Sinead Moriarty: We should forget hyperbole around ‘good’ schools

THIS is the time of year when nervous parents are hovering around the post box, or chasing the postman down the road, waiting on that golden letter. The letter that will tell them whether their precious child has got a place in the ‘right’ school.

Parents have become increasingly fixated over which school to send their children to. They worry that if they make the wrong decision, not only will their little Johnny or Mary not become nuclear physicists and Olympians, but that they will be miserable and never amount to anything.

It’s not just an Irish phenomenon. In New York one top-tier school received a letter of recommendation for a child from Bill Clinton, while another received one from the Dalai Lama.

Have parents gone mad? Yes, and it’s not just letters of recommendation from people in positions of power, people are also moving house, and getting into debt, all because of schools.

More than 52pc of Irish parents with children in primary school have admitted to finding it a financial burden, while the number rose to 68pc for parents with children in secondary school.

Some 18pc of primary and 34pc of secondary school parents claim to have got into debt over education costs.

A primary school education in Ireland costs an average of €766 a year, while secondary school education is averaging €1,628 a year.

And these are the non-fee-paying schools. The fee-paying ones are crippling parents with everincreasing fees and making parents jump through hoops to get their child in.

Some desperate parents are renting empty apartments, in areas they have no intention of living in, just to use the address to get their children into the ‘right’ school. In the UK, one-in-four parents relocate their family so their child can get into a better school.

Homes close to good schools are always more expensive to buy or rent because they are deemed extremely desirable.

I have friends who have used their grandparents’ addresses as their own, to get their children into better local schools.

Parents go over the annual school league tables with a fine-tooth comb. The best schools are circled, targeted and aimed for.

Strategies of how to get your child into ‘that school’ are drawn up. Piggy banks are robbed, grandparents are lobbied, removal vans turn up outside the house…

Are we putting too much emphasis on the academic results and sporting prowess of other children who have attended the ‘best’ schools?

Do former pupils’ successes really mean our little Johnny with two left feet is going to be any good at sport, or little Mary, who struggles with spelling, will suddenly turn out to be a genius?

Perhaps we are overestimating the effect that going to a ‘good’ school will have on our children’s lives. Of course some schools are better than others. But can we really be objective when we get all het up about leader boards and reputations?

Let’s be honest, if you visit a school on open day and the child who shows you around is extremely polite and intelligent, you are likely to be swayed.

But are you not forgetting that this child has been handpicked out of the masses specifically to impress prospective parents?

While he is waxing lyrical about the ‘fascinating project’ he’s doing on the Titanic, the rest of his class could be stabbing each other with their compasses.

When you are taken to ‘pop in’ to a classroom to see a class in progress, you can be assured that those pupils have been threatened within an inch of their lives to behave.

A friend who works as the admissions point of contact in a very popular school in Dublin says she is tormented daily with desperate parents begging for places that don’t exist. She’s been pleaded with, roared at, threatened and bribed for places. She said she’s been chased around supermarkets and had parents lurking around her car when she leaves work, wanting a ‘quick word’.

BUT what is it all for? Are we just getting caught up in hyperbole about certain schools? And just because a school gets good results every year doesn’t mean it’s the right school for your child. Perhaps it’s time we looked at the child first and then tried to find a school that suits them, instead of forcing the child into a ‘good’ school that they may hate.

With high birth rates in recent years, some 60,000 additional school places are needed simply to keep pace with the baby boom. Waiting lists for schools in Ireland are getting longer, parents are becoming more irate, and admissions people are diving for cover.

It doesn’t look like the race for places is going to become less competitive anytime soon. You’d better start lobbying the Dalai Lama for that letter of recommendation.

Are we putting too much emphasis on the successes of children who have attended the ‘best’ schools? Does it really mean Johnny with two left feet will be good at sport, or Mary, who struggles with spelling, will suddenly turn out to be a genius?