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Okay, I don't consider my family as a wealthy family, nor poor either to be honest. Two children, one went to DGSB and one to St Edmunds. Both did very well academically and family wealth had no bearing. As for home life, we are a normal family, in that we have the same problems to varying degrees as all other families. Our kids grew up knowing finanicial hardship and two parents who argued somewhat, usually because of the money situation. But we did what most folks do, stuck together and worked through the tough times and eventually life became good again.
No praise required, we are normal folks in a normal family doing what normal folks do. Our kids are normal kids who dealt with what they faced, it was how we brought them up. There is no secret, everyone can do what we did, its just that some choose not to, some have other priorities, and some need help, some are beyond help. But it has always been so and always will be so.
What I do want to acknowledge though is the excellent job done for my kids, and still being done for others by the staff of St Eddies and DGSB. The standard of education available in Dover is incredibly good but, sadly, there are many who don't make the most of the fabulous opportunity they have for learning in our town.
As for job applications, Diana missed the most unnecessary question of all off her list, "Age or DoB". I notice many recruiters are now asking for proof of entitlement to be in the EU/UK, via a scanned copy of the passport. And what do we see on that particular page of the passport? Yep, Date of Birth. British industry is still hopelessly age prejudiced despite what the law says. The ever vigilant HR profession will see to it that only Degree holders and under 35's are presented for interview. Such a waste of talent and experience when one considers just how many job vacancies there are, and how many over 35's are excluded from consideration.
Now a sort of anecdote. I did a presentation for the IT folks of one the Hedge Fund groups of a major bank in Canary Wharf. I stood in front of a sea of young faces, so decided to begin by asking one question, "Who can describe to me the meaning of defensive coding and give an example in your bank where this applies"? Silence reigned supreme. Somewhile later one of their talented youngsters ran a database job twice and corrupted the entire investment portfolio database. There was no message to say "This job has already be run, are you sure you wish to continue?", a positive response would then generate "Requires Supervisor override" forcing the individual to get higher level approval. This is a simple example of defensive coding and is probably well known to experienced folks, such as our Roger for instance.
I cannot put a cost on this incident, but a major bank losing its investment portfolio for just short of five days, the time it took to fix the database, must have run into tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds. All for the sake of HR maintaining a policy of "under 35's and Graduates only".
Finally, living and working in Africa for the last two years plus, it was refreshing to see people being valued for their experience rather than just academic bits of paper. The African employer values those who have been around the block a bit. I'd like to see that take hold here, but I doubt I ever will.