Are we mad to pay for private schools?
MY parents sent me to a direct grant London day school. It felt as if they mentioned the school fees on the hour every hour until the day I sailed off to university. Stumping up the cash required to send me and my sibling to this establishment was a struggle requiring daily sacrifice and boy were we reminded of our duty in return.
Homework was to be submitted on time and perfectly. The boys at the adjoining school were not to be snogged. We were to be in a perpetual state of ardent appreciation for the immense efforts our father in his underwear business was expending to sell thousands of dozens of winceyette pyjamas and brushed nylon camiknickers to amass enough cash to secure our entry.
If we failed to notch up enough marks in the non-stop half-term, full-term, mock and public exams we lived under constant threat of being: “Taken out of this wonderful school, young ladies, and dispatched to the scary comprehensive down the road.” We knew the score. Private school meant better everything: posher friends, freshly mown playing fields, harp lessons, impenetrably boring works of Brecht chosen as the school play and – towering over all the other advantages – superior examination results which led to better universities and a glittering career complete with a de luxe quality husband.
ALL this could be ours if we did what our mother called our “duty” and what our father called “fulfilling your part of the bargain”, kept our heads down, slogged through our Latin verbs, didn’t get expelled or pregnant and focused on the prize.
Of course the whole “pay the fees if it kills you” philosophy was so deeply ingrained I did exactly the same for my own children. My then husband was a junior hospital doctor, I was trying to eke out a living as a journalist. Finding the money for school fees was tough. If, however, you’d suggested not bothering we’d have been appalled. How could we possibly not go without to ensure a five-star future for our children?
Now a study led by a team from King’s College, London has found that the category of school you attend has no bearing on your examination results. Success or failure depends entirely upon your genes and IQ. What? What about all those children from poor families and houses without books who passed the 11-plus, went off to grammar schools and achieved academic distinction? Surely the study door and dirty nappies piled up in the bathroom. It’s as if the dozens of TV shows and newspaper and magazine articles on sprucing your lair up to seduce purchasers never existed. I’m on house number six and here, for what they’re worth, doesn’t suggest they’d have fared just as well at the local secondary modern? It can’t be, can it, that all the foregone holidays, shoes unbought, fun forsaken in favour of conserving every last penny for school fees could have been sacrificed in vain? Are they suggesting
MY FOOLPROOF TIPS FOR SELLING YOUR HOUSE
are my top tips: open a flipping window, no one wants to smell your lunch or your dog; clear out your stuff, there’s no point cluttering up the place; slap on a coat of paint; clean taps and plug holes till they sparkle; and most I’d have graduated from Cambridge and ended up as your august columnist if my parents had ripped me out of The Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls? All those sunny days glimpsed through drawn curtains as I toiled over Paradise Lost in my bedroom! Say it ain’t so.