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Private schools parents are living in cloud-cuckoo land
• I WAS quite frankly astounded to read John Gulliver heaping praise on the exclusive Hampstead Hill School (November 5).
So often in Camden we hear of parents that happily make use of our maintained-sector primary schools before their (thinly-veiled classist and sometimes even racist) fear of the “yobs” that frequent our local secondary institutions “gives them no choice” but to opt out in favour of places such as Highgate, UCS or City of London.
This so-called “excellent little school” facilitates an even higher level of snobbery to which even these morally-blind parents would not aspire. They shun our “excellent” state primaries and pay out the tens of thousands that its head Andrea Taylor charges them every year.
Ms Taylor’s mother and founder of the school Hazel Riches was reportedly inspired to set up this private school because she was “unable to find a suitable school for her children”. No doubt today’s customers excuse themselves with this very mantra.
I was educated solely in Camden state schools and now teach at a community school in the Docklands, which is currently in special measures and has a GCSE pass-rate that would make Ms Taylor’s customers shudder.
It suffers, like most maintained schools, from the sad fact that large swathes of middle-class parents, whose children will statistically always fare well at any school and are proven to drive up standards across the board, will not allow their offspring anywhere near such schools.
Parents who subscribe to such divisive and destructive enterprises as Hampstead Hill are naively living in cloud cuckoo land.
We don’t live in a world full of rich people. Why deprive their children of a taste of real life for so long, and why deprive society of a chance to improve schools that really do serve the wider community?
Axel J Landin
Bramshill Gardens
Highgate, NW5
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