Education superclass?

[Amber2]

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100245274/it-is-much-worse-than-sir-john-major-says-a-new-superclass-is-being-created-in-london/

This is interesting coming from John Major ...sounds like more lobbying along the lines of the Sutton Trust but do people really think it's much worse than it ever has been..? and this is do with with the inexorable rise of London...and the global money flowing in there...and so to creating an elite superclass of private schools also ...not just any old private school but a small handful of elite ones, applications to which have reached record numbers, presumably more and more from London and from overseas with over inflation rises in fees pricing out the traditional middle classes that used to be able to afford these schools.

Each to their own.

moomin well lucky you? what a smug post. You are as much of a provincial minority as the alpha London parents you describe are, even in the "elite"London schools this article describes.

Plenty of competitive parenting and stressed children in the big houses with SAHM mums in Kent. Plenty of parents enjoy their children in Brixton Bromley and Bow.

Excellent post Moomin. Children have become a project to many parents.

passed go but it isn't just a London phenomenon is it? (Though it may be exacerbated by the shortage of school places) Or even an urban one?

Not one of my work projects has given me nits this week. :(

And none of my kids is forcing me to go to Kiev. So, swings, roundabouts...

Moomin. With a post liek that, I am always interested in which profession. And the educational background to that result. And how many hours said professional works etc.

Dont know where the provinces are. Up north?

Goldigga it's a state of mind?

Birmingham. That sort of place.

Where I live probably doesn't qualify as the provinces. Sigh.

Golddigger - are you just interested to know what sort of profession can support a one salary household with private education? Or without?

Shooting
Well I am pretty smug to be honest. We moved back up north from London to DH's home town 20 years ago and have never regretted it. London is great for a long weekend but not where I'd want to raise a family.
And we're certainly not an elite minority where we live. I have lots of friends who are SAHPs with a partner on, I would estimate £40000 a year or so. We live in a lovely naice village within 20 miles or so of Liverpool and Manchester, so hardly the arse end of beyond.

This Londoncentric nonsense is pretty tedious to be honest.

I have no problem with Friends, or pop music, or Doctor Who, or any of the other things I indulge in myself, shooting . I will even confess to watching Downton Abbey. I don't actually view them as totally inane. I am not a fan of things like Big Brother, Jeremy Kyle, etc, because I view them as exploitative, nasty and inane.

I DO have a problem with the Daily Mail, because it expects itself to be taken seriously. Less of a problem with The Sun, because I can't take it seriously. I also have a problem with Hello magazine and celebrity magazines, because they seem to glamorise expensive lifestyles just because they are expensive and I don't understand what it is they are expecting me to emulate. Personally, I quite enjoy watching Strictly Come Dancing, too, if I ever have the time (what a silly time of day to be on when you have young boys) because I like dancing.

So maybe you are making assumptions about my view of what inanity is?

The competitive parenting especially creeps in wherever there are selective schools, state or private, that provide the environment, as prevalent in North Yorkshire as Kent. Of course you wonder how moomin picked her big house? Was being in the catchment of a good state school part of the plan for their perfect life? In which case resources have already gone to gaining advantage for her children, but of course, her children's education wasn't a project?

I also think that if the ONLY things I liked were those mentioned above, I would be a narrow minded person. I happen also to like classical music and other things that other people reject purely because they think they are elitist.

Shooting, actually, pretty much all the state schools near me are decent. My children have gone to the local comprehensive but we had the choice of three or four good ones. My eldest is at a Russell group University, my next three are heading the same way.
No I wouldn't buy a house near a dreadful school but that is a long way from treating my kids as a project.

