Dreaming Spires & Sweaty Fantasies

Educational choices have dominated many chats with mates over the last eight years. Before the kids were at pre-school, we agonised together about primary schools, who got in where, and weighed up how many of the similar-sized kids on the playground would live closer to PrimeChoicesOne, Two & Three.  Then came the long slow burn to secondary school. Faith school, closest comprehensive, exercising furtherflung choice, running the risk of falling short and getting SinkSchool, single sex lottery, or the high wire exams and auditions to PreDreamingSpires?  But then we dodged the secondary bullet by leaving UK at the end of year 5, for the land of prep schools (ages 7-13), and a heady year of naive bliss.

Uh oh, but now, part way through year 7, when UK mates are leaning back, feet under - or even on the table, here, brows are ever more furrowed, conversations heated, and we're back into the fray. And here the dilemmas are more complex still: stay with British curriculum (work towards GCSEs to make transfer back to UK easier, continuation of lots of sports, but either 90 minute commutes each way plus a very long day or weekly boarding); switch to the international school (close, well resourced, but on American system till International Bacc, so no pre-GCSE preparation, and no chance to strut those hockey skills so honed over the last year. American accents and misspellings. And completely completely different holidays, so in the summer ChildOne would be off from Labour Day till mid August and ChildTwo from end July till mid September). Or, Apocalypse Now, out from the nest, boarding in another country - South Africa, UK.

Each camp has its advocates and groupies. And there, like a pinball between them all, I bounce, bewildered by the terrifying implications, which go beyond the colour of the uniform and what-did-you-think-of-the-Head? to our babe-in-arms having compulsory Monday-Friday sleepovers each week.

Get a grip, I thought. Get school visiting again. Why not start smallscale and scope the issues with a talk on Boarding School: the UK perspective run by a visiting marketing director from UK public school at a nearby hotel? We KNOW we're all staying in the same country, so it won't startle the horses in the way the more realistic options might.

But at the posher end of the market choosing a secondary school can become a Lifestyle Choice for Parents, the stuff of glossy magazines and unlived aspirations. Kick off: sushi and smart canapes by the lit swimming pool of DesignerHotel. And I grew spellbound by the pitch and the opportunities. Not that this had been the stuff of my dreams, nor those of FirstBorn: 'we have two shooting ranges, one for claypigeons, one for rifles'... How much can termly extras run to? 'Well, it all depends. Some children bring their own horses, so of course the additional charge of livery on site can be considerable.' But wow, 20 music ensembles. 26 pupils competing at national level in a sport. Truly personalised teaching: a semi-pro icehockey star who is shipped all round the country for his matches and has his timetable fitted around his availability. Stellar exam results for a student body that doesn't take entrance exams. Whopping fees of course. And children leaving home at 13 to spend those weekends when the school is closed with for-profit guardians.  But a pandora's box of a pitch, which opened my mind to lurid never-before-dreamed-dreams of an addled & dangerous kind.

Next morning at work, our highflying students present themselves en masse. They've come to Nairobi from all over the country for the first of their two SAT tests. They've each come top in their district in the Kenyan exams, but high SAT scores would increase their chances of a scholarship to a US university.  Where US students would have been doing practice tests over the last two years, where schools hire SAT coaches and send students on summer workshops to improve scores, many of ours have pushed the boat out to club together in threes to buy one practice manual. Tensions are high. You have to mark your SAT paper with the colleges to which you want your results sent.  It costs 800 KSh - around £6 to add each extra name after the test - a sizeable amount for the students, so in reality today is the last day to change their choices. But without access to internet, reference guides, prospectuses or guidance, for most, today is the first chance they've had to discuss their choices, and the realism of their choices with anyone.

70 students, 5 networked computers, one with access to a printer, some statistical handouts we'd compiled and 3 reference guides, one from 2000 and two I bought on amazon and shipped in from abroad.  Half an hour on the computer per student to research a bit further. The students attended workshops we ran in the summer, where Kenya's Harvard grads spoke of their experiences, and so we fear a massive spike in applications to Harvard. Last year they accepted 4 Kenyan applicants. What if we can't persuade a spread of applications to maximise success for all?  What about fallback choices?  If it's all a punt in the dark anyway, why not go with four dream scenarios, - Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Cornell - the so-called Ring of Death option, who take 1 in 10 applicants. Or do you dare to break away from the crowd, wildly enhance your chances of entry, but possibly end up as one of 5 international students at a small college in the Mid West?  How would YOU go about prioritising universities in a foreign country in a few pressurised hours?

'Sweaty' is the word used by US admissions tutors for applications with too desperate a yearning tone. And the day was a sweaty, though a very moving, one. A day to seek to manage expectations. To remind students that whatever happens now, study abroad could remain an option for later, for postgraduate level. Telling students, seemingly for the first time, how much they have to be proud of. Yes, for their exam success, but more that they achieved them from a low-rated, low-resourced district school. To encourage them that their time as a peer counsellor working with other students with HIV is an application essay well worth writing. The student who kept chickens and ran a market stall selling his eggs after school to pay his secondary school fees. Students speaking of how their teachers were scared and reluctant to write them references, fearing that they wouldn't be able to do it well enough, that admissions tutors in the US would laugh at them. We'll be phoning reluctant referees next week to talk them through the process. Coaching applicants through the hidden heffalump traps of the questions. How 'why do you want to go to Yale? means 'Why (that isn't cliched) and what do you offer to us?' 

Its the stuff of dreams. Will we get Cinderella to the ball?  Our students are brilliant, determined in a way very few in the UK need to be, committed, and such impressive individuals. But the forms require sophistication, polish, and an ability to package your story. Here's hoping that native wit, determination and the best possible try with the resources you have might just win through for a few.