Headmistress attacks parents in national press

[UpsetofWestLondon]

Done first ever name change for this as don't want to be identifiable!

I am really, really pissed off. The High Mistress of St Paul's Girls' School, where I am a parent, has been widely quoted in the national press this weekend criticising parents at SPGS. I fully realise she may have been quoted out of context, but the quotes seem to apply to all parents at her school and the one that cuts to the quick is where she accuses parents of "affluent neglect" by not paying enough attention to their daughters in the evening.

I should say my DD is very happy at the school, does lots of things well and lots of things not very well but enjoys them so that's great. I adore spending time with her and the only reason I don't spend as much as I would like in the evenings is because of the extraordinary volume of homework she gets set by the school (and obviously the time she needs to spend on Facebook etc!).

I am glad Ms Farr is pro-children, and this is not the first time she has criticised the parent body, but at some point, if you continuously publicly criticise your paying customers surely you have to understand you will upset them? I feel personally attacked and concerned I will be judged by others negatively for being part if this vile parent body she describes. I am cross.

I almost want to post this in AIBU...but am I?

Poisonwoodlife I do take your point. It's perfectly true that if you look at the "Ethos" page on the SPGS website, as I have just done, you get a photo of Ms Farr and a message signed by her. Perhaps she is indeed one of those inspiring heads who wants, as you say, to transform the school and take it in a new direction.

The 38% hike in fees in the last five years, as reported in the Sunday Times, might be part of her plan to change the parent body: perhaps she wants the school to be more financially exclusive than it was when she joined. If she thinks that will help to foster the warmth, fun, creativity, and laughter she says she's keen on, that's up to her, I guess.

OP's concerns about parents' relations with the head sounded reasonable to me but maybe I shouldn't bother to comment if, as you seem to be suggesting, the Head must know best.

And in a school like that the pressures to succeed are enormous

They're not! They're only enormous if your parents are making them enormous. I don't remember feeling any pressure at all when I was at SPGS. I did feel a huge sense of possibilities being opened to me.

What I've realised from reading this thread and thinking about it is:

a) Clarissa Farr is probably right if a bit cack-handed in the method of delivery.

b) Most of the pressures in a school like this come from parents not other children or the school, hence her comments.

c) If you are actually at the school or another school like it and relatively well-adjusted with parents who are kind to you and don't expect the impossible, the pressure will just pass you by. The children who suffer are just not supported in a good way at home.

d) The ethos instilled in a child is mainly achieved at home. If you model resilience, good sense, trying hard, helping others, being kind, using your natural talents, whatever is important to you , at home, then your child is likely to pick up on it.

I think there is a lot of absolute nonsense talked about schools of this kind, tbh. I know current pupils as well as having been one myself and I just don't recognise the hothouse stereotype that gets applied.

Bonsoir you are right about the value of a good relationship with your head of school: and whilst not a close one that was what I thought I had with Mrs Farr. Now how can I trust her, when she is smiling at me at a concert, I know she might be judging me inside. Uncomfortable.

And poisonwoodlife your note on inspirational heads who achieve great change is actually quite moving. I don't think that's what we are dealing with here though. And I have tried to avoid all personal criticism here - my focus is purely on the poor judgement inherent in criticising your parent body in a way which will inevitably end up in the press.

And yes, whilst there are probably ten parents waiting to take my DDs place if we pulled her out, I would argue I am still an important stakeholder in the school and if my DD thinks her headmistress doesn't approve of what I do, that has a deleterious effect on us all. There has apparently been much discussion in lessons yesterday and today about it so the girls are highly aware.

The press seems to be loving their private school stories at present - you can't move without reading an Andrew Halls story, or an SPS hoodie story or this. Is it something to do with the dying days of a Tory administration? Let's fire people up against them?

OP My posts have been a bit glib and facetious. The concerns you have so well expressed are obviously sincere. Yes, of course you are an important stakeholder. You have a right to speak out. If you don't think Ms Farr is inspirational after all but do think she has displayed poor judgement and has upset parents, you should let that be known, especially when you are being asked to pay record breaking high fees.

Btw, I think it's the now astronomical level of the fees for these private schools that explains the press interest: journalists, like other salaried professionals in London, have been priced out in the last few years, so they are withdrawing their support. David Mitchell wrote quite a hard hitting piece about this in The Observer a few weeks ago.

Even if your parents are not pushing you to succeed it must be pretty scary to get a string of Bs and Cs when it is simply not done at that school. The expectation is that you are a high achiever or you wouldn't be there- once there you have to keep it up.

I thought it was an excellent price. After love and security children need time- lots of time from their parents and many don't get it because they parents can't make it, their lives are too pressurised.

The vast majority of parents in the UK have too little time for their DC, not because they have high flying careers, but because they need to pay the rent and put bread on the table.

There is a lot more working poor in the UK than rich professionals.

WF is right. Furthermore, amongst the super rich of West London, there are many families in which only the father goes out to work.

Anyway, OP's complaint at the start of this thread was that it was the amount of homework her DD had to do which deprived her of time to spend with her. It's hard not to sympathise.

Well quite granola.

The idea that high flying super-couples on their 'wealth and power trip' are so common as to be a problem we all need to prioritise...a societal emergency ...

Opopanax

I was waiting for you to post your thoughts. Well said. I had to acknowledge your post as no one else has yet. Perhaps truth from the inside doesn't support their view so it's being ignored? So far the OP and you are the only ones here with direct experience at SPGS (AFAIK, apols to any poster I missed). That said, a sample of 2 is not enough .

In my wide review of schools (open days etc) it is clear to me that the schools that have the biggest reputations where parents (including me) have the most pre-conceptions tend to "surprise" me the most.

