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I wholeheartedly agree with David Cameron when he defends parents who play the system, sometimes cheat, in order to get their children into good schools. I am one of those "middle-class parents with sharp elbows" who would do anything to get my kids a flying start, even if it means challenging, breaking or bending rules.
And I confess I have done all of the above in my time, as, I reckon, have many other Londoners. We are accused of chicanery and described as selfish, immoral and unfair. Yet the parental instinct to protect and advance offspring is a biological imperative. I would kill the last tiger on earth if it was attacking my baby and steal food to keep my infant alive. Wouldn't you?
In the 1980s my son was welcomed into a Church of England primary school. It was small and the children were polite, happy and motivated. I also wanted my boy to learn about Christianity, as it makes the country what it is. Sixteen years later when I tried to get my daughter into the school, it had turned into a protectionist enclave, a citadel. Its admission policies were forbidding barricades keeping out all but narrowly proscribed Anglicans who had passed various "commitment" tests. My borough is one of the most racially and culturally mixed in London. The school had decided it had no obligation to any other citizens but its own.
Appeals were no good. You had to be CofE, have church attendance certificates, prove you had donated to collections, ensure the child went to Sunday school. I decided to baptise my daughter. They knew and I knew it was a ploy. I told the local priest they were pushing me into dishonourable tactics.
My daughter got in but was made so miserable we took her out. The purists won by behaving unfairly.
We should condemn not the parents but the failures of our education system and the ruthless exclusionary practices of church schools. Standards of state education are relatively consistent in most EU countries. Here, though there have been significant improvements in the past decade, provision is patchy. We still have too many schools with low achievement and behavioural problems - and so word gets around about Church schools. If all state-funded schools were obliged to have flexible and fair admissions policies, parents would not have to resort to pushy and dodgy tactics.
Sort out the iniquitous system, I say, and stop blaming desperate parents who only want to secure the future of their children.
Reader views (3)
I'm afraid my immediate reaction is that the schools ought to change their admissions policy to require that one of the child's parents should be a communicating Anglican, rather than selecting on the basis of baptism of the child. What isn't mentioned in the article is that Anglican baptism is a sacrament and requires at least two sponsors to promise that the child will be brought up in the Christian faith. It is not simply a matter of the priest sprinkling a bit of holy water on the infant. Yasmin doesn't seem to have any feeling that there might be anything wrong about several adults making solemn promises knowing that they are outright lies. If the teachers were believing Christians and were aware that she had effectively committed sacrilege I'm not surprised they felt uncomfortable dealing with her.
- Rosemary, Cambridge, uk, 27/01/2008 21:50
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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's defence is a bit like the person who says I was forced to steal because the system does not give me enough money to go out and pay for the goods I really want.
I suspect she wanted this particular Church school not because of its Christian character but because it had high academic standards and she waived her political convictions aside and ignored the community schools that she would have much easier access too. I also suspect she is greatly 'exaggerating' when she talks about the criteria the school was using to ensure that it was taking those who genuinely wanted a Christian-based education. For example no church school has ever used evidence of contributing to church collections as a criteria for admission. How could that ever have been assessed?
It is quite wrong and unjust to refer to the ruthless exlcusionary (sic) practices of Church schools - certainly not of Church of England schools as a whole in London. There are only a very few primary schools where it is almost essential to be a practising Anglican to get into a primary school. And in those very few cases it is usually because there are very few C of E schools in the area.
- Tom Peryer, London, 25/01/2008 15:54
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"Yet the parental instinct to protect and advance offspring is a biological imperative" - how very sad that this is used as your defense. What you/others have already taught your child by acting in this way, ie deception with no care or understanding for the religion, has only been a wrong and sad example for all children. You and many others like you are lucky to have the abilities to push for these things, perhaps these abilities could have gone to better use in the cause of good education for all. This however does not mean 'bashing' faith schools. These schools are the ground roots of providing a much needed 'education' for all children today. I am tired of so many people condeming religion and yet will roll over (everybody else)when it comes to getting what THEY want, in the so called name of their children. Very sad.
- Georgina, London, 25/01/2008 14:28
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