Schools: part 2: the high school saga

Choosing the right high school for your kid is hard. When they're in about grade 3 or 4, you start making the rounds at the various Open Days and thinking about what's best. Do you want the school with top VCE marks? (That might seem a no-brainer, but it's really not.) What about the one with that's strong on PE? Or has a fantastic performing arts studio? It's hard -- and it's very much horses for courses.

I went to a co-ed high school (state school), and I always insisted my kids would go to co-ed schools. I wouldn't even consider a single-sex school, regardless of statistics of whether girls got better education in single-sex environments, and that was largely because I don't see school as a place that is purely about education but rather social conditioning as well. (And I can see evidence from when my left-wing brother did a business-type course and came out at the end right-wing.)

What I was after for Princess Sleepyhead was good pastoral care -- she was a kid who was always going to benefit from a bit more care. A friend recommended a Christian college -- said it was the most caring school she had ever taught at, if we could stomach the religion, which she said she couldn't. Couldn't be that bad, I thought. Till I saw the prospectus. Every subject was centred around God. PE is where students celebrate their God-given gifts of athleticism and suppleness; art is where they worship God through drawings and paintings. Hmmm. A bit full-on. And then the history room with the timeline that told that the world only started a few thousand years ago. Hmmm.

I don't have a problem with a school that teaches creationism if they do it in the RE classes, but this school was teaching it in Science. I do have a problem with that. (Especially when they tell you there's no proof for either theory. I know what the more evangelical Christians say about the fossil records, but still...)

"You do teach evolution as well?" I asked, knowing they had to say yes.

"Yes, because if our students go on to university they need to know what they have to argue against."

That was the final straw. No, really, I think I was just pursuing the argument; the timeline had really been too much.

On the plus side, I had been very impressed when the principal, in his talk, spoke with pride about the child who had just failed VCE but who had far exceeded everyone's expectations. (It was a student with a learning disability.)

It's very easy to be bamboozled by schools with great scores, but you do have to bear in mind two things:
(i) that such schools often preclude students who are not doing well from sitting for VCE (and if they're private schools, there's the added indignity that they've accepted money for the right to educate your child for so long and then are prepared to ditch them because they may not reflect well on the school's results record)
(ii) the selective schools get good results because they start with the cream -- this is not to say that such students won't thrive among like-minded, dedicated people, just that you have to expect that the results will be better anyway.

PS has never been a particularly academic student. She was not going to thrive in a school where all the emphasis was on academic achievement. We looked at schools that seemed more proud of the architecture of their new science wing, than of the attitude or dedication of their teachers. We looked at schools that impressed us in their variety of subjects but which we didn't think she'd cope well with. In the end, we settled on a Catholic school with excellent pastoral care, somewhat surprising because we're not Catholic. This school has a mandatory RE program, but with a much more moderate view than the other school we looked at. I don't have a problem with a school that teaches all about a whole lot of different religions: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism etc rather than trying to brainwash kids into any particular ideology. This school is also single-sex, but I know this was absolutely the best thing for PS (even if she didn't think so herself). As I said, horses for courses. Of course, the worst thing about a single-sex school for the parent with a girl and a boy is that when it's time to place the second-child you have to get back on the Open Day merry-go-round and start all over again.

Schools: part 1, the primary school saga

When I was a kid, our parents (most people's parents) sent us to the nearest state school, and that was it. No hard decisions. Nothing. I do remember, when I finished primary school, wanting to go to a private school because one of my friends was going there, and my mother just dismissed the idea out of hand. "We can't afford it," she said, and that was that. Then, when I was in year 10, she said, "You know, if you still want to go to that private school, we could probably send you next year."

Hmm. Trouble was that by then I was firmly ensconced in my friendship group. I said, "If you send me to another school, I'll drop out." And I meant it.

When the Gadget Man and I first married, we chose to build in a new area, and one of the first things we made sure of was that we were going to be near a public school. It wasn't built yet, but it was scheduled to go up, and would be walking distance when we finally had kids. Beautiful. Only then came a change of government, and the school, slated to soon begin, was put off, and there were talks of the block being carved up for housing. We were horrified.

