Richard Hulbert

When we moved to our house nearly ten years ago we knew that there was a real prospect that it would only be for ten years. We imagined that the secondary schools near us were somewhere between dreadful and awful and that our kids deserved better. At the time it was no more than a general impression born out of here say and rumour.

We live in a borough that is markedly divided by the rail line that goes from London to Scotland. To the west lie Muswell Hill, Crouch end and Highgate. On the other side of the tracks lie West Green, Wood Green, Harringay and Tottenham. On the west side of the borough all the secondary schools have six forms. On the east side no schools do.

Children who want to continue education beyond GSCE have to join a new school or sixth form centre. Two years ago Haringey completed their sixth form centre to serve the east end of the borough. It is situated in the north east corner of the borough. It is early days for the centre and I wouldn’t want to decry the staff and students who are no doubt doing good work. You can see from its web site that at the top of the course subject areas list are business and ICT and Hospitality and catering.  The centre is doing what it feels it should – providing courses that it thinks most Haringey students want.

For parents, perhaps those of us who were brought up with different expectations and in different times when six form was  a stepping stone to University and little else, the idea of universal provision of sixth form places is not really the point. Sure – politically we like the democratisation of education but for our child we want good old results. Not ‘value add’, not ‘every child achieving their potential’,  just good old A Levels and degrees.

So for the last couple of weeks we have been visiting the secondary schools in Haringey, perhaps hoping to dispel some myths and prejudices, whilst we still had a chance to exercise a choice rather than be faced with a dilemma. And we are lucky enough to have a choice albeit at some cost. not least  leaving (at least temporarily) the area we have really grown to love.

Our Post code N15  is the most ethnically diverse post code in the world according to a study done by Richard Webber, Visiting Fellow at University College London. I love living here. Our road is filled with lovely people – have a look at some of us enjoying ourselves. They are an impressive mix of people form different backgrounds some of them will go or have gone through the agony of finding a school for their kids. There are people who will say that good academic schools and ethinic diversity are mutually exclusive – I can’t see why. There are people who say that only by children who are academically able staying in the area and going to the ‘local school’ will anything change and it is choice that is the problem.

Maybe that is true but whilst you have some schools pitching themselves explicitly or implicitly as academic and some vocational then parents will, where they can, exercise a choice. Not having a sixth form on site is tacitly advertising a lack of academic ambition and in some sense harks back to the days of the secondary modern.

Haringey are building a new school –  Heartlands – it is situated right by the boundary between the two halves of Haringey next to the railway. It has to build a school – there is a severe lack of places. The choice of site could be seen as Haringey trying to address the geographical imbalance  in secondary provision. Alas Heartlands will not have a sixth form at least that is the plan at the moment. Whilst that is the avowed aim, parents for whom academic attainment is a big factor in choosing a school for their kids, will probably not choose this school.

So are the schools in the east really that bad? Would your kid be doomed to failure if you sent the little darling there? No of course not. Is academic excellence everything? I don’t think so, not everything, but it is something. If your kids are bright and if they have the potential to do well academically, then sending them somewhere they are going to be in a tiny minority, the rest having a different agenda, doesn’t feel to me, like the best thing you could do for them.

OK so we are not going to send our kids to a school in the east of the borough, so what? Well for us, so what – we are lucky enough to be able to move. It is those parents who do not have that option and whose kids are every bit as bright as ours that I feel for. Some will do well whatever school they go to but many will not achieve what they might have done had they gone to a more academically centred school.

Last night we sat and listened to the head teacher at Park View (our closest school) make an impassioned speech on the merits of PV. We both really liked him and what he said. Later that night in bed I wondered what he could have said that would make us send our kids there – I am still wondering.  But he will always be battling against league tables, the lack of a sixth form and the legacy of a school that was so bad at one point it had to be renamed.

it is a surprisingly lonely decision – choosing your child’s school. Although we have several friends who are going through the same process they are all prisoners of their own individual hope and fears for their offspring. As my Mum said when I told her she was going to be a grandmother  “Just remember Darling, that as a parent, almost everything you do will be wrong” Oh well.