What annoys you about state schools?

[NormaJeanBaker]

Just in the interests of balance...

I am sure that Thinkingabout drinking is about to pull me up on my punctuation and spelling as eveidence that twinset much teach in a crap school as she is illiterate. I would like to say in my defence I am balancing my laptop on my knee along with a cat and a springer spaniel.

Thinkingaboutdrinking I am sure this is not intentional but you have actually made me feel a little stalked and quite uncomfortable. I think I am going to take a break and come back with a name change in a few weeks.

yep ...glass could be half empty or full depending on your outlook ........luckily I don't worry too much about it.

If something else unexpected like health reasons disrupts that then I will be philosophical about it not all bent out of shape at the world....

By the way UQD, setting aside enough mortgage overpayment for 7 years of future private school fees is allowing for the unexpected....oh but how boring such forward planning is .....

Jump in with both feet without reading thread...what annoys me about state schools is all the primaries near us are either CofE or RC.

I think it's quite funny that some of the dislikes on this thread are polar opposites. just below this post we have "stifling of teachers" (i.e. we should drop the national curriculum and let teachers decide how to do their jobs), and below that "children should be learning 10 irregular french verbs for homework"

as it goes, my experience of UK state schools is very positive. it's not a "one size fits all" system at all ime, although to be honest quite what that means in relation to education I'm not sure (as no teacher I know of would dream of teaching exactly the same things in the same way to all children)

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"setting aside enough mortgage overpayment for 7 years of future private school fees" I don't get this. Presumably you need to have the money to "overpay" in the first place. Again, not something which a lot of people can "plan" for.

twinset - I for one am delighted to read about your school and how much you rate it! I get so disheartened to read negative things from so many state sector teachers. I am similarly positive about the 2 state schools that my children are attending. Both of them contending with problems and still managing to be good places to learn and spend time.

I'm not entirely sure how a school being burned down by an ex-pupil makes it a bad place.

Haven't read much of thread but my personal beef is the standard of PE classes.

I know this isn't the case everywhere but ime skipping around a hall for an hour every week with a teacher who clearly hates sport is totally unacceptable.

I also hate the fact that a lot of schools ban football at break time in case somebody gets hurt

IMO Ofsted reports should focus a lot more on PE in their reports. For example a school that doesn't get an outstanding in PE shouldn't get this standard as an overall mark.

There should be more male teachers and/or dedicated PE teachers in primaries. Boys' acacademic work would massively improve then, and if you don't beleive me, look at private schools. they do three hours a week PE and still get great marks.

'believe' even....

The unerring belief among primary school teachers that children would be fine if it weren't for their parents. (er no actually, most parents do the best they can, and actually love their children, even if they are sometimes slack about bedtimes or lunches)

"literacy" and "numeracy" presented as though learning how to read write and count properly were revolutionary and hitherto undiscovered concepts.

Teachers who wholeheartedly reject phonics because they were taught 20 years ago that look and say was the thing, regardless of recent research or individual learning styles.

The insistence that bright children just have pushy parents, and that that encyclopaedic knowledge of atomic weights possessed by that 8 yr old can be bored out of the pretentious little git by exposing him to enough worksheets.

Worksheets.

"Peer mentoring" (ie keeping bright children busy working on their supposedly absent social skills by getting them to babysit sitting them next to the class hellraiser).

Biff, Chip and their ilk

disgusting and unnutritious lunches (although I understand this may have changed since mine were in state school)

Not being allowed to go for a pee when they need to (resulting in two daughters with wet knickers and sore undercarriage for three years)

I could go on...

Wasn't going to add anymore but hey, life is short and it's good to talk so...

All those who send their kids to independent schools - whether money is no object, or if they have to re-mortgage or scrimp and save, do so because they believe it is the better option for their kids.

On the other hand, not everyone who sends their kids to state schools think the state school is their best option.

Some are lucky enough to have good state schools in their areas; some fundementally disagree with buying privilege (and, no matter how many 'regular' families chose independent, you are still buying into a tradition and history of privilege and elitism); others think there is more to life than school and want to have money to pay for their kids family experiences too - holidays, hobbies etc

BUT lots just can't afford it and therefore have no choice. Not just the poorest in society, but those on middle incomes who have more than one child and perhaps no equity in their house, no grandparents to help. No matter how much scrimping and saving the maths just doesn't add up for them.

So to all those with kids at independent schools, it's good for you, your kids and more importantly your choice.

But don't diss state schools, and more importantly don't blame those that send their kids there for bigging them up. Its v. bad form. You have the power and the choice. Just as women can't be sexist as historically (and sadly in much of the world now) we don't hold the power, so the OP's question could be seen as very divisive.

As you were...

But Merrylegs, I do feel that we as a society have to look at the schooling we provide as for most part that's where the adults of the future will get their education.
And I do think that those who have made an active choice not to use state schools either by paying or home educating have every right to be included in the debate and especially those of us who have experience of both state and other choices may be able to add loads.
By objectively stating what you think is wrong with the current system is not to put down all the wonderful teachers and students who are within it. In the same way I can tell you my local hospital is absolutely filthy but that doesn't decry from the fab nurses who looked after my son when he last went in with his asthma. It doesn't stop me however from criticising the dirt.

