Another wanky Guardian article - the 'anguish' of finding a good school ....

[disgustedbythehypocricy]

This is the most BOAK-inducing thing i've read in a while.. it's so bad i honestly don't know where to start!

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/04/andrew-penman-schools-education

I didn't say MI bleated.
I said 'those people who do...'

And they bloody well do. I hear it all the time. They can't quite believe they don't have enough cash for a house with a decent garden in a leafy part of London, or kids in private school.

Now if those things are of no interest to you, then you can make your choices accordingly. But if they are of interest. Indeed if you feel you're somehow entitled to them, then you're sure as shit gonna need to make different choices.

Blu - didn't that journalist get told by people on the street in Brixton to put his laptop away in case it got nicked? (So proving that Birxtonites are more likely to look out for you than rob you...)

Please don't turn this thread into a 'state v. private' row. It's so fascinating at the moment and that would be completely missing the point.

Motherinferior - I'm dying to know who you are now!

Or even Brixtonites...

I am deeply unmemorable! Just a hack who had a piece on that page. With an unfortunately porky photo

salizchap Tue 14-Sep-10 15:41:53
League tables and the whole % of A-Cs are a crock of .... anyway. I work at a school which prides itself on its inclusion policy. Our SEN department acheived an outstanding from OFSED, but the whole school only got satisfactory. Why? Because we take on all students regardless of ability, social background, etc... and we give each one a change to acheive to the best of their ability. We have kids with moderate learning difficulties who have taken GCSEs, when all the other schools in the area refuse to enter them for GCSEs. Why? Because they won´t get ´good´ grades. The only let them take vocational courses. For example, one such student (downs syndrome) got a ´G´ at GCSE, and OFSED penalised the school for this, not taking into account that this was an amazing outcome for this student.

The whole system is rubbish. If you have supportive parents and good staff the kids will do well within. The overall position of a school on the league table is not a good indicator of the quality of the teaching.

That's a really interesting viewpoint Saliz.

Interesting thread in all, actually. Am nodding my head in agreement with what Blu and Fennel are saying.

Agree that it's a nauseating article.

My dd has just started secondary. She hasn't gone private. I went to a private school and didn't like many of the other students: many of them were over privileged little shits with an overwhelming sense of superiority and powerful feeling of entitlement to the good things in life. I would have liked her to go to the local brilliant grammar school but chose not to get her to sit the exam alongside 800 other girls who've almost all had at least a couple of years of tutoring (dd had none) and the bus loads of girls brought in from the local private prep schools (who've been taught in classes of 13 all their lives and who've had intensive 11+ help at school).

My daughter is now at a local comp with an outstanding OFSTED which it's got because it's well managed and well-resourced. The kids (and parents) as a group are from lower middle class and working class backgrounds. There are very few children from professional families there.

I appreciate that she's very unlikely to leave this school with a clutch of exam results that will get her in to Oxbridge or one of the redbrick universities to do a popular subject. But she'll leave with an understanding of what real life is like for the people who make up the majority of the population of this country and an understanding of how lucky she herself is in comparison to many of her friends. I think that's really worthwhile.

And I'll just have to get my finger out and do loads of work with her so she doesn't lose out too much.

I agree with Blu, tittybangbang and in particular Fennel. Ours have gone to a regular comprehensive which was perfectly capable of delivering them out the other side to either Oxbridge/Russell group or to any other uni/HE institution or to getting a job, depending on how the individual child worked and applied themselves. Good teaching throughout and encouragement to apply themselves. For some there is obviously parental support, for others less so - but none of that makes the school a more or less worthy place. I am proud my kids went to a bang-ordinary comprehensive with everyone else from around here.

If you look at their incomes in their 40s you tend to see a corelation between whether they went to a private school or not and that is not solely because of the fact they came from wealthier homes, even if they did get to Oxbridge from a rough London comp.

I think Xenia is right. If you feel that your chief purpose in life is to ensure that your offspring clamber their way towards the top of the economic heap, then private school is probably a fairly sensible investment.

(Although please remember that the value of your investment can go down as well as up. Thinking of my immediate circle of friends, those who were privately educated have a rather greater tendency towards underachievement and financial fecklessness than their state educated peers.)

That'a a big of a generalisation given what surveys show (7% at private scholl and 50% at good universities and how those tiny 7% dominate our boards, our postions of power and just about everything except left wing councils)

Did I generalise? I merely pointed out that it doesn't work every time. Actually it was you that generalised.

No. I never went to a state school even aged 4. There's nothing wrong with Guardian journalists seeking the best schools for their children even private ones if they are clever enough to earn enough to pay fees. Most people want to do the best for their children rather than for other children it's why we might read to our chidlren rather than rounding up children on council estates and taking them back to our homes for bed time stories or putting our own child in a bad comp and sponsoring the child down the road in a council flat in a private school. I don't think benefiting your own child over those of others is a bad thing.

It's a circular argument, comparing income in 40s with private school background. Yes there is a correlation. But this is partly because if you plan or hope to send your own offspring to private schools you are likely to choose a higher paying career and stay working hard in it.

My group of peers at Oxford are mostly in fairly low/average paid jobs, and not for lack of ability to get top grades. They work in refugee camps, forestry, museums, one's a vicar, one's a teacher, one's a psychiatrist (OK that one is reasonably paid). None of them are currently sending their children to private schools. Not because they forgot to get the well paid jobs their qualifications permitted them to get. Many of these friends did go to private schools. But they don't want that for their children.

And if you know that in advance, you won't be so fussed about getting a job which can pay for it.

Still think it's all a bit pointless, if all you're doing is earning money to send your kids to private schools so that they can earn lots of money to send their children to private schools and so on, like posh rats in a trap. Life's too short.

at 'posh rats in a trap'.

Personally I'd rather be doing a job that makes me feel happy and fulfilled and is flexible enough to allow me to be with my kids every morning and evening, than one that pays bucket-loads but means I have to be putting my children in childcare from 7am to 7pm every day or having them brought up by the nanny. But that's just me, and I have no ambition to send my kids to private school (which probably makes me reprehensible in Xenia's book).

There's nothing wrong with wanting your children to have the best education. There's everything wrong with slating a specific school, using out of date information and a whopping amount of snobbery.

Well said MotherInferior. (another one here who could afford private education for their children but chose not too...I wonder why that could be....:))

Manchester Grammar school is a private school, whether Xenia's mother went to it or not....

Manchester Grammar is private and for boys, it's unlikely that Xenia or her mother went there.

Actually, like many mothers, I do read to children "from council estates". I don't "round them up" obviously, that would be weird and wrong. I go into school to do it, as do thousands of other volunteers. Perhaps, having been to private schools from the age of four it is a difficult concept to come to terms with, as from a very early age you will have become used to barricading yourself away from poverty and disadvantage, but for a lot of people, doing the best for your children actually means trying to make sure that other people's children are OK too.