Lessons to learn from supporting local school
THERE is no more smug sound than the words “good school” coming forth from a middleclass mouth. You can imagine the parents of young Delphinia and little Alphonso poring over this week’s school league tables.
I wonder if parents who are delighted to have their children in a “good school” allowed their eyes to linger on that third numerical column: deprivation. I wonder if they noticed a correlation between how well a school performed and the levels of deprivation it hosts.
The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) is used to judge deprivation. At Williamwood, in East Renfrewshire, in the most recent data of school leavers, 88 per cent of pupils are in the two most affluent groups.
Over the border in Glasgow is Castlemilk High School where 82 per cent of school leavers are in SIMD group one. Last year it was 90 per cent.
There is no doubt those in the top schools work hard. But how many have private tutors? How many come to school hungry? Or shouldering family burdens? Much success is the work of the school but much is the work of circumstance.
While league tables say little about a school, they speak to how children in certain schools are segregated by social class. Parents have strong opinions about private schools but no one discusses those who move for the schools. These parents pay tens of thousands of pounds over the odds for properties in catchment areas and then claim they stuck to their principles and sent their child to the local school.
I spoke to a chap who mentors a child from a Glasgow school. His child goes to one of your typical “leafy suburb” secondaries. “Literally like Beirut,” he said of the Glasgow school. I’d wager it was not literally like Beirut and perhaps his own schooling wasn’t up to much if he’s made it thus far without grasping the correct meaning of “literally”. It’s fearmongering like this that convinces middle-class parents to form fortresses of prohibitive property prices around “good” schools to create a pseudoprivate system.
None of this makes sense. The middle class child might go to a school where five per cent of pupils gain five Highers. They might go to a school where 70 per cent of pupils gain five Highers. But being well supported, having books at home, having parents who help with homework mean it doesn’t matter which school they attend; they’ll still gain their five Highers.
Is it bullying middle class parents worry about? Do they worry their child is uniquely unfit to cope? If it’s a lack of extracurricular activities, that shows some ignorance of all the many and varied opportunities taking place in the “not good” schools. It’s socially laudable to bray the words. “I want the best for my child”. Mildly disadvantaging your child for the sake of the greater good is not the acceptable thing. But why is it a point of pride to care only about your own offspring and to hang with anyone else’s?
It’s not a stretch to assume that people who want to have children would have an interest in children and their welfare generally. But “I want the best for my child” is at odds with wanting the best for all children. Why, if you don’t care about children, are you bothering to make more?
Supporting your local school should be the thing. When it boils down to it, school segregation is about ensuring your children mingle with doublebarrelled surnames and not hyphenated first names. There’s nothing to be proud of about that.
Middle-class parents form fortresses of prohibitive property prices around ‘good’ schools to create a pseudo-private system