BRENDA POWER
IT says a lot about how much we value education that there’s a general gloating at the dismay of some ‘middle-class parents’, that most mocked cohort, over their children’s Leaving Cert results.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Pay4Nothing parties, there is no more contemptible ambition than wanting the best for your children, and striving to help them advance themselves in a good school. Far better to spend your money on 65-inch televisions, designer sportswear, sunshine holidays and new cars than pony up for a private school to give your kid the best chance in life.
Never mind that many of these ‘middle class parents’ who send their children to private schools are put to the pin of their collars to pay the fees, often relying on loans, bursaries and scholarships. In an average Irish gathering, I suspect, you’d get more kudos for admitting to a role in the Hutch-Kinahan feud than revealing you’re the parent of a fee-paying schoolchild – no matter what the sacrifices you made to join that band of hated outlaws.
So I’ve no time for the ‘suck it up’ chorus of schadenfreude towards those parents who have seen their children’s third-level hopes dashed by what seems like a form of educational ‘affirmative action’ in favour of disadvantaged children this year. For a start, I am that soldier. I’m a farmer’s daughter from Kilkenny, and had never seen the inside of a fee-paying school until I sent the first of my five children there. My reasons, firstly, were because it’s 15 minutes’ walk away, and the logistics of getting them to a more distant school on public transport weren’t appealing.
Bullied
Secondly, because it’s a mixed school and I wanted them to be educated together: having lost my only sister as a child, and been mercilessly bullied by some fat and stupid older girls, there were times I’d have given anything for one of my brothers to be on hand. And thirdly, because it’s a good school and, whatever it cost, I wanted to give them every chance that I could afford. So shoot me.
My son was one of this year’s Leaving Cert students who might possibly have got his first choice if he’d sat the exam. He still had three months of study ahead when he walked out of school one day last March, never to set foot in a classroom again. And he’s one of the fee-paying pupils apparently feeling the brunt of the system: he was marked down a grade in two higher level subjects.
But he’s still going to Trinity College – blame the ‘Normal People’ factor – so he’s perfectly happy with his second option. And if a child from a more disadvantaged school got the place he wanted, through some subtle positive discrimination, I can’t begrudge them that opportunity. Because here’s the difference between those youngsters, now astonished to find themselves heading to Trinity or UCD or UCC, and kids like my son: he’ll probably get where he wants to go in the end.
It might take him another year, and a more circuitous route, to achieve his ambition, but I will do all I can to help.
He’s got a part-time job, he’ll cycle to college, and he’ll bloody well do the study that he promised he would have done if he’d had the chance to sit the Leaving last June.
And since despised ‘middleclass parents’ like myself are used to cutting corners to further our children’s education, a few more years of sacrifice won’t kill us.
But my heart soared when I watched the news last Friday and saw the children of poorer schools from tougher suburbs chattering excitedly about how they never expected to get their first choices, and how thrilled they were to be heading to college. Perhaps those youngsters would have soldiered on, if they’d been disappointed, and achieved their ambitions in the end. But it might have been one knock back too many, the uphill battle might have been too steep, the obstacles too great. Unlike my lad, they may not have had the support to keep going.
Disappointment
No doubt there will be parents looking at the results, as I did yesterday, seeing that their children could have done better, and ringing their lawyers. But they’re wasting their time.
They chose to ‘opt-in’ to this system, for a start. And they can stretch to a grind, and have their kids resit the exam in November, if they’re unhappy.
That’s not to take from the legitimacy of their disappointment today, and those parents who struggled to keep their kids in private schools, only to see them lose out, deserve our sympathy. Not that they’ll get it.
And not that you’d think it from listening to Sinn Féin, and their demonising of ‘middle-class parents’, but there are worse crimes than wanting the best for your children.