Secondary choices - middle class angst

[Wincher]

Name changer here, been on MN donkey’s years...

We’ve just done my eldest’s secondary application. We’ve gone for the local company - it’s 5 mins walk away, has rave reviews from parents I know with kids there, seems really welcoming and inclusive. Ofsted Good. Not great results, about 43% 5 good grades, basically in line with national average.

I just keep worrying that we’re not doing the best for my child and I need some sense knocked into me by MN. Both DH and I were privately educated. We are now very comfortably off. We were lucky enough to buy in London zone 3 before prices went crazy and we have a small but comfortable terraced house in a slightly grotty area a mile from the tube. We could afford something bigger in a better area but we have a brilliant group of friends here and our whole life is here. We could also - probably not as well as moving - afford private school for both our kids. But DH is against it in principle and it does seem like a crazy amount of money to spend - at £18k per year or so that’s the best part of £100k for each child just to get to GCSEs. Plus there’s the not minor point that my eldest is bright but not outstanding and really we should have been tutoring him for the last two years if he was going to stand a chance of passing entrance exams.

But I do really think private would suit him - he’s not bothered about being with his friends, he’d love to learn Latin, he’s little and got a posh accent and I worry he’ll be ripped to shreds in a big London state comp.

I think as the deadline for applying to private schools approaches (1 dec I think) I’m just worrying whether Sending him to the local school is really us doing our best by him. People say bright kids will do well wherever they go but is that really true? We still have a couple of months before the exams would be, we could intensively tutor him until then?!

Please tell me I’m being ridiculous and he will do well at the local school! I need to stop the yearning for rugby fields and wood-panelled halls.

My DF can be extremely ‘gammony’ - not gammons! Bloody spell check!

You can move him if it doesn’t work

They teach Latin at my kids state school (after school club).

flourandeggs I don't know what you mean. If you think the world will leave me behind because the resentment I feel about social class will cease to exist, well, I hope so. I'm speaking about my own experiences and trying very hard not to appear bitter about the class system in this country which has repeatedly put me and people like me at a disadvantage. Maybe I was trying too hard and made my tone odd. But I won't be 'leaving it alone'. I work with a couple of the 'best' universities so I know what I'm talking about actually.

@Andante57 Gammon is a term we use as a family to describe my Dad and father in law and their friends. They wear red trousers and gillets, have black labradors, drive landrovers and often have mottled skin from too much red wine at lunch (most days). They believe in their right to do pretty much whatever suits them because it has ALWAYS BEEN LIKE LIKE THAT! They are often sexist, bigoted and racist but when I meet one who isn’t I love the surprise. They would vote in a Tory MP even if he had a murder conviction as long as he wore tweed and went to the right school. They kill foxes even though it is against the law, just because THEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO AS IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY. They are often absolutely lovely people on top of all the above, but since the referendum I have to admit I have felt a bit cross with them as I feel for the majority of them voting for brexit was voting for something that can’t and won’t exist again. People voted for Brexit for many many reasons and many of them I get, I really do, but in the case of the more gammon members of my family I don’t get it and my way of dealing with that is a bit of gentle fun with my kids. If you voted for Brexit I suspect that you did it based on research and intelligent debate and with a view to the future generations. Most Gammons I know did it because their neighbours the Wholloping-Trollopes said they were going to and they have that lovely drinks party on Christmas Eve that they would hate to be uninvited to.

Amazing @flourandeggs, isn’t the world a small place?! So you know my family the Wholloping -Trollopes??

@SJaneS48 I do indeed. Wonderful house. He went to Eton you know. Grandfather was a brigadier. Marvellous.

Most Gammons I know did it because their neighbours the Wholloping-Trollopes said they were going to and they have that lovely drinks party on Christmas Eve that they would hate to be uninvited to

Excellent stereotyping here. But it’s ok for you from your sophisticated left wing viewpoint to sneer at others who have different opinions from you?
Do you encourage your children to sneer at and deride other children whose parents maybe voted differently from you?

I don’t want to get into an argument about Brexit but as for ‘sophisticated left wing sneering’ I’ve seen far more comments about ‘remoaners’ or the super intelligent ‘get over it’ in the mainstream media or on social media than I have from the left. I’m quite sure @flourandeggs does not encourage her children to sneer at chidren who’s parents voted differently, what a bizarre comment! How on earth would she know either? My DD had regular play dates 3 years ago with a family with a bloody great big UKIP sign outside their house - nothing to do with the child in question nor would we have thought it appropriate to deride the parents in front of her as it would have been completely inappropriate!

