Emanuel School, London - does anyone know it?

[mwamwa]

Have just been to an Open Day at Emanuel School in Clapham. Overall impression amongst the crowds was quite good and I just wondered whether anyone has any positive or negative thoughts about the place.?

It's an old thread, and those comments are from a decade ago.

I find this thread odd. I don't know the school, so cannot understand why you are on such a mission to damn it without actually saying what the current issues are.

How well do you know it? These days, that is (not 2007).

Where have I attempted to damn the school?

It's a school. It provides an education. There is clearly nothing particularly wrong with it.

You just seem so intent on derailing the thread.

And I ask again, how well do you know the school?

And is that as parent, staff or alumna, of some other connection?

Just don't justify your choices by claiming social exclusion has nothing to do with it, or that the area you live in is so colossally wealthy that a state school would be no different, anyway, and then you might be able to give an honest answer to people as to why you chose a school.

yes. And what is your rexperience of this school?

I know the school as well as people on here have described it - in other words, very little, as bugger all useful information was imparted by the various contributors, with the exception of one person saying their child was bullied. The rest of the comments are largely a pile of self-justifying clap trap, or admitting it was OK when people's children didn't get in elsewhere, or sniping about it being no better than a comprehensive. Very little sense of what the school is really like for its students can be gathered from this thread.

Which is why the comments aggravated me so much and I felt forced to come to the conclusions that I did.

So you don't know the school but have latched on to comments made nearly a decade ago.

Discussions about how schools change over the years can be quite useful, and I was never keen on the idea that zombie threads should be locked. But I think I'm changing my mind.

Nope, I have also read all the comments from 2017...

So I know the school is surrounded by "Nappy Valley" and that people for whom it was not their first choice nevertheless had children there who enjoyed it. And that it sends a few children on to Oxbridge and other respected universities, but not in the numbers of other nearby private schools nor at the same cost. So, I know nothing I couldn't work out for myself from statistics and websites, and have read nothing to indicate it is viewed much differently now from 10 years ago. No idea whatsoever of its particular ethos, just that it does OK academically, and surprise, surprise, at least some children are happy there, so as I summarised, it's coming across as a school which provides an education and has nothing particularly wrong with it.

For someone who is very happy with your state comprehensive, I really can't imagine why you would spend so much time being negative about a private school in SW London. You should be gloating over your excellent free choice. Why does this and other private schools bother you so much when we are all apparently wasting our money paying the fees?

You do interpret things weirdly. I would quite happily consider Emanuel school if I lived in the area and wanted my children educated privately. I just find people's comments about the poor school either snobby and dismissive, or utterly unedifying. Nobody whatsoever has given any sense of what might make anyone genuinely love the place. Do they give good feedback on the children? Do staff have good relationships with the children? How do they structure the day? What makes the school distinctive?

However, have you failed to notice that any criticism on this thread levelled at the school seems to relate entirely to it being too much like a good state comprehensive?

The word 'good' being really important here. Many people don't have access to a good state comprehensive because catchments are so tiny and house prices near the good ones (just a different way of buying privilege) are so high.

If you don't have access to a good state comp where you live, and have the means to access a private school for about the same cost as moving into the catchment of a good state secondary, it can look like a good option.

We will be considering this for my kids when they're older. Their state primaries are great but they only have one non-selective option for secondary (the other state options are superselectives). So we can move away from all the things we love about our community, our support structures, the house we love, or we can think about private, or we can shrug and say 'we'll make the best of the not-great school'.

I'd love to be the sort of person who said 'we'll make the best of the not-great school'. But these are my kids, and I'm not a good enough person to sacrifice the best option for them that I can afford to do a tiny bit for the betterment of society as a whole.

Meanwhile, I'm holding out for the local comp to dramatically improve over the next five years. That would be the ideal.

Private education is problematic, but it's not the only form of social exclusion operating in the education system.

I think you mean it's not the only form of social exclusion operating in the country - our schools reflect and perpetuate the divided society in which we live. And I don't think it is entirely honest to say we have an education system in this country, as though private and state schools are all part of one education system when they clearly are not. We do have a fine old underfunded, overcrowded mess, though.

"seems to relate entirely to it being too much like a good state comprehensive?"

Does the school have a representative number of poor low achieving kids there then?

Because comprehensives do.

"Why does this and other private schools bother you"

Because watching children being socially segregated on masse in front of your eyes into different institutions is pretty sordid, and a bit heartbreaking really.

It's like seeing all the inequality and snobbery that still screws up our culture and our politics almost as much as they did 100 years ago playing out under your nose every day.