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

Letters in the Guardian and Merton Cllr letter

thanks for the links blu!

I went to a comp that took in the roughest areas of the town. In the 1980s.

It was awful. I think I spent the first 2 years with a knot in my stomach, dreading break and dinner times - it was unsupervised and the bullies rode roughshod over everyone. Things got much better when we started the 2 years of 'O' grades, as we were streamed and also the rough kids either dropped out or went to the tech college.

I don't feel I reached my full potential at school - my grades were unremarkable. I didn't go to Uni until I was 24, but I now have a PhD.

There is no way on earth my sons will receive such a poor standard of education. No way.

I know schools are very different today and that our local comp has improved beyond belief. But I don't want my sons to have the ghastly education that I did.

It's all very well to take the mick out of parents who don't want their kids mixing with the chavs. But I was an aspirational working class girl who's education was ruined by focusing on just surviving around rough kids, when I should have been enjoying my education.

But I'll say it again. He had an array of good schools to choose from. But his decision was based on prejudice, pure and simple.

Highlander has a good point. How many of those commenting on the article actually went to a 'normal' comprehensive themselves?

Agree that the article is ghastly, however, and that he has rather burned his boats on the moral ground by lying (and proud of it) to get into a faith school in the first place.

Highlander, I'm sorry you had a bad time at school. That is horrible. No-one on this thread has said they would send their child to a school in which they thought they would be unhappy or was actually proven to be bad. No-one on this thread has said that any parent should 'like it and lump it' and send their child to a terrible school and simply put up with it and expect no sympathy. The point of most posters on the thread is that you can't just make sweeping innacurate and even offensive generalisations about particular schools and then expect sympathy (and even a big fat royalty cheque on a book, ffs).

I didn't go to a comp. My brother and sister did, and my brother has the highest and best level of eventual education - my sister and I the same. My brother enjoyed his schooling more than I did. The closest comp to us is in a S London postcode that has much higher crime than poor old Tooting. This streamed comp does really well and the many very diverse children I know who go there are indeed v happy. But many people like AP will flee rather than even look at it. That's fine, it's their choice - but possibly, if it might have suited thier child if only they had looked at it, more fool them!

I went to a south london comp and it wasn't perfect but it was fine. And some of my teachers were brilliant. And I came out with good A Levels and went to a Russell Group uni blah de blah

Some of my contemporaries are now in very influential positions, some are middling along (like me) and some are in prison, a couple for murder. Some have died.

That is a comprehensive education for you.

I went to a normal comprensive. At the time about 60 out of 200 pupils took 5 or more o-levels but I don't know how many passed more than 5.

'comprehensive' I mean. It was long ago and now I need reading glasses.

I went to a comprehensive. Admittedly a very very very long time ago. It was a kind of middling-good comp, where lots of people didn't get many O'levels or indeed GSCEs. Others got rather good O'Levels and A'Levels.

I went off and got a couple of degrees, the first one from Oxford. Oh, and when I did the Oxford entrance exam I got a scholarship, thus demonstrating I'd done rather better than people from posh schools.

Yes same for me, some people did very well and went on to A-levels and good universities (one girl got a scholarship to Cambridge, several like me went to good red-brick unis), some failed to get any decent GCSEs at all, or just didn't turn up for the exams, or had stopped coming to school once they turned 16. Plenty were in the middle, and did OK.

I'd say the main determining factor was social class and how involved/supportive the parents were (the catchment area was pretty mixed). That's what makes me think that so much of the supposed value of posh schools actually comes from the pupils having this sort of background and parenting to begin with, not anything particularly special the school is doing.

I agree some schools are very, very rough and chaotic making it incredibly hard for anyone to learn (though that doesn't seem to be the sort of school the author of the article was turning his nose up at), can understand anyone wanting to avoid those. Even then, setting and streaming can make a big difference, though I would pity the child who gets a bit behind through no fault of their own and ends up in the chaotic bottom set and unable to progress. Wouldn't blame the parents for wanting to move them in that situation.

Sorry you had a bad time Highlander, but you are right - schools have changed a lot (I'm not saying that they are all perfect though). Blu's response is spot on I think - just what I was thinking but too sleep-deprived to articulate.

I went to a comp in the 80s. It took from the surrounding villages and was considered the best in the area. In my opinion and experience it was crap. It was full of middle-class kids but I still lived in fear of the bullies and 'rough' ones (and they exist in any school, inner-city or not). I was much happier in sixth form which was in the local town, considered 'rough' and had kids who didn't speak English as their first language. I did very well, went to university, have a PGCE and Masters and very good job in the civil service (soon to be no more but that's another story).

As Blu says, none of us want our kids to go to a bad school. But Andrew Penman made his decisions based on nothing it seems than hearsay, rumour and statistics. He is still an arse.

I went to a big comp - about 1200 kids. Some of them were as rough as arseholes and took speed in the loos at lunchtime. Yes, there was bullying and we lived in mortal fear as youngsters going past the fearful 5th form girls.

But that's the point, isn't it? You get to mix with all sorts, and learn to cope with people who are not as nice as they could be.

sorry Getorf, how on earth does a child learn to simply cope with the circumstances you describe?

