I was struck by the juxtaposition of the state’s and the individual’s apparently contrasting perspectives on how to do our best by our children in your editorial, “We all want the best for our children: the state must help ensure we get it” (Comment). The state’s interest in creating “a more socially integrated education system [to achieve] a more cohesive, tolerant society…” was presented as conflicting with the challenge: “Who could criticise [middle-class] parents for wanting to do the best for their children?”
Well, I for one would certainly do so if “the best” for their children was conceived in essentially egocentric terms. We choose what values we wish to inculcate in our offspring. Some of those choices (those emphasising privilege, inequality, discrimination, perhaps) will conflict with the culture we each choose to continue to live in and benefit from (socially integrated, coherent, tolerant etc). Surely this leaves any of those “middle-class parents using their greater means to get what’s best for their children”, whose values fit such an egocentric conception, open to our “hectoring”, left wing or otherwise.
Mike Warwick
Holmfirth
W Yorkshire
Your editorial comments that “there are still too many mediocre schools” and that there is a need for “opening up access to the best state schools” deserve to be challenged. The most recent Ofsted report says that 82% of primary schools are now “good or outstanding”. The other 18% are likely to be schools where many of the children come from culturally impoverished homes and so do not score high on some of the Ofsted criteria, notwithstanding the likely commitment of their teachers. These schools do not deserve the epithet “mediocre”.
The notion that there are “best state schools” is questionable: best buildings, best test results, best teachers, best leadership? What assurance can there be that over the six years of a child’s primary career the state of “bestness” will continue.
The idea of “opening up access” to designated schools is a sop to over-ambitious parents who inevitably will elbow out others: where is the social justice in that? If every school is a good school (which is the government’s aim) then choice is unnecessary.
Attending the local school contributes to community development: children’s friends live nearby and their parents interact. If prospective parents feel the local school is “mediocre”, they should talk to members of the governing body and try to discover whether their judgment is fair and, if so, ask what the community can do to improve the situation.
Michael Bassey Emeritus professor
Newark
You refer to Tatler’s list of good schools as “money-saving tips”. The list is more important than that. Of the 21 schools in England Tatler has picked out, five are grammar schools and 16 are comprehensive ones. Of those 16 comprehensive schools, nine used to be grammar schools, two were once secondary modern schools and five have always been comprehensive.
First, the reiterated claim that only grammar schools produce high standards is obvious nonsense. Second, the still widely held belief that, at some point in the past, all but 164 grammar schools were “destroyed” by leftwing zealots is equally absurd. In fact, almost all grammar schools were transformed and often enlarged.
There are several hundred schools that are as good as the ones listed by Tatler, many of them in the north of England.
It is equally obvious that both Roman Catholic and Jewish schools would rank high on any such list and that becoming directly dependent on funding from the secretary of state as academies has had little bearing on the achievements of schools that were already among the best in the country.
Sir Peter Newsam Former chief schools adjudicator
Thornton Dale
N Yorks
