Nice White Parents

[Hardbackwriter]

Anyone else is/has been (I know it's been out for a while) listening to this? I'm midway through episode 3 and think it's fantastic - it's making me feel very uncomfortable at points but so it should as I'm probably exactly the sort of parent it's talking about. The second episode, with the parents who said they wanted an integrated school but didn't actually follow through struck me particularly - I know so many people who are totally in favour of comprehensive state education in theory but whose children just happened to 'need' to go to a private school. I would have sworn before we had DS that I'd have sent him to the most mixed school possible but I'm now pretty certain we will in fact send him to the more middle class of the two primaries he could go to. So it's certainly bringing home to me some truths I've been in partial denial of.

One thing that confused me about the first episode - the very passing reference to the white children being mostly native French speakers. I had thought until then that the white parents wanted the French programme because they thought it would be lovely and stimulating and intellectual, but I guess not? Was Rob French-Canadian and when he talked about reaching out to 'a group' of other parents were they all French-Canadian? I didn't think that the podcast was very clear on this, perhaps because it makes the particular case seem less generally applicable, but it was a bit confusing that it wasn't explained.

When you get to the 'can of peaches' you might want to shut this thread down, because there are no words....

I'm pushed for time right now, but I'll send something about my experience of school searches / tours soon. Things weren't very different in 2010's London....

Ah I have heard that bit and it's just so, so appalling. The poor mother of that poor child, but also the woman interviewed who then realised that she was being forced to send her children to a school where the head genuinely thought it didn't matter if the children lived or died

I suppose the main issue it's bought up for me is tangential but very much related, which is that where we live is just so incredibly white - has as been every space I've been in from, from school to university to work. It's made me think much more seriously about the fact that I'm replicating that for my DC and about how indefensible that feels, but also that I don't know how to address that without moving to a completely different area.

But it's also made me think about my similar behaviour in regards to class - e.g. my fairly conscious choice that DS will go to the primary school with a much more middle class intake (which, actually, is slightly more ethnically diverse but only because of the kids of academics from the university nearby) rather than the much more socially mixed one, and how uneasily that sits with me.

Ok, so there were schools that were really well resourced. I honestly put that down to the staff, especially heads being very cunning in getting money. Some were excellent at it. But many of these schools also had very active PTAs, and these PTAs were mostly white. School governors also, but PTAs were definitely quite monocultural. And all of the activities were very middle class feeling - coffee mornings, dips with hummous. I found that a little alienating even and I love a bit of onion hummous from sainsburys. I couldn't see myself on those PTAs and i'm a fairly socially active person.The fundraising for some schools was out of this world, I couldn't believe it, you know, fundraiser balls (balls!). I'm even chuckling to myself now. So culturally specific.

Anyway, I'll talk about a few schools I really considered. One was in an area that was mixed as much of the city is, but is being gentrified. The school used to be a school no one wanted to send their kids too. It's a church school, and parents in the area who went to church religiously were black. On the school tour the head said very few kids get in through the link to the specific church attached to the school and from that church catchment. Instead most are selected by distance and attendance at a Christian church. Some of the other nearby churches were slap bang in the middle of council estates where a lot of black kids who genuinely went to church lived. This estate is about 0.4 miles away. So historically lots of black kids went. But the head put a lot of effort in and the school got better, and more popular. The school started offering extras, lots of after school activities, amazing actually, and this drew the attention of the white people moving into the area who would normally send their kids private. Some who saw it as a type of state private school. Some now send their kids there until they're 7 and go to prep (seriously! On the tour the head pleaded with us not to the do that but to stick with the school all of the way through if at all possible) When I was younger the school was predominantly black, now i'd say it's 4 black kids out of 30. Funnily enough, the school SHARES its site with another school and that school is around 95% black (Caribbean, North and West African). So at the end of the school day these kids leave from different exits on the same street and nearly all the kids from one gate are white and nearly all kids from the other school are black. This other school does quite well academically, but it's not culturally white feeling, and doesn't have the resources for the extras to pique white parents' interest.

So I stood at these said gates and spoke to black parents from both schools. The ones from the church school talked about the school ignoring the voice of the black parents in favour of the parents with money (white parents), that black parents had complained about some changes which alienated their kids (much like the podcast, change in language lessons from Spanish to French!) to no joy at all. I spoke to a white parent who talked about another white parent who rented a property they did not ever live in for £2k a month to get the kid into the school. Oh, I forgot to mention the catchment area shrank to around 0.2 miles after sibling intake so there is nothing to rent or buy come January each year! But by the next year most addresses are for the neighbouring town which is a more affluent area. This is compared to the other school with a catchment of about a mile.

Ok, so I looked at the DofE website. The church school did really well. I looked closer at the stats, this held true only for children who were not on free school meals. FSM children actually did quite badly. But it struck me, hold on, if the main factor in learning is the school, all children should do at least ok, unless of course the free school meal children actually come from extremely tumultuous backgrounds, not just financially hard pushed backgrounds. So i hit the street again. Nope, black parents felt the school placed greater emphasis on the well-heeled children (who were mostly white, but not all). So there was a two-tiered education going on there. Glanced at other stats, school had far fewer ESOL children, SEN children than average in the area. Parents at the gate said most children were tutored.

