One In The Eye For The State - Or Is It.

[MrPin]

Ha....as if a certificate will give anyone the means or the ability to buy a home or secure a lifestyle they would wish for themselves and their future family.

Nice to have, but not necessary, as per Wizard of Oz, "If I only had a brain".

[Qetesuesi]

Ha....as if a certificate will give anyone the means or the ability to buy a home or secure a lifestyle they would wish for themselves and their future family.

Oooh yes, that'll hit 'em in the solar - the DoE nitpicking about this particular gnat while the economic elephant in the room rampages around....

[SpectrumFX]

Ha....as if a certificate will give anyone the means or the ability to buy a home or secure a lifestyle they would wish for themselves and their future family.

That puts it all firmly into perspective.

I was in full time education until I was 22. My wife was in full time education until 21. We both have subsequently gained professional qualification and both have professional jobs.

My parents both left school at 15. My mother didn't even bother getting he final exam results, and effectively retired forever in her mid 30's.

For house and lifestyle my parents did better by a substantial margin

Credit bubble, credit bubble, credit bubble beats Education, education, education.

[winkie]

Yep ...competition, competition, competition.... Supply and demand... Greater supply of both credit and bits of paper...and demand for the better jobs that credit or bits of paper will not necessarily buy.

[Hail the Tripod]

So not only are poor kids priced out of a good education by the commensurate increase in house prices near good schools, a requirement for tutoring on top of that further exacerbates the problem.

But it's ok because we have to compete with the Chinese.

That presupposes the outsourcing to teachers/tutors is more effective than strong parental involvement. I don't think that is true. Just be responsible for your kids education and they'll do fine.

[uptherebels]

The first time any of my kids went on holiday, whether in term time or not, they would have been over 18. In fact, two of the four, have still never been, now aged 24 and 26. That's not counting school trips of course. Which included the USA and China.

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

That presupposes the outsourcing to teachers/tutors is more effective than strong parental involvement. I don't think that is true. Just be responsible for your kids education and they'll do fine.

This is my take on it but whilst others can and will throw money at the problem, its not likely that the individual will be able to do a better job.

There was a myth that there will always be people richer than you but don't worry if you apply yourself you'll be ok. Well that's been well and truly de-bunked over the past 15 years.

[Bruce Banner]

Surely it all comes back to the "accident of birth". However much The State tries to override this it will fail.

The State must protect children against the worst excesses of their parents but must accept that children are the product of their parents and should be brought up by them.

Edit: Having said that, the Nazis had a pretty good stab at it with the Hitler Youth.

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

The Communists saw the family unit as the enemy of the state, the key battleground for the achievement of the socialist dream. Families were thought to be the source of all corruption and a true barrier to equality.

Maoists even instituted communal dining rooms in the People's Communes and split families up. Even private ownership of cooking utensils was banned and collectivised.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/china-1900-to-1976/the-great-leap-forward/

I think children were packed off to collective education and you didn't even sleep with your wife each night.

This is a chilling paragraph that with hindsight seems to be how our world has ended up to ensure the maximal number of workers for the state. All traditional familial responsibilities of women were destroyed....child rearing, cooking, care of elderly all to be communalised. Who would have thunk that Mao was such a visionary.

David Ca-Mao-on?

Anyway this verdict is great news. No need to worry about my kids missing school next month.

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

Google "pupil premium".

Q,

My eldest is in year 3 and will be taking grammar school entrance exams at the end of year 5. I resolutely refuse to get a tutor for this. Even though that makes me a social pariah. I shall be trying to do it myself.

We have been doing some Bond assessment stuff for a year or so but not really cranked things up in preparation yet. I realise the different grammar schools use different format exams and I have looked up what the local selection do.

Any free tips? Or feel free to tell me to piss off. I don't have an issue with tutors and if one of my children genuinely struggled I would have no qualms in getting help to attain a reasonable level of understanding and be thankful I could afford it. But paying for tutoring to secure a 'better' free education, whilst logical on an individual basis is not a step I want to make myself.

[Qetesuesi]

Q,

My eldest is in year 3 and will be taking grammar school entrance exams at the end of year 5. I resolutely refuse to get a tutor for this. Even though that makes me a social pariah. I shall be trying to do it myself.

We have been doing some Bond assessment stuff for a year or so but not really cranked things up in preparation yet. I realise the different grammar schools use different format exams and I have looked up what the local selection do.

