Do you feel you are *entitled* to the "best" school for your children?

[UnquietDad]

If so, why?

and just a few other questions/points.

Define "best"

and

Does this apply also to people up the road?

and

Does this apply also to people in different social classes?

i.e if you're entitled to the "best" school why isn't everyone else?

Is there a middle-class sense of "entitlement" to the "best schools" in this country?
Is the problem that we have such a variation in standards of schools across a supposedly comprehensive system?
Is it people playing the system, moving out of catchment, "getting faith" etc, and making themselves part of the problem and not part of the solution?
Or is the issue simply one of being too obsessed by the schools that do well in the league tables and/or have a nice uniform?

(It's a quiet Saturday... Walks away whistling, hands in pockets... Gas Mark 6, set to simmer. I'll be back...)

Unquietdad, look what you've done!

I hope you're going to clean up this mess, or you'll be going straight to the naughty chair

I have not read the whole thread but riven is disabled herself and has a profoundly disabled child and I know its not a competition but it does make your options in life pretty limited

Ds1 goes to our local school even though it has a large socio econimc mix and ethnic (travellers in this case) mix. The headteacher is well respected and runs the very large school well. It isnt the best school in the area though but ds1 is happy (more important imo) I would send him to any school he would be happy in tbh> Childhood is about more then your academic acheivment

picking up on someone earlier point...I was brought up without selective schooling and agree its much better

Riven, there is a very good argument that we, as mothers, are the best carers for our children. Why on earth should we be paying for a third party to look after our children? They could never do as good a job as that child's own mother. Some mothers find themselves in positions where they are paying to work. That is unacceptable. In Canada you receive money for staying at home with your children whilst they are young.

much better to live in area qwithout it i mean

so much pressure on kids down south

cat64 - you're getting to the heart of what I am on about in the OP there, I think - false choice.

I agree UQD, it is a very ignorant comment for anyone to make and not what I would expect from an educated person. But then who says you have to be intelligent just to be rich?

Political correctness gone mad...

Cat, the local authority failed my family. When we moved here, at the wrong time re school lists, the Lea person told me that they didn't have a school place for my Y7 child. We had no choice but to go private.

We've taken that decision on the chin and made many sacrifices. We can't really afford it, which is why I have returned to work, and why we put the fees on the mortgage etc.

Yes, the Lea should provide us with decent school places at secondary level, but they don't - so we have done the best for our children in our own way. And we are pretty happy with how it has panned out. Shame on us.

I am not going to apologise for picking good degree courses and then working the corporate ladder. It hasn't been particularly easy, but it has been worth it.

It's called Socialism riven. But the well-off people don't want socialism ever to work because they don't want to share the profits they make from the hard work of the workers.

Come off it Scienceteacher, you said people should stop complaining, take some responsibility and go private! Hardly a reasonable comment.

Are you Mrs T masquerading in MN clothing?

We all wants best. There were schools that were 'better' than others, 20 years ago aswell.
And people would try and get in.Some would, some wouldn't.
= LIFE
And you may be pleasant to the woman down the road, but when it comes to selfishly wanting the best, all that flies out the window.
Just seems natual to me.
Hasn't it always been this way.

ST, you seem to be confusing your own situation with that of millions of people. Just because your situation meant that is what has happened to you, you cannot apply that same principle to others. It doesn't work that way. We are not all born the same, with the same brains, talents, personalities, friends, families and so on. I am happy that you are now settled and so should you be, proud even. But your argument that because you did it, it must be accessible to others is false and surely you must see that? It is in the government's best interests to ensure that these possibilities are not open to everyone, because we need workers in this country. That's why student fees were introduced, to encourage children from poorer families to go into manual labour because we were getting short of blue collar workers.

Just because you are a blue collar worker you shouldn't have to put up with second best. But unfortunately that is the reality. That is capitalism.

Actually, I didn't do that, Edam. I said that what we did ourselves. Big difference.

I only ever said what we did ourselves, Rhubarb. I never said that others should do likewise.

Why do people always see personal decisions as judgements over others? I really don't get this attitude at all.

Underlying this there is the interesting point that the main way to express one's dissatisfaction with the state system is to pay to go private.

You need to be in a particular position to do so.

This means that those parents who are doing so are not necessarily those who feel the state system is least effective or appropriate for their children - there may be thousands of those - but merely those who can pay to express this. A very different proposition.

My OP is making the point that we often think our children need the "best", which kind of assumes that there is also a mediocre and a worst. And that kind of assumes, in turn, that there are people who deserve these - or who, at the very least, can put up with them. That was what I was getting at.

But UQD, there are many levels of education. I myself have seen the good, the bad and the ugly. It would be naive to think otherwise.

Personally, I could not spend money on my house, on cars, clothes, holidays and entertainment, at the expense of my children's education. That's pretty much what it boils down to.

ST, people only see it that way when it is implied that others should do likewise. It is the inference that you worked very hard and therefore those who cannot afford private schools must not be working very hard at all. I apologise if this is not what you were saying, but then I fail to see why you would bring up your own personal situation if you were not using it to make a point?

The checkout girl at Sainsbury's earns around £15k a year, the drivers who delivers all the goods to the supermarket earns around £16k a year, the cleaner who keeps the supermarket clean earns around £10k. All of these people do an essential job. If we didn't have these people then we wouldn't be able to shop at supermarkets and the country would be swimming in dirt due to lack of cleaners.

The average annual fee for a private school is £10k although some can charge up to £25k. This makes it impossible for the vast majority of blue collar workers.

It seems to be a case of keeping the blue collar workers where they "belong", because access to a good education might give their offspring ambitions, and that would never do.

'Choice' has to be one of the most misused words going when it cames to education. Unless of course like ScienceTeacher you can afford to choose to go private.

agree unfitmother

ST, I presume you are good maths. Do the sums. Your checkout girl is hardly going to have much left over from her salary to spend on fast cars and holidays is she? You can't even get a mortgage on £15k a year.

If you cannot afford £10k a year on a private school then you might as well have a nice holiday once a year instead. How others spend their hard earned cash is hardly up for debate here.

Many workers are priced out of the exclusive education system.

UQD, in that case my view is simply that my child deserves the most "suitable" education. This does not necessarily mean the best when it comes to exam results. It can mean the school which prepares its children best for the realities of life: The school that provides different courses for different types of intelligence: The school that engenders a passion for learning: And so on and on.

I would like to think that rather than a better and worst there can be a "different" - i.e. more suitable for different strengths.

Perhaps I'm being too idealistic.

I seem to recall that you went to Oxford, UQD.
Why did you go there instead of your local university or polytechnic?

It smacks of losing an argument when people start to get personal, don't you think?

What does it matter which Uni UQD went to? University is different to school, hugely so. For one thing you do have a certain element of choice, and for another you can decide as an adult. For a child it has no say in the matter, it goes to whichever school is in the local region or whichever school mummy and daddy decide to pay for.

Why does she have to be a checkout girl?