Private Schools

Private Schools

In the past I have used this coloumn to rant and rave about everything and anything from, what age you should be allowed to drive a car, to whether or not the sky is blue, but the one subject I have always steered clear of is education. That is until now.

Yesterday I was reading Jeremy Clarkson’s column on private schools and it got me thinking about the one question I dread above all others…..If I have kids would I send them to a private boarding school or a mainstream comprehensive?

If someone neglects their pets the RSPCA are on their case in a flash, yet who looks after our neglected school children? How many times have you heard politicians say no child left behind? It makes my blood boil.

Think of any normal mainstream class there are always a few neglected children sitting at the back, the forgotten ones. The ones labelled “difficult” or “special needs” so are just left to their own devices. I was one of those “challenging” kids.

I don’t envy mainstream teachers at all, they have a hard job and I’m sure they do the best they can with very little resources. I mean trying to teach 33 children all with individual needs and challenges must be a nightmare especially when one of the class is a pain in the neck, as I’m sure I was. Don’t get me wrong I had some truly amazing teachers who nurtured what little talent I had and never gave up on me, something I can never thank them enough for. But they were few and far between and I’m just not sure that ignoring the problemed children -which is what it always felt like the others were doing-, was the best way to deal with the stretched resources.

From year 10 I went to a private boarding school. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t one of these posh places where no one was ever naughty and all the students were geniuses, we had our problems but compared to a mainstream school it worked for me.

I remember my mum driving me up the bumpy driveway on my first day. As the big house loomed up above...