School visits

Tom and I both went to our local comprehensives, great hulking 1500-student schools. I don't remember a school visit beforehand. The choice then, for me, was the local comprehensive, or learning Welsh, my mother's mother tongue but not mine, from scratch and opting for the Welsh-medium comp, a bus-ride away.  Those comprehensives then did well by us, though maybe less so by others. They gave us some inspirational teachers and helped us to good exam results. I do remember feeling scared, overwhelmed and dwarfed for much of the first two years there. It wasn't human scale, but it met many needs. It's what we imagined for our children too.

I did visit schools for sixth form. An only child, I'd decided I'd like to board if possible. Visited five liberal leftie boarding schools, was offered a scholarship to one.  Remember the school visits, all over the country, as an interesting, exhilerating experience. Not threatening. But it's different as a parent. Or different now.

Since then I've visited many prospective schools at different transitions for our kids. UK state primaries and secondaries, Kenyan private prep schools and high schools. And this week, UK boarding schools. Oh my. Recap of last year's installment here. http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2010/10/dreaming-spires-sweaty-fantasies.html


It was all simpler when the kids were little. Suburban small towns don't offer that many primary schools your child might get into. I was enthusiastic, EagerBeaver Personified, visited all the possibles the toddler group suggested. Eliminated one candidate because of spelling mistakes on the teacher's displays in the reception classroom.  Steered clear of another where Ofsted said a third of the children were on Social Services's at risk list, anxious yes about how we would manage carefree playdates in the supervision of other parents. Was bowled over by a tiny village school, academically less stunning, in which the inspirational head bade year 6 volunteers take prospective parents on a tour of the school. What confidence in your ten year old pupils. What a willingness to take risks. What great exposure and experience for your pupils. THIS is what we want. Please.  (One prospective parent told me with relish how she had been taken round by a lad fascinated by fire extinguishers. How her tour had led uphill and downdale in search of the full complement of fire extinguishers. Possibly frustrating if you had clear, adult-focused objectives you wanted answered. But a beautiful testimony to a loving creative school.)

Then six years later, last year, we toured Kenyan British curriculum high schools for FirstBorn's transition.   Felt keen on the options. Picked a first choice. Relaxed.  And then realised with a parental doubletake around six months later that actually, while that was the preferred choice for lots of her mates too, of course we wouldn't be here then. We are here in Kenya for Tom's work. And before FirstBorn finishes GCSE we'll be elsewhere, also abroad, in a yet to be defined location, but most likely, mid-GCSEs, in a country where the schools are not a patch on those in Kenya or UK.  Oooeeer.

So over the summer I researched UK boarding schools. Received snooty emails back from Registrars called Priscilla, informing that my (nicely spelled, appropriately apostrophied) correspondance sent a year and three months before FirstBorn's potential entry was in fact three years too late, and that the list for her yeargroup had been closed for the last year.  There are different stratospheres of parental organisation I discover, again.

I combed through prospectuses. Weighed up reports from the Good Schools Guide. As a family we spent a Sunday afternoon perched in a row on the sofa watching promotional DVDs from different schools.  Bland. Largely uniform. But so telling in the minor details.  One focussed mainly on the boys and the boys' sport, with scant female airtime or focus on parity of provision for the fairer sex.  Another was packed full of young men wearing cityboy ties in their freetime, drawling confidently in upper class accents.  Compulsory cadet corps. Is this what we want? Can't we just find a setting where Firstborn, we, might be acceptable as we are, with the beliefs, accent, class we have? Honeystoned buildings. Polished, practised orchestras in olde worlde chapels.  Jangly jarring feelings on the sofa.

Fellow expats in Kenya were going through the same process. The bits which seem so alien from a Kenyan reality:
'We watched a school DVD where the pupils were wearing thirteenth century costume. How interesting. Must be for a special festival or celebration, we thought. But after twenty minutes we realised this WAS the uniform. Oh dear, not for us.'

Fast forward to the visits themselves. A frenetic tour of five schools in five days, all over the UK.
'Where have you come from today?' a kindly icebreaker.
Blank dazed unresponsive expressions from the whole party - another day, another cutprice Travelinn (£19 the room!) reached by satnav on another identical industrial park or service area of another motorway.

What do you wear to visit these schools, when you're coming from Kenya where the seasons are precisely opposite to those in UK? Where fashion lags a good five years behind, where new clothes are bought via the mitumba market - leftover secondhand castoffs from UK charity shops - and where here completely acceptable floaty cotton blouses and skirts would, as FrankFriend noted:
'label you as a real country hick with straws in your hair, love. Better not.'
Wintercoats dumped as we moved to Kenya, we'd opted not to fork out £400 on warmish coats for the three of us to wear during this week alone. But as we shivered, bejacketed but coatless, in the drizzle, round Northern split sites, we'd guess they wondered quite why we were so idiotic. Martyrs to fashion if not to commonsense.

