Heck my socialist principles are going to take a bashing here but due to a limited number of schools in Jersey I have arranged for Natascha to attend a fee paying school as from September. She was required to sit and pass an all day entrance exam to obtain a place at the Jersey College for Girls. As you can imagine many families have the dishdosh on this island so therefore there has to be a filtering system based upon on merit and ability as well as being able to afford the fee's.
The fee's, uniform and trips,vacations,extra curricular activities costs are prohibitive to so much an extent that I may have to start working again (but I am far too lazy and old..joke) to pay for them but who would meet these costs for the child from a care home? We all know that kids can be cruel and a child from a care home background could find themselves stigmatised or bullied if they didn't conform etc. I know thats an appalling slur to make on todays children and society but it's a sad fact of life. I have tried to instill in Natascha the belief that she should treat others as she would like to be treated and not diffently just 'cos they come from a richer (which is more often the case) or poorer background than us.Whether I've succeeded or not only time will tell.
Finally I want to try to give and Stinker the best possible start in life by sending her to a school where academia.discipline.hard work and manners still matter and are rewarded. I'm not sure that I would want to spend the next 10 years scraping the money together in order to send her to a school where (a) there were children that 'had' to be accepted and forced to attend under some government hair brained short lived impratical scheme that risked being scrapped under a new government and (b) a higher risk of a disruptive element within the classroom as children from different backgrounds resented that they had been compelled to attend rather than have a willingness to attend.
I appreciate I sound like a typical snob but I can assure you that's far from being the case however I can forsee all sorts of practical problems arising from this idea. Surely the real answer is, as I've always advocated. is that a good education should be available for all based upon ability,application and hard work not based upon whether your parents can afford it or not.
I am just trying to be a good Dad...and not always succeeding.