Any free tips? Or feel free to tell me to piss off. I don't have an issue with tutors and if one of my children genuinely struggled I would have no qualms in getting help to attain a reasonable level of understanding and be thankful I could afford it. But paying for tutoring to secure a 'better' free education, whilst logical on an individual basis is not a step I want to make myself.

Although you don't explicitly mention it, I assume you're talking about maths, otherwise why would you ask me. Any child can be helped/help themselves by practicing with the wide range of games at topmarks.co.uk, and more focused attention at ixl.com. At a later stage, the algebra generator at math.com is great for equations of all sorts.

Having said that, I imagine that grammar school entry tests have their tricky side, which is where a live interactive tutor would be useful.

Re. your final sentence, remember that "there's no such thing as a free" education - you're already paying plenty into it via taxes, so a little more is no great betrayal of principle. On this point - and coming back to my initial remarks about my amazement at most parents' seeming total indifference to tuition - I'd say the following. Parents who pay for private schooling do often make great sacrifices for it, and one can easily understand why many will frankly say they can't afford £10,000 a year or more for it. By contrast, it's extremely hard to understand how most parents could possibly pretend that they can't even afford c. £500 a year for top-up tuition, which likely won't need to be for more than a year anyway,

[Mrs Bear]

Q,

My eldest is in year 3 and will be taking grammar school entrance exams at the end of year 5. I resolutely refuse to get a tutor for this. Even though that makes me a social pariah. I shall be trying to do it myself.

We have been doing some Bond assessment stuff for a year or so but not really cranked things up in preparation yet. I realise the different grammar schools use different format exams and I have looked up what the local selection do.

Any free tips? Or feel free to tell me to piss off. I don't have an issue with tutors and if one of my children genuinely struggled I would have no qualms in getting help to attain a reasonable level of understanding and be thankful I could afford it. But paying for tutoring to secure a 'better' free education, whilst logical on an individual basis is not a step I want to make myself.

I heard a while ago that our two highly sought after local grammars, or at least one of them, had changed their tests. They use to consist of largely verbal reasoning, which most certainly improves with practice.*

But the school(s) found that some of the new entrants who had scored very highly in these tests could barely write a coherent sentence, I.e. with reasonable spelling and grammar. So they introduced a more traditional English paper in addition, otherwise there was an awful lot of remedial work to do with some of them.

I would def. find out what the tests consist of and do some practice at home.

*Our elder daughter had never done any VR while at school outside the UK. When we came back she had just one term before the 11+. The school gave them VR practice every day. At the beginning of term she was scoring about 40%. By the end of it her scores had gone up to 90%+. She passed the 11+. (We did not use a tutor.)

However I had previously been told by an acquaintance who ran a private prep school that these tests were used to 'detect potential', that practice would make no difference and that it was impossible to prepare for them.

All of which was clearly rubbish.

[LiveinHope]

I heard a while ago that our two highly sought after local grammars, or at least one of them, had changed their tests. They use to consist of largely verbal reasoning, which most certainly improves with practice.*

But the school(s) found that some of the new entrants who had scored very highly in these tests could barely write a coherent sentence, I.e. with reasonable spelling and grammar. So they introduced a more traditional English paper in addition, otherwise there was an awful lot of remedial work to do with some of them.

I would def. find out what the tests consist of and do some practice at home.

*Our elder daughter had never done any VR while at school outside the UK. When we came back she had just one term before the 11+. The school gave them VR practice every day. At the beginning of term she was scoring about 40%. By the end of it her scores had gone up to 90%+. She passed the 11+. (We did not use a tutor.)

However I had previously been told by an acquaintance who ran a private prep school that these tests were used to 'detect potential', that practice would make no difference and that it was impossible to prepare for them.

All of which was clearly rubbish.

I failed 11+ but passed 12+ to the same grammar school. They were totally different style exams. The 12+ made sense to me at the time; for example, calculate area of triangle, in contrast to "which is the odd one out"

[CunningPlan]

I failed 11+ but passed 12+ to the same grammar school. They were totally different style exams. The 12+ made sense to me at the time; for example, calculate area of triangle, in contrast to "which is the odd one out"

That's too easy. DTMark. (Was I right?)

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

Although you don't explicitly mention it, I assume you're talking about maths, otherwise why would you ask me. Any child can be helped/help themselves by practicing with the wide range of games at topmarks.co.uk, and more focused attention at ixl.com. At a later stage, the algebra generator at math.com is great for equations of all sorts.

