Ethically, is there any difference between buying a house in a good catchment area and just PAYING fees?

[Fillyjonk]

Seems pretty much the same to me

Both ways you are paying for an edcuation

Both ways the intake of the school is limited, one by catchment (local, expensive) one by just upfront paying fees.

Thoughts? Justifications ?

(this got posted in SEN for some reason. Not sure how. Apologies)

Info on cognitive ability The Guardian and for the more cerebral amongst you, Brain

I've still got one

Me too - there must be some advantage in never being able to buy hats! That means that I shall be doing Sudoko puzzles into my 90s whereas my DH who loves maths problems but has a childs size head will be in his dotage.

Sorry- was being lazy and busy:

Times article on decline of cognitive ability among 11 year olds.

\linl{http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1693061,00.html\Guardian article on same}.

Blogger sounding a cautionary note about the research .

And, hot off the press, Abstract of the original research. You won't be able to real the entire article unless you subscribe to the British Journal of Psychiatry, alas.

The limitations of the research as far as I'm concerned are that they target a limited set of intellectual skills, but arguably ones that inform many aspects of an individual's functioning: mostly common sense and the ability to think in the abstract.

Thirty years ago children were taught to assimilate facts and regurgitate these in exams. These days, as I am led to believe, they are encouraged to use reasoning to solve problems by applying what they learnt (please correct me if I am wrong). I'm not so sure that schools should be blamed for the decline in cognitive ability. I think we as parents need to look closer to home, tbh.

Only last week the government wanted to bring in programme in order to teach young children how to talk because so many now are unable to speak in sentences let alone hold a conversation. IMHO, that has to be down to the home environment where parents are not talking or reading to their children.

SpeedyMama - I was at school thirty years ago (I'm forty) and I certainly wasn't taught to assimilate facts and regurgitate them in exams.

But I agree that the home environment is probably becoming more impoverished as families spend less time together because of longer working hours.

It's not true about blaming working mothers (or God forbid fathers) for all this of course.

"So why are children now doing so badly? Possible explanations are numerous. Youngsters don?t get outside for hands-on play in mud, sand and water ? and sandpits and water tables have been squeezed out in many primary schools by a relentless drilling of the three Rs and cramming 11- year-olds for the national tests."

My ex husband said at his prep school which I think is one of the biggest in London so they saw many many children that those who were in front of the TV most of the tim e as under 5s were very different from those who spent a lot of time outside. Taht is not really a parental issue except if your parent is too risk averse to do anything other than chain you to a chair by the TV. My 8 years are outside huge amounts of time whilst I post on mumsnet and they're pulling huge logs of wood, getting into bushes, making dens, kicking balls - it's all about physical stuff, size, fixing things and I think that's what some "inside" children miss. Last year the class was given permission to go into a particular bit of the school woods at break. I like all that stuff.

Dinosaur, like many private schools it isn't far from the brain damaged national curriculum, so there was little decision to make on that basis.
A few things commended it to me.
It does separate GCSE sciences, not the abbreviated one created by the artsgrads to channel money to folk singing and language teaching.
The maths teachers I met were of a quality sufficient to work in a bank, indeed one had done so.
The kids seemed more friendly than Bancroft or Chigwell. Chigwell in particular came across as slightly nasty. Hard to define that but DW and I came to the same conclusion independently. I also was not impressed with C's head telling me that my kids were going to be "Old Chigwellians", with some sort of social cachet. The library was shit. I define "shit" as having fewer books and of poorer quality than I had in my sink comprehensive.
But it was a very nice mock medieval bulding, so that was all right...

We quite liked Bancroft, but it doesn't have a pre-prep, the prep itself seemed very good, but even though the head is some sort of science grad, they go for the cheap and nasty pretend science GCSE.

DCs are both very bright, certainly DC1 has swept past where I was at his age. Thus the selection process at Forest commended itself to us, because we didn't want him getting the grief of being too much smarter than his peers.
The Forest staff also demonstrated a superior understanding of boys. Although like almost everywhere early teaching is all female, they don't treat boys as a type of defective, disruptive girl. All by itself that would have been enough.
There's more sport than I would like, but nowhere is that not an issue.
Both Forest and Bancroft had good libraries, and structured for the benefit of the kids not the library staff.

...and the chaplain at Forest is an old enemy of mine

Sadly I fear that outdoors, messy, potentially dangerous, less supervised and more child-driven play is less and less likely to be provided in all but a handful professional child care setting, although I also agree that parental attitudes at home seem to be becoming more and more risk averse by the year. Schools, nurseries and childminders do not want to be sued, in a climate increasingly eager to point the finger of blame for the merest accident.

This is one of the major reasons that had me postpone my return to paid work, when my son was 2- I visited any number of day nurseries and found them all wanting in this (major for us) respect. So my children spent the first five years of their life outdoors in mud, looked after happily by me.

I am glad to say that we were lucky enough to find the more wonderful Devon prep school, whose own headmaster had been to a prep school with a hatchet in the uniform list, and believes in the value of controlled risk exposure. His mantra is: "The world is not a soft play area- why lead them to believe that it is?"

Xenia and Duchesse - I agree entirely on the outdoor, messy play stuff.

I regularly get treated as a "mère indigne" by hyper-urbanised Parisians who don't understand why my daughter isn't locked up/strapped in at all times.

Sounds a wise head master. My husband found some of the children with co-ordination problems hadn't had much time out doors kicking balls learning spatical skills - if I jump from that tree branch to that tree branch will I fall to the ground or grab it successfully. My 18 year old would say however he passed his driving test first time because of his skills gleaned from driving cars on computer games for years.....

well if you pay a bit more for a house in a good catchment area you will make money. if you pay less for a house in a worse catchment area but pay fees you'll lose money.

..unless they change the boundaries in which case the super buy in the area of the good state school might suddenly become an area no one will buy in. It's a risk that you don't take if you're choosing a private school.

Thanks for the info. Got Bancroft's and Forest on my list for DS1.

The big advantage of Forest (for us) is that they have a school bus that collects from Stoke Newington, such is the volume of parents from Hackney that are voting with their fees!

Dinosaur if you want an offline chat about our experiences at Forest and Avon house, I'm
dominic at pauldominic
dot
com

BTW I detailed our reasons for choosing Forest, our experience once in has also been good.
You do have to apply early though...

Oooh, my ds has an enormous head! I think he's very clever too.

Dinosaur's boys are very bright indeed.

Glad to hear it.

For us, moving makes sense financially. We live in Hackney -extortionate house prices, appallingly bad schols - and we're moving to Barnet - extortionate house prices, generally very good schools. It's a no brainer, really!

Yes, Barnet schools are good. There were children at Haberdashers who I think got the school coach to my daughter's school every day and typically she had the occasional friend living right over there. I always got lost on the drive to parties over there. Certainly nicer than Hackney.

i'd spend the money on a house in a nice area with good schools. generally houses go up in value over time so as long as you stay there more than 5 minutes even if it did go down because of a move in boundaries it would eventually go back up again and your kids would still be in a good school.

careful renters

PMSL@madamenoir.

You see, that's beyond pathetic in my opinion. These people should just go private and keep some sliver of self respect intact (still belly-laughing and sppitting my lunch out all over the gaff!)