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Pushy
Local Government
Chronicle - 4 March 2008
I am the father of three pushy parents. Son-and-Heir lives in Oxfordshire: four-year-old Sam is at a nursery school which should see him on a direct trajectory to one of the seriously good schools in Oxford. Twin daughter No One lives in remote Suffolk: she is sweating on the top line to see whether Ariane will make it to a primary school which is half-an-hour’s drive away. She is willing to spend two hours every day in the car unless she can find a car-share to relieve the burden.
Twin daughter No 2 is even more agitated: she is in Washington DC and is desperately anxious that when the family returns to their Surrey home in 18 months time Emma should start school at one of the primaries which feeds into one of the top secondary schools. She is even ready to fly home on a special mission to stomp around the key schools beating on the Head Teachers’ doors. They have all pored over Ofsted reports wanting to know not just how good the school is now but the profile of university entrance at the secondary schools they feed.
I sometimes wonder whether some of the commentators on education – especially teacher union leaders – realise just what a Hobbesian world it is when it comes to getting children on the right schools track. If parents try to buy their way into the catchment area of a good school they are behaving entirely rationally: they would be rare, indeed, if they were willing to sacrifice their children’s opportunity on the altar of social cohesion. If parents discover some long neglected religious observance to get their children into a denominational school (contrast the baptismal rolls with applications for Catholic primary schools, for example) are they being hypocritical or simply seeking reliable educational performance even if it means a little competitive story-telling? Parents believe, increasingly, that if children are not locked on to the right tracks by the age of three or four their entire future may be at risk – unless they are pulled out into the private sector.
My wife and I were pushy parents: yes, we wanted the children in schools where they felt happy; where the environment was caring and the ethos creative as well as competitive. But we wanted them to be pushed along at the best pace they could sustain. The only time any of my three children were miserable at school was when they were bored and under-stretched not when they were challenged. And of course there is a social dimension to all this – it is inescapable. When a school e-mails form parents every day with the evening’s homework it is appealing to the engaged and concerned parent and, perhaps by definition, the more affluent home. And parents tend to gravitate to fellow parents from broadly similar circumstances.
So what do you do if you end up on the wrong side of an entrance ballot? Choice No One is to appeal but for many this will be a false hope – and in any case I find that the appeal procedure often generates more aggro than the original decision. Choice No 2 is to seek another school rather than the one allocated even at the price of a commute. Not a realistic option for many parents. Three is to get stuck into the allocated school though this will not be easy for the child because parental anxieties about school choice communicate themselves very rapidly to children, however much teachers might welcome some committed activist parents. Four is to bail out and go private for those who can afford it.
Jim Knight, the refreshingly direct-speaking schools minister, commented recently: “Choice is not about a guaranteed place at a first-class school. It’s about having real options in your town.” So far so good. But when he added that improving exam results were delivering just such a nirvana I suspect that many parental eyes will have glazed over: if there is one aspect of Government educational policy which is literally incredible it is the claim of continuous year-on-year exponential improvements in exams which have sustained a high level of intellectual rigour.
Bill Shankley, one-time Liverpool Manager, once remarked: “Football is not about life and death; it is more important than that.” Many parents, confronting the crucial choices about schools, will easily transpose those sentiments to education.
© Local Government Chronicle
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