150k EDUCATION DD WANTS TO DO HAIR AND BEAUTY BTEC AT FE COLLEGE

[helenjackson2]

HI I AM NEW TO THIS FOURUM.DD CURRENTLY AT TOP GIRLS BOARDING SCHOOL SOUTH EAST.10GCSE GRADE A A* EXPECTED OXBRIDGE POTENTIAL.WANTS TO DO BTEC IN HAIR AND BEAUTY AT LOCAL FE COLLEGE WHAT CAN I DO TO STOP HER STUPID AND IDIOTIC IDEA.HELP

Ha ha!! I read this and laughed!! You decided to spend your money on her education, you can't decide what she then does with it. Hopefully she has a good grounding to go on and be a success at college. There are one or two hairdressers out there who have done quite well for themselves you know. Live your own life and leave your daughter to get on with hers.

If she's at GCSE level at the moment, you are more than a bit dozy not to have seen what way the wind was blowing.

I can see the OP's POV. My Ds1 is 16 and silmilarly academic . I would be saddened and disappointed if he chose to pursue a Btec practical course not through any snobbery at all but because it would be such a dreadful waste of his academic brain and his potential. I think this is what the OP is getting at.

it is a gamble but as other posters have mentioned, we have chosen for our children to go private.

I am paying my DD to go private from primary hoping to give her better opportunities later in life due to the challenging job market and competition. By no means are we rich, we are working class but I am willing to make a lot of sacrifices and work my butt off to give my DD the opportunities that she deserves.

If she decides later on by not going down the academic route and be a top lawyer or banker etc then so be it as long as she is willing to work hard and be ambitious in whatever career she chooses to follow. I rather she was happy, healthy and have a good work ethic and a close relationship with me.

Whilst I am unsure how genuine the op is, the debate is nonetheless interesting. My personal stance would be to work as hard as I could to get her to finish her formal education, whilst not ridiculing or belittling her.

To those of you advocating that she be able to make her own decisions, remember she is only around 15, as she hasn't even taken her GCSE's. At boarding school she will be leading a fairly sheltered but academically pressured life. I am sorry but you don't really know what your future career will be at that age, most children change their minds. As fee paying or non fee paying parents we want to give our children all the opportunities, academic and non academic, to achieve and choose what they want to do as they get older. We want to open doors for children not close them. I believe that it is my responsibility to my children to encourage them to go as far as possible with their education. Then the choice is theirs. They can be doctors or plumbers etc. but they can choose anything. If they choose to leave after their GCSE'S a large part of me would feel I has failed them. I want them to be able to achieve anything and contrary to some posters that is simply going to be so much harder if she leaves after her GCSE's, no matter how you dress it up.

I went to boarding school and at that age we were all desperate to spread our wings and ultimately rebel and test the boundaries. We would have probably jumped at the opportunity to leave after GCSE'S, what 16 year old wouldn't!I remember after my GCSE's seriously suggesting to my mother that I would like to work in Mcdonalds as I was enjoying my holiday job there so much. Whilst there is nothing wrong with that, aside from the fact that I turned vegetarian at university, I know now that I would have hated giving up school to work there! I am eternally grateful to my parents for facilitating my education, which allowed me the choices I have had in my life. To those of you that say she can go back into education, yes she can, but it's so much harder and being a mature student isn't the same experience on so many levels.

Encourage her to get a summer job in a salon. Talk to her, not down to her but seriously I would be pretty firm. My line would be if that's what you want to do after you finish your education, then fine I will support you all the way.

I am sorry OP but thisw is really annoying me. There is nothing wrong with being a beautician or Hairdresser, you actually sound rather snooty. You decided to send her to boarding school not your daughter. I think she should do what makes her happy not what makes you happy. You can not live you life through your daughter. Just because you sent your DD to boarding school doesn't mean you can expect to have so much of a say in the career she chooses. I think you are being out of order.

Blueyonder22 is spot on in my view.

Blueyonder I found on my university course a lot of the students who came straight from actually dropped out of courses. Some said because it wasn't what they wanted to do. I think it can be an advantage to go to university slightly later on in life. It was for DH and I because we both knew we really wanted to study not just because it was the expected thing.

It seems that OP chose a top girl's boarding school ,not to give the good education, but because she had decided on the end result she wanted. It always seems silly, if not dangerous to me to map out a child's life. They are not you and they may be nothing like you. If you want a future conservative, vegetarian, atheist, Oxbridge educated lawyer then by all means try and influence that BUT always bear in mind that you may get a labour voting, Christian, farmer who goes to agricultural college to breed sheep for the table.
Good for her-hope she goes for the dream. If it doesn't work out she can always go to university later or change later.
I'm not at all sure OP is genuine from her posting style-but even if not -you need to realise that you get to choose your own career and path in life.
Don't pay out for education if you expect it to give an academic path or you think that your DC 'owes' you. A good education is never wasted.

