When parents are slagging off the local comp...

[Everyoneafter3]

I've posted before about my concerns over the local secondary, which, thanks to comments on this board and an excellent recent Ofsted, are very much allayed. I had a very good read of school newsletters etc and am much happier. Dd1 (Y4) is musically gifted and will also audition for a specialist music school.

The area in which we live is very affluent: many children round here go to fee-paying independent schools. These dc are going to school and telling my dd (and others) that the local secondary is rubbish ("my mum and dad say..."). One particularly stupid parent has said at home that "no child of mind will set foot in x school" which of course is coming back home with our dd.

Dd1 has now got it into her head that the local school is terrible, that she's really upset to go to not a good school, that she wishes we weren't poor (we're not! But no, we can't afford independent school fees without having to sacrifice other stuff we prioritise as a family). She's been researching exam results and all sorts.

For our part we've said well look at any local school she'd like to, although as we live across the road from the school in question it'd be unlikely that she'd get in.

I'm heartily sick of parents telling their dc how awful the local school is. It's simply not fair. My dc won't receive a 'lesser' education. They aren't going to a 'rubbish' school. If this continues I'm tempted to speak to their current primary school tbh. What else can I do? I've told dd to not listen, we've looked at the school website, talked about results (!) but I'm at a loss.

Bobo, also I'm not implying admissions tutors are corrupt.

I'm saying that private school pupils are given the benefit of the doubt, because admissions tutors feel they know the quality of the school - they think the pupils that apply are of a higher quality. Perhaps this is because the top indies are so well known. Even though technically the elite grammars are more selective, they simply don't have the name profile of the top private schools.

HBS and QE boys are extremely well known.

OP should be soothed by the thought if the comprehensive a good one, her child is likely to achieve (grades-wise) what they would have done at a grammar school.

Schools in England are getting better, and with a calculated vote in the upcoming general election, we have the chance to stop schools being hugely underfunded.

Peanut - you're underselling yourself. Your writing is cogent, and I know that most PHD candidates are intelligent. Part of being highly intelligent is having the intellectual curiosity to commit to 8+ years of intellectual discovery and research, and being able to motivate yourself to write it up.

Empress - apparently not well enough!

Alyosha - yes, the educational opportunities of DC at elite grammars and at top private schools are very, very different. You refuse to believe this.

Our DC have not been to school in the UK. Their educational opportunities have been very, very different to DC at a selective state school (in France or in the UK). People's educational opportunities vary.

I always said a PhD (I have one so not being sneery) was a demonstration that you can cope with large stretches of boredom. I think that is true for many.

True genius is extraordinarily rare. When it happens it is often initially sidelined. A good example is Bill Hamilton - truly an extraordinary brain (but he always struggled with the drinks dispenser ). He was a different league though - and notice (from the link) how unusually self driven - he just followed his interests - he wasn't remotely interested in established views - he was truly and independent mind (& a great loss)

www.theguardian.com/news/2000/mar/09/guardianobituaries3

Our education system does nothing to encourage fledgling Bill Hamiltons...

Bobo, but WHAT are these amazing education experiences girls at NLCS get in school vs. HBS?!

Devilish - I think a lot of women (assuming you are one) are so self-deprecating about their incredible academic achievements. Getting a PHD is a huge sign of intelligence. It shows you have the resilience, endurance and intellectual curiosity to stick something out for 8+ years, and to add to human knowledge. Anyone can be an intellectual dilettante, it's sticking through to the end that marks you out as unusually bright.

Well neither myself nor DH cared what school candidates had attended. His subject means all candidates are interviewed, mine was purely a paper based assessment process.

Around 35% of the intake were privately educated in one RG University I worked in one year, approx 7% of dc are privately educated. This is quite a long time ago before widening participation was quite so hot.

The golden years of higher education are over I saw the changes. Many staff are overwhelmed with student numbers, you just don't know all your students so well anymore. Some Universities are centralising administration services, its cost effective but it's not good for the students. Thanks for the kind words.

There are a couple of threads about the Michaela School if anyone is interested. I fully appreciate the head's motivation but I think what they are doing at Michaela is diametrically opposed to the sort of lateral thinking and independent creativity in your subject that, say, Oxbridge colleges are looking for. They are focusing very heavily on rote learning and reproduction of force-fed facts. It remains to be seen whether this 'lack of questioning' translates itself into truly high attainers at and post GCSE.

I would rather home educate than send my children to Michaela too.

The golden years of HE are certainly over. I wouldn't particularly encourage mine to go unless they need to in order to pursue a known, specific career or they have a keen interest in a pure academic subject (that may end up being the case for ds3).

And sunset agree with you about the rote learning.

It's not easy to find but 'Most Likely to Succeed' www.mltsfilm.org is a film that examines education now and how useless drilling rote learning is for employers in growing industries. If you can't see the film do watch the trailer for some of HE key ideas. My youngest goes to a (state) secondary school that shares similarities with High Tech High. The Dept for Ed seemed reasonably interested by what they're doing as well so they must be covering the NC etc.

