Think Carefully Before Opting for Private Education

[PRMum2012]

i am a mum of two (23 months and 3 in august)I am self-employed, part time and married to a lovely architect. We have a great life and two happy kids.

On paper I would say I have not done too badly with my life and my aim is to work full time as soon as possible now my kids are a bit older. If the work was available I would happily work full time now.

Despite setting up my own business I can't help feeling like a failure that I can't afford for my own children, what my parents did for me.... It annoys me that I put so much importance on it ... I am now passionate about finding a decent local primary school for my children so they don't feel the same pressure i do now, when they are older and looking for schools for their kids ....but i'll be honest ......assuming i can afford it i would try and do it from 11 if i can....!!!!...

Hopefully by then, my kids will have an input too and they will be forming their own opinions on the issue.

Depending on mortgage and family support I can't see that it's possible for anyone with two kids earning under £80,000 - £1000,000 + (as a family income) to afford private education anymore, my advice is unless you have a thriving business or two, work as a dr, lawyer or banker.... Forget it.

It's really hard to watch my younger sibling do it for her kids, they are paying for private prep while we cant afford it.... But it really upsets me I feel like this... why can't I just be happy for them and quietly satisfied that I don't need to pay on top of my taxes for my kids education.

For my own primary education i went privately, tried the local school for secondary education but was bullied so moved back to the private system.... I had a mix of private and state during secondary - my second private school was amazing but the second state school I attended for 6th form (my choice) was great too so why is this all having such an impact on what I want for my own kids.

My DH is much more laid back, he went privately all the way through but doesn't place as much value on it as I do/did....I wish I felt the same way but all I feel now is pressure to earn more money so I can pay for them both from 11.

rac·ism

/ˈrāˌsizəm/
Noun
The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as...
Prejudice or discrimination directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief.

I would be grateful for anyone to point out to me where I have been racist in any of my posts.

And if you can't, kindly retract what I find a very insulting and false accustion.

Spero - FWIW I don't see racism in your posts.

And can we all calm down please and move on to discussing my 'relative' poverty when compared to the rest of you.

Come on people how can someone complaining about kids of other ethnicities not playing with hers be a racist.

Just stop it please.

I suppose I should just chuckle when accused of racism when I actively seek an end to segregation and value diversity.

but it is a pretty obnoxious allegation and obviously offered in the spirit of being obnoxious, so thanks MTS, unless you name change you have given me a useful heads up on your likely contributions to a thread.

Stay classy.

I personally don't interpret your comments as racist and I'm unconvinced most other sensible sane people on MN does.

In multicultural Brixton/Pechkam/Camberwell/Stockwell/Walworth and lets not forget the glorious Elephant there is often voluntary segregation this is not just the affluent white MC families in Camberwell Grove or Durand Gardens but Jamaican families on the Angel Estate and the African families in North Pechkam. This segregation obviously creates suspicion and a lack of understanding which of course grows into suspicion and bigotry about how others live their lives.

The only positive thing is that when people do make an effort to get to know others from different cultures backgrounds etc again only IME most find that those on the surface who appeared so different are just like them and "pretty all right really". The tragedy arises when you are not given the opportunity to discover this.

Exactly. I think this is a problem for much of South London. If even our children can't meet at school or on playdates, what hope do we have? Prejudices and misonceptions are simply perpetuated as people have fewer opportunities to just to get to know each other.

I think presenting this 'mirage' of choice in primary schools has a lot to blame for this. It is only a choice if you can exercise it - and that usually means you are higher up the economic/social ladder than the families that get left behind.

so ghettos perpetuate. A dangerous state of affairs.

O god. I will never forget the Glorious Elephant.

I would love to see inside the mind of the Town Planner who said - lets just paint it a really garish shade! That will sort it!

When really the only sane response would be to blow it up. I don't think I have every been to a more depressing shopping centre and I used to get dragged around Wolverhampton in the 1980s so I think I have experience of depressing shopping centres.

