'Occupation of main breadwinner' on Secondary Form??

[gingertoo]

Just had the confirmation offer letter from the secondary school where my son will be going in September along with loads of forms to fill in - personal details / emergency contact / photo consent etc (they are very on the ball!)

I'm puzzled by one of the questions - 'Occupation of main breadwinner'.

Not puzzled by how to answer (!) but puzzled by why they would want / need to know...

Any ideas?

(It's a state faith secondary if that makes any difference!)

[spiderpig8]

It might be to do with GCSE grade prediction.My DB says that social class of parents is fed into the formula.

[justagirlfromedgware]

It is the implication of "main breadwinner" that I would find troubling. My DH and my salaries are so similar that it is only because of my added pension contributions (making up for too many years studying) that my take home pay is marginally lower than his. An obvious point of annoyance is that in this day and age to assume that there is necessarily a significant difference between one income and the other is to ignore the wide variety of familial economic situations present today.

More specifically, it's not being anti-school to ask for an explanation for the question; more the fact that without a reason why it's being asked, the school might not get the most useful answer.

For example, if this was me, I'd be wondering if my obscure academic specialism is of greater relevance or my husband's mainstream legal job? In the context of careers talks, clearly his might be, as we saw this year at our DS's state faith school: When they asked for volunteers to talk to year 10, both of us offered and only DH was invited. I'm not offended, oh no ! But seriously, if they're asking in order to know something entirely different, a different answer might apply.

[Tortington]

i think you should ask them why they want to know, to what purpose would the information e used for.

i would e proper tempted to go for the ofsted inspector suggestion.

stupid form faith school muppets

[fembear]

I don't win it or buy it. I make my own.

[bronze]

We don't win our bread. We buy it!

[gingertoo]

Wow, this has got interesting since my op...

Just to clarify, I intend to answer the question and answer it honestly - just wondered why it was there. I have never been asked that before on any of the many school forms I have filled in over the years (for 3 DCs)

zanzibar - have no idea what is asked when you make an application to private school - have never done it so I can't make a comparision. Was not saying it was not alright to ask the question - was merely pondering why they should want to know....

[zanzibarmum]

So it is alright for private schools to ask for parent's occupational status before admission (and even interview parents) but not for a state school to ask for occupational data after admission - certainly isn't illegal

Simple answer is if you don't like it put your name on a waiting list of another school.

As someone said school is not the enemy

[mattellie]

Loshad I don't think the hostility as you call it is aimed at schools, though. And certainly not at teachers. It's aimed at the seemingly never-ending desire of governments - and the current government in particular - to want to know every little detail about our lives.

MmeBlueberry has explained why it's useful for schools to have some knowledge of their pupils' home life, and I can absolutely see her point. But I'm still not convinced that a question about the parents' jobs fulfils this criterion - it may do in certain very specific instances, but not as a general catch-all query.

[claig]

very good point treacletart, they have used the colloquial term 'breadwinner' intentionally in order to disguise the intrusive nature of the questioning and make it appear informal amd innocuous

[treacletart]

"breadwinner" seeems an oddly colloquial term to use on a form ...

[fembear]

Sigh. Thank you claig. How come parents on this thread seem to understand this point but teachers don't?

The teachers at DD's school were clueless. Once DD was given some printout about herself and she asked what REFU meant. They told her it meant 'refugee'. I had to explain to her that actually it was 'refuse to say'.

[claig]

specific mention of occupation in the article

"Also, details of parental occupation, ethnic background and whether or not applicants have been in care will be shown to admission tutors ahead of the selection process, not after it is completed.
The middle classes are becoming the new whipping boys for 'New Labour'."

[TheFallenMadonna]

We have to monitor certain groups anyway. When we were OFSTEDed, one of the groups most closely tracked was those on free school meals. I have them idenitified in my performance management (not my choice).

[claig]

I think gramercy and fembear may be on to something when they mention social engineering. Most advantageous occupation to state would probably be road sweeper

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6923772.stm

[TheFallenMadonna]

Or monitoring purposes. Social engineering implies they are going to do something with the information rather than just comapre it with previous years/other schools etc. The place is offered, and I can assure you we don;t set by parental occupation, so I doubt it is more than a data gathering exercise.

[fembear]

Don't understand your point Loshad. The school could ask 'are one/both parents employed, and is it F/T or P/T'. Why ask specifically which occupation, and only ask about the main breadwinner, unless for social engineering purposes.

[Loshad]

not !!

[Loshad]

given the hostile reactions on here to this it's no wonder some of my students are so hostile to school - it is useful to know if a child comes from a struggling family and is intermittently in social care and likely to need extra support or a bit of leeway if being a little tricky in class as opposed to a child who is plain rude to you, but comes froma stable home background with a parent in employment. It's really in your child's benefit to work with the school and see them as partner's , no aggressors.

[TheFallenMadonna]

I wan't thinking useful for teachers. I was thinking for the school, for the LEA. Naturally the information isn't useful for individual students. As I've said.

[MmeBlueberry]

I can't think of my pupils as being in groups or part of a stereotype. They are always individuals to me.

There are just too many exceptions when you try to force someone into a group.

[TheFallenMadonna]

I wouldn't withold the information. I think the information that they are actually collecting with this question is useful. I think it about socioeconomic groups and representation rather than indivudual pupils though. And that might influence other people's feelings about whether or not they want to give the information.

[MmeBlueberry]

We can only speculate on that given very limited and selective information from the OP.

All I know as a teacher, is that the more you know about a student's homelife, the better.

You can be either bold or wishy-washy about how you collect this info. I suggest bold - drinks evenings, coffee mornings, match teas, and outright asking them.

I don't really see the problem, or any reason to withhold the informatiom.

[TheFallenMadonna]

So in the absence of other questions, it's likely that they wanted the information for reasons other than getting to know the child.

[MmeBlueberry]

I wouldn't suggest that only finding out the occupation of the breadwinner is sufficient to build a picture of a child, but it is better than nothing.

[TheFallenMadonna]

Simply asking the occupation of the main breadwinner doesn't tell them that though MmeB. Knowing the jobtitle, and only the job title, of one parent (an only one parent!) does not in any way give a full picture of the child's circumstances.

It does put them into a socioeconomic group. I actually think that is useful data for a school to collect. But pretty sure that's what it's for.