My four resolutions

Hugh David vows never to say ‘faith schools’ ever again
SCHOOLBOARD
One of the hazards of parenthood, I have discovered to my cost in the decade since having children, is the temptation forever to be looking over your shoulder at what other mums and dads are doing and then questioning whether you should follow suit. The educational equivalent of relative morality quickly soon takes a grip and makes every choice, if you are not careful, a matter of running with the pack.
It happens at each stage of your children’s growing up. When Bruno and Gabriel were tiny we had a part-time nanny for them, because it worked best with our particular domestic arrangements. Other friends and colleagues who chose instead (and for no doubt equally good reasons) to send their offspring to day nurseries would occasionally snipe at us that, being all alone with a nanny all day, our kids would grow up anti-social (not noticeable, so far, I can report). And we would, occasionally, snipe back about the shortcomings of day nurseries, in a defensiveaggressive fashion.
In the same way, stay-at-home mums – and one stay-at-home dad of my acquaintance – would occasionally (at the end of a long day) tut-tut that we were taking our careers more seriously than parenthood. And then in the next breath tell us that they felt worthless because they no longer worked.
Parenthood is all a compromise, I have decided over the years, and in making arrangements for your children you have, first, to decide what works for you as a family, without reference to anyone else’s choices, then acknowledge that whatever option you pick is ultimately imperfect, and finally get on with it with something like good grace and Christian charity. Letting off steam by judging other parents’ choices, even having rows with them about the rights and wrongs of child-rearing, as parents are tempted to do when more than two are gathered, is pointless, however therapeutic it may be.
So, at the start of 2009, before I read or hear anyone else’s parenting or school gate New Year’s resolutions, here are a few pure, uninfluenced ones of my own, which I will endeavour to apply to my own children’s education in our wonderful local Catholic primary, St Peter’s, to my role as a parent governor at the school, and to any hobby-horses I stray into riding in this column in the coming 12 months. Please feel free to pull me up short if I fail to match up to this lofty ambition.
1) Realise that education isn’t just about my child. Too often we see what goes on at a school only in terms of how it benefits our own child. But every classroom is an experiment in mutual tolerance, trying to craft a learning programme that matches 30 individual sets of needs of children from very different backgrounds. Inevitably the result won’t perfectly match any of those 30, but with a good teacher, and a bit of parental support, it will come as close as damn it with many. Our children’s education is a collective endeavour – not a tailor-made purchase.
2) Stop using that awful phrase “faith school” and pick up others when they do and explain why it is corrosive. Ours is a Catholic school – nothing to be ashamed of there. Within the state system, it is a voluntary aided primary – slightly technical jargon, I know, but this system has been with us for 65 years, so we should just about be au fait with the vocabulary. And if we want to lump its treatment – by Ministers, critics etc – together with that of schools run by other denominations or faiths, then let’s opt for “school of a religious character”. “Faith school” has become such a term of abuse – and was foisted on us by Whitehall in an attempt to convince us that every voluntary aided school is the same, when, in reality, they are as distinct as distinct can be.
3) Regard every judgment made on numbers who qualify for free school meals with great scepticism. The standard rod used to beat the back of Catholic schools is the “fact” that they have a lower percentage of children taking free school meals than in their secular equivalents. From this “fact”, is posited the conclusion that Catholic schools manipulate their admissions. Yet most academics who quote these school-meal figures admit that they are of dubious statistical worth and are, at best, a very crude measure (though only in small print at the end of their reports).
4) Refuse to apologise, even when at dinner with good friends who press their atheist views, for sending our children to a Catholic school. We are not blighting them or turning them into bigots. Saying that out loud may make the Christmas card list shorter come December 2009, but my lip will not feel quite so bitten.
If any teachers, parents or governors would like to let me know their New Year resolutions, do e-mail them in to me, Hugh David, c/o [email protected] or drop me a line at the paper’s address.