Tory by-election candidate on state education....

[seeker]

......sorry it's the Daily Mirror, but so far it's that or the Huffington Post! At least they are showing their true colours......
Here

Maisie- not. It wasn't my first choice. But if he wants to be a doctor and has the ability and application, he will be. I have not written him off because he's at a secondary modern school!

Because grammars are often as good as some private schools. Therefore if you are in a grammar school area and your children go to them then why would you choose the private sector.

Both Seeker and I live in large grammar school areas and they are very very popular.

As an aside, I am often amused, though, at the number of parents who feel that the choice is private, or, failing that, grammar- like a parent who can afford private's DC will automatically get a grammar place.

Q: "DH has just been made redundant so we have to remove Jocasta and Tarquin for their private. Where can we move with good grammars?"

What shocks lie there.

Maisie define 'good as'. Do you mean 'at getting DC through exams'?

That may not be everyone's measure of 'good'.

Many privately educated DC wouldn't do well at all at a state grammar, 30 to a class, get on with it. Many DC do 'well' at private schools because they are individually tutored. Which is why you'd choose a hand-holding private over an 'all-in' grammar. That's why you might go private- because your child might not cope in a state school of any hue.

Do not assume The Grammar is the poor man's Private.

I think the complete opposite. The grammars werent right for us so we went private. The grammars are still not right for us from an academic view point. That doesnt mean for the right people that I dont think grammars are a great state option.

And it is very tiresome to assume that parents educating their children privately have no idea about the state system at all. The days of the lords and ladies going to the big private boarding schools like Eton and Harrow with no idea of life outside are long gone...

Hilarious gaffe. The sheer arrogance and stupidity of the modern Tories laid bare for all to see by their own candidate! I don't know what school had the dubious privilege of educating Maria but it doesn't say much for her knowledge of education nor of medicine.

I should imagine many of her potential constituents feel quite insulted. At least they've found out what the silly mare actually believes now, before putting their cross in the box.

Erebus - I know you dont like private schools but please dont trash them all and start indicating that pupils wont be able to cope in a state system. The grammars around here are full of very tutored pupils who can often struggle once they get a place. They dont just get on with it.....

Edam, it didnt do Diane Abbott any harm in terms of her seat!

Diane Abbott was, quite rightly, given a lot of flak. Now it's Maria's turn. Maria deserves criticism as much as Diane did.

Our local Tory MP is far too sensible to ever say my sons' school isn't good enough for his kids - FGS, that's just basic common sense (and manners).

John O'Farrell's right, if you think there's something wrong with local schools, get stuck in and DO something about it. (I'm a school governor, FWIW.)

I don't like private schools?

Far from it.

Wish to god I had the wherewithal to buy my children advantage despite possible intellectual deficiency!

I'd love, love, love to send my DS to schools with 15 per class, 15 hand selected, well behaved boys of very similar ability, no nasty SEN, no problematic difference, learning lessons from slightly oddball, maybe eccentric yet utterly committed mad-bat professorial types (OK, OK, who'd be taken apart by an 'ordinary' class of kids) with the almost guarantee that at the end of it they'd get RG uni places where they could mix with other privately educated DC who hey! Might not be the most erudite, wise or far thinking of their generation but were all very naice. Like our Cabinet.

What an easy ride which any parent might want for their DC!

OK, I also recognise that many of these private DCs would do fine in the state system. Some might not get that A* ( a risk a parent would have to take) but those DC's presence in that class might help general feel and discipline of that class but hell, which parent, given the opportunity to avoid that risk, wouldn't 'go private'?

Diane I think was worse pulling the race card and going completely against Labour values. She had I believe been in place as the Hackney MP for years (time to do something about it and also to know that not in a million years did she want that sort of education for her DS!)

Time will tell whether Maria will get in or not but the previous MP was Chris Huwe so not a great act to follow.

Caveat: No, actually, I wouldn't love for my DSs to be utterly divorced from the reality of everyone else! I am very happy with the state comp they are it but I will be as honest as to admit I chose it because it doesn't have too many 'social issues'. Their classes are not disrupted by chairs flying past their ears! But there are problems, all of which are quickly dealt with.

Erebus, according to Hampshire County Council, Thornden School received 610 applications but made only 280 offers.

The final offer distance was 1.1 miles.

Kings School, which you claim you can get into from anywhere, received 1056 applications and made 354 offers. It was possible to get in there from parts of Eastleigh, but not all of it by any means.

Erebus - you have clearly never been in a private school or had an experience of any of them. So, what on earth makes you such an expert. Surely you should be asking people who have experienced the private system what they think as opposed to your off the wall views.

Eccentric teachers - I have seen two in the whole school who could be thought of as odd. SEN - well my DS has two in his class.

Very similar ability - dont make me laugh. Just because you have money doesnt mean it comes with intelligence. Just like not having money means you are clever.

Get the chip off your shoulder and perhaps see that not everyone holds the same view as you.

And what about the pupils on scholarships, full busaries etc or whom English is not a first language and who bring a great oppportunity to experience different cultures. How would you see them?

And how are pupils at private schools divorced from real life? Both my DH and I work, we have to budget, we dont have vast sums of money lying around to pay for their education. The children see this. Not everything they want is given to them on a silver plate. Those days are long gone! Both DS's know that they will be expected to get holiday jobs. One has already done some shop work.

Actually looking at the data, nobody got into Thornden from out of catchment, the 1.1 miles would be within catchment.