Yes yes Litchick. Debate is good. But just thought that from the tone of some here, it has been forgotten that lots and lots of people really don't have any choice and are therefore doing the best they can in the circumstances.

If that makes them want to big up their school without criticism then they should be allowed to do so?

Also am not sure if the comparison with hospitals is so good? Prince and pauper will use your hospital, but in general the same cannot be said of private education.

Yes, even those with private health schemes will surely use A&E occasionally... so they have an interest in the local hospital being good. If you like, a "stake". That's what's missing from a lot of local schools - stakes. And I don't mean the sort used on big fences to keep the riff-raff out.

Merrylegs puts it better and less confrontationally than I have. For the vast majority there is no "choice", no debate to be had.

UQD - sure you can plan, if you want to - how many women nowadays delay having children into their thirties because they want to put their career on track first, that's planning, or choose to have one child instead of three so they can give that one a private education where they could not afford it for three...it depends on how much of a priority you give to a private education in the first place. I agree that for some even the best of planning means you cannot afford it but I am not sure what the point is here- it seems your view is pretty much the same on all your posts - no one should be able to buy a better education for their kids than the state provides (I guess following that line you would have to abolish catchment areas so folk can't buy their way by moving next to a good state school, private tutoring also they don't get an unfair edge....parents spending a lot of money on books for their kids at home, theatre trips, private music lessons, ..how far can we go on this theme? Problem is, you can abolish all that...and you are going to be left with some inequality, given middle class parents who having been through the system themselves can give their kids the inside track on Oxbridge, writing essays, help with homework, doing an interview, providing their middle class friends as role models for career aspirations etc.). Even if I could not afford private school, I would spend a lot of time helping my kid get a decent education (jeez - Barack Obama's mum did it by getting him up at 4 a.m. every morning to study for three hours before he went to school). It's just life, but you should strive for social mobility, through a better state system not attacking the right to pay for a private education simply because others has the choice to do so and you feel you don't.

I think helping achild with homework is rather different from removing him/her from community and local peers in order for him/her to mix with children that a parent feels are PLU (definitely the feeling around my neck of the woods).

Also, it is very hard to strive for a better state system if the most committed parents and the ablest children are not part of it.

Sorry - many of the most committed and ablest.

Sorry twinset, not intending to stalk at all- just remembered your post about cold portacabins as i have lots of experience of them so it struck a chord - I am often lurking on education threads so worked out your school (the L*M in Dorset kind of gave it away - I'm in Dorset). Was not intending to make you uncomfortable - just get a bit cross with people bigging up things when I think that the government should be spending the kind of money they are having to spend at your school on all schools... but that's another rant altogether.
And I wouldn't dream of commenting on anyone's punct or spelling - my typing is too poor to do that!

But amber I think you are missing the point (if it is those last few you were addressing).

You say it's 'just life'. No, that's your life. You have opted out and therefore, as you so very generously say, it should be those who are left, ('you') swimming in the seas of the state to 'strive for social mobility, through a better state system'.

Well, er, thanks for the permission. I think.

Also, your point about 'not attacking the right to pay for a private education simply because others has the choice to do so and you feel you don't.'

I say again to you, who are in a position of power. There is no 'feel' about it. Some peoples just don't gotta choice.

How if people who chose to educate their children independently are making an active choice for something, rather than it being negative choice against the local state system?

I think it works like that in the majority of cases.

So, yes, they are exercising a choice that is not available to the majority. That is unfair.

What does not follow is that they therefore consider the state alternative and all those who use it to be utter rubbish. This seems to be the misunderstanding that prevails. I can chose to send my children to a school which doesn't do SATS. It doesn't then follow that I think everyone who doesn't make that choice is a lunatic, or that I have no understanding that some people can't make that choice. It also doesn't follow that I can hold no opinion on SATS.

I think knocking the institutions which do a good job of educating their children - in this case private schools, though by no means all do do a good job - is a red herring. I think it's good old fashioned class hatred, and there's nothing wrong with that in my book.

But it's easier to blame the blame the well-off for class division and an unfair society - a) they deserve it and b) they can take it - than to look at the poor and try to work out how to heal those divisions in terms of education.

God I have to do some blardy work!!!

But am loving this heated debate.

Yes! Class divide! Up the revolution!!

It's us and them.

Oh, oh, and those that used to be 'us' justifying why they are now 'them', but saying but it's OK because even though we are now us-es, we are actually still really interested in you thems, as long as we don't actually have to like, be your best friends or anything.

I find it quite uncomplicated, but this might be because I don't think there is black and white, or absolute right and wrongs in life. I think the world is a mess, and I think people are flawed - that's my reality, so that's what I work with.

I think it's unfair that private education exists, and that the better off have choices in education to exercise that the less well off don't - be that private school or expensive house in catchment. I don't think people that are less well off are so because they have failed in some way.

honestly - ours is fab

not hugely keen on girls in skirts but i think that makes me an old granny - id have loved them as a kid

sorry - girls in trousers!!! doh