Oh and course you can change career & don't need to decide in your 20's - with a degree/msc and PhD I am going back to university for a career changing degree in September. Over 20 years after my first undergraduate degree. I'll probably have to work until my 70's so it may as well be in something I enjoy (& a field I knew nothing about in my late teens and early twenties).

alyosha one very basic difference is contact hours.

Last year I was on a long running y12 thread and those of us posting worked out very early that children in private school were generally getting more teaching time.

The cuts to state sixth form education have been severe.

Is it not concerning to anyone the huge number of Eton and Winchester leavers who all go to one particular college...?!

It would be were it true. Have you any data for this in the last 5 years?

Just a point on Michaela; they are very clear they do what they do based on evidence based research. They think the evidence shows that lateral thinking skills develop as you gain knowledge. If you read some of their kids' english essays you can see they consider lateral thinking to be important; but it's how you get there they find most interesting. I think they're right on the evidence and that the education they give their kids is absolutely incredible.

Let's just take a moment to point out that one of the most successful comps for oxbridge is mossbourne, a school with a very very similar philosophy to Michaela! So it could be they are on to something.

Their style of teaching (teacher led and didactic) isn't that much different from my old school, but Michaela takes things to new heights. One poster commented on contact time. Michaela have a drill to ensure that all classes are started within 1 minute of kids getting in the classroom - leading to hours more learning by GCSE...

NC for this - here is some anecdata:

I went to Westminster, Dh to a good grammar. We both studied humanities at Oxbridge.
When I did A levels I spent the entire lower 6th studying around the subjects. We didn't start any syllabus literature until upper 6th. We went on umpteen theatre trips, had opportunities for many language/history trips etc. We were taught in groups of 10-12 for most subjects. Our teachers were all very enthusiastic and happy to spend extra time with us if necessary. We had lectures most weeks on interesting subjects by top speakers. And yes, it was pretty much a given that you applied to Oxbridge.
Dh OTOH never went on theatre or school trips - they just weren't offered. His teachers were very "old school" and not particularly keen on teaching. He started his set texts at the start of lower 6th and was utterly bored by them as he had to study them word for word. No additional reading around the subject was encouraged. By a miracle Dh ended up applying for and getting into Oxbridge.
And that statistic about private school applicants being spoon fed and doing worse? Well I had never been spoon fed in the way that he had and despite him being more intelligent than me, I got the better degree.

On Christ Church - not sure where to find it. You can see Oxford as a whole by Ucas apply centre, but not by college? I'll keep looking...at least Westminster's connection to Christ Church is a matter of record: the dean remains a member of the governing body!

And why for the last 5 years - was there a connection before then? What's changed in the past 5 years?

Will anyone admit to college-school links further back? In the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s? When did it change, if it ever did?

Your anecdote is really illustrative snoopy.. I think it brings out what many posters have been trying to express.

Alyosha - one of my cousins who went to SPS and took his A-levels in 1985 can recount quite amusingly the meeting he had with his housemaster (I think) who, when my cousin told him to which Cambridge college he wished to apply, was told "No, you can't apply there because that's where I'm sending [name of other pupil]. And you can't go to [name of college] or [name of other college] because that's where [names of other pupils] are going. You will go to [name of college].

And it all happened!

snoopy it was hoped that the demise of AS would encourage sixth forms to spend more time exploring the subjects rather than focussing on the tests.

But the cuts have been so deep that many sixth forms have had to reduce teaching time and offer only three A levels from year 12.

Some are dressing it up as a positive. But its budget driven.

Bobochic many schools in the U.K. still dissuade pupils from the same school applying to same college for the same subject. Common sense really unless they want to compete with each other.

Alyosha you have made repeated claims along the lines of quoted Is it not concerning to anyone the huge number of Eton and Winchester leavers who all go to one particular college...?!
but it would seem it is unsubstantiated by any evidence.
I said five years as that is the most recent and therefore should be the easiest for you to quote. You can go back for the last 10 years if you want or even before but it might take you a bit longer. If you can't find it please desist from the misinformation.
If you have an anecdotal source perhaps they can help through alumni publications.

Getahaircutcarl Dh and my experience was pre AS Levels so his school had no excuse at that time for not being more adventurous. I can understand that AS Levels made life more restrictive but I imagine Westminster had some creative solutions.

sendsummer - sure, but my cousin's point was that for - whatever reason - his peer group's destinations were effectively decided by the school because they all got in where they had applied on the school's advice.

My sister, who went up to Cambridge in the 1980s, went to the same college as our father, his brother, their father, his father i.e. she was the fourth generation...

People are always quoting the statistic "7% of pupils are at private schools" but that's across all age groups.

It's actually around 18% at sixth form.

Makes quite a lot of difference to the arguments about access to HE whether RG/Oxbridge etc etc...

And, boy, has this thread been derailed.

Very truly dare I say comprehensively derailed?

My personal experience is similar to Snoopy's in that I did A levels in two of the same subjects as my step-sister of the same age - I was at a private school, she was at the local highly regarded sixth form college. In English they just read the required set texts; we read several books by each author and double the number of texts we needed so we had a choice of questions. In French we read at least 2 works by each set author. They laboriously read round the required minimum in class. I just knew so much more, regardless of how much extra I put in on top of that.