Ultimately, it wasn't just the fact that she
wasn't learning anything. At five years old and only 12 months into proper school, we
could - just about - cope with the fact that
she'd come home bored and could barely write her name.
Wanting a state education for our daughter, we'd done our homework and moved to the
catchment area of the school we liked best. We panicked when the midwife said we might not
be close enough to guarantee a place and were knocking on the door the day she turned two.
We celebrated when she was offered a place in the nursery 18 months later. She had a very
happy year, made lots of friends (though we often commented how the children traipsing
home to tea were just like her: white, middle-class, precocious little girls - no sign of
the diversity we expected) and started Reception with no worries.
By half term she was coming home in tears and wet knickers. It was the school's policy not
to let children - even four and five year-aids - go to the loo when they wanted. We were
told firmly: 'If one goes, they all want to.' They had to wait for break, but by break, of
course, half the school was desperate to go to the toilet - so the littlest
ones never got a look in. We spoke to teachers. We brought the state of the toilets up at
PSA meetings and with governors and concluded that if a school couldn't get its act
together sufficiently to allow young children to get to the lavatory in time, how could it
ever hope to educate them?
We were the first in our class to go private, and for ages we skulked around not daring to
look our friends in the eye. We agonised and justified and when they asked: what's it
like?' we looked at our feet and mumbled, 'great'.
|
30 Stoke Newington Church Street
London N16 0LU
Tell 020 7254 6751
Web: www.yumyums.co.uk
|
In fact, the difference between an on- the -verge -of-failing Stokey primary and a pay-
through -the-nose private school was overwhelming. We expected academic rigour (and rigour
we got - the amount of homework is obscene) but not the level of pastoral care, the
interest the school takes in its pupils. Do badly in a Maths test one week, teachers find
something for you to shine at next; goldfish died? Let's write a poem about grief; cycle
to school? This is how you do it safely. The school understands that most mothers work
full time (how else to pay the school fees?) so makes juggling easier. It publishes
important dates eighteen months in advance and a detailed diary on the first day of each
term; gates open at 8.15am, there's a homework club till 6.00pm and it never, ever closes
at short notice.
Most of all, I know that the quality of the 'education' she's receiving is second to none.
So when she tums 17 and presents her list of how we've failed as parents, the fact that
she wasn't given a chance to reach her full potential at school won't be on it.
And that's the crux of it really. We buy this privilege because we couldn't hack the
worrying any more. Worry about who's teaching their child what today, worry about the lack
of joy and inspiration in the classrooms, worry about the amount of aggression in the
playground and yes, worry about the toilets. Clearly there's a lot of angst in Stoke
Newington because, in my daughter's class of twenty-seven, one postcode dominates - N 16.
Friends who have stuck it out at local schools take some kind of perverse pride in just
how bad it still is, and the stories they come out with are legion. There was the day a
head teacher, who wanted to close the school because of a strike, and the chair of
governors who didn't, stood eyeball to eyeball at the school gates surrounded by anxious
kids. I heard the police were called to sort it, but that can't be right - can it?
But the police were called, weren't they, to escort another head off the premises because
the council (months after he'd been in the post, mind you) finally got round to checking
his references and found them lacking? Lucky to have a headteacher at all. Since my
daughter left four years ago there have been more than ten people in charge of running her
old school.
How could any child thrive under those circumstances? How could any parent, lucky enough
to be able to scrape together the money for an alternative, want them to? |
