Although it was over 15 years ago, I clearly remember visiting the elementary school I had set my heart on for my first-born son, Jacob. Despite being in North London, it was located in the middle of green fields, with a huge playground and outdoor space for all the classrooms.
It was rated outstanding and the principal told us that many students attended the most prestigious schools in the area. The classrooms were filled with colorful paintings and the children were well-behaved and neat in their elegant uniforms. They sold me.
But when I told one of my more snooty friends, she reeled in horror. —Will you send him to public school? she scoffed in disbelief. It was as if she had announced that she would turn my five-year-old son loose in a crack den.
This is a reaction I’ve encountered many times over the years, and I know I’m not alone.
I think I did my four children, Jacob, 20, Max, 18, and twins Zach and Jonah, 15, a big favor by sending them to public schools, writes Ursula Hirschkorn.
Another good friend told me about a dinner with some wealthy guests who grilled her about why she would consider sending her daughter to a state high school. In her opinion, this amounted to child abandonment.
As if by not shelling out tens of thousands of pounds to push our children to the front of the queue in life, we are somehow failing as parents.
Well, things will soon change if Labour’s plan to add VAT to school fees comes to fruition should they win the general election.
It is believed that almost a quarter of a million children will have to leave behind their golden private schools and face the state sector. Imagine all those poor Tarquins and Arabellas having to struggle with the common people!
Do I feel sorry for them? Not a bit. For years, their parents have looked down on families like mine who had no income to pay school fees. For most of his childhood, I supported mine with my writing and my husband, Mike, 48, ran his own small business; We didn’t earn enough to send one child to a fee-paying school, let alone four.
When my children were little, I had a radio debate with Katie Hopkins and she made her opinion clear: her children would attend public school over her dead body.
Although the conversation was good-natured, I still felt as if I didn’t love my children as much as she loved hers, simply because I couldn’t afford the fees (even with the 20 per cent discount that came from avoiding VAT). ).
In fact, I think I did my four sons, Jacob, 20, Max, 18, and twins Zach and Jonah, 15, a huge favor by sending them to public schools.
First of all, it never got in his academic way. Jacob gained all As and A*s in his A-Levels and a place at medical school in the most difficult entry year in his history. However, it was not for him, as his talented teacher had given him the theater bug and he is now studying at a top drama school in London.
Max has been offered a place at one of the best music colleges in the country and the twins are studying like mad for their GCSE mocks. Its state school is highly revised and, as a result, 83 per cent of pupils achieved A* to B grades at A level last year.
My friend’s daughter achieved great success and is now studying medicine. Not bad at all considering how much her parents let them down by not paying for their education.
Naturally, when I hear about friends’ children who were privately educated and didn’t get the grades they needed or the places they felt they deserved at university, I have to hide my delighted reaction. Despite shelling out at least £100,000, plus tutoring in many cases, his descendants still couldn’t beat their public school contemporaries. Who looks stupid now?
But the real benefit of going to a public school is that you can mix with all walks of life. In elementary school, my children were educated with children of Afghan refugees, children whose parents had fled war-torn Somalia, and those who had emigrated from Eastern Europe. Back to school was a melting pot of languages and the PTA’s “bring a dish from your home country” event was a culinary trip around the world.
In high school, they rubbed shoulders with the children of celebrities (who were smart enough to know that paying for an education isn’t always best) and with children in guardianship. It means they can talk to anyone and not put on an air of grace.
This is in stark contrast to some of his haughty private school friends who, embarrassingly, transform into “men of the road” and start talking “street,” or amplify their elegance whenever they encounter someone who is not from the road. Same little pleased tribe as them. .
This is nothing new. When I went to Exeter University in the 1990s, students were almost exclusively privately educated and they made sure you knew it. The first question they asked me was where had I gone to school? When I responded to an obscure British school in Belgium (and yes, it was private, but my parents could only afford it because they got a big grant and it wasn’t fancy at all), their faces glazed over and they moved on. to the next person.
A friend went to a conference her first week and was asked, “Who the hell are you?” because she had the temerity to come from a public school and try to infiltrate her clique.
That’s why I’m pleased that Labour’s tax on private schools can result in a Britain with fewer of these snobbish elitists clogging up the upper echelons of our society. Children forced out of their exclusive bubbles and into public schools will be better off, as will the country as a whole.
And their stuck-up parents may realize what a waste of money private schools are when public schools can offer just as good an education.
Even better, your children won’t come away with the horrible sense of unearned superiority that an expensive education creates.