Why secondary school choice is bunk, but paying for education is probably the dumbest thing in the world

So, the secondary school countdown has begun, and frankly, I’m daunted. 

With an East London property priced accordingly to be (probably) just outside the catchment of the local, charming, Hogwartsian academy on the ‘naice’ side of the park, with its strong views on uniform and pernicious detention policies – and inside that of a building which resembles a brutalist Borstal in the centre of a housing estate, whose more diverse intake and rather more relaxed approach to everything else, means I feel I’m stuck with Hobson on genuine choice (though I’ve discussed my view on the nature of free will previously).

I genuinely believe my son will be just fine wherever he goes, educational outcomes being so much more about socioeconomic factors and parental attitudes to learning than anything an institution can provide. But the ‘suck it up or go elsewhere’ attitudes of the some of the local state schools when it comes to hardline discipline policies leaves parents feeling so disempowered as to have none (if they ever did anyway). But perhaps this is the point.

Parental empowerment is, these days, considered inconvenient, used as it has in the past to excuse poor behaviour, attendance, and the general markers of social exclusion. So a one size fits all policy has been enacted on local secondaries (nay academies, as most have become).  These institutions, which are hoovering up failing schools like McDonald’s swallowed up high streets in the mid 80s have been successful in “raising standards”. But in many cases, they do so by enforcing a regime so unapologetically indiscriminate as to be positively myopic. Doling out detentions for trivial misdemeanours like forgetting one’s compass might standardise approaches to behaviour. But failing to differentiate between a child who’s late in because their cat’s been run over, and one who’s merely overslept is just a cruel – and increasingly, less unusual, form of punishment. Parents are, often sensibly, kept very much at arm’s length. But raise a legitimate objection and expect to be shown the door. 

Perhaps the upside is that children who answer back are also offered the same invitation, which, for keener learners, no doubt feels like just deserts for the perpetual disrupters. And in practice, perhaps parental disempowerment is necessary to avoid the sort of scenario that occurred in my son’s year six curriculum meeting this week, where one parent dominated, demanding to know why the school wasn’t offering her phonics lessons so she could help her son. My husband, who’d cut short a meeting at a venerable financial institution to attend, felt more ought to have been done to shut such intrusions down, but the difficulty of catering to everybody is that we all have different challenges, not all of which we can be understanding of, all of the time. And there’s the rub of state education – you get what you’re given, and if you don’t like it, tough luck.

Hey ho, looking at it another way, we are also lucky to have on our doorstep a handful of ‘outstanding’ institutions “to choose from” which have, save for the tribalistic window dressing of neatness and architectural niceties, very little to “choose” between them.  All of them, though one is are in its infancy, and one has seen a dramatic turnaround, have  top class Ofsted reports, trailing, no doubt, a fair few teacher nervous breakdowns in their wake. It’s just a case of whether we accept the sprawling local with little outside space and a demographic that’s different to the suburban homogeneity with which myself and Tom grew up, or whether we put up and shut up with the smarter looking one up the road that’s rumoured to  dictate hair length on boys. In any case, we might not get in – catchments are tight and shrinking – and the only other option, locally – with its high profile terrorist casualties  – seems a bit too risky even for our now diluted middle-class sensibilities.

Actually, the other option, of course, is to pay for it. An option I balk at, not just for the cost and the philosophical yoga it entails, but for what it might actually do to our kids. As a grammar school girl who did well academically, I met many specimens of trust funded alphas with well-rounded vowels (or a touch of ironic patois for the very poshest) on my self-funded gap year before uni,  which ended up being more an exercise in inequality comprehension, both abroad and at home, than expediting a long-held desire to see the world. I thought, at the time, these posh kids’ parents were mugs, spending ridiculous sums on education perfectly well got elsewhere, particularly as I went on to get a 1st from a Russell Group. It took me longer to realise that opportunities afterwards would be so much bound up in who you were, rather than what you knew, or even what you were capable of. It was a harsh lesson, and one I’m still coming to terms with even now. 

Even given my stagnant career trajectory, we are privileged enough to be able afford to pay for our children’s education – just. But are we even the sort of people ‘they’ would want? Would my son actually get anything out of it, short of a sense of entitlement and actual indebtedness? In short, is it worth it?


Heading to a fee paying school (just for a nose) across the river where I work (in a creative role in the loosest possible sense, one that could probably done with a good a-level, rather than a degree and masters) this feeling of social inferiority resurfaced. Not only is this school expensive – a rough yearly total is about half my annual salary – it’s also highly academic. Entry is by examination and interview. To put it mildly, you have to be pretty special to get in. And when I was met by one of the Year 5 boys – who towered above me in loafers, I might add – you could kinda tell.

This creature, still half-formed as all teen boys are, was clearly a ‘leader’ in making. It was the same with the others – strapping 6ft fourers with fresh faces, there’s something in their chiselled jaws, languid posture, the forward facing eyes of a hunter, and certainly a superficial charm – a confidence that’s been handed down through generations of success: land accumulation and dynasty management, that sets these kids apart. 

There was also a strong contingent of more “clever looking” types – the children of the high ranking professional classes – judges, consultants, bankers – what might be termed in any other school, nerds. But here, they were clearly in their element, playing Rachmaninoff in the entrance hall with the aplomb of a concert pianist, or reciting pi to 130 places. It’s for this reason I’m even considering this school for my son, who has found it uncomfortable, even stifling to be academic among a team of more football-loving lads. I feel like he’s stopped trying to be clever to try and fit in, and in some ways this breaks my heart.

