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Original poster

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

485 replies

UnquietDad · 26/04/2008 16:56

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...)

OP posts:
Cammelia · 26/04/2008 22:04

Rhubarb I do like your eloquent posts.

Can't do it though.

southeastastra · 26/04/2008 22:06

i always feel sort of sorry for the children at haberdashers, they're so cut off from the real work. it's so isolated

Rhubarb · 26/04/2008 22:11

Ah but Xenia, if I had a gifted child (which I obviously do!) and I wanted to send that child to a private school, how can I do that on our incomes? Dh works, I work, we do not go on expensive holidays, we do not have a plasma telly or 4x4, everything is second-hand, we live frugally, yet we could not, if we wanted to, send our children to private schools. So they go to the nearest state. That is our choice, the only one we have.

I'm happy that you have that choice, I just wish that choice were available to others to. As you rightly said, there are very clever and gifted children being denied a University education because of the hideous fees. What a horrible position for the parents to know that your child is gifted, yet unable to raise the cash to pay for the fees to send them to University.

Did you watch that documentary a couple of nights ago on that Media Studies student who was a lap dancer to pay for her studies? She was a single parent, determined to better herself, but unable to ask her parents for money and being in severe debt, she resorted to lap dancing for some money just to pay her way. And even then she found she couldn't scrape through. She was working all through the night, trying to get to Uni on the train the next morning, writing essays, but stupidly tired and increasingly desperate. It made me fear for my own children and wonder if University would be something I would encourage them to do.

southeastastra · 26/04/2008 22:15

private school isn't all it's made out to be. seems like a hot house training if you want your ds or dd to be a doctor or lawyver - churns out bland personalities

Rhubarb · 26/04/2008 22:17

Totally agree. They don't do proper checks on their teachers, there is no integration, they only mix with other rich kids, they have no knowledge of the "real world" and from experience I've found a lot of these people are very intelligent, but have remarkably little common sense.

Original poster
UnquietDad · 26/04/2008 22:19

Quattro - OP deliberately chippy. It came out of another thread and I wanted to start a debate. I thought the best way to do that was with provocative questioning.

I do think it's interesting, and relevant, that people are questioning the terms of my OP, especially the idea of "best". I was genuinely interested to know what people's definitions of "best" might be, and I suspected it might be "best fit" (most suitable for your child) rather that top of the league table.

I'd be interested to hear anecdotal evidence from people who live in a "good" catchment but have chosen not to send their children to that school (chosen, not just couldn't get in and putting a brave face on it), but rather to another not so "good" on paper (not so hard to get into) but more right for their child.

To whoever asked about which university I went to - how is that relevant? It certainly hasn't affected my "choice" (lack of it) over my children's schooling.

OP posts:
scottishmummy · 26/04/2008 22:21

SE you sound so envious.put another way
"i always feel sort of sorry for your children not at haberdashers, they're so cut off from the real work, it's so isolated".hmmm does not seem so nice huh?

you make your choices and schools, don't be so disparaging and stereotypical about other parents choices

it is a lame intellectually lazy that such stereotype's exist on both sided eg assume private school pupils horrid boorish and comprehensive children ate rough thugs

real life is far more complex

ReallyTired · 26/04/2008 22:23

I met a lovely little girl who was at Haberdashers. She was with her mother at Alderham country park and had excellent social skills.

I think its naive to assume that all children at a school are the same.

One of my son's school friends is going to be sent to Indian boarding school as his parents aren't happy with the standard of education. He is only six years old and from looking at him, it stands out a mile he is suffering from clinical depression. He isn't standing tall, he has stopped smiling and his mother is complaining that he doesn't eat.

I think that the most important thing for our children is to be happy and to feel secure. Its a mistake to think that academic sucess is the most important thing in the world.

southeastastra · 26/04/2008 22:24

yes i am envious that they have £££ invested and it's reported in my local paper

scottishmummy · 26/04/2008 22:26

and........

