What annoys you about state schools?

[NormaJeanBaker]

Just in the interests of balance...

By the way, as I said I wish we had a Scandinavian type set up and there were decent state options for all, that way I wouldn't have to pay twice..(though I don't in any way resent paying taxes for a decent state education for all) - a failing state system that is not good across the board impoverishes the whole country in my view.

Not saying anyone was a Tory - just that the argument employed is that which characterised the "nasty party" during the 1980s. It was. And is.

"Dire moral stance?" Dear me. Any comparisons with commodities - Mercedes, holidays, first class air travel - are totally spurious and Miss. The. Point.

Not everybody is in a position to "draw up" an all-singing, all dancing "career plan", you know, and factor in the school fees from the statrt. (It beggars belief that anyone would do that, to be honest.)

This is the stuff Xenia comes out with on here - and while I have a lot of respect for her personal achievements, her generalisations about how people can and should better themselves are grating in the extreme. Not every career is that predictable. Not every "plan" is that watertight.

Jeeeeeeeezus, nobody HAS to "pay twice." I hate this bleeding-heart get-the-violins-out stuff from the private lobby. It's OPTIONAL.

UQD

Lie down. With a cup of tea or something. And Listen very carefully.

You ask "So why do we live in a society where a school is recognised as failing, judged as such by significant numbers of parents in the catchment, and yet thought to "do" for the vast majority of kids?"

I do not know. I did not vote for this nonsense. I did not create our educational system. I pay large amounts of taxes which I would have hoped might have been spent on education (remember "Education, education education"?) but the government went off the rails and started spending money on wars instead. This is NOT MY FAULT. IT IS NOT THE FAULT OF ANY INDEPENDENT SCHOOL PARENT.

You say "for 90% of people it is not a choice between "luxuries" and school fees. It is simply that there is no choice other than the "inadequate" comprehensive."

I accept this point. I've no idea why you felt you had to make it 10 times. Inequality exists in just about every aspect of people's lives. The wealthier people are, the better health they enjoy, the better diets, the better healthcare, the longer they live etc. This is the way that life is.

You want life not to be like this. I don't blame you. I want life not to be like this as well. The difference between us is that you are facing an incoming tide and commanding it most imperiously to stop while I am building a boat.

I note by the way, that you only vent your spleen on independent school parents. How do you feel about faith school parents? Surely this is just a variation on the same theme? Or what about schools in £1m+ house price catchment areas? Isn't that more of the same?

Yes, yes, but Quattro, do you really think that the people living in the £million plus houses send their kids to their catchment state school???

(there will be exceptions - but in general...)

Oh and UQD - I did build a career plan at round about the age of 15. Not everyone is this anal but you know, some are.

I didn't factor in some things to do with health but I did factor in independent schools. Apart from the health stuff, the plan has stayed on course, touch wood.

ATM? Nothing! The 2 state schools I have direct experience of are doing everything right and I am totally pathetically grateful for them.

I look at DS#1's secondary school and I cannot think of one thing right now (class sizes possible excepted I can't remember how big they were until 6th form) that was better in my private girls's school.

If people don't like their local state school or have gripes about this or that such as lack of sport provision get on the governing body - there are always LEA or community places; huge vacancies around the country and kick the asses of teachers who say things like "the trouble with my Yr 5 parents" is that their expectations are too high.

To answer the op: the short school day

Quattro, you have obviously missed the 100+ threads where my spleen has been vented at length about the insidious horror of the faith school . I haven't mentioned it here because that wasn't the question asked.

I don't accept that you are Noah and I am Canute. (Yes, yes, I know the Canute myth is not true and that he was only trying to prove he couldn't do it. State grammar school education, see. Great thing.)

"The difference between us is that you are facing an incoming tide and commanding it most imperiously to stop while I am building a boat." Nope, you're pulling up the ladder and saying "I'm all right, Jack", whereas I'm trying to get everyone on board.

I just feel I have to point out the spuriousness of this "debate" occasionally. I am not the only person to adopt the "stuck record" technique here when being wilfully misunderstood.

I don't have a problem with people building career plans if it makes them happy - be anal if you like. I am anal too occasionally, about other things.

What I object to is the idea that this level of "planning" automatically equates to a watertight career and =££££. There are a few bankers who'd have a word or two to say about that, I bet.

Lots of people "plan" what they are going to do, but most are at the mercy of "events, dear boy."

Cammelia - I am overjoyed to hear someone else say this.

Can I ask what you DCs hors are?

My dd is 10 and in Year 5 - registration is at 8.45 and they finish at 2.45 - it's an outrage!!! Does anyone else have a school that finishes this early?

Back to the OP. My son attends a state school and I have nothing else to compare that with. Probably the class sizes are the one thing which I'd love to see changed - it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that one teacher and one teaching assistant are going to struggle in a class of 30 pupils.

My son's school is lovely, supportive and very welcoming to parents. At present even if I could afford it I would not move him from there to a private school. As time goes on who knows - maybe I will want to.

Yes yes re: class size. Have said this before but will say again - DS was in a class of just 10 - (state primary). There were only 2 other boys. One was his kind of kid, the other he just didn't gel with.
He was also top of the class.

Now he is in a (state high school) class of 30 - he has loads of friends to chose from and play with. He can be challenged properly, join teams for sports and now there are cleverer kids than him too - ones he can compete with properly, spark ideas off, be inspired by, instead of being first at everything all the time.

So, you know, pros and cons and all that...