There's a lot of prep-school gate gossip, speculation, third-hand stories, theories based on a sample of 1 etc etc. I would expect this for schools that make the news and which "represent" the private sector (e.g. Eton, Westminster, St Pauls, etc). What's depressing is that parents that care about their children pay attention to this sort of nonsense.

The only people I trust on the nature of a school are my own child, the pupils, parents, teachers and recent alumni. All the other indirect generalisations are useless.

Well quite MN.

People on here and in RL are always experts on what my son's school is like....

WF and Granola

Of course any thread about private schools is talking to a very "narrow" audience. Any issues there are dwarfed by the 95% state sector and the need to improve quality and outcomes there.

As for work/home life balance, our state primary sends kids to a variety of state schools. Every parent of a year 7 tells me the homework volume is huge (after the initial half term soft landing). None of them are at private schools. I'm not convinced the pressure on home life is restricted to high-end academic schools (private, faith or grammar). Add into this the fact that many parents work too (whether in a factory or a law firm).

I think the "parenting" point made by CF is quite specific to West London parents, but the wider parenting point applies to all.

The OP has every right to feel personally attacked by it and has every right to complain. Go have a chat with the head.

WF

Can we get MNHQ to add "WQ" to the acronyms dictionary? I like the tone of it.

If my experience as a university lecturer is anything to go by I have been nothing but impressed with the unpretentiousness, individuality, social concern and interior resilience of all the Paulinas I have taught in the past ten years. Going by the product the teaching and the parenting must be getting something right. If I had a daughter I would not hesitate to send her to St Paul's.

Perhaps the high mistress has noticed a recent change in the intake and is concerned about it?

It is lunatic that this story hit the front page of The Times and there is certainly a lot of ill informed gossip about these hyper expensive schools. Opopanax's post quite rightly addressed that but it didn't address OP's original complaint which was about the current High Mistress's relations with her parent body.

OP's subsequent post reporting that Ms Farr was inviting parents to have a word with her if they happened to meet her at a school event confirms that there is a problem. The impression given is that she is not making time to get to know the parents, despite the mind boggling fees (£22.5k pa) she demands from them. A case of "affluent neglect", I'd say.

If she did make time for that relationship, she might discover that only a few noisy parents were driving snowploughs or flying helicopters.

If my experience as a university lecturer is anything to go by I would have reason to know or remember which school any of my students came from, because it has no relevance to what they do at university.

Seriously, I think it's quite odd to specifically know which students you've taught are from a particular school, even one as high profile as St Paul's.

Just saying. From a higher ed perspective, the fuss around particular schools seems bizarre - we have fantastic students from all sorts of different schools.

It has relevance to a thread specifically on St Paul's Girl's though, no?

I do admissions. I know where all my students come from. I could have talked about students from other schools, good, bad and indifferent, etc etc but it would be irrelevant to THIS thread.

Back off.

PiratePanda

More anecdotal evidence that doesn't suit people's ill informed preconceptions. How dare you?

That said, a data set of 5 a theory does not make.

PiratePanda as a university lecturer, how could you possibly afford to send any daughter you had to St Pauls? Is that not the nub of the issue - it is so expensive as to exclude just about everyone.

I am another poster grateful for living in Scotland where we have a genuinely comprehensive system (apart from the continued existence of Catholic schools in certain areas). One school for all - imagine that?

Yes, there are private schools, but the vast vast majority of children will go to their local comp - and there has been no societal break down as a result of this lack of 'choice'.

GregorSamsa

"If my experience as a university lecturer is anything to go by I would have reason to know or remember which school any of my students came from, because it has no relevance to what they do at university. "

That's a shame. That means you have no anecdotal evidence to enhance this discussion at all. Time for a cup of tea?

whattheseithakasmean

I think the thread is about headteacher/parent relations and, potentially, work(study) life balance of adolescents at school.

The private/state school - London/Home Counties/Rest of UK debate is a great one, but I don't think this one.

I can't really address Ms Farr's relations with the parent body because I don't really know enough about that relationship! I did say that I think she probably has a point and just expressed it rather badly. I can see why the OP feels upset. I do think it's probably not worth dwelling on from her point of view unless she feels it is actually aimed at her (in which case she would have needed to hear it). From what she's said, she's not that type of parent, though.

Even if your parents are not pushing you to succeed it must be pretty scary to get a string of Bs and Cs

Nobody gets a string of Bs and Cs, probably not even at A Level. Not now and not even in the olden days when I was there - someone might have got half Bs and one C and the rest As or something (but the marking system was completely different and in those days it was vanishingly rare for anyone to get all As). Honestly, it just doesn't happen.

MN164 I do think my post was relevant, as, like others on this thread, I am bemused by the level of wealthy parental angst. It is almost as if having wads of cash to spend on education causes more problems than it solves.

I was also a bit surprised by PiratePandas post as I work in HE so I know what a lecturer earns - less than me and I couldn't afford whopping great school fees. I am also unconvinced of their value - and the contents of this thread have rather reinforced my view.

gregorsamsa it depends where you teach.

I work in one university where it's hard to get to know students very well, but another where tutes are just me and them, so we know a lot more about each other.

Also regarding admissions, the first university sinmply does it electronically. No person gets involved other than the department admin staff. If the candidates have x, y, z they get an offer. End of story.
The second university hand picks. An enormous amount of time is taken in sifting and interviewing etc.

whatthe wealth doesn't bring that many problems with it. Trust me .

Some niggles, perhaps. And some like to talk them up. Perhaps to put off those that might like a slice of the pie? Gosh, no, you really wouldn't like these huge advatages, your're better off as you are.

And people smile and nod. Yes, I really really would not like it.

As for whether a lecturer can afford fees, well it depends what their partner earns. The chap in the office next to mine works part time, but his wife is a partner at Goldmans .