work. As you yourself have pointed out, jabed, this was in many ways a gross injustice to the large numbers of children attending the SMs who were, in fact, very intelligent. At least comprehensive schools were forced to acknowledge that they contained children of all sorts of differing needs and abilities, rather than being able to pretend that they either had academic children or practical children to deal with (as though the two are, in any event, mutually exclusive).

What I don't understand is how Jabed passed his 11+ and ended up in a Secondary Modern even taking moving areas into consideration ...why not a Secondary Technical school ? Serious question

The major divide was the fact that SM pupils did CSEs and grammar school pupils did O levels. That immediately put children at an advantage as soon as they passed the 11+.

I think things HAD to change as more and more jobs demanded academic skills, and children from all schools were required to show evidence that they were literate and numerate. There had to be a level playing field for academic qualification and GCSEs were introduced.

Local SMs now have 6th forms and students achievement at A level is comparable to the GSs. This didn't happen in the past. As soon as you failed the 11+, your education led to sub-standard exams and put you in at a disadvantage in the work place. Only the self-motivated (like Jabed) went on to improve their qualifications at college.

MRZ the same happened to my friend's DH. He moved and couldn't get into the local grammar, even though he passed the local 11+.

But we had a tripartite school system (until mid 70s) with Grammar schools, Secondary Technical schools and Secondary Modern schools and yes SMs did CSE exams but the Technical schools taught O levels to "top sets" and CSE to "lower sets"

flexybex I can understand how he lost his Grammar school place but not how he ended up in the lowest level of the system ...

Because the system was unfair mrz- the same as it is today. There was nothing uncommon about jabed's experience.

Unfortunately wevdidn't have a tripartite system in many places - we had pass and fail and there was no difference between those who were just above or just below the line.

And some secondary moderns did O'levels.

Are there really people who consider a northern accent to be a speech impediment? That is so depressing.

You simply can't make sweeping generalisations about any type of schooling.

It's uncommon in my experience exoticfruits.
I don't actually know anyone who moved from (or expected to) Secondary Modern to Grammar school. I do know people from my era who moved from Secondary Modern to Secondary Technical and I had friends who moved from Secondary Technical (O level classes) to Grammar school.

Eople wre being incredibly stupid about the "beer and curries" remark. They are either stupid enough to be taking it seriously, OR stupid enough to think that those of us who agree with J O'F will rise to their tongue in cheek comments about it. Either way, they are not showing themselves in a good light.

I suspect there are as many people who consider a northern accent to be a speech impediment as there are people who consider a southern accent to be a sign that you are up yourself.

Do private school parents not partake of beer and curries, though? This is interesting. And quite indicative of why I would not want my PFB mixing with That Sort of Person.

In my area we had no Secondary technical so we moved from the secondary modern. I failed 11+ 3 times, I was two below the line and had we lived at the other side of the river my marks would have given me a pass. I did O'levels at secondary modern, although I had to move to a secondary modern outside my catchment area at 14yrs - I then went to the grammar school for 6th form. It was very common to move to grammar school at that stage. My brother passed at 12+ and then at 13 was put unto the high flyers express stream! My other brother passed, my parents moved and he couldn't get a grammar school place ,but he was at least able to travel to the next town and go to a comprehensive. The whole system was a waste of talent and dreadfully unfair.
Actually, had I lived in the town there would have been a tripartite system which would have been better for me. However I think that it was because we were country children - all from small villages- that the behaviour was good.

Remember that bit of the thread where we were talking about what constituted being well spoken? I think we've just seen an example of what doesn't. Karlos John O'Farrell, together with other parents in Lambeth, set up their own school. Not a free school a la Toby Young, but a proper comprehensive within the system, it w needed because there were more kids than school places available? He absolutely did have to 'search desperately for solutions for children the state system wasn't accommodating (in borough)'. That's exactly what he did.