“It worked for us” – a selfish parent speaks!

Posted on | June 16, 2009 | 3 Comments

The obnoxious remark above came from a selfish, unrepentant and, frankly, rather stupid parent on BBC Scotland news this evening. She had just successfully appealed to have her little darling admitted to Sciennes Primary School in Edinburgh from outwith the school’s catchment area, thereby making a nonsense of Edinburgh City Council’s brave and wholly rational attempt to keep classes within a reasonable size in this and other popular schools.

Sciennes is, I have no doubt, a very good school, but it is only one of scores of very good primary schools in Edinburgh, and one of many hundreds across the country. This woman, and others like her, are stupid because they believe that their child will get a better education in one of these popular schools than in whichever local schools they would be sending their children to were they a little more sensible. Their belief is unfounded since the policies and actions of HMIE, local authorities and the schools themselves in Scotland over the past two-and-a-half decades have ensured that the variation in school quality across the country is now really very slight indeed. In any case, any variation there might be in quality, I would contend, is just as likely to occur within a school, between teachers, than between schools (and that includes these incipient magnet schools).

Sciennes Primary School, of course, is situated in one of the more obviously middle-class parts of Edinburgh. This woman’s decision, I would warrant, had little to do with educational choice, and everything to do with social snobbery and middle-class cachet.

This is an issue ripe for legislation by the Scottish Government – it is high time that these corrosive remains of Thatcherite educational policy were rolled back to a point that will enable Scottish local authorities to implement sensible school catchment area and class-size policies without having to cope with the destructive actions of self-serving elitists such as these. The alternative is that Scottish education will drift inexorably towards the dreadful situation now existing in so many parts of England where so-called ’school choice’ policies have polarized schooling to an extent that is probably now impossible to reverse.

Technorati Tags: school choice, school catchments, elitism, snobbery

Category: education, elitism, ethics, law, politics, principle, schooling, scotland, society

Comments

3 Responses to ““It worked for us” – a selfish parent speaks!”

Tony Loughland
June 18th, 2009 @ 3:11 am

I had this very same conversation on the Manly Ferry this morning on the way to work, John. The erosion of the comprehensive in New South Wales began with the State Liberal government in 1989 who started all this nonsense with so-called centres of excellence, selective schools and the relaxing of the residential qualification rule. The result has been the creation of a second-class comprehensive high school and public school system in the perceptions of the aspirational Sydney parents (some of the middle class angst captured in a recently published book by some of my colleagues (http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/edsw/880.html?newscategoryid=102&newsstoryid=3058)

Parents base their choice of home on the proximity of popular public school or play the system so that their child gains entry into a selective high school or “opportunity class” in years 5 and 6. Private schools have benefited greatly from the splintering of the formerly strong comprehensive system of schooling.

BTW, there are many studies as you know John that support your claim of the greater efficacy of individual teachers on student outcomes than the effect of whole schools (see Rowe, 2003 The Importance of Teacher Quality as a Key Determinant of Students’ Experiences and Outcomes of Schooling Melbourne:ACER}
John Connell
June 18th, 2009 @ 7:22 am

Hi Tony,

Good to hear from you. I’ve seen at first hand the inexorable shift towards the private sector in Australia. I’m happy to say there is no sign of a similar shift (yet) in Scotland where the private school population here is still, I believe, less than 2% of the total. However, there are signs of an increase in the habit of looking past your local school for your child’s education.

Thanks for the research tip-offs.

John
You wanna live like Calman people, you wanna see whatever Calman people see? - Scottish Roundup
June 21st, 2009 @ 7:11 pm

[...] John Connell reckons that the policy of letting parents choose the school their child attends isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. [...]