@ThePlantsitter if you work with universities then I suspect we share the wish for the brightest kids to get on to courses despite their background - my work is also all about this. I think we will see change, maybe you are not so sure and I took offence to the laughing emoji, it felt like you were teasing my heartfelt wish that despite my own entitled upbringing and relative wealth I really, really want to see a change to our education system for the most disadvantaged. Perhaps the emoji was a typo?? Suspect we are coming from broadly the same place - get the brightest kids on the best courses through contextual offers and then we will have the best lawyers, doctors, inventors, engineers that we can for the best of society. I am going to cling hard to that dream.

@Andante57 I teach my children to ask themselves why people who see themselves as civilised are outrageously racist, bigoted and sexist in front of their grandchildren, yes I do. I let them make their mind up about everyone else.

Flourandeggs I’m surprised you go on seeing these ghastly people - even if they are relations - but I suppose you can enjoy gathering more material to sneer at them about once home.

@Andante57 I continue to see them because they are family and because they are people, as flawed as any of us. The reason I use humour is to deal with the really quite horrible bits of their beliefs that stand so firmly opposed to who I am. I don’t sneer at them, I can assure you that is a trait that I’m which they have the upper hand, but I do struggle to see the world from their point of view. I have a poster in our kitchen with a quote from To Kill A Mocking Bird that says “There is only one kind of folks Jem, folks.” And I really believe that, it’s the reason it is on my wall for my kids to see everyday. But you have to believe me when I tell you that the people I call gammons do not, not for one moment, believe in those words.

I also had a middle class dilemma about which secondary school to choose, and almost sent her to a hard to get to faith school despite there being a good comp locally. In the end I chose the comp. I think sometimes it's easy to get caught up in angst and stop being able to see the wood for the trees. You obviously chose it for a reason. The reviews of the school from other parents sound really positive and I like the idea of spending extra money you have 'saved' on great experiences.

FWIW I went to the local comp as did my siblings. One is an Oxbridge academic, the other earns more than the two of us combined in something financial. We can all talk to anyone because at comps you have such a wide range of friends. Your son can and will do fine with your encouragement. There are lots of small people at comps too

@Emmapeeler2 - nice post! Agree that when you are talking about giving DC a breadth of education, knowing how to relate to all different kinds of people is far more invaluable in life than all the usual ‘value adds’ of Private’s that usually come up in these posts!

@Andante57, what you’re not really getting your head around I feel is how you can both really love someone but also find their views completely appalling! My DF is very much a product of Empire - we lived in East Africa till I was 10. His views on race, politics and class are positively Victorian. He and I have polar opposite views (his opinions on POC’s ability to self govern, run armies & businesses are quite something else!) and we both take a great deal of pleasure from baiting each other (sneering as you would see it) on everything from Brexit through to feminism and more recently, BLM. There are no hard or upset feelings either side, barely a day goes by when he doesn’t email me some gammony article with a deliberately inflammatory comment in CAPS. Christmas at their house can be a real pile on Grandad ..which he enjoys enormously and plays up hugely to the stereotype of being an old horror. This isn’t spending time to ‘sneer’ - there is a great deal of love and affection involved. Because yes, you can think that someone is an unrepentant hideous class bound bigot, hate everything they stand for, know they’ll never change but care for them deeply.

@SJaneS48 perfectly put, much better than I managed! Some of the best books, plays and music cover the complexities of this type of love, and how surprisingly strong it can be. I love my Dad hugely, was the one who was at his side through a horrible health issue a few years ago that led to a huge operation, I was there when he woke up from the anaesthesic and found my heart breaking to see him so helpless on a ventilator, yet I cannot bear the way he thinks about so many things and the way he believes the world should be. I really value the discussions we can have on here, what wonderful ladies you all are even though we might not all agree about everything. Night y’all!

I don’t sneer at them

Flourandeggs of course you're sneering at them.
Loathing their racism is totally understandable and I know for someone of your political views, anyone who votes Tory is unacceptable, but why did you bring up all those stereotypes about brexit, hunting, brigadiers, Eton, red trousers etc if it wasn’t to sneer?

No doubt the advantages of independent schools are bandied about too much. But so is the 'mix with everyone' value of state schools. Looking at many of the terribly MC families that I know with children in state, they live just as much within a social class bubble as we do, in fact in some cases decidedly more. Yes, there may be a larger proportion of children on low incomes at their children's schools than there are at DS's, but those are very rarely the kids that their kids end up being good friends with. Their social lives are very much tennis lessons and meals out and frequent holidays - totally out of the reach of the poorer kids. Please let's not pretend that simply going to a state school automatically makes you a classless 'person of the people'. Sorry if that sounds defensive, but the amount of self-congratulation I've heard from 'friends' who have decided against private education (often in favour of a grammar or faith school) while continuing to live an entirely Range Rover, ski trip and million+ house lifestyle is frankly laughable.

