Fisking a wilfully ignorant private school parent

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

It doesn’t take much to provoke me into writing in support of state schools, but Evening Standard reporter Paul Waugh is normally somewhat less sanguine.

So it’s interesting to read Paul’s angry fisking of an article in yesterday’s Times in which Heather McGregor, MD of an “executive search company” (his quotation marks, not mine) displays herself as what Paul calls a “snobbish, 80’s shoulder-padded businesswoman who had fallen on hard times.”

Paul writes:

“Ms McGregor freely admits that what drove her to educate her sons at private school was that they would benefit from “a network – membership of a club”. This is why I thought the piece a cunning parody – it’s so rare that you hear parents admit the real reason they educate Sebastian and Jemima privately was for sheer social status.”

But, he says:

“The best bit of the satire was when she admitted that as a result of the [recession and sending their children to the local state school] she and her husband “will need to adjust our lives to do more hands-on parenting; that too is no bad thing.” Jaw-droppingly funny.”

I’m highlighting these passages because they are the same parts of McGregor’s article that shocked me most, and that I’d circled in blotty ink to question myself. But McGregor’s article is worth reading in full (as is Paul’s rebuke), if for no other reason as to understand the level of wilful ignorance it betrays.

Local state schools are not the enemy. On the contrary, they are pillars of stability for many families, and on the whole give the children that attend them a more rounded and worldly education than a private school ever could.

Just this week, in fact, my Mum read me a letter from a parent of one of her schoolchildren that was moving and inspiring in a way that is unique and personal to the multi-cultural and mulit-talented school that she works in. The letter thanked my Mum for her skills and dedication in teaching this child. I’ve called my Mum to try and get an extract from it, which I’ll add here later. It’s worth waiting for…