It isn't necessarily going to be 'harder'if someone leaves school with good GCSEs studies a vocational course, goes out and works and then decides they want to go to university or whatever. It is a diffent path, but there is a lot of support now for adults who want to start higher education and many of those who went to university as mature students do really well. As a lecturer, I do notice that the mature students are often among the most committed and serious in my classes. They haven't just trudged along from school to university because it's 'the done thing'; they've really chosen to take a different direction in life. And mature students often bring a lot of skills that 18 year olds straight out of school tend to lack, which can prove invaluable in many degree.

And it's also absolutely fine if someone decides that they want to be a hairdresser or beauty therapist and not got to university ever. Hairdressers and beauty therapists are useful members of society and apparently have great job satisfaction. Going to a posh boarding school does not make these jobs 'beneath' one.

Beauty jockey, great name, shame post was so down on absolutely everything. I did do life the other way. I still altered it all later and redid things successfully. Much of both my routes became unfortunately down to gumption.

Thanks Blueyonder I have just got off the phone from my Sister and she has said that DD should come and work for her for 2 weeks over Easter. My Sister is convinced it wont take 2 weeks for DD to change her mind and if DD wants to go down the BTEC ROUTE I Should make sure that at least its a 2 year NATIONAL COURSE THAT COULD LEAD TO MANAGERIAL POTENTIAL AND TAKE SOME ACCOUNTS COURSE.

I am a big fan of vocational BTECs when a youngster knows what they would like to do and agree that to incorporate accounting and management is some way (and not as the included course units) for an able and academic individual would be sensible.

Please don't arrange for your sister to make it as difficult as she can in the hope that your daughter will be put off.

If this is about injustice is there any mileage in trying to convince her to try change the system through leadership?

Ie a career in law and/or government.

For which she would need decent A levels and degree.

Have you talked to your DD about earning potential, ie how much a lawyer earns, compared to a beautician? Has she thought of how she will get herself a mortgage onbeuaticians wages

I can't help thinking your DD is doing this to wind you up.....how about calling her bluff by going along with her plans?

Not everyone wants to be a lawyer or a doctor etc. We would be in trouble if everyone did. It is really insulting to all the people who are happy with who and where they are in life.

As someone who did the GS academic "sausage-machine", through to a Russell Group uni, then had a child who had stellar GCSE's and wanted to do hairdressing, I hope I can add genuine experience of a similar situation to the thread?

In YR11, my eldest was determined to do hairdressing - her teachers were appalled. I counselled DC to at least try the 6th Form route for a year and then see how they felt. My DC agreed but after amazing A/S results and a genuine shot at a Russell Group uni, they were still determined to go down the hairdressing route. Again, their tutors were dismayed and voiced their disbelief and disappointment that I was so supportive. We supported that wish because as parents, what else could we do? We had no desire to force them into the wholly academic route like I was forced to do - it didn't make me any happier. DC got a place at college but then managed to get an apprenticeship, which is pretty rare in this day and age and quite frankly, the better route into hairdressing, than a course at college.

OP, I know it's hard but all you can really do is be a mother and support your child in their desires and be alongside them for the tears and cheers along the way. We have to allow our children to choose their own path and at the end of the day, allow them to grow through their "mistakes" and triumphs.

I have no doubt that DC will pursue more "A" Levels when the time is right, as they have that sort of mind, in the same way that I will pursue my hairdressing course when the time is right for me

My DD is privately educated but even if her education didn't cost us £15k pa and she went to a state school, I would still be pissed off big time if she said that she wanted to be a hairdresser.

A trainee/junior starts off by making tea and sweeping up hair. Then she gets promoted and gets to wash people's hair. After a while she actually gets to cut hair for near minimum wage at the hairdressers on your local high street. If she gets a job at some posh Chelsea hairdressers frequented by A List celebs then Wow! But come on, call me a snob but doing a hair tint on some granny on your local high street hairdresser is not something I want for my DD.

But where would we be without hairdressers?! I do hate this attitude 'it is all right for other people's DCs but not mine'. We certainly need them more than we need lawyers-it is the ones with the law degrees that can't get jobs.
I don't think that people have the least idea that you can have a good degree from Oxford at the moment and be working in a coffee shop! She has lots of years ahead to change tack if she wants and economically it makes more sense to be a good hairdresser and then go on to other things rather than to get a good degree from a good university and end up a sales assistant in a department store while you try and find a starting point in your career.

You need to support the DC that you have instead of plan the future of the one you wanted.

Well there you go.... You've hoisted your expectations on your DD and it hasn't paid off. Good for her - she knows her own mind. You sound judgemental and patronising. If you're foolish enough to spend that much money on 'education' then you've only got yourself to blame. IMO you sound like a pretty awful parent.

Ermmm one person is saving lives while the other perms your hair. Hardly an argument.

exoticfruits and tiggytape, I couldn't agree more, or have put it better myself.

"economically it makes more sense to be a good hairdresser and then go on to other things rather than to get a good degree from a good university and end up a sales assistant in a department store while you try and find a starting point in your career."

I am sorry but that is such a silly broad sweeping statement. Nothing in life is all or nothing.