wotiwrote

My son is sitting his entrance examination tomorrow for one of the local private schools that thrive in this area of Surrey. My eldest daughter already attends the school but whereas, in her case, there was never any real doubt that she would pass and be offered a place, my son's success is in doubt. This is not down to any lack of ability on his part, I believe, but more a result of his determination to embody all the characteristics normally associated with small boys of ten years old. In other words, he has trouble concentrating on anything for longer than a few minutes if it isn't on a Playstation or PC screen. He does read, occasionally, but only when he goes to bed. My wife believes that, by building a computer for his bedroom during the summer, I more or less doomed him to fail the exam.

Of course all this bother and worry over private education goes against the grain for me in so many ways. Prime among these irritations, it has to be said, is the pressure of school fees. If my beautiful and clever wife were not running a successful company of her own, there is no way we would be able to fund the schooling of three children at the extortionate rates charged by private schools. So many holidays have been sacrificed to the demon of fee-paying. It all comes down to a perception of what else is on offer. I've written before about the local 'state' school that is within walking distance. Apart from the fact that it has a reputation for bullying and drugs that is at odds with its overtly Christian philosophy, my children cannot go there, even though it is nominally a state school, because their parents do not pretend to be church goers.

When my eldest was offered a state school place it was in a town almost an hour away by bus. So, the choice was to pay for her to go to a school that is a mere ten minutes away - on foot - or force her to travel to a shitty little school in a shitty little place and have a hard time making friends because she lives so far away. Of all the failures of this Blair government (I no longer dare to call it a Labour government) the failure to do anything about education is the thing that has affected me most personally. Not just in my pocket but because I believe in local schools, where people are part of the community, where the teachers are part of the same community. Our state schools have become more and more like out of town superstores. Large, separated from the areas in which they sit by fences and gates and barbed wire in some places. We pay teachers next to nothing to educate the next generation: our economic and cultural future. Parents are less involved in the raising of their children, partly because many couples are either separated or both working to pay off the large mortgages that many of us are burdened with, and partly because it is an easy option to let TV and computer games entertain the kids while we get on with other things. The national shrinkage of the extended family also means the involvement of older relatives is less common than in previous generations.

But before I begin starting to sound too like a grumpy old man or the founder member of Eeyorism, I'll wind up with the thought that I am ambivalent about the outcome of my son's examination tomorrow. I hope he passes and passes well to make him feel good about himself but what I really hope for is that a new local school will be built in the next six months that offers the same level of education for free to all the children in the area who wish to attend, no matter what spiritual beliefs or relationship to god their parents profess to hold. Or fail to hold. Then I could afford to buy him something really good for passing the exam.