The other school the Mirror claims she should have sent her son to (Wildern) made only 3 out-of-catchment offers last year. According to the Hampshire CC website, her house is on the border of the catchment, the road - Burnetts Lane, West End - is part in, part out of catchment. So she may or may not have got a place here. (Definitely wouldn't have got a place at Thornden or Kings though.)

maisie how do you know I have no experience of private? Because your arrogance leads you to believe that if I did I'd never break with the coven to say the things I have??

"Very similar ability - dont make me laugh. Just because you have money doesnt mean it comes with intelligence. Just like not having money means you are clever."

Where have I said 'clever'? I said 'similar ability', I never said 'high ability'. YOU read that into my comment which I find interesting in itself. It has endlessly been shown that the highest ability and lowest ability DC learn more effectively from being in similar ability classes. My DSs school separate out the higher ability in MFL and Maths (only) and, come Y9, the DC with the lowest ability, and the class sizes then go 10, 15, 27, 27 (etc etc), back to 15, 10. The highest ability in, say Maths can't be taught effectively in an all-ability class because several, at 14, already have A* Maths A levels...

I could go further and suggest you only need to glance at our current Cabinet to see that money doesn't equal intelligence.....

"And what about the pupils on scholarships, full busaries etc or whom English is not a first language and who bring a great oppportunity to experience different cultures." Um- the important word here is 'scholarship' The clever DC of the less wealthy have been dragooned in to up the school's league table position. And, to be honest, most of the non-indigenous DC I know of in private schools come from more 'English stylee Middle-Class families' than the 'white kids'! There are dozens of non-white DC in my DCs highly performing (academically) state comp. The vast majority of their parents are hospital consultants. They bring no more 'cultural diversity' to the school than my DC, and nor do I expect them to.

filly shit! I live 3.5 miles from Thornden, yet my children are there! In catchment. My god! And a good friend's DC are in Y7 in Kings from Romsey 8.1 miles away!

Don't tell.

I'm sure admissions change from year to year. Anyway, West End, where Hutchings lives, is definitely not in catchment for Thornden.

No, our catchment has remained stable for many years.

TBH, I'm not sure the point you're trying to make, filly.

Yes, you cannot necessarily get into Thornden from out of catchment, one that's a couple of miles wide and 3 1/2 miles long, but you can sure as hell get into Mountbatten in Romsey (a very good choice, esp as it's very 'comp') or Kings in Winchester (more GS'y) from miles away.

The point remains that this prospective MP has openly and brazenly in a manner as yet not 'corrected' by her party, implied that the only way her DS can become a what was it?- 'thoraco-respiratory surgeon'?- is by going private.

She is a disgrace, one that further proves that however clever you think you are, don't say stupid things.

She didn't openly or brazenly say anything. Two sentences appeared in a Daily Mail article that are very unlikely to be verbatim quotes of what she actually said.

She is (or was, certainly), a governor here:

www.cedarhall.essex.sch.uk/

having got her older son a diagnosis of autism and a place at that school.

I would wager that she knows more about the educational needs of her children than the journalists trying to turn it into a scandal. I bet she knows more about local schools than the leader of the party (one N. Clegg) who are the leading opposition in her seat too.

Aaargh this thread is like groundhog day.
Whatever she knows/doesn't know about local schools, whatever education she has chosen for her children, the fact remains that it was a fucking stupid thing for a candidate to say to a journalist during a by election.
She is a stupid woman, therefore she should not be an MP.

If we exclude everyone who has ever said something to the media that is open to misinterpretation from being an MP we will have very few candidates left.

Seeker keeps saying she will believe the Daily Mirror's interpretation of the comments until the Conservative Party issues a clarification. To be honest, given her clear bias, I doubt anything the Conservative Party says would change her view. And in my view, for the Tories to attempt a clarification at this stage would be poor media management. The Daily Mirror is the only paper that has chosen to interpret the comments in this way. They are hostile to the Tories and their interpretation of two sentences from an interview given to another paper is, at the very least, an extreme interpretation of the alleged quote. To issue a clarification or correction would give the story oxygen and may lead to more people believing it is true on the Yes, Minister principle - never believe anything until it has been officially denied.

There is no dispute that the Labour candidate in this election wrote, "In October, 1984, when the Brighton bomb went off, I felt a surge of excitement at the nearness of Margaret Thatcher's demise. And yet disappointment that such a chance had been missed." That is offensive to say the least, even if it was, apparently, intended as humour, and could be read as supporting terrorism. You may not like Margaret Thatcher/John Major/Tony Blair/Gordon Brown/David Cameron/Ed Milliband and may disagree with their policies. No problem with that. But in my view it is completely unacceptable to express disappointment that one of them hasn't been killed in a terrorist attack. Of course, he wrote that 25 years ago, at which time he also said he had wanted the UK to lose the Falklands war. Maybe his views have changed but he hasn't disowned those comments.

"Mr O'Farrell, writing on Twitter after the comments came to light, said: "So the Mail have gone for me on something I already volunteered about myself, which I said in 1984, and acknowledged was wrong as I said it."

Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan said: "I'm sure if you asked him now whether he [Mr O'Farrell] agreed with that [the comments] now he would say no."

He said the book was written 20 years ago, adding: "Some of it is in bad taste and should not have been said, but he was writing a book that was at the time, very funny, very witty."

He said the comments were "probably bad humour - him trying to be funny, but clearly not funny".

From the BBC website. Among other places.

I'm just amazed that a woman who considers herself to be of the calibre necessary to represent the voters of Eastleigh in parliament can fall so spectacularly at the first hurdle, namely alienating the parents who send DC to either Toynbee or Thornden. Managed to annoy both in one throw away sentence.

Not terribly clever!

see here so not just The Mirror!

A 'clarification' that muddies the water further?!