Of course "ghettos" will perpetuate London is one of a tiny handful of global cities and the richest people in the world are keen to part of it. House prices continue to rise at an extraordinary level and even dunps like Peckham become "tres sought after" but there will always be a minority who are literally scrapping along the bottom who cannot exercise any choice they will continue to send their children to undesirable schools and receive poor quality education/housing/healthcare etc and most will be unable to break out of this drudgery they live in and their children will tragically repeat the same cycle. In the mean time everyone else is doing very nicely thank you very much.
But this has always been London's history over 600 years Dick Whittington thought the streets of London were paved with gold and today many still think this and in some cases of course they are right.

Spero I remember when it was painted pink (showing my age) I believe its been knocked down now although I maybe wrong. I know the awful Ayelsbury Estate has gone and of course the infamous North Peckham estate went not long after the tragic murder of Damilola Taylor.
Nothing would get me back there.

Happygarden - you are right - I remember looking at the old Victorian map where the streets were all different colours to reflect the 'well heeled' and the 'vicious and criminal' - I was amused to see Holborn had then quite a high proportion of 'vicious and criminal'.

I am just sad in 2013 we seem resigned to the fact that little has changed in 100s of years and we still have families living in horrible poverty.

I would go further and say things seem to be moving backwards - there did seem to be a time in the 60s when you could escape your family of origin but now social mobility seems non existant. And I think that is a direct result of the 'I'm Alright Jack' mentality.

I remember the Elephant as pink? and then red? Neither helped. Or maybe that was just an hallucination after hours of waiting for a night bus that had any room to get on .

I left before it became red although I've got yellow (God help us) in my head when I drove past a few years ago.
Of course there's barely any social mobility for the under classes in the early 90's I remember ready an article about the existence of the underclasses in the UK and then experts said they were found in literally only one part of the UK you guessed it Peckham! Its a poverty trap poverty breeds more poverty and this government certainly has no intention of addressing it and I would go so far as to say is happy to maintain the status quo and he last one only made a half hearted attempt at addressing it. Its the children of the under classes that concern me they have no choice whilst they're parents are seen as parasites on the state they suffer.

Spero - You ask why I made the subliminal racist comment. Well, you live in an economically deprived area but it isn't any different from predominantly white economically deprived areas up north. So.why introduce race into this particular point? Why mention the groups of black youths walking down the street? It's like those Daily Mail articles - old woman mugged by black youths. What has the colour of the muggers got to do with it? It's not as if a detailed description followed with an appeal for anyone who recognized the perps.

Comments like this offends me because it sends out an subliminal message that black people are more prone to anti social behaviour and that the source of your problem is the 29 black kids in your DDs class.

I am not totally unsympathetic to your situation. My white friend grew up in a predominantly Asian part of the Midlands. In year R and Y1 the Asian kids that spoke no English took up most of the attention of the teacher so at lot of the time he was left to his own devices. It was quite normal for the Asian kids to regularly go back 'home' for 6 months at a time. When they returned to school once again getting them to catch up took up a lot of the teacher's time. Basically, his education took a back seat.

As for the social side, a lot of the mums didn't go out to work so their English was limited so like your situation the mums would socialise among themselves. It got so bad that they stopped going to PTA events like the school fayre.

I mentioned race because it was highly relevant to the situation I was in in Brixton. I don't think I made any mention of 'black youths walking down sthreet' but of course they were - along with white youths, hispanic youths, Chinese youths, Brazilian youths.

the streets weren't the problem. Everyone walked along them. But nobody mixed in the schools, the pubs, the bars. The Ritzy cinema as I recall was 90% white patronaged.

I happen to think that is a great shame for us all. I don't think that makes me a racist on any level.

If it helps, the chiild causing the most trouble in my daughter's class in Bristol is white.

But I am not going to argue my credentials with you any more. I know who I am and what I believe.

