So called left wingers who pay school fees

I agree absolutely, gracesmum.

Hi granjura just read your post, the bit about the deputy head with her children at private school resonated with me. When I first moved to my last house, my older son was 3 and a half and had just started in the nursery at the state primary that he attended. I was invited to a coffee morning by the woman across the road from me who had a daughter the same age as my son. She asked me if I had moved to this road so my son could attend the posh prep school up the road, I remember being quite annoyed that she had made this assumption as we had never met before. I said no he would be going to such and such state school, she literally recoiled in horror as if I had told her I had Bubonic Plague. During the course of this coffee morning, I found out that she was a teacher in the state system with her children at the aforementioned prep school, her friends who she introduced me to, also teachers, one at the senior school where my children eventually went. All their children were at prep schools, but one however did say her son was going to go to the same nursery, because it was free as my child, but would be withdrawn before reception because it just wasn't good enough, which I thought was really rude given that I had already told her that my son would be going into that reception after nursery. These same women made no bones about the fact that when their children came up to the 11 plus age they would try to secure them a much sought after place at the one and only state grammar school in the area, and I think it was around that I began to realise just how divisive the whole education system is in the UK.

People like that, banana, tend to make me think it's more about snobbery than useful education.

Indeed Bags they did have frightfully nice blazers and little caps for the boys just like the one W G Grace wore back in the 19th century!

I still know of people that send their kids to very mediocre private schools when there are high performing comprehensives round the corner. It is what one does in certain circles.
gracesmum there were some truly shocking secondary moderns in England and Wales the 50s and 60s - I remember people close to me attending them. No science or modern languages teaching at all. Let alone gyms or playing fields. There was little enough money going into grammar schools at the time and the secondary moderns that I know of were the poor relations. And it was only 3 or 4 years of post 11 education back then. And the vast majority of children were consigned to this educational scrapheap at the age of 11 as grammar schools places were very limited. Even fewer for girls than boys in some boroughs if I remember rightly. Many of those who failed the 11 plus would these days be going on to get A levels and go to university.
I think todays comprehensive system, even with the creaming off of the private sector, is immeasurably better than the secondary moderns of 40 years ago. A long way from perfect I know, but a huge advance.

Hear, hear!

I went to one of those shocking sec mods. Left at 15, no languages (hardly any English)

Now at the age of 69 I have just started teaching myself a language; Spanish.

Gracemum, I fully understand what you are saying. My OH would have never succeeded the way he did, had it not been for the Grammar School system in those days. He was one of those who got through - but so many were borderline- lots of talent and intelligence, but maybe not in the academic way Grammar School exams prescribed, and fell right through. I probably would have been one of them.

The comprehensive system (and we all know is is not, as the system is still creamed off, and not only on academic ability) does allow for contact between different groups, levels, social classes, etc. As children are streamed per subject, the best still study with the best, at their level- but without being segregated from other members of society.

It is a bit like the Health system in the US - it's gone so far, that it seems impossible to redress. The more a school is labelled as 'bad' and another as 'good' - the bad becomes worse and worse, and the good not necessarily better.

Petallus - Bravo. Muy bien

My late FiL, a socialist (Cambridge communist in the 1930s) to the backbone and not a drop of champagne in his bloodstream, sent my ex as a day boy to a minor public school when he failed his 11+, rather than send him to the local sec mod. Ex succeeded in passing O-levels and then completed his A-levels at the boys' grammar where FiL taught. If my FiL could justify private education for his son, almost anyone could!

Gracias amiga

Annobel, I think I might have done the same in those days as some of the Sec Mods were so awful. Very different situation as he only did so in extremis, when his son was failing, partly due to the system. He did not 'choose' to do this, but felt he had no choice in the circumstances. I respect that.

Nowadays, in good Comprehensives, and there are plenty around, that just would not be necessary.

petallus- That was me, too. Married a man from a posh public school.
Opposites attract, eh?? Got a Masters in my 40's.

I reckon that I had a better all-round education in an 'ordinary' Scottish Academy than my ex had in a second-rate public school where the only advantage I could detect had been small classes. Having said that, by the time I reached the Sixth year, I was doing classics in a class of one.