There is something in that coolingbreezes. It is quite depressing how even within very 'diverse' comps the kids frequently and obviously segregate themselves along class and race lines.
But that doesn't mean having them all in the same classroom is pointless. Even if they don't become 'best friends' with kids outside their cultural bubble, they will at least over the years most likely get a sense of how and where the others live - and of their own privilege.
And over the years friendship groups evolve . . . that black kid no-one bothered with in Y7 may be the coolest kid in the class by Y10. Some middle-class-bubble kids - I've seen this - suddenly realise how cool it is to have 'street' friends in the sixth form. Much harder if they grow up in an environment where they've never even had contact.

True - though I wonder whether the desire to have 'street' or less affluent friends often persists far beyond school days. I'm particularly thinking of a couple of well-off but state educated London 'kids' I know in their late twenties who went through a definite 'street' phase at school in their late teens but still ended up as investment bankers and certainly don't have a very mixed social circle now...

I'm not trying to be dogmatic, honestly, just trying to argue a balance. Maybe I see it differently because I didn't go to a private school and my son didn't go to a prep school and we don't live a terribly champagne lifestyle. Yes, his school is 'posh' (though there are lots that are 'posher'). But he still sees plenty of his primary school mates. Our extended family is MC but certainly not loaded. He's not defined entirely by his school, just as a state school kid isn't defined entirely by theirs.

I agree coolingbreezes. You write about the same type of people we encountered at our primary school. They probably couldn’t afford private because their mortgages were huge but they segregated themselves into their MC bubble. Their DC didn’t mix with anyone not personally chosen by their parents! By the time the DC knew their own minds they were at a grammar school with about 1 fsm child per year!

Apologies for coming back to you on the following @coolingbreezes but..

“ Their social lives are very much tennis lessons and meals out and frequent holidays - totally out of the reach of the poorer kids.”

Erm, why would that have anything to do with a better financially off child’s friendship with someone from a poorer background? A weekly tennis lesson for an hour is unlikely to interfere in or out of school. As for having meals out, well they hardly at secondary school are going to eat out somewhere Michelin starred - if they do eat out with friends it’s more like something cheap on a mooch around town or lunch items for country walk. I completely don’t get how a holiday abroad or two is going to interfere either. Why would it? For both my DDs, friendships have usually involved a lot of hanging around each other’s houses - this involves no money. Some of those houses have been big and others haven’t. I’ve genuinely never had either of them come back and make an unpleasant comment about a friends house, it’s all was and is completely about whether they’ve had a good time, watched a movie, messed around with their hairstyles, listened to music etc.

-“ though I wonder whether the desire to have 'street' or less affluent friends often persists far beyond school days”

Do you genuinely think children think like this? ‘I’ll be friends with x as he’s working class and that’s cool!’?? The Teenage DC are very tribal and make friends with similar interests who they like, end of really -you don’t need to have money to like a certain type of music or indeed these days a certain look as many of them like ‘vintage’.

And again @PresentingPercy (sorry all, I’m apparently on a roll, I’m heading to bed shortly!) re your comment “ le. Their DC didn’t mix with anyone not personally chosen by their parents! ” I just don’t think this is the norm. I’m not going to dispute your own lived experience (and these parents sound deeply unpleasant!) but I do think you were unlucky. It’s certainly been nothing like my experience with DDs at State Primaries. DD1 went a State in Richmond which had a complete cross section of society. DD2 went to Primary in the pretty affluent area of the Home Counties (again, a real cross section). I’ve personally never chosen or stopped DDs from playing with anyone based on their background and I genuinely don’t know any other MC parent that has either - the only children who our DC might have been discouraged from making/staying friends with were ones who were violent or particularly mean (and they come from all backgrounds!).

‘ the pretty affluent area of the Home Counties (again, a real cross section) we live in’ that should have read. Onbviously I do need to go to bed!

Ah! Onbviously! What the heck..

OK, I need to go to work so will have to brief! No, I don't think that one tennis lesson necessarily stops you being friends with a less well off friend, of course not. But it is part of a set of social signals that I do think are picked up on. And actually I do think that casually going out for a pizza or similar a couple of times a week, when it's so affordable for you that you don't even really think about the cost, is out of reach for many kids and does potentially help determine a friendship group. And no, I don't think children make friends quite so deliberately as you infer from my PP. I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that, consciously or unconsciously, the apple often doesn't fall far from the tree. 'Class' and wealth are incredibly persistent in this country, and that's about way more than school. The MC children that I'm thinking of are ultimately likely to be living very similar lives to each other, with similar jobs and social spheres, by the time they're thirty, regardless of whether they go to a state or private school.