For a person to say 'I like classical music' is completely meaningless. Particularly when one of the composers mentioned to support that claim is in fact a romantic composer. Most people will like some composers and not others. I tend to prefer the Russians, Les six, and baroque/early music to classical. I like some of the Romantics but not all.

moomin what London centric stuff? Frankly I live in the London suburbs because London was where DH and I could get work, at one stage where we could get work was the other side of the world so we went there too. Some aspects of London life might as well be on another planet because we are not superrich etc and though I take advantage of what London has to offer to us within our means it really isn't that much different to what would be on offer to us in any naice village near, or suburb in Leeds Manchester or Birmingham. It just never occurs to me to be smug about it, or to have a chip on my shoulder about what other people have because I know that in the scheme of things we are very privileged by the opportunities we have had in life. And I respect other people's choices.....

moomin And my children only considered those "elite"schools (it was their choice) because the 3 or 4 good comprehensives within a mile of my house were oversubscribed by 5 pupils for every place on first preference and my DDs didn't get in. They got in to the elite schools because of who they are as young people, their ability, personality, sense of humour, the qualities that we could only have nurtured, as you surely do if you enjoy and love your children.

There are some demented competitive parents who are as you describe at DDs school, and they tend to have insecure and competitive offspring, but they are the minority. None of the parents of my DDs friendship groups are like that, they are professionals and in other mainly middle class jobs, some SAHMs, several from other cultures making a life here. Down to earth families whose offspring are considering all sorts of futures, according to their talents, not parental pressure. My eldest DD is at a RG too studying Natural Sciences, and planning to go on doing that for the rest of her life, because she loves it, she will not, she has made quite clear, be paying for my care home

Any differences between your life and ours are relative and in the context of the sorts of lives most people have a chance of, indistinguishable. But I am sure it is important to you to maintain illusions of superiority, and I won't let reality and a telegraph article designed to reinforce the stereotypes get in the way of that.

Shooting
There is an assumption very often on Mumsnet that everyone lives in London, and is struggling along on £100000 a year, unable to get on the property ladder. Either that or they are living on benefits in a shack "up north" because of course there are no decent jobs up north.
Therefore an article suggesting than an internationally educated elite is creaming off the top University places and the top London based jobs is supposed to have us all getting our knickers in a twist, fearing for our children's future prospects.
Well for most of us it is not that relevant. We are doing okay with our northern jobs and our northern universities thanks very much.
And there has always been some sort of elite hogging the cream. Those who think otherwise are quite naive.

Trouble is for me, is that I dont like it much in the north. .Not sure I am allowed to say that really.

And really, I have absolutely no sense of superiority. I am merely pointing out that there are other options than the hamster wheel one.
DH and I have sort of fallen into our lifestyle through dumb luck as much as anything else. We moved here to support DHs widowed father, not because we had done some clever calculations as to how to achieve the perfect lifestyle.
You seem like a decent sort Shooting, go and argue with Bonsoir or one of the other nutters would-be elitists on here.

Golddigger, it is an acquired taste that's true. But I there is plenty of Britain outside the expensive South East where it is possible to live a pleasant, relatively inexpensive lifestyle.

Indians - now you really are trying to show off. It is not completely meaningless to refer to classical music. My preferred period of music is the classical period. I referred to no composers, but if you must know, my favourite composer is Mozart (I'm not going to pretend I like little known gems) and I dislike Beethoven, who was too late classical/borderline Romantic, and to my mind you can really tell he went deaf. I have played in brass bands, wind bands, jazz groups and orchestras. Of course I like all sorts of music - including so-called elitist music. There is also plenty of music I really dislike. That's my point, really - you don't reject things just because a particular group you are not part of claim them as their own, or they are initially harder to get to grips with, nor do you accept things merely because of peer pressure.

I dont live in the SE either. But now I have kids that are being sucked into it, jobs wise. So they have the disadvantage of starting out with no home base there.
But they are happy enough with their choices.

I think your points are valid though. I have noticed on threads like this that some children, after being privately educated, then feel that they owe their parents all sorts and dont want to let them down. So they end up going the same routes as their parents, and so the cycle continues, rightly or wrongly.

But who is to say who is right and who is wrong. We are all different.

MoominMammas - I'm having a perfectly happy life in the provinces, too. I don't want to join an elite, I don't feel the need to earn huge amounts of money, I think the most precious thing I can give my children is my time, and I don't want my children to go to "elite schools." I do, however, want my children to have access to a wide range of experiences.