If it makes you feel better about yourself to chuck these kind of allegations about, knock yourself out.

Happy - believe me when I say that when I look in the mirror and listen to someone go on about the anti social black kids at her school I don't see a 'smug' face.

"The Ritzy cinema as I recall was 90% white patronaged."
i forgot about that all those naice people from Dulwich Village, Herne Hill went there.

No. You see someone who just doesn't actually read what people post, and respond to what you think they have said/want them to have said.

And I really don't see the significance of your own ethnicity-so enough of the "when I look in the mirror" posts.

I think it was almost all Herne Hillers (I was one from 1994-2004). I don't think the Dulwich lot dared set foot in Brixton.

Yes your right Herne Hillers rather that solid and pretty affluent Dulwich Villagers.
Bristol which is where I'm assuming you live now is quite multicultural in places a few years ago we were in that Tescos by Ikea what ever that part of Bristol is called and it slightly reminded me of that Tesco on the Old Kent Rd all the old memories came flooding back.13 years in SE London I can recognise a shit hole at 40 paces.
(Sorry for the thread hijack nothing like a trip down memory lane) on a rainy evening.

I couldn't afford Herne Hill when I came back in 2008! the world has gone mad.

I think i know the Tesco you mean - just off the M32?

It is interesting. My friend moved her child to a private school because at the predominantly white middle class she was of only a handful of non-white kids. I respected her views. My cousin was one of only a handful of white kids in an inner city Birmingham school and encountered serious racism issues which the school never tackled because he was not in an ethnic minority. He ended up going from a very bright child at 11 to a drop out at 16. His parents would not move him because it would be seen as racism - they were very left wing. His younger siblings though went to other single sex schools in other parts of the city because that was a better reason and those schools had a good mixture of different racial backgrounds. The conclusion any child in a minority in a school will incur racism but it is tolerated when the child being picked on is not from a minority ethnic background. The sad fact therefore is that minority children in middle class areas go private and in inner city areas those in a minority go faith school route or private leading to educational ghettos in both the private and state systems. Any solutions?

Another friend teaches in a Birmingham comprehensive school where the teachers lounge is segregated by choice on racial grounds. What chance for the kids.

Fucking hell. A teacher's lounge that is segregated? We are all doomed.

The only solutions I can think of are to do something about house prices -which will never happen - and to tackle deprivation, which will require such an effort of will and isn't a vote winner, so will never happen.

I don't understand why we can't have a concentrated effort on EVERY school being a good enough school and stop panicking people into buying up all the houses in the catchment area for the 'outstanding' school. It wasn't that long ago that we all went to our local schools and that was the norm.

Well, the way everyone writes about it makes it sound as though poverty tends to breed racism and wealth tends to breed a desire to keep away from poor people. Maybe when people really need to rely on each other, they only feel safe to do so if they come from a similar background, but when they can look after themselves they become more interested in other cultures - provided the other cultures can join in with their expensive pursuits or accept being looked at rather than joined in with.

Hi Rabbit. I do think sometimes richer people like to stay away from poor people and have plenty of experience of this whilst at university and within the circles I mix in. Not wanting to mix with council house kids. As mentioned not everybody. Racism survives in very middle class backgrounds too whether this is racial or religious backgrounds. I grew up in a working class area though where I did feel it was stronger but now it seems to be the other way round. A friend of mine sniffed when a black family 'her words' was moving in. This particular friend is from an ethnic minority herself. If anything now from my experience it is growing between different minority races and in the private schools near me which are all predominantly filled with kids from minority races partly because on the whole it is a very white middle class area and they do not want their child to stand out but also because some people from developing countries value private education more than those of us who grew up in the State school system in the UK and did very well. The most racist people I have come across are those who were not born in the UK and have not grown up with a multicultural heritage. It seems to be worse now with the school segregation than when I was a child although perhaps I have rose coloured specs on.