'State schools are creating amoral children'

[BurgenSnurgen]

...because state schools are under so much pressure to improve results that there's no time to teach them right from wrong.

So says Chairman of the Independent Schools Association

Bit speechless really. It's giving me the absolute RAGE.

Mart I'd like to be an idealist and in fact when I was young I was bit, but out here in the real world if my friends and I don't sending our DC's to independent schools it not going to have that much impact, and certainly wont send out a message to the people you would like it sent out too, because the sort of people who can cheerfully stump up £35k+ a year will either not care what others do, think we've hit hard times or think we've simply gone off our chumps.

I'll bet they don't suggest they join the ranks, though, happy.

Is your mentoring officially through a school Martorana?

Yes.

Well good luck. She is lucky to have such a committed supporter.

So nothing else to say about how patronising I am? Not interested in learning any more? No more about the "colonial attitude"?

Neither of those phrases came from me. But yes, I am interested in learning what you think it is important I know.

Mentors would have to be chosen carefully, selecting people who can help children see what is possible and then let them make their own choices. This has got be about informed choice for the child.

martorana

Because that's what they are more comfortable with, Herc. It's not a good idea to give that sort of people aspirations- it'll just mean they won't fit in anywhere. The toffs won't accept them because they won't have the appropriate cultural capital, and they will have grown away from their own kind. I think that's the argument, anyway. It's like being in an episode of Downton Abbey..........

Oh god. Nobody sent me the memo. Shit. Should I hand my qualifications back, D'you think? Should I resign from the various international committees I'm on?

:(

Like many WC people I have shitloads of cultural capital. More than you could shake a stick at. More than most of my toff colleagues. That having said, there is a difference between people like me and people like them.

We're usually brainier.

Yes. That is why I asked whether you were working with school as generally sixth form heads are quite protective of their students and needs. I did this job for a number of years and then worked on the other side in the very early days of widening access, a long time ago. I find some of the rhetoric around this a little rouseauian and it irritates me. But perhaps what I perceive as pragmatism, others see differently.

rabbit AAT is an entry level qualification. It can in theory lead to better things, in practice it usually doesn't. It limits people.

I have nc from a name I have used on this thread, as details are personal.

Martorana has some points.
My DD applied and got an interview at Cambridge. She didnt get in.
She is from a state comprehensive, which I am not sure has ever had students get into Oxbridge. They may do, but it certainly isnt advertised. I even had a problem with the Head and her year yead, in shivving up whatever they had to do their end to support the application. If I had not gone in and kicked up a bit of a fuss, the application woudl not have got there in time. My DD knew that there was one other pupil applying too, so we sort of worked together. The Year Head had other things going on in his teaching life and basicaly wanted to do all the uni applications together or something, and I dont think they even realised the early deadline.

But my other main point is this. Together with them not really having a clue, I realised that they were completely unable to help us two parents with any knowledge about our applications whatsoever.

I had to do what I could via googling for tips[I dont knwo anyone personally well enough to have asked for help with the application.

As I said she didnt get in. And I realise that not a lot do, even with an interview.

But I do think we would have had a lot more help from a school that regularly had pupils there. Not to mention tips I could have picked up from other parents.

word I was in that situation too and I don't feel untethered. It wasn't easy but, honestly? It wasn't hard either.

Level playing field, no?
Am I bitter, definitely not. I am well aware that life isnt even, and fully accept that. And she was not applying for one of the main degree choices. And, as I knew she would, she is doing fine elsewhere. At a uni that has an excellent course in what she is doing. With excellent contacts.
Will it be better had she gone to Cambridge, work wise, may be not.

Jojo what is thought by some to be a good idea (but has n't been formally implemented) is some sort of central bank of 2nd /3rd year students at the appropriate university and of the same subject are who are happy to be contacted and mentor students from schools like your DD's, usually from year 11 onwards.

I think that having gone to Cambridge is definitely what gave me an edge work wise, not just the line on the CV, which does mitigate against some of the negative strokes I have to live with (dyspraxia mainly. And being dead common), but much more, the feeling which has helped me all my life that if I could do THAT, go THERE from where I started out, then I can do anything. This has lead me to pursue and accept opportunities which I might otherwise have been too timid to go for, and to push for things like simpatico working arrangements that fitted nicely with family life at a time when such things were very unusual. S I think it has been a huge advantage. In terms of contacts - zilch, professionally. On a personal level I have a highly exotic and interesting array of friends and acquaintances which I generally speaking have to keep quiet about in a professional context.

That would have been brilliant.

I have since learnt that part of what they may have been looking for was some sort of deep thinking?
If it was that, I could have helped her in that way of thinking. But to be fair, she probably isnt the deepest thinker, so in essence she may not have been what they were looking for anyway.
[fwiw, even if she had come from a feeder school, I am aware that she still may not have got in realistically]

Also, she may not have had a wide enough range of extra cirricular activities. Especially debating?

I dont know. But it would have been at least useful to know the sorts of things they might have been wanting?

Probably, ggogle can only do so much, and up to date info, and definitely the mentoring, particularly about her specific course, would have been useful!

fwiw, the industry she has gone into and wanted to get into, are not that interested in Cambridge. Not so far, at any rate.
Whether it will matter as she progresses, I dont know. Not nesessarily.

Realises I am very off topic, so will shut up now, and may return to my old name!

Sounds as though her course has worked out well for her but knowing more information whilst going through the process is much more empowering.

I think you made a very good point about preparation and support. I used to think people going on about that were just bitter, because I didn't have any, so surely nobody needed it. But I now realise I was being ridiculous, and crucially - the bar is much higher now than it was in the 80s. Plus, I was probably just very lucky. My DD1 doesn't want to go to Cambridge and I suspect is unlikely to get sufficiently stellar AS results to apply anyway. But if she did want to, her (state, but highly selective) school prepares them, properly. And I can see how that distorts the playing field for kids who go to places that don't (not, as it happens, the alternative 6th form college which also prepares them). Sadly for her, my DD1 wants to do something even more selective than Cambridge and her school isn't really in the business of preparing kids for that. It makes me worry, because I know other schools do. Just not any remotely near where we live.

So a school leaver getting a 3-year apprenticeship in Risk Consulting with KPMG at Canary Wharf whilst being funded to do AAT and then go on to do the full chartered accountancy qualification would be a bad idea for someone who wants to be an accountant but doesn't want to go to university, then, HercShipwright?

rabbit I wouldn't advise anyone I knew to do that, no. Since you ask.

Why is it not a good idea?

Attrition rates mainly.