I ended up sending mine to a school that does really well, fewer frills, very working class, but where there is no significant difference between the outcomes for those on free school meals (in fact on some metrics they do better), where ESOL is high, transfer in for foster kids is higher than national average, very high proportion of ethnic minority kids (actually not my ethnic background, so my child is still a minority), but I just have more faith the outcomes are down to the school, not tutoring, and everyone is equal. People have asked me whether I'm concerned about the kids my children mix with. I really wonder about these comments. Families are families. DV knows no class boundary. CSA knows no class boundary. Crime knows no class boundary. Drug addiction knows no class boundary. People are pretty much people. I am very aware that how these issues are surveilled, treated, policed even, can be different, but people themselves? The same. There are no more good or bad children or parents at either school and I'm ok about missing out on the social capital.

I still pass by those two schools and their respective gates and can hardly believe it.

A bit jumbled but i wrote this over a few hours while doing a bunch of other stuff. Apols

@Sugarintheplum you raise an important point about BAME children’s performance in majority white schools. There’s evidence from the US that they do worse because teachers have lower expectations for them and sometimes due to discrimination - for example black boys are excluded at higher rates and get harsher punishments for the same actions as other types of students.

A big factor here is also the ethnicity of the teachers. Regardless of student population make up, black children have better outcomes when they have black teachers.

So actually the issue for BAME parents is quite different. Might it be better to choose an OK school with a higher % of BAME children and staff? Because your child might not actually be better off at the mostly white school.

@turnitonagain

Re expectations. Yes. I posted this on the other thread, and will do again here.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0834rgs

In this programme they show that in the UK black children do increasingly badly UNTIL they are 14 years old. This is for both Black Caribbean and Black African students. Then at 14 they suddenly do much better and Black African students eventually overtake white children at 16 (GCSE in this country). In fact from 14 the white students' performance starts to decline.

Why? Because at 14 formal exams and assessment take over. Until then it is teacher assessment and report. So all through school teachers are underestimating black children's abilities and overestimating white children's. Black children need to be anonymous to get a fair assessment in this country! As it was all teacher report and algorithm this year, those kids got shafted. I know so many. So sad.

Why the difference between African and Caribbean? I honestly think the Caribbeans being in the UK labouring under a racist educational system has a lot to do with. The resulting other social difficulties are more entrenched in those communities.

When I was at school it was a common story, Black kids everyone thought were going to fail, and therefore put in lower streams and written off suddenly pulling As and Bs out of the bag. It didn't surprise us! We knew our friends were smart. These black kids had done it by teaching themselves and yeah some of them did it even in the lower classes listening half of the time. Kids will be kids and all kids need encouragement. You don't encourage them they mess about.

Who knows what these kids would do with equal opportunity at school? Well we do know, we only need to go back to the Caribbean and Africa where children who take the same exams that are sat in the uK do better than those children in the UK doing the exact same A levels and O levels. The UK state educational system is classist and racist and it fails children. Only need to look at the recent exams fiasco here to see that.

When I was 11 i was given the majority white middle class high school nearby. I begged my parents to send me to the more diverse school with average grades that weren't as good in the other direction. They did get me in. I thrived. Still have friends from high school until this day. When i say diverse I don't mean majority black, I just mean every background. Was lovely now that I look back on it. It was still racist mind you, but not as much! i knew black kids at the other school - disaster. Didn't know any black kids who did well there and the school obviously didn't care about them, they were invisible in a way, I know this because my sister chose to go there. Even a few days ago she spoke about how much of a mistake it was.

The school doesn't need to be just ok or average because its BAME ( I know you didn't say that). There are plenty of schools in London that are predominantly BAME which are among the best in the country. Off the top of my head because friends have mentioned them or send their kids there. The two St Josephs in Bermondsey. Colville school in West London, Bevington in West London, Thomas `Jones, that one in Peckham, I forget the name... Angel Oak Academy. Lots more.

I was one of a handful of BAME students in a private school, but as a well behaved girl I didn’t have many issues with my teachers. My brother was a different story. But being in a mostly white school with almost exclusively white (barely even any Asian) staff was terrible for my self esteem.

But I did experience the “shock” from white students and especially their parents when I was getting top marks and got accepted to a coveted university. They’d assumed I was at the school due to sport 🙄

@turnitonagain

Well then it's likely you are still in a professional environment that's all types of prejudiced and difficult. If so, proud of you sis!

I listened to this podcast series over a month ago so I am listening again through more critical ears.

I wonder what would have happened to the school if no "nice white parents" had enrolled? I say this because there WAS a secondary school in a deprived area of my city. It wasn't performing well so fewer and fewer parents enrolled...which meant they received even less money and performance deteriorated. It's closed now and the local kids are bused far and wide to any school with space. It remains to be seen whether outcomes improve for these children - some might have benefited from the algorithm this year.

