Selective independants

[poppydoppy]

Do they look better on League tables because the standard of teaching is better or just because they select the children most likely to do well?

Yellow Of course there is. The system of catchment comps has always been favoured by a certain type of middle class person who can claim to be ever so egalitarian while completely insulated by money and ability to buy or rent in the 'right area' from any of the consequences of a system open to all. It;s a far more reliable system for insuring that people like my sister and I wouldn't sully the doors of 'their' schools.

Ensuring.

teacher same in this area and I assume the majority of others. There's been a lot of disquiet for years but it's pretty much come to a head with the mad, mad levels of tutoring that so evidently exist. I hope the tutoring threads on MN have played a small part in rattling those in charge, it would be a pleasing irony. Anyhow, I'm sure you read the stuff about changes afoot. There are often pieces about active outreach programmes too, and diatribes by current HTs about the even worse inequity of comprehensive selection purely by wealth. The HTs very clearly do care and all seem pretty united in wanting to act. They're probably collectively bright enough to work out the mechanics of how.

iniquity.

"Selective education is not damaging seeker. Selective schools are dead keen on ensuring fair access at the moment " No they aren't.
Well, they might be dead keen on it, but state selective schools select "blind" so there's nothing they could do about it if they wanted to.

Most of the country has no selective state schools. They were abolished in about 1970 in my original area. (Both my parents did rather well as they were pretty bright and they both passed the 11+, did well). However the Sutton Trust found that comprehensives in areas without grammars are as good as grammars over all at getting children into good universities, I thought. I might be wrong, but that seems to be so.

Do you think employers really care "what" school a child attended?

I don't think in 2013 employers give a toss about what school you went too. They are I suspect interested in which university you went too and your degree classification.

I wonder whether Xenia would have coped had one of her kids turned out autistic or CP or any other sen that would have stopped them fitting into her world view
However none of us surely want children who are not bright enough to be going to university

seeker I should perhaps have said that there is clearly considerable impetus towards ensuring that tutoring ceases to provide advantage, as far as possible. There are concrete proposals being made as I expect you yourself will have read in the educational press and there appears to be an abundance of will to push reforms through. You sound a bit defeatist. I'm quite optimistic, since I think the best of the selective state schools do an excellent job and it would be good to knock the tutoring thing on the nut.

Xenia is utterly honest. That's worth respect. Rather honesty than hypocrisy any day. A lot of the time she probably says what a lot of other people think but prefer not to say or don't even admit to themselves, because they're deluded by middle class angst. I'm a little disappointed to learn that she's a doctor's daughter since I thought she'd won a scholarship to this dreadful mediocre private school and fought for her success like a cat. I've probably sent my DC to the selective state school for the same sort of reasons: some of them would never have worked particularly hard at the local comp, because they have wanted to join the crowd which would have produced middling results and therefore not provided them with the chances they now seem to have. I don't really see that that's despicable. Xenia did just the same but added in money to the equation. I think it's a bit cheap to claim that a particular poster couldn't have tolerated a SEN child. Almost all mothers deal with whatever adversity they're presented with, even when sometimes it's phenomenally hard.

I would be happy for my DS's not to go university if there was a good alternative and they demonstrated an appitude for something. Many trades including those who work for my DH's company require a high degree of intelligence an ability especially at math. I have a friend whose a farrier a four year apprenticeship least it was when I last owned horses he's not only highly intelligent but also very successful earning double xenia's bench mark of success £100 O00 pa.

I agree with you yellow (there's always a first time for everything). It is cheap to claim someone can't tolerate an SEN child. We all want healthy "normal" children but as a general principle mothers also love their child what ever. There are some extraordinary parents caring heroically with children with severe SEN when ever I meet them I am awestruck by their dedication and love. They come from all walks of life without a doubt money cushions the rich but it does not take away the emotional stresses and strains.

My point was that Xenia's posts do not exhibit the introspection that would show her able to cope with true adversity.

Dear friends of mine - both very bright etc have an eldest daughter who is a long way into the autistic spectrum. She will never "achieve". Their younger children will. But the impact of the oldest has shaken all of their (and our) preconceptions about bright people having bright kids and watching them earn well after university.

Xenia has regularly shown diddly squat sympathy for those less fortunate than herself, without really trying to understand what has held them back from living like she does.

Its one of the interesting things of having ones kids at a comp that one meets Mums who are great fun etc etc and then the DCs point out that their kids are bottom set remedial : you cannot always predict the children from the parents and vice versa.

The fact is that many industries want bright students...I'm not convinced they need the absolute brightest.

There will be a whole heap of skills needed in addition to being bright.

