Do you think you can be a socialist and

[Swedes]

1. Pay for your child to be independently educated?
2. Buy a house in right catchment for the right school?
3. Feign religion to get your child into a faith school?
4. Object to a lottery system for school places with urban areas (ignoring all convenient environmental issues)?
5. Vote Tory? (because some people seem particularly confused)

Heated, I find most people's principles mellow when their children get to around 10.

I don't disagree with his decision but he felt the need to justify it as it seemed incompatible with his beliefs. As one of the few avowed socialists I know it was interesting the compromises he allowed himself - as pp said it is difficult as a socialist to operate in a 'late-capitalist society'!

Your child wouldn't be offered a free place at a fee-paying school without you applying in the first place, which generally costs money, so question 7) isn't entirely a separate case from question 1). There aren't that many free places going these days, are there? I thought "a full scholarship" usually meant half the fees rather than an entirely free place.

What does a true socialist do with a (possibly) bright child in a grammar school area?
Sending them to the local comprehensive doesn't seem viable, as in this system the local comp. is effectively the secondary modern...isn't it? And hence not the best place for a (possibly) academic child.
Do I have to move to an LEA with a proper comprehensive system; or just swallow my principles ("it's not possible to be a socialist in a capitalist society") and hope like hell she passes 11+?

Surely a true socialist believes in the comprehensive system and has to take what it gives them?

But we are not in a comprehensive system here. I wish we were!

Yes - they are called Gucci Socialists

And I wish we had grammars here...

The Bodenetariat?

UQD, let's swap...can I commute to Slough fromm your house?

Sadly I am in the People's Republic of South Yorkshire! We have Blunkett to thank for our system. These days he is more interested in writing articles in the local paper about how you can't find a decent sommelier in Sheffield. (And if anyone dares criticise him he just retiorts that they are accusing him of being a "grammar school boy with ideas above his station"... tw@.)

Ha! But...actually, he is a grammar school boy with ideas above his station...
Well, you may not have Legoland, but you do have the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, I'd def. swap it for Slough.

I am not really a true socialist these days, I think I just hanker after the days when I was. Maybe I have a chip on my shoulder, perhaps I am from the, "if it was good enough for me it's good enough for them" school of thought on comprehensives; I have friends who went to my comp. who now have precious little ones at prep school, and I just want to slap them! (The parents, not the kids...well, the kids too, sometimes, to be honest, but that's another thread...)We all have a stake in the future of all our children, and surely it really isn't good enough just to buy your own kids an education and hang the rest of them?

No- but I think socialism is aspirational and requires a wide buy-in to work effectively.

Sending your children to the nearest failing school b/c of your principles, while many others scramble around for alternatives just disadvantages your children. IF everybody sent their children to the nearest school (something which in theory I think should happen), and the school did the best they could by all the children in the school (without any regard for their league tables), THEN I would send mine.

Whilst schools continue to play strange league table games, whilst parents understandably vote with their feet and refuse to play the Russian Roulette, then opting for any of your five options is an understandable reaction.

Do people seriously move house just to get into a good catchment area? Genuine question, but the mind boggles. I'm far too tight to do that anyway, with stamp duty, fees and so on.

It doesn't yet affect me as DS is only a toddler, but if we do move for a better quality of family life, I'm sure going somewhere with a decent Comp will be on the wishlist, in the same was as I'd rather move somewhere with decent transport links, low crime rate, a nice pub .... To not do so would be cutting off one's nose etc.

"I think it's quite reasonable to say 'I believe in socialism, broadly speaking, but in order to function in this society I'm going to have to make some compromises'. "

I love this, and I think I might have to have it printed on a card to flash at moments of ideological chicanery.

I see myself as a social democrat anyway.

I think the answer is no.

I live in a grammar school area and won't think twice about sending my children there.

I'm not a socialist though.

No

but I no longer claim to be a socialist.

duchesse - it's like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Second-guessing everyone else's moves...

dadada - believe me, they do, especially in socially polarised cities like mine. People will even compromise on the house

I once collared an estate-agent and asked him why the housing market here worked like it did (asking price as starting price, frantic bidding) and he said "schools".

I believe there is a huge element of "keep away from the riff-raff" - more than anyone will admit. There is also an element of the council almost wanting some schools to be bad because it makes distinctly average ones on 65% look great.

That'll be £50 for the ideological counselling, DaDaDa

I don't really see what's anti-socialist about grammars, per se. They are state-owned (sory to harp on about this but IT IS THE DEFINITION OF SOCIALISM after all...)

I think there is some confusion here between socialism and general left-wingery. I think it's valid to say that a very left-wing person would be a hypocrite to pay for a private tutor to get Arabella into St Cakes Grammar, but if little Arabella is bright enough to get there on her own merit, I don't see a problem with that. It's not the fault of left-wingers that grammars are the state schools of choice for rich parents.

The idea of grammars is actually a very socially inclusive one - they take the academic top 25% (or whatever it is) from all social backgrounds. The fact that they don't work in practice quite like this - that they are jumped on by middle-class parents pushy enough and resourceful enough to play the system - doesn't mean they are bad per se.

That just seems... daft, UQD.

I mixed with the riff raff and it never did me any harm . But I don't necessarily want to live amongst 'em now just to salve my conscience, so I won't feel too guilty if I move to a decent area ta very muchly! I hope I'll be able to have enough confidence in my kids that they'll be able to find their way through OK with our guidence, as did my brother and I. Although I'm sure many of you with older kids will be chuckling darkly at my naivety. I don't understand this emotive talk of 'using your children as guinea pigs' when the majority of children are state educated. They don't all turn out to be gangsters.

Do they?

X post, was referring to catchment areas.

Ah, UQ- we can but dream of 65% grades A*-C around here...

Where are these mystical non-selective state schools from which almost every young person leaves literate, numerate and with a sizeable clutch of meaningful GCSEs? I've only ever taught in one from the dozen or so I've been into, and that one operated a selection by house price system. Oh, with a handful of traveller children thrown in for apparent "fairness", but no-one expected too much of them (even though many of them were very bright and street-smart...), and they were generally absent when it came to doing state ordained tests- how convenient.

I cut myself off above. Meant to go on "People will even compromise on the house to live in a nicer area - have known people who have downsized from a detached in a dodgy catchment to a terrace in a good one, for the same price of course."

Socialist sounds warm and lovely and cuddly. Shouldn't everyone want to be one? Or is socialist a dirty word now, like feminist?

duchesse - Sheffield has the whole gamut: one top state school which always gets 80+%, with corresponding house prices, a clutch on 60-69% which all jostle for second place, a whole swathe in the 40s and 50s and a handful at the bottom under 30%. Our lowest, I think, is 13%. DW teaches in the second lowest.

You could do a graph matching house prices to school league table results and it would almost exactly correlate.