"You have to do anything you need to to get the best education for your child"

[seeker]

Discuss.

I have done my best to get my DCs the best education I can. My first priority when buying a house is the schools, I wouldn't buy my dream house if it was in the catchment area of a poor school. I wouldn't go to church to get a place and I wouldn't pretend an address. I would only pay for education if there was no reasonable choice. I think it is a better preparation for life to mix which a whole range of backgrounds. I don't pay attention to league tables and I am not too keen on 'reputations'as they often way out of date and wildly inaccurate. The only way is to visit the school on a normal working day and ask dozens of questions.It could be a wonderful, high performing school but be unsuitable for your DCs. Mine wouldn't cope in a highly academic school and I am certainly not keen on those who only want high achieving pupils.In the newspaper yesterday it said that some Independent schools were preventing pupils from entering some exams if they were likely to do badly because it would lower their position in the league table. I would hate them to go to a school where their league table position is more important to them than an individual pupil.
I am probably a bit different from a lot of people, I moved away from an 11+ area and I am very much in favour of Comprehensive schools.
I wouldn't lie to get into a school but I wouldn't send them to a school with poor discipline and staff-I would home educate in preference.

I haven't had to do that as I bought the education instead. I doubt any children would resent that sort of a lie. Anyway local authorities check addresses and in terms of faith parents have to attend church and that's not deceptive. Indeed it can make some parents return to their faith so in a sense it's win/win - the church gets back people who had dropped out, people get spiritual comfort, the children get an hour away from the TV on Sunday sitting still which always does them good anyway.

It is OK, Xenia, if you then keep up the church attendance once you have the place, otherwise it is not a message that I would want to give my DCs.

Personally I'd abolish all state religious schools as in US and French schools and ban religion from school. My mother (and me) thought she could educate us as Catholics out of school and did not send us to Catholic schools (except for my first few years). You don't need religion in school to be religious.

'the children get an hour away from the TV on Sunday sitting still which always does them good anyway.' eh? why does sitting still do them good? And what makes you think they're all watching TV. Mine are usually running around the park or the garden.

I think that being able to sit still, be patient and listen is a good thing for children to learn. All part of learning reasonable manners.

Actually listening skills in kids coming into school at 11 tend to be quite poor. My last year 7 form couldn't listen to a story for 10 minutes (the Demon Headmaster, not War and Peace or anything!)

I do think some children aren't ever made to keep still and listen even when they don't want to. Something you need to do in school and if you're used to doing it in church and even used to having to do something you don't like that's a gift in a sense a parent gives to a child.

I see your point, but I hardly think thats an important reason for going to church! However I'm with you Xenia on the abolishing church schools. Religion if for the family and for church. School should be completely separate.

I don't know about the best. I want my children to have the same sort of education I had. I was lucky to go to a very good state grammar. I pay for my children to go to a top 50 independent school and I think it is pretty much the same education that I received free of charge.

That's exactly my situation Swedes.

BTW you're offspring are particularly good-looking aren't they

your

Cammelia Thank you.

Surely the "best" is the best education for the child?

We sent DS1 to St Crammer at vast expense for a little while. He hated it. He is much happier in School Local.

Query whether I will be able to be this relaxed about his education at secondary level though. School Local is actually a very good school indeed, but the state secondary near us is not at all good. Sounds a lot llike the one near Rubber Duck actually....

We're prepared to do what we can to get dd what we consider to be a good enough education. We are about to move house to that end. We live on the edge of a rather grim area and the secindary school is the grimmest in the county. So we are moving. Not to the best school - to the best we can afford to live next to - one which doesn't seem to ahve any major problems. It looks good enough to us - we feel able to do the rest.

In theory, I could go back to work FT and pay private school fees but I'm not prepared to do that. I would be fine with a faith school (in fact I think that will be our local primary) as long we can be clear about our atheism. I went ot a faith school myself and came out unscathed - and it was a but school than the other one up the road. My mother was a Serious Believer though.

When it comes to the good of the community vs the good of my child, it is unlikely that I would choose the former over the latter.

Crikey - lousy typing even for me - must be because I'm sober. 'A better school' etc.

I would be happy to share this reasoning with dd when she is older.

"I am still very interested in an earlier question I asked - what do people say to their children in later life if they have "done anything" to get them into the "best school", if that "everything" includes lying about their address or their faith".

Still interested......but obviously no one else is!

I think it's the "new found faith" people that interest me most. When do they stop going to Church? What do they tell the children when they do - or do they keep going for the rest of their lives?

We moved house while DS1 was on the waiting list for a school, and told the local authority our new address knowing fine well that meant DS1 would never make it to the top of the waiting list. It was just the right thing to do. I don't think I can take much moral credit for this though, because if the state sector doesn't work out we are lucky to be able to afford the private sector instead. As it turns out I now consider School Local, where DS1 ended up, to be better than the school for which he was on the waiting list.

Can't help with the faith point though, and I don't know anyone who's tried it.

DH travels a lot to India, where very poor people do everything they can to send to their children to the evening school run by volunteers, but which is not 'free'. We have just returned from Egypt, where education is valued above everything - even shoes for the children. Very poor people who have nothing in dire situations are prepared to make scarifices because they know edcuation is the only way their children have out of poverty.
Here in this country where education is 'free' to all, it appears to be very poorly valued by those whose children need it most. All of us who post on mumsnet are by definition internested in education, and doing our best to provide our children with what we consider to the best education available to us in our own circumstances. The real concern is not actually the edcuation of our children, but those who do not se the value of it, and deprive their children of the opportunity to learn, and by conveying that attitude undermine the efforts of whichever schools their children attend.