School admissions policies are back in the news, and the actor Rebecca Front has an excellent article in today’s Guardian on the dilemmas faced by parents in the face of these policies.
I don’t want to start a debate here about school admissions policies (or approaches to education) as such. Instead I just wanted to post a couple of thoughts on what happens when “gentle parenting” meets a school system in which parents’ decisions are driven more by desperation and fear than by a calm, considered assessment of what is best for their children.
First, what do our children learn from how we make choices regarding their education? The system seems designed to teach children that it’s a “dog eat dog” world in which those with the sharpest elbows win. That their educational choices are entirely a matter for their parents, not for them. That the school in which you find yourself at 11 completely determines your life path, with no second chances. Are we teaching them that “gentle parenting” and “unconditionality” are just a front, and that when the chips are down what matters is a ruthless pursuit of self-interest?
Second, what pressure are we putting our children under, and from what age? Our eldest, T8, has just started year 4 at primary school. We live in an area with a lot of selective state schools – don’t get me started – and some of T8’s classmates are already having tuition in preparation for the selective tests in two years’ time. This puts us under pressure – are we letting T8 down by not following suit? – and more than that it puts the children under pressure.
Third, the system leads parents to fixate on “winning the admissions race” rather than finding the right school for the individual child. There are children who scrape into the local “super-selective” school having been tutored and coached to within an inch of their lives, and who are then utterly miserable. The lucky ones are able to persuade their parents to send them to one of the good non-selective schools to which they should have gone in the first place, and perhaps would have if their parents hadn’t been propagandised by the media (and by years of conversations at the school gate) into thinking the only choices were between St [Name Deleted’s] Grammar School and educational oblivion.
Any thoughts?
Image courtesy of most uncool, under a Creative Commons licence.
Let the wild rumpus start! 