In NWP, it really does sound as if there were a lot of French and French Canadian parents that grouped together and decided that they wanted an international School on the cheap. Where do all the French kids go in London - private?

I think I am going to blame the Principal/Headmistress for much of the bewilderment on both sides, but she probably had little idea of the very different world the professional classes inhabit until it was too late. Do schools normally change the emphasis of a school (e.g. offering IB and extra-curricular in French only) without consultation with the parents or School Board?

Interesting piece about post 14 outcomes OP. All kids deserve inspirational teachers and parents that think school is important. Failing that, they need very good mentors (something I remember seeing that some of the London schools were trying to organise).

I genuinely do wish to learn so I can guide/encourage my young teen.

It was briefly mentioned in the podcast that the school was at risk of closing due to low student numbers - which I guess is why the head was open to Rob's offer. Which I found quite jaw-dropping as a thing to propose - 'If I and my friends send our kids to the school will you totally change the curriculum for our kids?' - and even more shocking that she said yes. It was implied that he also promised they'd raise the money for it, but I can't even work out how that worked - surely they had to hire French teacher(s) for the start of the year? If Rob hadn't raised any money what would the head have paid them with?

There were a few moments where I felt like 'ok, I recognise this, but also this is it but on steroids', and one of them was the entitlement in Rob thinking that his French immersion request was a reasonable thing to ask. Similarly with the cluelessness of the woman urging the parents to give donations of things to auction off - 'like if you have a holiday home, or like someone I know who works at Tiffany's and so gives away some of their jewellery' - I know (and I'm sure have been one of them) some very tone deaf people who don't recognize their own privilege but that was another level.

And thank you for the link @Sugarintheplum - the point about teacher assessment is such an important one, especially as I think (after this year's fiasco) there might be a move back towards coursework.

Yes, not sure how that worked. But at the beginning I think French was limited to after school activities, so maybe less expensive than what it became.

Strikes me the expectations of parents are along the same lines as the children - the part where the woman is enlightening the PTA chair about the benefits of dual language. And the PTA chair speaks Spanish as well as English! But just assuming she isn't bilingual and even if she is, well, it's 'Spanish'.

And then the white kids talking about how their presence is what has made the school good - that they have made the other kids learn to read and behave in class. Talking like White Saviours at ten years old.

WTH? Ten year olds get this from somewhere.

Oh gosh, and the NYT mockery of the kids. Beyond bigotry.

One thing I could really empathise with was the fear of white people turning up. 'Cos you know it's going to be a power battle (if you have the energy) and complete loss of voice and power is a true and real threat. The original PTA saw that from the get go.

And then the white kids talking about how their presence is what has made the school good - that they have made the other kids learn to read and behave in class. Talking like White Saviours at ten years old.

I knew someone who had won loads of prestigious scholarships to study an area dealing with BAME issues. I asked him once if he ever felt he was displacing a BAME student. He said “isn’t it better to give it to a good whites person like me who can actually make a difference?” Jaw dropping. He was 21/22 years old at the time.

Yes, it was horrible hearing the kids talk like that - they were so obviously parroting something they'd heard at home. I can't imagine that they were any more circumspect about their belief that they had saved the school in front of their classmates - they didn't seem to have the slightest inkling of how offensive it was - so their poor classmates having to hear this crap about how they didn't 'learn well' before their white saviours came along.

The woman at the gala was awful - 'she's never been to Paris!' - but such a recognisable type. That's why I wanted them to get slightly more into why French and why for native speakers, because there's something very culturally specific in Anglophone culture about the idea of learning French as the pinnacle of intellectualism; you don't hear people talk about other languages like that except the classics and they, just like French, have often been used as 'gatekeeper' languages. There is something particular about the dynamic of it being French that wouldn't have been there if Rob's project had been for, say, an advanced mathematics curriculum.

Paris seems to hold a magical allure for a subset of Americans. I am not sure that this is the case in the UK, rather it is down to the availability of foreign language teachers here (learning German and Spanish probably wasn't that common 50 years ago). I have had the 'pleasure' of working alongside people like "gala lady" (just completely unaware of people outside their immediate bubble/echo-chamber).

Learning Spanish, similarly, seems to be frowned upon by such people (not in the UK, but certainly in the US). I have a nasty feeling that it is because native Spanish speakers tend to be the maids/waitresses/gardeners rather than their friends.

In the case of the kids in the school, I do think "the white kids" had one or more French parents (originally I wondered if there were lots of Canadians, but I didn't hear the accent). The failure to offer inclusive French for all levels is the fault of the teacher who failed to adapt/notice/care. DDs Junior School had a Mandarin club and taught through games/craft/play/English explanations. The Chinese heritage children went along and enjoyed helping their friends and teaching them a bit about their culture.

I would love to know what the parents/teachers/school board think of the podcasts. I have so many how/why questions.