New whine in old bottles
A tooth-furring piece in the Sunday Times about Bedales, the "trendiest public school in the country".
It quotes "an excited Notting Hill mum, whose daughter started at the school last year."
They want to get the best out of every child there, and not just in an academic sense. My daughter failed all the written tests on her entrance exam rather spectacularly, but they gave her a place because they really liked her character and could see a lot of potential.”
and later adds
Lucky when the fees are so crippling: £8,218 a term for boarders. But Oxford and Cambridge entrances are high, with ex-pupils often landing plum jobs in the media and creative arts.
In other words, it has a more realistic (aka permissive) attitude towards adolescent desires but its main selling point is, like all public schools, that it will see rich thickies right. The added liberal smugness (celebrities sent their kids there! The had a Buddhist monk! For a whole term!) just makes it more than usually annoying. And a little unfair. I thought the pay off in England was that we have a massively unfair education system, but at least the public schools paid for it by producing richly entertaining screw ups.
It quotes "an excited Notting Hill mum, whose daughter started at the school last year."
They want to get the best out of every child there, and not just in an academic sense. My daughter failed all the written tests on her entrance exam rather spectacularly, but they gave her a place because they really liked her character and could see a lot of potential.”
and later adds
Lucky when the fees are so crippling: £8,218 a term for boarders. But Oxford and Cambridge entrances are high, with ex-pupils often landing plum jobs in the media and creative arts.
In other words, it has a more realistic (aka permissive) attitude towards adolescent desires but its main selling point is, like all public schools, that it will see rich thickies right. The added liberal smugness (celebrities sent their kids there! The had a Buddhist monk! For a whole term!) just makes it more than usually annoying. And a little unfair. I thought the pay off in England was that we have a massively unfair education system, but at least the public schools paid for it by producing richly entertaining screw ups.
Labels: stuff
posted by buff and blue at 11:14 pm
2 Comments:
"could see a lot of potential"... to pay £8,218 per term of course. I wonder what percentage of the population could afford to do that for, say, three children?
Ha! All so familiar - same thing at the place I used to teach - parents think you're doing them a favour, but in truth, you're fleecing them for the fees and placing even more strain on the teaching staff to get results for these idiots. Of course, we were never allowed to say they were thick, they all had 'learning difficulties' and were 'talented in other ways'.
Puss
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