All teens want to feel normal, and the feeling I got in this institution is that it’s the healthy competition with the other uber bright kids that means this school tops league tables nationwide. The facilities were fine – better than most, with a pool and “fencing salle” for those so inclined – sport of all types is encouraged as a respite from brilliance. Yet the teachers were resoundingly normal save for the  horsey “learning support” teacher, who told me in no uncertain terms this was a “competitive school” and glared at me like I was crazy when I suggested that social and communication problems might go hand in hand with academic success. Indeed, once they’d marked me out as a chancer rather than effortlessly liquid by dint of along overdue highlights and cheap shoes, they weren’t not particularly engaging either, except for the deputy head who had the most piercing eyes and a way of talking about ‘little boys’ that caught me off guard, who told me I’d be better off “shopping around”. 

So, some of what you pay for is to have your child’s game raised by their generation’s academic crème de la crème, where brilliance is everyday, rather, I suspect, than dramatically better teaching standards. The opportunities aren’t so much in what you can learn – standard GCSEs and A-Level are offered, though results are outstanding (but only in the way my own felt at the time) – but in who you might meet. What you are really paying for is not so much a superior education (though neither of the other schools we looked at offer Greek or Mandarin) but entry into a particularly well-heeled club, one which will grease one’s way up the pole of success by virtue simply of being in it. 

I left feeling frustrated yet exhilarated. Why not just try, I implored at Tom. Yes he might struggle intially to meet the standards of kids drilled by tutors and prep school expectations, but if he got in, he would fly, I hissed, annoyed at Tom’s defeated stance as he totted up the cost not just of  Jonah’s but also Ava’s prospective public school education and mentally waved goodbye to a new car a holidays abroad going forward.

We could get a scholarship, I needled, although it’s unlikely given our combined income and assets (the fact we own a house at all probably disqualifies us); that and the fact Jonah has done zero preparation, as well as his diagnosed social and communication difficulties. Even if, somehow he aced the four papers he would need to take, he might struggle at interview- no doubt designed to weed out those who are simply “clever on paper”. It was all feeling like a fruitless mission before we’ve even begun. But that’s the point. Preparation for entry to school like this probably begins generations back. 

And yet should we just accept his fate?  To choose between the state sector, where he might be penalised for minor transgressions and groomed for middle management rather than have his ego fluffed at private school, and be whisked onto the board by kid-gloved staff who know they are largely outranked is one between Scylla and Charybdis (or between a rock and a hard place for plebs like me). And yet, this choice, which isn’t really a choice, is why social mobility has stalled in this country, if it ever got going in the first place. 

The fact is, Jonah is probably going to get good enough grades wherever he goes (for what that’s actually worth), and neither option is going to change the basic fact of who he is – a computer loving kid of two suburbanite oddities whose network doesn’t stretch much beyond our own front door. The swagger eluded by these proto lords of the universe can’t be bought. It simply is – from knowing, whatever happens, your place in the world is more or less secure. No toadying, or people-pleasing necessary, no, nor adherence to petty rules and regulations, although you might get access to a selection of rather fetching old school ties. As Margaret Thatcher once said, being powerful is rather like like being a lady – if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

Which is another reason why Jonah might not swim such a big pond. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book David and Goliath, he argues that it’s much better to be a big fish in a small pond. The big pond, he says, takes really bright kids and demoralises them. So, while Jonah might temporarily up his game surrounded by other high achievers, the very fact he will no longer be one of the better, academically, means he might well just give up. It’s called relative deprivation, and it’s the same feeling I felt traveling round India with a bunch of trustafarians. Nevermind that there were beggars on the streets everywhere I went in Kerala or Madurai. I felt hard done by because I funded my trip scrubbing pub toilets rather than a golden ticket from Mama and Papa.

So, the chances are, we’ll be sending Jonah to where our pockets can quite comfortably accommodate him- the local academy where he will either endure hard-line detention policies and work out he’s got it, comparatively, pretty good. He may not learn Latin or how to play water polo, but we’ll still be able to take him on holiday to middle class ski resorts in the south of France, which likely sets him apart from many of his peers enough to feel relatively privileged. 

I wrote before about learning to accept and see the benefits of averageness, but unfairness in society continues to rankle – that Jonah’s life chances, just like mine, are hampered not by his ability to get good grades, but through the basic facts of who we are, and crucially, who we are not.

Unlike the local academy’s ‘one size fits all’ approach to discipline that seeks to ensure fairness whatever your circumstances, life just isn’t like that. And so, just to make sure he knows what he’s up against, I’m still going to take him round the posh school to show him up close that this is the world we live in, one in which parents pay through the nose to help their children grapple their way to the top in a society that’s red in tooth and claw. I’m hoping it will inspire him to fix up without crushing his spirit. 

But by staying “normal” rather than subsuming him in elitism where he will always feel he falls short, he may be better able to carve his own niche, much like my father, who made a business out of a hobby despite crippling dyslexia that saw him leave school without an O-level. If my family is proof of anything, it’s that being academic isn’t the only route to success. 

In the meantime, I’ve bribed my son £100 quid to give up his tablet for a month. The fact he’s agreed to do it so willingly means he’s money orientated enough to be try hard at something despite his natural inclinations, and however unpalatable. We might use the time he saves on Minecraft to do something more worthy, like look at past papers, or read something that isn’t by Rick Riordan. But a important lesson, and the one that’s most challenging for a boy on the autism spectrum is learning to look people in the eye – because the most universal indicator of status, or lack thereof, is being able to hold someone’s gaze. And he’s not going to learn that with his head in a screen.