Now it reaches Eton

[richardb]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indepe ... html%3famp

[dsm]

No great surprise

[loringa]

I think it was already at Eton. Didn't Ajaz Karim work there after CH?

[J.R.]

It won't be over 'til the fat lady sings and she's on a very strict diet.

Watch this space !!

[rockfreak]

Have I got this right but wasn't it parents and alumni of Eton and Queen's Club who appeared in the box as witnesses to attest to Karim's excellent character when he was up before the beak? Perhaps it's Eton as well as Christ's Hospital who can't see these people coming (fnurg fnurg).

[richardb]

Have I got this right but wasn't it parents and alumni of Eton and Queen's Club who appeared in the box as witnesses to attest to Karim's excellent character when he was up before the beak? Perhaps it's Eton as well as Christ's Hospital who can't see these people coming (fnurg fnurg).

It was indeed Eton and the Queens Club.

[rockfreak]

As are others I'm following the IICSA, particularly as it delves into residential schools. One of the Boarding School Action activists, Joanna Brittan, who had a bad time of it at Sherborne Prep and whose brothers were abused there, has noted how the now late headmaster Robin Lindsay was accused of abuse by several pupils but left the school scot free and was indignantly supported for his sterling work as head beak by lots of parents. Apparently these accusatory ex-pupils were all deluded hysterics. It was left to the media to splash the scandal. This is what puzzles me about the English middle classes: as ex-boarders like Alex Renton (dreadful experiences at Ashdown Prep, a feeder for Eton) have researched, there are no shortage of parents who know that their progeny may be at risk at a boarding school but are prepared to factor in that risk to have the cachet of a child in one of these places.

[loringa]

This is what puzzles me about the English middle classes: as ex-boarders like Alex Renton (dreadful experiences at Ashdown Prep, a feeder for Eton) have researched, there are no shortage of parents who know that their progeny may be at risk at a boarding school but are prepared to factor in that risk to have the cachet of a child in one of these places.

Nonsense - every single parent that I know considers safeguarding very seriously before any of us decide to send our children to any school, state or independent. We make the decision as to what school we are going to send our kids after careful consideration of a very wide range of factors of which safeguarding is one, albeit an important one. We are interested in quality of teaching, pastoral care, extra-curricular activities, the opportunity to live and study with children from all over the world, as well as policies on equally important issues such as bullying. The problem with all your comments is that, despite all the benefits you received at Christ's Hospital, you have this massive chip on your shoulder and it colours absolutely everything you post.

I am not remotely interested in the so-called 'cachet' that goes with having been to an independent school. Like every parent I want my daughter to achieve her full potential and that is not something my wife and I believed she would be in a position to do had she stayed at her primary school and then moved up to one of the two local comprehensive schools.

Final point - what is this about the 'English middle classes'? After an education at Christ's Hospital you are firmly one of us whether you like it or not! (though probably not as middle class as Jeremy Corbyn; one of the few people I've come across who is even more middle class as me. At least Sir Keir Starmer can claim working class roots of a sort).

[rockfreak]

You mention pastoral care. What's wrong with your own pastoral care? Are you and your wife unable to bring up your children? Or perhaps just lazy? Why send them to strangers to do the job?

[sejintenej]

Nonsense - every single parent that I know considers safeguarding very seriously before any of us decide to send our children to any school, state or independent. We make the decision as to what school we are going to send our kids after careful consideration of a very wide range of factors of which safeguarding is one, albeit an important one. We are interested in quality of teaching, pastoral care, extra-curricular activities, the opportunity to live and study with children from all over the world, as well as policies on equally important issues such as bullying. .

The problem is that the scandals only emerge long after parents make their choice and often after the child has left that environment

Like every parent I want my daughter to achieve her full potential and that is not something my wife and I believed she would be in a position to do had she stayed at her primary school and then moved up to one of the two local comprehensive schools.

To illustrate your point; a friend and neighbour gave her time free of charge to teach one period a week at a local school. She actually teaches all over the world (recently in Cuba for example) at the expense of her own country's government. Her method is simple but effective to the extent that her primary school pupils were shown on Blue Peter multiplying and dividing five figure numbers instantly in their heads. She no longer teaches because the school has declared cannot allow pupils the time that one lesson per week to learn arithmetic. I can n ow do it but not up to the standard of those young kids.

Nowadays I live almost with a calculator in my hands - I am always calculating percentages, additions and multiplications. That ability is useful for a lifetime

=====================================================
I see the freak is asking if you are competent to teach your kids;
My answer would be that the teachers are dismally failing and also that they are teaching contrary to what decent parents try to instill.