Original poster
UnquietDad · 26/04/2008 22:26

Rhubarb is making may good points which I don't have time to address fully.

"Choice" is not choice if it is only available to certain people. For those who have no desire to believe in an imaginary friend and don't feel up to home ed, paying is the only method of taking a stand against whatever the state system decides to fling your way. There should be others.

OP posts:
Original poster
UnquietDad · 26/04/2008 22:28

The local paper here has its tongue right up the arse of the city's private schools and features them in its pages if one of their photogenic flock so much as does a particularly fragrant fart.

Meanwhile, the only stories they feature about the state system inevitably involve people with their faces getting slashed, or sent home for wearing the wrong shoes.

OP posts:
beautifuldays · 26/04/2008 22:29

UQ - our local catchment school is the 'best' school in the area, and parents clamour to get their children into it.

it was not my first choice for ds. i wanted him to go to a much smaller, less pressured school in the next village, which is much more relaxed and less formal. however, it wasn't to be and we have been allocated at our catchment 'outstanding' school.

he will probably go there, although i am worried that it seems like more of a SATS factory than an enjoyable place for small children, but hey ho, what other choice do we have - unless i can convince dh to let me home ed him that is!

TotalChaos · 26/04/2008 22:29

UQD - possibly you will be interested in my choice of state school then. DS (starts reception next September),has mild SN (language related). My initial first choice was a faith school that is best state school in county, and feeds into best comp high school in county. Could almost certainly have got him in on religious grounds. However I decided to keep him on at the school he is at nursery at. It's got a good Ofsted report and excellent facilities (fairly recently built to replace a failing school). However it's undersubscribed - in middle of council estate, fairly high level of kids with SN,below average attaintment on entry etc. Teachers/nursery staff are very used to kids with DS's particular SN, and DS settled in very well and is very happy there, and is clearly progressing far more than he did in his private nursery.

southeastastra · 26/04/2008 22:30

i just find it weird that they're so cut off- haberdashers or watford grammer

maybe alot of parents think they are cleverer than they are

scottishmummy · 26/04/2008 22:31

whats it go to do with you though.you are might exasperated

Rhubarb · 26/04/2008 22:37

Am I thick if I state that I have no idea what you are on about with your references to "haberdashers"? I thought that was a shop that sold various materials?

scottishmummy · 26/04/2008 22:40

haberdashers is a suburban NLondon school
this page

Rhubarb · 26/04/2008 22:41

So how can ReallyTired know a girl from there then? It says it's a boy's school. (How I'd love to pull up an apostrophe error on their website!)

Original poster
UnquietDad · 26/04/2008 22:43

It is a boys' school. A boy's school would be very small.

keep going , Rhubarb, you are talking a lot of sense on here.

OP posts:
scottishmummy · 26/04/2008 22:44

haberdashers girls school two single sex schools one site

johnso · 26/04/2008 22:45

There are many Haberdashers schools scattered around

scottishmummy · 26/04/2008 22:46

haberedashers girls school two single sex schools, one site.still just a NLondon suburban school

Judy1234 · 26/04/2008 22:46

Indeed, the City livery companies of which Haberdashers is one founded schools hundreds of years ago. They're a bit like the old state grammars. One of my daughters went to one. It's a girl's school which usually gets A level results in the top 10 - 20 schools state and private in the country but not snobby like some of the posh boarding schools for the very rich but very thick.

I am not interested in arguments over whether private school children have particular faults. They are just the same as any other children but tend to be better at mixing, speaking, getting on with people, not being intimidated by others, better spelling, spoken English and all the rest. The fact they do so much better in life too (in career success terms) probably explains why many parents would pay if they could afford it.

There are ways to earn more money. People can take second jobs, change career to something better paid. People manage that or teach in one of these schools. My son got an almost free place in the private school his father taught in. There are plenty of ways to skin a cat if a parent is really determined to get a child into a good school.

CissyCharlton · 26/04/2008 22:50

League tables have a lot to answer for.