My Edifying Examination of England's Education Options
On on a number of occasions quite a few of you have have reached out interested in our school choices for Scarlett,
Lily-Mae and Georgia’s for lots of different reasons. I will try to cover each in turn, my "My Edifying Examination of England's Education Options" blog is based solely on our experiences as a family living here in Notting Hill, West London and surrounding areas (that are easily commutable) and on our girls personalities and educational needs which by the way are all different.
We all love our children and want them to have a wonderful child hood and we strive for them to have a good education whether that be in the comprehensive or private system. We looked at both systems (more on that a little later).
Our girls are all very different, i would describe them as the following...
Scarlett - a firecracker ball of energy- always on the move. Interested and inquisitive - kind and empathetic. Full of life and my mini me.
Lily Mae- fiercely independent- always unpredictable- constantly surprises me- fiercely intelligent and intuitive- an advocate of whats fair and right.
Georgia- little superstar- hilariously funny- quirky and off beat- sharp mind and hugely popular with everyone- knows her own mind! (a but of a fussy eater) : )
Safe to say we have visited our fair share of prep schools over the years, some say there is a lot of kudos attached to getting a place in a number of these nurseries, pre- and prep schools. I have heard so many times that getting a place at a private school is the stamp of status in the UK. Many a story of a husband running from the birthing unit to the school to put their child’s name down on the school waiting list and worries that their child is an August baby making them almost a year educationally different ... the mum i know was thinking about down the line when the 11 plus examination board would not being taking into account that age learning difference for the year.
One prep school we went to see had a 4 year waiting list but there just is not enough schools comprehensive or private to house the number of children in West London and this only fuels the competitive fire of trying to get your child into the school they suit.
There has been a lot of change at Gibb HQ as i call us LOL, us as a family has seen a big change in our day to day life- I was born and grew up in the beautiful rolling hills of Yorkshire, moved to London to do my Articles in a law firm based in the City and then moved to Prague on the spur where we enjoyed 13 fabulous years and the children were born fast forward ...relocating lock stock and barrel back to London where it was like starting all over again.. i knew no one and neither did the girls.
Each one of these moves has brought a set of challenges to overcome, and with my girls it was their education. I always felt lucky in Prague to have got them into a montessori nursery (so they learned through play) and then into the Lycée Francais School where the IB (international baccalaureate) is standard and whilst Scarlett didn’t enjoy the strict rope leaning techniques and relaxed conduct code Lily -Mae did. You cant always get it right! fast forward... All three came back into to the UK multi-lingual with a really good head start in Czech, French, Spanish and English. The other side of the coin was that even having had 2 British parents their written English was inferior to other English speaking educated children. Returning to the UK meant a whole new way of learning and adapting to the system- especially Scarlett who was one year off the 11 plus.
Next week in part II i thought it may be useful to share the nurseries and prep schools we looked at both state and private.. It is true to say that they ticked so many of the boxes, all diverse, jaw-dropping facilities, a great inter impressive pastoral care and top-rate academics – so for us the choice for us came down to location academic and ethos.
Hope you enjoyed Part I, If you did and would like to receive my blog please take a moment to subscribe :)