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When I took our eldest child out of a private school and enrolled him at the state primary at the end of our street, I remember one mother saying: “I'm not brave enough to do that.”
We didn't feel brave. We went to see the school, Oxford Gardens Primary in W10, we liked it and five years on, all three children are extremely happy there, under an inspirational head who continues to improve it.
But secondary education now looms for our nine-year-old.
This year four out of 10 pupils in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea will leave primary school next Friday having failed to get into the state secondary school of their choice — one of the highest rates in Britain.
Despite the millions Labour has poured into education, we live in a city with a chronic shortage of reputable secondary schools.
The good ones are oversubscribed, the bad ones are about as popular as swine flu.
But what defines one from the other is not necessarily money — what makes the difference is the people who run them.
Our secondary school option — short of remortgaging the house for private fees or pretending to be religious when we are not — is Holland Park School, the only comprehensive in K&C.
Opened in 1958, alma mater to the likes of Jenny Abramsky, Anjelica Huston and Ken Russell's and Tony Benn's children, it was a liberal educational experiment that by the late Nineties had lost its way.
Head teacher Colin Hall, 49, arrived in 2001 to little more than organised chaos.
Pupils didn't wear uniforms, the police were a fixture outside the gates, the results were poor.
Fast forward almost nine years of Hall working 80-90 hour weeks, and he has produced a school of 1,500 pupils that will get its first entry into the coveted Good Schools Guide 2010 next January.
“Outstanding in most departments” says the guide. This year it attracted 960 entries for just 240 places.
With only two years of primary school left for our eldest, we decided to take a look.
Past the high gates, security guard and pristine landscaped gardens was a reception area that could be mistaken for an advertising agency.
Minimalist leather sofas looked out onto a grassy courtyard of bay trees.
The somewhat inscrutable Hall explained his plans to compete with the best public schools in London — it includes a £70 million new building on the current site equipped with pool, science lab and dance and drama studios that he hopes will be rubber-stamped by the council in October and opened by 2012.
On the school tour, we got an insight into his methods. A teacher's raised voice pierced the studious hush and we followed Hall into year 7H2's art class, where 11-year-olds were misbehaving.
The next three minutes were a masterclass in commanding discipline. “Stand up,” Hall Said. “Sort that shirt out.” “Who is right and who is wrong?”
It was almost painful to watch the children, but not once did he raise his voice.
Hall was unapologetic. “What parent wouldn't want me to be a scary figure on occasion?
“Look, I've spent 26 years in state education and profoundly believe that state education can deliver,” he told me. What London needs is more Colin Halls and more middle-class families with the courage to support them.
To those struggling to pay private fees, my advice is this — dismiss the hearsay and visit your local state school. And judge it on the strength of its head teacher. You may be pleasantly surprised. I was.
Reader views (3)
I think you should read the article published in the Guardian last month about Holland Park. I have a friend who was a teacher at this school and recently resigned alongwith many others. There is a climate of fear here amongst teachers and children. The teachers regularly arrive at 7p.m. and are expected to work 12 or 13 hour days. Not the sort of school I would want to send my child to.
- Ann, Bishops Stortford UK, 09/07/2009 22:25
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I have to fully agree with you.
My child school’s Headmaster came with a reputation and lives up to it through the teachers & pupils and its great school. Outstanding from Ofsted visits, but when you visit the school you can actual see it’s not cosmetic. Pupils are well behaved, so polite & helpful you have to pinch yourself to make sure it’s all real and this is a secondary school in a ‘deprived London borough’.
This is what every parent & child needs and it great that the leadership of this school has created this ethos and it’s extending outside. This school has raised the standards in other schools in the area and the pressure is on.
- Jade, Hackney, London, 09/07/2009 12:46
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Jackie Annesley lets think this through and break this down to the basic elemenets and start with who teachs the children?
Not heads. Granted headteachers are incvolved in the process of hiring new teachers, please lets give credit to the real workers in the front line headteachers are overpaid paper pushers.
Teaching is heading down the same road as the NHS with money being wasted by paper pushers and missing the CORE hard working troops on the front line.
- Ge, Kernow, 09/07/2009 10:50
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