DH is involved in recruitment at trainee level at his law firm and he alsways says bright is a given (evidenced by a 2.1 in a decent subject from a decent university). But there is a lot more he's looking for. Evidence of flexibility, good communications skills, international outlook (including the ability to take posting abroad) and tenacity (sometimes the hours will be brutal)...

He says where applicants went to school doesn't interest him per se, other than where they might show evidence of certain skills.

"Xenia is utterly honest"

No she isn't. She is a self parody.

I'm afraid I think, after 7 years on Mumsnet, that X is the T word.

Me too. Which makes me so angry with myself when I care about how she talks about other people.

My oldest is slightly dyslexic actually. I tend to try to avoid writing anything personal about the children particularly the ones still at school. My late sister had down's syndrome. I think most parents must find it hard to have a child with special needs or anorexia or who is suicidal etc.

I don't think people can say I have had no adversity. The things that tend to make life hard for people are things like deaths and if you take my last 10 years divorced, deaths, dementia, disease, over £1.3m of debt I don't think that is that easy although I have always been able to feed up all so I am certainly not claiming poverty.

I agree with wf's husband's points and having had 3 older children graduate I can see what employers look for. I think the ability to tolerate, put up with, be stoic, never call in sick, keep going whatever, the kind of stuff that the empire was built on which one hopes the comprehensives teach too is important in many jobs which is why employers check in all kinds of jobs how often is the person late, are they always off sick , are they a jobsworth etc. Endurance. That is why playing sport can help too as that shows I supose commitment to a team although not all my children are as sporty as the others (One just got back from 3 days of playing for her country - picked for the team this year and she's very pleased about it - I just had a nice call - her employer I think is going to announce it to the company. I don'tthink employers look too often at schools although once the other daughter said her new boss saw her school and said ah you must be clever (as only clever girls get in there). It would not of course get anyone a job on its own).

(When someone writes about me and then puts a sentence in quotes it gives the impression I had said that sentence eg. "However none of us surely want children who are not bright enough to be going to university". Now I suppose I might have said that but I don't think I have. Is it supposed to be a quote from me on the thread? )

Xenia
Your own post at 09:24 first sentence.

Talkinpeace, I read it that Xemia meant that no one wants children who are not cut out for academic study to be at university when there are better options for them. I think that is how she intended it.

The other thing you all need to take on board is that there is just no money left in the public sector. I still do some occasional work in the public sector and I am shocked at whats going. I've spent 29n years of my life working in the PS and thought i'd seen everything, in the last 10 years its been bad but I've never seen anything like this before. I for the first time am really frightened for Joe Public in particular the most vulnerable but even the likes of you and me are now regularly being out in life and death situations (I am still having nightmares about a situation the other week and) I cannot whistle blow because I will loose my job. So you who think that special schools groups or God know what can be set up for the 1 in 10 000 you are deluding yourselves they isn't any money left.

seeker you are right what about those who dont have the money to pay or those who dont have the confidence to fight the system (not that its going to do them nay good), who aren't articulate enough to at least try and fight, those who cant write a good letter and know who to complain too. Well they frankly are fucked.

This.

I have worked in school improvement for the last 15 years, and I have just gone back into a school. The difference today compared with 15 years ago is shocking, and not in a good way. To be honest, there hasn't actually been any school improvement in our authority for around the last 8 years or so (since they were forced to merge Education with children's Social care and suddenly all funding for educational projects was pulled in order to plug the hole in the dyke that is children's placements).
I really, really worry for pupils in the medium-to-long- term.

seeker - you got a DD at a posh GS. You constantly go on about how pissed you are with a system that stuck your DS with a secondary modern. But that doesn't stop you from constantly criticising parents who favour selective education for their DCs.

So you hardly in a position to display moral outrage at Xenia's comments.

Were you the elder sibling or the younger Xenia? And did your sister survive into adulthood? I've recently read Rosa Monkton's comments on attitudes displayed to her DD and her description of the family's exceptional love for her. My second cousin was born with Down's while his mother was (quite literally) running away from the opposite side during the war (he was born in a field in a shed, with a toddler in tow). Very much loved until he died in his forties, but so sad still. DD3 was given a rubbish prognosis at 16 weeks and I had to question myself deeply for three to four weeks until the results came through. There's more to life than selective or private education. As Russians said, some adversities are common to us all.

word DD1 is currently only a very baby trainee but appears to have worked right through the night about three times in the past couple of weeks. As a mother (and even as a mother who did the same job for a short while in the Eighties, albeit at a slightly different firm) I'm appalled. But she's hacking it, God knows how. And why is there this overnight stuff? Why is it necessary now when it was barely needed in the heady Eighties with all the privatisations etc? (sorry, off thread).