I don't think I am pulling up the ladder saying "I'm alright Jack". I haven't disengaged from the objective of wanting the improvement of all schools and voting accordingly. I also do some mentoring stuff.

But what I refuse to do is to put my children in a school that does not meet my academic/musical/educationa/physical expectations of what a school should do.

Your arguments aren't consistent. Sometimes we are characterised as appalling snobs for using independent schools - because state schools are just as good as independent schools doncha know but without the social cachet. At other times we are characterised as being unfeeling because we are deliberately giving our children a better education and that is somehow wrong.

You need to work out whether you think that independent schools are better than state schools or not.

If your answer is that independent schools are better than state schools, your energies would be better employed in trying to improve the state schools (rather than singlehandedly abolishing independent schools and achieving a poor level of education for all).

If your answer is that independent schools are no better than state schools then you should be gurgling at the thought of these poor fools spending money on something so entirely unnecessary.

I don't think that's a consistent deconstruction of my arguments. It's possible for me to think neither of things, exactly - just to be annoyed at the continual equation of "spending money" with "wanting the best".

Every school is different - I'm not going to make any generalisations about what's better or not. It does annoy me that there is a perception from some that private schools are better, and that therefore, by extension, state schools are rubbish. Because, after all, some people choose to go there and some have no choice.

Who do we vote for to want the improvement of all schools? I think the political boundaries are very unclear, and will be until manifestos are forthcoming.

I don't think it's possible to generalise about state schools. There are good and bad teachers in state and private schools.

But the main disadvantages in the system as I see it are;

large class sizes

bureaucracy, which leads to

• rules that are made to serve the greater good but which sometimes leave little room for appreciating pupils as individuals and an approach which is at times, unflexible

• teachers banging their heads against brick walls when they find a poorly designed system makes their jobs much more difficult, and at times is simply unworkable. This breeds cynicism within the profession.

It's not so much that I am annoyed, more that I fundamentally disagree with:
The NC.
SATs.
Stiffling our teachers.
I suppose I am an old reactionary and I just don't want the government involved in the education of my kids. I don't want to be at the whim of their constant nannying and interfering.

The thing that really annoys me about state schools is the silly homeworks.

Leaflets about picnics for food technology.

Draw a poster of a pirate and label it for English.

Open-ended projects lasting a half-term researching something with no objectives or no particular point.

Stop wasting children's time with this pointless stuff. Either give them something which will extend their knowledge or let them have time off homework. I'd rather they had ten irregular French verbs to learn or a page of equations.

I have nothing against state schools - I have taught in a few and went to them, but I think people talk them up, just as they talk them down...
Just to be clear - going back a few pages Twinset seems to indicate that her school is a perfect state school with wonderful facilities and model pupils - and yet the reason why they have such fantastic state of the art facilities is that an ex-pupil burnt half the school down!
And she was on here complaining recently about being in freezing portacabin classrooms - which the school has had as half their classrooms for the last 9 years - so not quite as wonderful as she might make you think.

I was also swung to private by availability of French and Latin, a classics orientated, liberal arts education at an early age for DS - I loved Latin at school - it doesn't seem to be an option in any of the nearby primaries.

I hate the idea of a curriculum being driven by meeting sats scores...it's not the state sector as such but the strictures placed upon it by a narrow view of education by the government to meet it targets.

QC your post took the words out of my mouth ..

UQD- Its not anal to plan a career - its called ambition. I didn't plan it at 15 myself but I was lucky - I studied what I loved at uni (an arts degree) then travelled and went back to college retrained a couple of years afterwards into a profession so I could be generally employable despite the arts background. I'm still reasonably happy at what I do several years down the line, I am pretty much my own boss and it pays well enough. It's allowed me to live around the world and I want my DS to have the same chances and will give him career guidance to open the same doors or more doors in fact - however if he chooses instead to be an NGO in a developing country or a student of whale migration or a rapper - it will be his choice (that may be difficult for you to understand I know as you have us private school parents all pegged).

Message withdrawn

To the OP:

What I dislike about dd's infant school:

political correctness gone mad
health and safety gone mad
bureacracy gone mad

And I'm a governor. I sit in meetings and despair sometimes as some blob of a woman drones on in a nasal tone about "facilitating learning objectives" and so forth.

Hmm. One can be ambitious without planning a career. Call me cynical, but I think anyone who "plans" their life without allowing for the unexpected - particularly if they expect to tie a certain level of income into these "plans" - is setting themselves up for a fall.

Thinkingaboutdrinking I am have not said my school is perfect, I dont think any school is perfect. I have said it is a very good school but I have also said there are schools considered to be better. Although it depends on what you are looking for, the school I teach in provides exactly what I would hope for dd.

I am quite amused that you would trawl through my posts to look for flaws in my school. When a school is being rebuilt there is a time when the school lives in temporary or inadequate accomodation.

Part of the school has been in portacabins for 9 years, noone would say this was ideal or even acceptable. But despite that our pupils are well behaved, motivated and successful. If you read my schools OFSTED you will see that there is reference to this very fact.

I did not teach in the school 9 years ago or even one year ago so cannot commment on the ex pupil and the fire. I only know the outline story.

I will continue to talk up my state school as I think it deserves talking up tbh, I am proud to teach there and unreservedly proud of the pupils I teach.

I am also excited beyond belief about leaving my cold portacabin and moving into my state of the art classroom in a few weeks.

I will finally say that I am not cynical, every day of my teaching career in this school is an utter joy - and that is saying something especially when I teach in a portacabin!