Comprehensive Teacher, Grammar Mother

Over the last couple of years, I have noticed an increasing number of friends and acquaintances insisting until they are blue in the face that as a teacher, I must be interested in politics and I must have an opinion on things.  Until quite recently, I have been quite happy to reply that no, in fact, as a teacher I must be interested in Shakespeare and I must have time for planning and marking, and after that I must have time for a rest and a sleep and a cup of tea, and in between all of that very concrete stuff, I don't have time for any more abstract musts.

Brexit, however, changed quite a lot of that.  The result of the referendum came on the morning I went into labour and my little French-British son was born into a country that seemed to be pretty unwelcoming to half of his identity.  Suddenly this very abstract concept of politics was very personal to me, and the same thing seems to be happening with this whole grammar school debate.

Let me outline my position to you in brief: I am a Teach First ambassador and, unsurprisingly, therefore a big socialist.  I adamantly believe that a free education can be an excellent education because I had one.  As a trainee teacher in a 'challenging' comprehensive school surrounded by grammars, I also experienced first hand the damaging nature of selective schooling on both children as people and children as data sets.  My teacher head therefore knows that the UK would be a much better place for our children if there were no private schools and no grammar schools.

As a mother, however, my thoughts are completely different.  I don't like to think of myself as a hypocrite, but given the options in my area of private, grammar or struggling comprehensive, I'm going to pick what is best for my bilingual, literate, gentle baby.  Grammar, it is; hypocrite I am, and shamefacedly I contribute to what my politically informed friends are calling 'The Tragedy of the Commons'.  Oh dear.  My problem is that I want an enriched, French horn-playing, sailing club, Latin-lesson education for my son, but my local comprehensive can't offer this.  The tragedy is, that as long as parents like me who want this kind of education for their child are sending their babies to grammars and private schools, my local comprehensive will never be able to offer this.  By choosing what is best for my child, therefore, I am perpetuating a culture that I despise.

This MaternityTeacher is not about sitting around feeling ashamed about her own hypocrisy, however.  This MaternityTeacher is about grassroots action and bottom-up change-making, so I have thought of the most genius solution that would mobilise and empower not just the MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher community, but parents on leave all over the country: as a parent, if your local comprehensive school doesn't offer the type of things you'd like your child to experience in 11 years time, then why not use your skills to do something about it and build the educational culture that you want for your child?

For example, I am a classically trained musician and I want to send my son to a school with an orchestra and a choir.  The music department of my local comprehensive school, however, has only been operating for six weeks, and does not have the capacity for extra-curricular clubs at present.  Why don't I, therefore, volunteer once a week to run the choir?  Whilst I'm at it, why don't I see if the school will let me take my son with me for this hour so that he absorbs all this music making from his bouncer?

If other parents on leave in my area did the same thing, then our local comprehensive could look exactly as we want it to for our children: rugby club on a Wednesday, string group on a Thursday, book club on a Monday, sailing club on a Friday, DofE trek at the weekend.  It might be eleven years until our own children would benefit from this, but if, when we go back to work, another parent takes on the project that we have started, then the cultures that we want will be well-established and we will have a school that not only rivals the local grammar and private options, but a school that has made a sustainable and positive impact on our community.

There's no denying that any school-based volunteer work is great CPD, so is this kooky commune thinking, or is this actually a really good MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher opportunity?