[rockfreak]

Loringa says, "After an education at Christ's Hospital you are firmly one of us". What a strange idea. No, I'm one of me. Christ's Hospital was where I went to school. The real world started after I left. Christ's Hospital merely gave me a misplaced sense of snobbery. Poorer kids or not we had benefits that are denied others. I remember sitting in class at CH shortly after I started and wondering why the class was half the size of the north London primary I'd just left and why the playing fields seemed endless (and this was before Mrs Thatcher started selling off the state school playing fields). What have I done to get this, I pondered. The answer is of course I was simply lucky - governor's presentee in 1952. If indeed you count the idea of boarding as being a good thing. Enough has now been researched by modern day psychologists to question this. As for luck in academic terms - this much quoted Thatcherite idea of "choice" in education is laughable. Since only seven percent go to private schools it seems more like Hobson's

I think that CH works very hard to sell what I might describe as "an air of grandiosity". The history, the special ethos, the tradition, the uniform, the marching into lunch to the splendid military style band, the choral and classical music, and then the moving leavers' charge at the end. Very seductive. If people want a really good book to read they might try James Brooke-Smith's recent "Gilded Youth". He covers this whole psychological conundrum. How you often end up "school-minded" even if you were, like him, a rebel. The real world, at least when you first leave, can be a bit of an anti-climax. We have to move on and find our way. But as he admits' the hex of the school is strong.

[sejintenej]

I notice rockfreak didn't answer my one liner. After what state teachers did to my children those ones should be treated somewhat like pedos
.
Example 1 : This child will never become anything so the school will not waste resources on him. He can sit at the back of the class and do nothing. (The child is dyslexic and the suggestion was made that he be assessed - he wasn't)
Example 2. Next school; same pupil; little attempt to help him probably because of the primary school report; he was sent to "teach" those with learning difficulties instead of attending classes
Example 3. Child working for A levels; teacher does not teach maths but the perfection of the Labour party and devils of anyone different - not just one period but many.
Example 4. Children running out of school and playing dare with passing cars en masse. Headmaster refused to even speak to the school about the dangers. (A boy was later killed)

That is my experience of state schools. Incidentally, schools in the same area as 1,2 and 4 will not even consider people for contact with pupils if the have ever been adopted because they do not have birth certificates. (They have adoption certificates which look similar to birth certificates but a different heading) Can you imagine anything so stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Fitzsadou]

I’m thick, so I don’t understand Sejintenej’s aphorism at the end of his contribution. Please explain? Thanks. TB

[J.R.]

I’m thick, so I don’t understand Sejintenej’s aphorism at the end of his contribution. Please explain? Thanks. TB

I think I'll leave it to David to explain !!

[loringa]

You mention pastoral care. What's wrong with your own pastoral care? Are you and your wife unable to bring up your children? Or perhaps just lazy? Why send them to strangers to do the job?

Umm - you appear to be under the misapprehension that the idea of pastoral care in schools is limited to independent schools, and boarding schools at that. Understandable I guess, I don't suppose you have had much involvement in education since your own children left school and you must be 20 or so years older than me but things have changed. Open any Ofsted report and you will see that pastoral care in the round as well as specifics such as safeguarding, policies to counter bullying and a wide range of other welfare matters are writ large. Every school in the state sector that I have had anything to do with has someone whose responsibilities cover these areas. In most secondary school there will be someone with a title such as Assistant Head (Pastoral) or Assistant Head (Safeguarding). In at least one inner-city (not London) school I know there is a non-teaching member of staff employed solely and wholly to provide pastoral care.

But that wasn't your point was it? You wished to demonstrate your self-perceived moral superiority by criticising me for sending my dd off to be cared for by other people, presumably so I can go skiing (or yachting, hunting, shooting, coarse fishing - take your pick) without the encumbrance. Sadly I don't move in those circles, and couldn't afford to anyway as most of my wife's and my spare money goes on my daughter's education. For what it's worth my dd only used to board two days a week anyway to enable my wife to work away (she's soooo lazy) but let's not let details get in the way.

The problem I have found is simply that my daughter was making insufficient progress in her primary school. She was doing well enough to have achieved satisfactory results in her SATs in due course and to have achieved at least the threshold level at GCSE of 5 GCSEs at Grade C (now Grade 5) or above, so the school wasn't interested in her. We could have employed tutors but I am struggling to understand what the difference is between paying for tutors out of school and paying for schooling itself.

So, whilst pastoral care was obviously an issue for when she was in school, the underlying reason for sending her to an independent school in the first place was that she wasn't getting what she required from the state system. But then, unlike you Mr Redshaw, I am not a 'true believer, driven by socialist dogma that would have required me to send her off to a school that wasn't meeting her needs so I could take a perceived moral high ground during discussions like these.

I wasn't originally going to bother to reply but I appear currently to have a lot of time on my hands - so I have!