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

Mmmm. Wonder how many non-Catholics got in to Wimbledon College this year, 'supportive of the ethos' or not.

He is slightly annoying but what do people think he should have done? Pretended to be a catholic?

The main thing this article brings home to me is the assumption that he and his wife would actively "choose" the school his child went to. This is supposedly an option which everyone has, but in practice is one which the VAST MAJORITY of people do not have. Thanks to over-subscription and geography and transport, most people are pretty much stuck with one school, or a non-meaningful "choice" between two or three. I don't suppose that is really understood in Guardianista-land.

I actually think having only one school where you can send your children - your catchment school - is a good thing and this false "choice" is a blind alley. But that's maybe for another day.

Quite heathen. I don't know about Wimbledon College, but a baptismal certificate and a priest's letter confirming weekly attendance at mass is absolutely necessary for most of the Catholic schools around here. It's pretty full on fakery if you're going to go for it. Consequently there are an awful lot of lapsed Catholics who have found their faith round these parts.

To clarify, I think people pretending to be religious/superstitious just to get a place in a religion/superstition-based school is pretty appalling - but, on balance, not quite as appalling as the fact that such institutions still exist in the state system in the 21st century.

Well one thing he could have done is to have written a decent article looking at the problem in a more analytical way, rather than whining about being in the fortunate position of being able to spend £40,000 on exploiting the system by moving close to his favoured school.

If it is a state-maintained comp, it is perfectly reasonable to complain that it excludes the non-superstitious. If it required parents to swear their allegiance to Flat Earthism or David Icke's giant lizards, the absurdity would be plainer. No different - just easier to see.

Well actually there are an awful lot of people who this kind of admissions policy doesn't suit: everybody of all religions other than Catholic for example, not to mention anyone at all who cares even slightly about segregating children by faith.

Strangely enough, non-state funded Catholic schools tend to be impeccable in their admissions policies. Naturally in this case anyone with the funds is welcome regardless of faith.

The problem is that, while there is a morally flawed system, people are always going to find morally flawed ways of exploiting it. This is not be encouraged, but it should surely only be expected - it's just human nature.

No kidding. But we don't need to read them whinging about it in a national newspaper.

I think that someone claiming to be a card carrying socialist one one hand, yet is lainly terrified that his children should associate with Vivien from the Young Ones-esque oiks is asking to be mocked, frankly.

It pisses me off no end that a large number of people immediately dismiss what they class as 'sink' schools with absolutely no idea of what they are like in reality.

DD goes to what you would class a 'sink' school, basically a bog standard comp in an area with selective grammars. She didn't take the 11+ as she moved into the area during year 9 (from a selective school in a neighbouring town, which in reality despite the wonderful GCSE grades was a crap schol pastorally). She was unable to get into any of the selective grammars due to huge waiting lists.

So, she went to a comp. Yes there is a large proportion of unmotivated kids, however the school emphatically does not cater to teh lowest common denominator (such a fear re comps I find) and has given dd a far wider ranger education than her previous selective school. The quality of teachers is in general better (not as many coasting teachers as there were in the selective school, generally teachers who choose to teach in sink schools seem to have a more vocational bent). The discipline is far better.

DD has just started Year 10, she is predicted to get As and Bs in all 10 of her GCSEs (not bad for a dyslexic kid) and is far happier than a lot of her friends who have remained in the supposedly better selective school that her old friends still go to.

What should he have done?

1.Looked at the local schools available to him and made decisions based on the style of teaching, quality of teaching (I've looked - lots of the Merton schools have a v good 'contextual'score) and subjects taught- NOT on crass prejudiced factors like how many children are bi or multi-lingual, or crass factors like dismissing the good people of Wandsworth / Tooting as murderers

1. If nothing doing, kicked himself in the butt for having learned no lessons from his demeaning pretence at religion and thought with more foresight about secindary education
2. Quietly moved and go on with it
3. Thought 'but it's not right that I should have to move or feel tepted to lie' and written to his MP about schools / faith schools
4. Understood how lucky he is to be able to play the system by lying and then using his money, rather than wallowing in self-pity, self-righteousness making a prat of himself and embarrassing his kids by having them pose alongside him, and exposing them as having been engaged in a lie re religious belief.
5. Not then capitalised on his self-righteousness / lying etc by seeming to make loads of money fom the experience by writing a crap book, and publicising it in a crap feature which purports to explore th painful dilemma of the parent while really being an advertsing feature!