The girl who did classics in a class of one at my school ended up running off with the (married) classics teacher!
IMHO many parents who pay for education are not always worried about education but are buying exclusivity so their kids are not mixing with children they think are less worthy than theirs.

No chance of that for me, nanaej. My classics teacher was a maiden lady with a PhD who had been at school with my mum. She didn't half make me work hard.

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baNANA'

I agree with everything you have said, gracesmum also.

Yes Polly Toynbee and the likes of Dianne Abott are hypocrites of the first order. I have watched and listened to them annihiate the fee paying school system.I find those who proclaim the loudest to be true socialists usually are the most disingenuous actually.

Take the likes of Billy Bragg and the church. They are very wealthy property owners, they bang on about poverty and the homeless. Do they give their property to the poor, like heck they do. The Arch Bishop of Canterbury is a classic hypocrite socialist. The church has it's own property department with a megga portfolio. The 'palaces' lived in by him and others would make fantastic accommodation for the homeless wouldn't it.?

Polly Toynbee, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Joan Bakewell claim to be socialists. They worry about the poor elderly and societies less well off telling us it is our duty to help pay for their care. What happened when the so-called Granny Tax came in. They ran for the hills crying wolf In other words it's O.K. for me to tell you lot what you should do, oh but hang on a minute this is going to cost me money, bugger that for a game of soldiers, sod socialism on this one.

Bono, Will Self, Polly Toynbee, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown etc., are all as much a part of the hypocritical political machine as anyone, left or right of politics, take your pick.

Butternut I too got a Masters in my (late) 40s.

Didn't marry a posho though. It was someone from an even humbler background than mine but he made it through to Grammar school.

petallus

The 'wealth of the church' isn't the personal property of the AofC! The income from church investments goes to pay pensions for retired clergy, train priests and laypeople, run charitable foundations, support dioceses with no money, and above all, help to maintain the thousands of crumbling ancient buildings tourists love to visit. A £1 in the collecting box doesn't go far to replace the lead nicked off the roof or replace the 12th century gargoyles. And a lot of Bishops' 'palaces' are already used for other purposes while the bish lives in a 3 bed 2 recep down the road. Clergy don't have much choice about living a frugal life given what they are paid!

POGS - Don't even get me started on Yasmin Alibah-Brown, boy does she have one big chip on her shoulder given that she has done very well in her adopted country? Although I think she writes very well about the many problems Muslim women face, having to cover their face etc., I nevertheless find some of her articles relating to race unbelievable, she even finds nude shoes an issue would you believe, because they don't match darker skin tones. Well personally I'd say black and brown shoes are more prolific and they don't match paler skins, is this a problem? I didn't see it, but I believe it is on Youtube, an interview she had with Richard Bacon, where she said something along the lines of I wish you white middle class men would all just go away, so we could step in, (I'm not quoting verbatim), but you get the gist, how she got away with it I don't know. Very prickly woman who sees slights everywhere.

Gracemem I do find that those who went to grammar schools are all in favour of them but what about those who didn't? Were they not worthy of a good education too? Is it really fair to judge a child at the age of 11 on one exam? Was it fair that in some areas 30% of children went to GS but in others it was as low as 5%? For those 95% of children who 'failed' in those areas there was not such a good education. I fail to see how any parent can think that is a fairer system than allowing those who can afford to pay for their children's education to do so whilst also subsidising the education of everyone else. If you abolish the private system where is the extra money to come from? Yes, in an ideal world all children would have the best education for their needs but we don't live in an ideal world.

Alison, are you saying, then, that Secondary Moderns didn't provide a 'good education'? As far as I can remember, the friends of mine from primary school who failed the 11 plus seemed to have a similar education to those who went to the Grammar School, apart from not doing Latin! They did do more practical subjects later on, such as typing, woodwork and cookery, but so did we at the Grammar School (not woodwork, unfortunately) if those were the subjects a pupil wanted to take up.

And of course in those days (60s) everyone either went on to higher education or got a job after leaving school - unemployment was very rare!

A very distinguished retired professor whom I know well failed his 11+ and eventually gained several doctorates. His family were all educated in the comprehensive system and have succeeded in their chosen fields. A former colleague failed hers and was able to gain a degree in languages and have a successful career in teaching - ironically, in the selective system. Some sec mods were better than others, and the same can be said about present-day comprehensives.