I was trolling the internet for information about neighborhood schools for my four-year-old a few years back; I had one eye on the television and one on a league table, when a famous scene from the Breakfast Club appeared. Looking at the ubiquitous set of Sherman High School for the first time as a parent, I had a true coming of age moment. I completely put aside the gratuitous type casting and silly plot, and found myself thinking: " Now that looks like a great school".
The John Hughes films, set in the affluent Chicago suburbs of the 80s, resonated with school kids of the better-off enclave of Detroit where I grew up during that time. My hometown benefited from automotive money; the public schools were over run with local property taxes. My public high school language department offered French, Spanish, German, Latin, Japanese, Russian, and Chinese. Life was simple in that time and place: just like the kids in the movies, you went to your local school.
Like many of my cohorts from The Hughes Generation, I am now firmly rooted in the city. I am a lover of what I consider the sumptuous life of small apartments, public transit, socio-economic diversity and having world class institutions that I generally don't use on my door step. I looked at finding a school for my daughter as the first of many rites to prove my dedication to city life.
Our friends and relatives with children tell us the grueling process they go through in New York City. The tales of waiting lists, the application forms, the demonstration of worthiness, all this seeking to avoid, at any cost, most public schools.
School choice for all Americans has become an all-consuming fact of parenthood. You can't just move to a nice school district, only a handful exists anymore. My alma mater has streamlined its course offerings; reducing, among other things, its language offerings to French, Spanish and Chinese.
When we were less than a year away from having to make the final choice in the education system in London; we discovered the system is particularly well suited for two energetic Americans with religious ties. I love to think of the fun that Arne Duncan and the Obama administration could have building consensuses with the littered factions of the Right in Education reform modeled on the British system, but that is for another essay.
In our initial starry eyed rapture with our progeny we thought we would give our child the best possible start in life and send her to an independent, or private school. This is the easiest option, if you pay enough money, you can have an amazing education. There are no lists, you can get a spot in just about any good school.
In the midst of our back and forth debate between independent school and how we would expect to finance it, we took a vacation in Chamonix and that decided it. If we ever wanted to take a vacation again, state school it would have to be.
State schools, or what Americans would call public schools, can be religious in England. Schools with religious affiliation, owing largely to the self-selection of parents having to show up at church twice a month (or more!), have higher standardised test scores, and naturally better admission rates to competitive secondary schools.
In our area of London, we are encouraged to apply to any state school within our Local Education Authority. In the case that a school is over subscribed, children matching their admission criteria and who live closest to the school will be admitted. If you are applying to a religious school, you need to take a form into your parish priest or vicar and they will verify how long you have regularly attended their church. In addition to this letter, you may be asked to produce a baptismal certificate.
My husband was raised and educated Catholic, we were married Catholic, the children subsequently baptized Catholic. Imagine an American's delight to learn that along with six months maternity pay, the free National Health Service, a weekly child benefit check of £20, you can also receive a free Catholic primary education. We thought we had died and gone to new parent heaven.
We loaded our new-born and newly baptized infant into the Bjorn on Sunday mornings, usually having been up most of the night and from the early hours of the morning, and went off to Mass to stand in the isles and gently rock our sleeping infant, or walk around and distract our wakeful one. We went to the most amazing and beautiful churches, we attended sung Latin Masses, the Cathedral, the Oratory, vaguely aware of some schools associated with each and trying to find a place that was close to home, that we wouldn't mind spending time in.
Finally, around the time our daughter was two, we walked into the most amazing church. They had a band, the church was filled with children, the songs were folksy with hand motions. If your child cried, no need to worry, the tambourine would drown out the noise. I fell in love with it. Father Pat became our family's hero, preaching about hard work, duty, redemption, hope, happiness.
We were over the moon when we found out the school associated with the church had great scores. Done and dusted, our decision was made. Every Sunday morning off we all would go...
Until we started making more and more friends whose children were going to attend a different neighbourhood school. The weekends would come and increasingly our circle of friends all seemed to be attending the same church, with the hope that their children would attend a seemingly lovely Church of England School. As our friendships with these parents strengthened, we were asked with increasing frequency to attend school fetes, bake for May Fares, help set up for the weekly playgroup and eventually I came to sing in the family choir.
As the school seemed so nice and our friends so dear, we thought that maybe we should make an effort to get more involved in the C of E church, and as I was raised Episcopalian, it fell on me to branch off from my family and attend a different church on Sundays.
So, here we are, in London, American-ing up the British education system by attending two churches. We agonized over the merits of the two local Catholic schools, the numerous C of E schools, and the two non-faith schools. The fact is, they are all good, all wonderful and we should only be lucky to have our choice of such great schools in our former Chicago neighbourhood.
In the meantime, our child attended a perfect little free state nursery just down the street from our flat. The nursery is just that and we have to choose a primary school for her to attend full-time starting next year.
We attended one gathering at this nursery, the term party. Everyone brings a dish, the children play and the parents chat. As my daughter ran around the school garden with scores of other children speaking a dozen different languages to their parents whose jobs ranged from the highest levels of government to people who have been on benefits most of their lives.
At one point towards the end of the evening, I was in the very back of the school, in a small cozy room lined with cushions, where children often play with torches, or flashlights (or as my confused and befuddled daughter called them, flash-torches). A child shined one on me while I made scary monster faces at him, my shirt heavily smeared with the pasta I served my 10 month old in the baby carrier that was dangling from my waist. Suddenly a man with a very familiar face walks in the small room and gives a very warm, kind and somehow twinkling "hello" to everyone. It was Gordon Brown, checking to see if his son was having fun playing with the torches.
Unbeknownst to parents on both sides of the Atlantic agonizing over school choice, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain sent his own children to the state schools closest to his home. Even more ironic, American's secular cousins in England have found a way to coerce parents into taking their children to church.