The mad scramble for school places | Zoe Williams

far their children go to school right? Zoe Williams on the paranoia of parents leaves the door early in the school

Tuesday, I met a woman that I am able to discuss, in addition to her husband, whom I had never met, and she said, ".. We toured Jaguars of the incredible "Jaguars (Girls' School James Allen") is a private school, primary and secondary schools, about five miles from us I made a face -.. It was certainly not disagree I was sad, "I'm sure it can be in life" next speech. I was hoping it would have to leave I could never pay Jaguars, then fell, as it would be vulgar to me to spell it.

But my face is obviously not as readable as I think, because it was about, and give me the brochure, and instead of chirping about how well that turned all the children who were once had to say: "I do not really agree with the private schools." Obviously, this is embarrassing - no one wants to have a disagreement with someone who knows very well - but the difficulty was all mine. We have reached a point where it is much less shameful to end privileges equal ensure that their children are born with are brought to power by all the privileges that you can put in your hands, what is the force their political views on anyone. And I agree with that, it's embarrassing, but what I do in life.

But before reaching private secondary schools and if you have no right to oppose them when they went to one (me, me, we'll settle this later) and if "I just want the best for my children" is reason enough for anything except buying organic satsumas (is not) and what is still Jaguars (which has a large swimming pool), we need to first agree on one thing to have lost his mind on the issue of schools. We went collectively insane.

There is this idea of ??"strong middle class, pushing," the fight against death in last place in the so-good-as-is a grammar school: it seems that critical middle class, when in fact it is the tacit understanding that the upper classes in public schools and classrooms do not care. And since everyone loves her children, and very few people are super rich the person of the middle class, is common. If not, you do not care enough.

My friend P, a school governor, said. "There is a feeling that if you do not Mozart and phonetics intense every night, their children will become addicted to crack it against total failure-story to it. Narrative does not make sense that most children attend public schools and do very well. Anxiety is chilling, as is the panic. What we want is that this energy to go to support a system that you think it's very good, and we hope improvement. But when everyone is crazy in a way selfish. "

This panic is so widespread now than when the government recently announced that priority would be given special parents in the armed forces, a friend of Sheffield, said: "Ten years ago, I ' would have thought that getting a tutor was bad enough ... Now I'll end up going to Iraq. "

This person was a joke: this person, L, in Carlisle, was not kidding. Your daughter is in primary school very well, but they are less easy side. "It's a disaster. I was really planning to go undercover as a master of the offer seriously. "

"Is this a joke."

"Well, what can you say?"

claim that they are extreme, but what he really thinks is "jam git. Not everyone can play at being masters of supply. Some of us have not even a teaching degree "

It is no coincidence that Ms. Kelly was a known nod: I know someone is crazy enough to consider a private elementary school. This, I believe, at the end of the social apartheid, which we so afraid of the poor savages that even their children under 11 years are too dangerous to fraternize with. Also, I do not know anyone rich enough to think that this would be a good use of their money. But that does not mean it is possible to disagree.

A year ago, I had an argument with a friend who was going to London because he does not want her daughter to be the only white girl in her class. No matter who was not even two at a time, and never mind the fact that racism is open, shameless - without warning language or religion, not "do not want my daughter to be the only of its class who speak English "or" I do not want to be the only one not wearing a headscarf. "What I noticed is that we live in Clapham. The place is full of white children. And yet I do not think he was sincere. I think he was really mad.

A life

another friend in one of those famous "black hole" where there are a number of schools near you, but you are not, technically, in all its spheres of influence . After an application process that sound perfectly reasonable if you had never heard of a "black hole", her daughter was rejected by the school closest to the church, which had requested an open space. Rumors flew, despite the fact that religious schools are required to cover one quarter of their places to children not to the church, to solve this problem by using the "open" places of siblings.

I used to be violently against religious schools, the pure anti-democratic outrage education places are funded by each of us to be confined to anyone loose enough power to demand the belief that almost no one had. Just under 3% of people - 1.7 million - in the UK to attend a service CoFe a month. Since 25% (4605) of all primary and secondary schools are CoFe, and one million children attend a religious school, you could probably say that everyone in the congregation tried to obtain or keep a child in a school of the church, and all true Christians prayed quietly at home, waiting to secular education to improve enough that they could have their church.

• However, preventing the atheists to establish their own schools with their own high standards, and asking the prospective parents a letter of recommendation from a leading local humanist? We're too lazy. We lack the civic spirit. So I care not so much on principle, but even when you are very neutral in education faith, this "open" business is more insidious, especially because there is no transparency in the admissions process .
• Anyway, do not go to school or one of four others near them, and were assigned to a school that was a walk of 50 minutes (one simple), but only part of the problem: I had bad results at all. The results of literacy were so bad that Ofsted felt compelled to insist that only 2% of pupils have English as their first language. Group of 50 children only, it is a way for Statistics say "a child". I sat there for about 20 minutes, trying to find the acceptable way to say it's a bit much. Or if it is a bit much. But listen, I would not spend all day with people who do not speak English. I would be bored and lonely. This may make it harder to concentrate, but it's a long shot, and also what you're after, exactly? An alienated child with attention for very long, as Thomas De Quincey? Or a normal kid with friends?

moved, finally exploding in front of a totally different school, which Ofsted has been neither good nor bad, the student body is more diffuse, that only in this context is a euphemism for the mine "The more people speak English." This is what I would have, but there are people who think it is beyond the limits, they think that children rub along well in a non- verbal, and what are they going to talk anyway, outside the international language of sweets and families of Sylvania? Everyone is in a continual fever of irrationality. I've seen people freak each other Finally, standing on a golf game in progress, "Someone I know went into the nursery, but not the school, and had 10 gates near you."

Ofsted

people walk if there is a deficiency in seven years of mathematics that could not be solved at home with a calculator and some nuts. Do you remember when people started talking about mortgages, and that was the death penalty for young people? And we all roll their eyes and say, "I used to go dancing, but now I'm stuck at a party talking about the fixed exchange rate with respect to the variables?" This is equivalent to that of a decade later, with the exception that often

not

speak because he is a little more annoying than a financial decision. This is the policy all along: the decision on whether you intend to be a Christian to the decision on private schools
job before school, we all have principles and policies we can all just left you like them. Julie Burchill line concisely why, if it was so left, which gave all his money - "I am a communist, but in the meantime, until the revolution, not only with my own" - a summary. We do not need to put our money where our mouth is, because the money was not the point.