In the end, the school did open a year before we needed it, and all was good. I remember walking around with three friends and our small children, thinking, it looks so small. And one of the other mothers said, "It looks so huge." Perhaps it was just my perspective. Nope. By the time Princess Sleepyhead was in Grade 3, they had run out of classrooms, and weren't able to acquire any portables but got the go-ahead to build. Great. All would be well.

Trouble was, by the time she started Grade 4, the building, which was supposed to be nearly finished, had only just started. The principal's letter told us it would be finished by the end of first term. We looked around and thought, nup. No way.

In the meantime, short of classrooms, they had bundled three Grade 4 classes into two rooms, taking out the divider in between, which meant there were around eighty kids and three teachers all together. Now, for a kid with ADD who was struggling to stay up this was going to be a disaster.

On the Thursday of that first week of school, I went and spoke to her teacher and asked when he expected the buildings to be ready. Really ready.

Not before half year.

Right. That was a no-go solution for us. Half year was best-case scenario. (As it was, they weren't ready till the beginning of fourth term.) The next morning, with our hearts in our mouths, we rang the new school that had opened up in the next estate. They could see us straightaway. It was a forty degree day, with a fierce north wind. The school, without any lawns yet in place, was like a dustbowl.

Class size at the new school was currently twelve. What? Wow. (Within a few weeks it had hit the twenties.) Perfect for an ADD kid. We said we'd give her a week to get used to the idea, and the principal assured us we were much better to move her straightaway, before she formed new friendship groups. "Start her on Monday," he said. What? Things were moving fast. Way too fast.

So we drove back to the other school to make an appointment to see the principal. She could see us straightaway, they told us. Hearts in our mouths, we told her of her decision. "You should take her out of class to go and see the new school," she said, "to get her used to the idea." Now? Now.

So we fronted up to her classroom. Poor kid had no idea what we were thinking and thought she was in trouble. We had no appointment to take her to the other school, but fronted up in all the heat and dust with this dazed kid who must have thought we were taking her to the school from hell. Ah, well, I thought, it will be a new start for her. Only one of the kids, when she was introduced to the class told the class who PS was, and that she had ADD. Great. (That same kid went on to bully her at high school.)

We were very happy that first year with our decision. This school had a much firmer hand on bullying than her last, where she had had her finger broken. The new teacher was terrific, even if we didn't see eye-to-eye on phonics.

At about this time, one of my students and I were comparing notes. Her daughter, also in Grade 4, was at a Steiner school. The previous year she had been telling me how wonderful it was -- all about the great things the kids were learning, and I was jealous. But this year, she was more bitter. "Oh, yes," she said, "my daughter can tell you all about Greek mythology, who this god is and who that one is -- she knows more about it than I do -- but she can't read or write."

My daughter had also been in an at-risk literacy class. "What, not at all?" I said, surprised, and thinking she meant not read and write well.

"Not at all," she said. "We're about to move her to a state school." And here I had been wondering if that might have been a good solution for PS. All children are different and have different needs, and some systems work better for some children than they do for others.

By the time PS was in Grade 6, we were moving suburbs. We didn't want to interrupt her final year, so left her at her new school. Her brother was only in Grade 4 and still at the old school, which we were less and less enchanted with. The decision to move him to our new local school was easy, only he refused to go. Of course, parents get the last say in such things, and we did move him, but not without angst. And he went from being the top of his grade to the bottom of his new grade, which said a lot about how far ahead they were at the new school. The new school put both other schools to shame. It had a fabulous arts program, a fabulous performing arts program, a fabulous sports program, and the most committed teachers I'd ever met. At the first school, all I'd ever heard from parents was grumbling; at the second school, I'd heard a mixture of grumbling and praise; but at this school all I ever heard was parents raving about what a great school it was. I felt like I was in a position to make a judgment (naively or not) because I'd experienced three schools, but these people didn't need convincing about how lucky they were. They knew it.

Sir Talkalot went off to school on Day 1 unwilling and unhappy. He came home that day loving his school, and was soon saying how much better it was than his old school. He never looked back, but when we say how PS struggled in her early years at high school, and how ST's school ran a transition program, we wondered how it might have been for her if she'd gone to that school for a while, if they'd both gone there all along. Better, I suspect, but we can only make the best decisions we can make at the time.