Perhaps we don't. We do need a solution though.

But any solution needs to be based on the real basis of the problem - his main objections were ill-thought out and fonded on misconceptions or snobbery.
Pne of his solutions would presuably be 'found a free school with no children from ESOL families'!

SW London has too many of his type (they'd be the ones who aren't murderers)so I say good riddance. If a few bad schools is what it takes to make the smug arse leave it's a price worth paying.

Blu

I was so hacked off at the droning self-pity that I entirely missed the fact that he was promoting a book. I thought misery lit was so over?

I don't think he's even making any point about faith schools. He seems to be whining that he has to make an effort

• whining that he has to exert effort to get kids into CofE (and his effort is way beyond what is required, he's just making extra sure he's top of the pile isn't he. And by the way Penman, at CofE it's usually communiion on sundays not mass)
• whining that he can't fake Catholicism. If he could he obviously would
• whining that he has to fork out £40k from loose change in the sofa

All without apparently even checking out the reality of his local schools in the first place.

I was also left wondering why he was moving to a 65% school and not a 80%-100% one in that case

I was busy applauding you, actually, GetOrf!

I know - the irony is that he is moving to a not particularly goos school.

If you give much credence to those figures as a mark of a good school (and I don't frankly) my dd moved from a 83% school to a 45%, and frankly the biggest difference is that (a) the middle ability and 'thick' kids are not sidelined to concentrate all efforts on those kids which will get brilliant grades and (b) there is less money obviously spent on wanky accessories such as LCD tellies in reception and Apple computers in the library.

I would like to scream very loudly at the basic unfairness of a city which has the 11+ - 4 selective (state) grammars which have 100% A-C at GCSE, and 4 comps which gain between 20 and 50%. Seperating kids like this at 11 is grossly unfair in my view but that is another thread.

I can't believe anyone out there is chomping at the bit to read an entire book of this turgid, self-absorbed wankery. The publishers must all be on drugs.

Well, DS2 is still at Rutlish and DS1 was there before going on to Esher College (until this year there was no 6th form at Rutlish).

I'd like to flag up the headmaster's comment, if you haven't read it, that last year the results were not 49% but 61% - and the school is now achieving above the national average.

Both my boys had/are having a good, sound education at Rutlish and I can honestly say that we have never had any doubts about sending them there.

DS1 has just achieved AAB at A-level, btw, with an A* in his additional AS level; DS2 has just sat a handful of GCSEs a year early and has 4Bs and 2Cs to his name already. So I think Rutlish can be proud of that.

LOL at his reluctance to send dcs to a school where many children have English as second language- presumably he'd have sneered at Tiffins.
What an arse.

I went to what he would probably call a 'sink school' - it was the local comprehensive so there was no question really of me going anywhere else. I think the average GCSE pass rate wasn't great (always below national average) and the catchment area did cover some fairly deprived estates.

But it was fine. I suffered some occasional bitchy bullying from other girls, but I'm pretty sure you get that everywhere. I got good GCSEs, went on to do A-levels at the local FE college (school had no 6th form) and got a first class degree from a good university, followed by a graduate job in the City (which I'm leaving shortly, but only to start a PhD). So I don't think I suffered from not going to a posh school.

I think if you've got a smart, well-motivated child with supportive, involved parents, they're going to do well at pretty much any school, there's no need to pay for private school (or go to ridiculous lengths to buy or cheat your way into the 'desirable' state schools), unless you're motivated by making sure your precious little snowflake isn't tainted by having to to sit next to a child with a working-class accent or the wrong colour skin. Or so you can show off to other parents about the school your child goes to. Either way it sounds stupid to me.

I think everyone should just have a choice of full time at one of the three nearest schools or home ed supported with a unit in each town. That is it. No private, no religion, nothing. If you want to, home ed, if not, you get a choice of school. I would hope there would be some variations in teaching methods across the school too so there was real choice- maybe one traditional grammar style (maybe not actually selective, but covering all the traditional subjects like Latin and History), one looser, more action and outdoors based and one like the ones we have now. All fully inclusive, but with special needs units for those who can't fully integrate for whatever reason. And really, by secondary school, there MUST be a way of making flexi school an awful lot easier as they move classes all day anyway.