Oh I coped/survived all right - but my education was ruined - but hey, you don't think that seems to matter, right?

As an adult, if you were in a work environment where that level of intimidation was causing you to under-perform, there would be an outcry on MN.

Yet we're expected to throw our children to the lions as part of some bizarre social experiment.

Sorry to be so aggressive, no personal attack intended

No, if a child cannot cope and / or is not being educated (let alone being ruined) then they need to be in a different school, absolutley not made to stay in some school on a matter of principle or experiment!

But I know of 2 families who have moved a child out of the private sector into state schools (one at primary level, one at secondary) because they were enduring horrible bullying...should those children have been made to stay in thier private schools because, for instance, of some bizarre social prejudice?

I know (and am good friends with) a parent of a child who had a bad experience of the schoolmy child is thriving and very happy in. The ruination of your education - and your childhood - is unforgivable. The only point here is that the kind of ill-founded, ill-researched and prejudiced panic that the likes of AP spread in articles and books is not helpful to children, parents or schools.

Sorry Highlander to hit a nerve (if I did) - if my original post came across as flippant I am sorry.

The school I went to was truly comprehensive - it was a rural comp, it had one of the largest geographical cathcments in the country. As the alternative were the local private schools (which were crap, frankly), there was a real mix with chidlren of all classes and underclasses mixing together.

It was a crappy school (still is) but it was a true mix, and although loads of kids achieved nothing, there were also loads who did well.

Of course not all kids suit schools like this at all, Highlander you would obviously have done better in a smaller, less volatile school. And of course I would never recommend just blithely sending your child to school to validate your social preferences. Just that don't necessarily right off a rough school, it may well suit your child to go there.

I have had to do exactlu this - my dd used to go to a very highly regarded selectve school in Cheltenham. She was horribly bullied and made herself ill such was her fear of school. And this was not roughness - this was a brilliant school, near enough 90% A-C at GCSE, places there were really coveted. This was just snidy verbal nastiness.

i had to get her into another school, it was very hard as we live in Gloucester, where you have 4 grammars and 5 comps. The 4 grammars were a no no - the waiting lists were huge, and being dyslixic dd would not have passed the entrance exams (gloucester has an obligatory 11+). Out of the comps, 1 was catholic (over my dead etc), 1 was all girls (wanted mixed), another one was all boys, another had no 6th form, and the only one left was a pretty poorly regarded comp in a rough area which had less than half teh success rate at GCSE. I dreaded sending dd there, but the alternative was to send her miles away into the Forest of dean (which she didn't want).

She LOVES the school. She is far, far happier than she was at her old (supposedly better) school. I go round telling everyone that this supposedly sink school has been an absolutely briliant place for my dd.

The discipline at her new school is far stricter (it has to be, dd says that some kids do kick off) and although the school may not suit all kids, it does suit dd.

I went to private school and was bullied to fuck between the ages of 11 and 13. There were no other schools to go to and it got better once I started O levels. There were drugs ODs, a huge amount of drinking, fights between pupils and staff etc. Don't think that 'posh' schools are immune from that sort of shit - they're not.

oh the shame

Write off, not right off.

goodness, Getorf - don't apologise!! (although that's very sweet )

I think everyone is a bit sensitive about their secondary education. I do need to forget that I am a child of the times - pastoral care was unheard of in the 1980's!!

I think you're right Highlander, and of course everyone has their own individual experiences to bear. Pastoral care in the 1980s was pretty thin on the ground - I don't think they'd heard of bullying in those days, or it was seen as just the way life is. I still remember the hard girl at school and the fear she instilled in me - and she didn't really pick on me that much!

I was talking about all of this with a friend the other night and we were wondering - does anyone really enjoy their education between the ages of 11-16? Although I wasn't miserable, I couldn't say I enjoyed my secondary school or had a good experience, and neither do most people I know. Life improved for all of us when we got to sixth form (in a different school).

So I'd be interested to know - does anyone on this thread look back at their secondary education with happy memories and great fondness?

Interesting point. I liked certain teachers and subjects but there were so many other distractions with my hormones going wild, trying to keep in with a group of friends, finding my place at home. Anger and embarassment seem to be the big teenage emotions. But I was motivated to work because I saw university as a way of escaping home/home town. So teenage misery has its advantages!

Anyone seen this? It appeared in today's Guardian. They must have realised how much they screwed up by not checking the facts thoroughly enough.

Headmaster hits back at book's claims of angst over state schooling

Don't know what I think about banding - would it split up pupils from the same area, or siblings, or friends from the same primary school clases who all happened to be at the same academic level? It could only work if all schools operated the same policy (which is not going to happen under the Conservatives).

I can't open link - is it in today's Guardian? Have copy but can't see article.

It's on page 4 of the main news section. The link seems to work for me.

Good for that headteacher - it must be incredibly demoralising for teachers and pupils to read about their school in a national paper like that.

The banding thing ... I'm not sure. Why would it necessarily improve the social mix of a school? And I wonder what criteria they'd use to decide how intelligent a kid was?