We met some brilliant, listening, thoughtful and thought provoking, inspirational headteachers.  Signs of sparky teaching. Mannered pupils. Robust houseparents who've been round the block many times before. Some schools which we loved, but which had so few full-time boarders one knew Firstborn would be rattling around alone at the weekend, one lone isolated gooseberry while others returned to the bosum of their families. And then some schools in a premier superleague. Sparkling amazingly resourced teaching facilities, with super expensive kit, for which the well-resourced nationally renowned UK new university at which I recently worked would have given eye teeth. Wind tunnel. Electron microscope. Observatory. Multiple drama studios. Recording studios. Design & technology studios with professional kit, professional spec welding equipment which pupils may use in free time, for example, to build their own cars from wasteyard scrap.  Amazing extra curricular activities. Pupils who canoe 125 miles in competitive races down the Thames.  Beekeeping clubs, cryptic crosswords, computer animation, codebreaking, Model United Nations. Pupils, considering studying Chinese, who are supported to do work experience in China. Or those interested in Drama who do work experience in the West End.  It's what we'd hope for for our children.

Or is it?  We hadn't thought we were small-minded parents of narrow vision. But doubts emerged. How would a child for whom every stimulating educational luxury has been afforded cope with the realities of first jobs or of no jobs? With the mundanity of filing, with necessary but repetitive tasks, or with getting up in the middle of the night, again, sleepless, again, to change a filled nappy? Brilliant, life-enhancing opportunities, but leading to a sense of unrealistic entitlement? Who knows.

The pupils we met were uniformly great. Enthusiastic, informed, thoughtful, kindly ambassadors, well aware of their good fortune. Well educated. And its not that we don't believe in excellence. But some schools seemed so aware they were grooming for excellence that if your - the child's - vision of what you might want from life differed from theirs, and they thought you could get them brownie points, an Oxbridge place maybe, well it would be hard to stand out against it. Conformity. We know best. And I'm sure, in many things, they did.

For Firstborn, coming from Nairobi's restrictive security where she's not allowed to a mall alone for fear of potential bombs, the thought of occasional Saturday afternoons in NewLook is a major plus point of returning to UK. But it turned out to be a acid test question.
'It isn't safe for her to do it in Kenya. Would she be allowed into town with friends on free Saturday afternoons?'
At one school our adult tour guide's lips curled at the question. As if we'd asked whether recreational drugs were on offer in the storecupboard, whether noserings were permissible at High Table.
'She won't have free Saturday afternoons.  All the teams, down to the H team, have fixtures each Saturday. If you're not in a match, you're expected to be there to show your support.'

But being a teenager, for us, is also about the freedom to make mistakes and to learn from them. About space to hang out with friends - yes in NewLook or to lounge on a streetcorner or in a busstop - not about having every minute of every day organised, CV building though this may be. About downtime, space for reflection, experimentation with clothes and hairstyles and identity, and mistakes and recalibration.  About a diversity of pathways to a happy, satisfied life, not about one sole pathway, Endorsed by Authority, acclaimed by allcomers.  And while some schools seemed to see it like that too, others, particularly the very high achieving ones, were clear that they begged to differ.  If education is about good results alone, it was clear which schools were TheBest. Why then don't we want TheBest for our babe?

Wandering in tears round Bath after our final visit, clutching FirstBorn's hand in a way I hadn't in public since she was old enough to tell me not to, thoughts crystalised.  If she has to go, we want her to feel valued for her individuality, the way we value her at home.  We want a place where she'll be valued for her quirkiness not just for her officially endorsed and sanctioned prowess on the oboe.  Yes, teaching and educational stimulation matters. A lot. But so too does willingness to follow a child's lead, to support them to explore what matters to them, blind alley or potential money-spinning endeavour alike.  It's not we're shy of success. But that success, in life, has many facets. We want to support our children to be self motivated, to follow their own leanings, to prioritise according to their bent. To help them to become who they want to be, whether high-achieving conformist or quirky misfits like their parents. And the way you learn to do that, is by giving them some space, not by following a high protein, high altitude diet, defined by Olympic coaches though it may be.

So we've chosen together. Reached unanimity. Are yet to submit the forms. Feel reassured by our choice. Hope she'll yet pass the tests. And are conscious that this is another rite of passage in parenting, premature in our case, but which I'd guess most go through. Preparing as best you can. Trying to do the best you can in the situation in which you find yourself. Being clear that the child knows, whatever happens, you are there for them. Rehearsing scenarios, together.  And then, tearfully, fearfully, standing back, and letting them take control.