Will my son resent me for sending him to a public school — and paying for his sister’s posh one?
FREDDIE, Ruby and James would like to invite you to their Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-themed birthday party,’ the invitation reads. ‘RSVP essential.’
‘We hope Jessica* can make it. Ruby will be heartbroken if she can’t,’ the glamorous blonde with the fur gilet purrs, climbing into her Land Rover and blowing me a kiss goodbye.
I expect most parents at my daughter’s new prep school won’t be worrying about the cost of birthday presents, but I know my standard €10 book voucher isn’t going to cut it this time.
It’s a far cry from the last birthday party my teenage son, Sam*, went to at a nearby Nando’s. His friend, Alex, is the son of a single mother who is working two jobs. She insisted on no presents.
You see, our 13-year-old son goes to a public school while our ten-year-old daughter started at a posh private school last year. Why? We couldn’t afford to send both of them. It is a real sacrifice to send Jessica to a fee-paying school, but one we have decided is worth making. Even if it does mean forgoing holidays and a new car.
I am aware it will give our daughter advantages over our son, but we simply cannot find the €43,000 it would cost each year to send both to private.
The reality is, Sam is brighter. While he made it through primary school relatively unscathed, Jessica, who is less outgoing, sporty and academically able than her brother got lost in a class of 33 kids of mixed abilities. The school, which was clearly massively overstretched and under-resourced, was not in a position to help her.
Then there was the awful food (nuggets and chips, most days), undesirable friendships and the fact she was on the waiting list for the only club she wanted to be in (drama) for almost a year.
Her new school has just 14 children in the class and she was recently given the starring role in their production of Matilda.
Her confidence has come on in leaps and bounds, not to mention her reading and arithmetic.
In an ideal world, we would send both our children to private school and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel terrible about the disparity at times. We are, thanks to a promotion at my husband’s work, in a slightly better position financially now than we were four years ago when our son started secondary — it just wasn’t an option for him.
There is no denying that our daughter’s school is streets ahead of her brother’s. The extracurricular activities they offer are mind-blowing – hockey, horse riding, forest school and fencing.
One of the only optional extras at our son’s school is a gaming and engineering club. A group of teenagers stuffing themselves with chocolate and ignoring each other while they build models is not character building.
Our son has PE once a week while our daughter swims at the school pool on a Monday, plays hockey or football on a Tuesday and has two afternoons of PE and outdoor learning on a Wednesday and Thursday.
The food in the canteen is also exceptional – think fish pie, broccoli and home-made profiteroles, whereas my son lives off sausage rolls and Danish pastries at his school canteen.
And did I mention the school trips? Our daughter will be skiing in Switzerland this year while our son’s sailing trip in a dinghy doesn’t really compare.
Then there are the social connections our daughter is making. She has already been offered a pony on loan by one of her classmates. Fingers crossed there will be no shortage of work experience offers when the time comes.
Our son’s friend, on the other hand, found himself in a spot of bother after his brother was expelled for bringing ketamine to a school disco.
The children at our son’s school are, at least, bright and have parents that put the time into making sure they are up to speed with studies, or will shell out for a private tutor.
At the time, we knew we could not afford to privately educate both children, so we were thrilled when he passed the exam and the decision was, ultimately, made for us. If he’d failed, we couldn’t afford to send him to private school without remortgaging the house, something neither of us wanted to do. But I’d have felt terrible if he’d ended up at the local comprehensive.
Three years on, things have worked out reasonably well, although I’d have liked him to do more extracurricular activities. He’s not so much as set foot on a rugby pitch since he became a teenager, despite our best efforts. Football is the only thing he is remotely interested in. There are things which are far from ideal — his penchant for tacky football tops and the fact he sometimes pronounces ‘H’ ‘haitch’, (‘No one at school pronounces it ‘aitch’, Mum,’) but I am, on the whole, proud of him and how he is turning out.
I pray he doesn’t come to resent his little sister or us for sending her to, in his words – a ‘posh school’.
I hope that the skills he learns from his public school – getting on with people from all walks of life, working hard, appreciating what he has – will be the strengths he will take through his adult life.
And perhaps some of the connections his sister makes might help him one day. The son of a local politician is in her class. Maybe he could help Sam get some work experience next year.
I must remember to buy him a great present for his birthday next month. Has to be worth a try at least, doesn’t it?