Having said that, I imagine that grammar school entry tests have their tricky side, which is where a live interactive tutor would be useful.

Re. your final sentence, remember that "there's no such thing as a free" education - you're already paying plenty into it via taxes, so a little more is no great betrayal of principle. On this point - and coming back to my initial remarks about my amazement at most parents' seeming total indifference to tuition - I'd say the following. Parents who pay for private schooling do often make great sacrifices for it, and one can easily understand why many will frankly say they can't afford £10,000 a year or more for it. By contrast, it's extremely hard to understand how most parents could possibly pretend that they can't even afford c. £500 a year for top-up tuition, which likely won't need to be for more than a year anyway,

I ask you because I've little idea on the tutor front. Presumably you don't do much in the way of grammar school entries then. As far as I know the tuition now "required" will set you back at least £1000 in the run up to exams and each school has a different assessment so no doubt there is plenty of opportunity to rinse parents with additional fees. And also as far as I know these are grammar school entry tutors rather than specific subject tutors.

In general I don't believe the standard of education provided is great, even at "good" schools. My eldest child is by no means a genius but does not seem to challenged at all in the maths/science areas so far.

[tinker]

Martin Lewis (Money Saving Expert) running a poll:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/poll/16-05-2016/should-parents-be-allowed-to-take-kids-out-of-school-for-a-holiday

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/six-year-old-taken-on-term-time-holiday-will-never-catch-up-on-colouring-20160515108831

[billybong]

The life of an individual was controlled by the commune. Schools and nurseries were provided by the communes so that all adults could work. Health care was provided and the elderly were moved into “houses of happiness” so that they could be looked after and also so that families could work and not have to worry about leaving their elderly relatives at home

Yeah but that was the commies and they had to do that as they had such a rubbish one bowl of rice a day pull the plough by hand economy it was only ever worth joking about by successful economies like the UK ha ha.

[Hail the Tripod]

Martin Lewis (Money Saving Expert) running a poll:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/poll/16-05-2016/should-parents-be-allowed-to-take-kids-out-of-school-for-a-holiday

That's a solidly unpopular policy, it's difficult to see why the Conservatives are looking to double down on it with new legislation. With all the flak they get about being the "Nasty party" for their austerity platform, you would think this would be one of those peripheral areas where they look for can look for an easy win in the popularity stakes and get some mileage out of the "good for hardworking families" soundbite.

[justthisbloke]

I may have made this point already (I lose track of what even I've said after 9 pages!), but while I have no truck with state education in either principle or practice, since when have cheap "holidays" been seen as a human right of all hard working families? My kids never went on holiday. We *did things in the holidays* which is entirely different.

[SpectrumFX]

I may have made this point already (I lose track of what even I've said after 9 pages!), but while I have no truck with state education in either principle or practice, since when have cheap "holidays" been seen as a human right of all hard working families? My kids never went on holiday. We *did things in the holidays* which is entirely different.

I'll back the right of an individual to go on holidays with their children when they like, over the right of schools to impose arbitrary fines on the people who are already paying for them.

It's like a shit restaurant fining customers because they didn't eat the food they've already paid for. The whole apparatus has become utterly detached from reality.

[Hail the Tripod]

since when have cheap "holidays" been seen as a human right of all hard working families?

Who is (seriously) claiming it is a human rights issue?

The case is an examination of whether or not taking your children on holiday during term-time constitutes criminal neglect (if they happen to be enrolled at a state school).

[knock out johnny]

I'll back the right of an individual to go on holidays with their children when they like, over the right of schools to impose arbitrary fines on the people who are already paying for them.

It's like a shit restaurant fining customers because they didn't eat the food they've already paid for. The whole apparatus has become utterly detached from reality.

Agreed - let's face it, the teaching profession is bascially a bunch of control freaks who not content with having power of kids, want to extend their fiefdom over the parents themselves. They can do one.

[CunningPlan]

It is all a bit of a farce. My son's school ran a diving trip in October half term - but left two days before term ended to make sure the flights were cheaper.

Who do I claim my £60 from?

[frozen_out]

It is all a bit of a farce. My son's school ran a diving trip in October half term - but left two days before term ended to make sure the flights were cheaper.

Who do I claim my £60 from?

Exactly. Like many things this is just the government showing they can ****** with you any time they like, so stay in line.