arabella weir on why we must send our kids to state schools

[nowirehangers]

Arabella on why she would never send her kids to private schools
What do people think?
Fwiw I find the tone unbelievably smug. I also disagree with a lot of what's being said. I don't think all parents send thier kids to private schools so they can avoid the great unwashed, though some do. I would love my dcs to go to a state school for the reasons she mentions.
What puts me off is the fact the teaching is so often mediocre - as the Chief Inspector of Schools admitted this week. Of course there are so incredible teachers in the state system but I fear there are a lot of second-rate one too. I went to a state primary where the teaching was awful then was moved in to a private school and couldn't believe how much more stimulating the atmosphere was and how much more inspirational the teachers were. I dislike the idea of my dcs mixing only with posh kids, so I'm going to put mye experience down as an unlucky one and give the local state school the benefit of the doubt but if I feel they're being taught badly I will remove them and remortgage the house or whatever to make it work. Anyway, that's my opinion, interested in others.

if you are white and live in an overwhelmingly white area I can see that you wouldn't care too much about the cultural makeup of the school it would feel a very divorced concept to you.

If are not white or you live in a part of the world that isn't predominantly white, IMVHO attending shcool in a white enclave is not a good thing.

Fio - quite often the tarquins and jocastas do find each other without parental involvement, I have seen it many times

LMD - spot on.

if it has little relevence to you what another section of society does, then you will not fight to change it if it is piss poor.

middle class pupils snub chavs in comprehensives
Enid, am with you - like attracts like, that's neither good nor bad it's just a fact

I doubt I would bother with worrying about the state sector if I sent my kids private

for that cash I would expect to have less worries in my life tbh

thing is, doesn't that completely reinforce the class/wealth divide? We're ok, we don't care what happens to the poor people over there, type thing?

the advantage of a 'we're all in the same boat' approach is that we all have an incentive to make things better for everyone.

if you can just buy your way out, the only incentive is to make as much money as possible for yourself.

lol fio - its just that there are plenty of poncy parents around here but generally their offspring are called Jamie and Lucy!

I think the diversity issue has two prongs.
A Jamaican friend of mine chose a school with a large amount of black faces. It mattered to her enormously. But that wasn't because she was looking for a cultural mix. Quite the opposite, she was looking for peers for her children, kids with a simialr cultural identity.
The other prong is white middle class parents who are looking for a mix because they believe it will be enriching and interesting. Sometimes, not always before you lot go bonkers, this is very patronising.
The 'wasn't Eid a hoot,' brigade. 'We all wore burkha and made the girls cook.'

I care about state education even if I didn;t have children becasue I'm an employer! (admittedly not to the same degree)

We would quite happily pay (French style though) fees to send my DP's son to private schools to get some of the benefits. The state school they are at is currently driving us mildly mad. There is nothing we could possibly do to change it - it would get neither worse nor better if my stepsons left.

lol at 'Middle-class pupils snub 'chavs' in comprehensives' daily mail headline if ever i saw one.

also could be 'emo pupils snubs geeks' or 'chavs snub emos'.

It just seems too difficult to change things. I would vote for any government who made a priority of education, I would happily pay more taxes for better education, but by and large I feel entirely as though I have opted out of it. Oh I do a bit of mentoring - but not much.

I don't know why there isn't a uniform secular education freely available to all, with grammar schools for those that want academic educations ... no knife crime ... but there isn't ... there's a whole mess of things out there.

Is Arabella Weir a mumsnetter?

I still (mildly) object to wanting a multicultural environment as being "a cliche". Its such an easy thing to dismiss if it isn't relevant to you but IMO hugely important if it is relevant to you.

I don't the odd patronising parent personally.

"I don't know why there isn't a uniform secular education freely available to all, with grammar schools for those that want academic educations"

Because it is patently extremely difficult to achieve - can you think of a country that actually has managed to do this?

"I think the diversity issue has two prongs."

I think it has three the two you mention and what I consider a genuine reason for wanting a multicultural school -

you want your DC's to go to school with a wide variety of people of all races and backgrounds. (For whatever reason - MN acceptable ones and MN unacceptable condescending ones)

what i find especially irritating from the private school brigade is the the attempt to achieve a sort of mealy mouthed post-hoc justification by bashing faith schools and grammars as "unfair" - which is ludicrous coming from the position of having chosen a private school! fhs have the courage of your convictions!

'tis classic daily mail
I didn't mean to post that link meant to post link to the times's coverage of the same story - the point is research showed that comprehensives are not class-free, race-free happy melting pots and the Theodoras and Jagos seek each other out wherever they are.

Yes, and Finland also has the world's highest suicide rate doesn't it? Well-rounded individuals?

what about roger's comment (from the dm link)

What, were these crackpot socialists expecting decent kids to hug a hoodie?
Quite right to keep away from the chav scum.

twat