11 Plus Exams Forum

‘When you’re at school, you’re told to get good grades so you can go to university,’ says Richard.
‘Then at university, you’re told to get good grades so you can get a good job when you graduate.
‘But at no point do they tell you that, even with a good job and good wage, you still won’t be able to afford a place of your own.’


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Just a short quote that I thought summed up the reality awaiting new generation and the disillusion they are going to experience once the years of education are over and the real life begins... First chasing after a dream of getting into a good grammar, ten getting a good degree... And after All that what do they get? They won't even be able to afford a place to live! Where is it All heading to? What is the grand plan of those who manage the propery prices? I feel we are filling our kids up with dreams, with ideals, but reality will shock them. your thoughts Please..

A few random thoughts on this from one with unorthodox views:

1. I don't think it is right to concentrate childrearing on the ideas in this title. A wider focus on being a decent human being and not just a well-educated one would benefit not just one's own offspring but wider society and mankind in general. The mad race to greater economic prosperity, with all it implies and brings with it, may be one we have already lost. Perhaps we need to question whether it was ever the 'right' race to be in anyway.

2. Many parents are complicit in allowing children to think that as long as they go to university, all will be rosy. I don't know why - many courses are just awful and a waste of money and children who do them will be no better off in the job market when they come out than when they went in. Parents need to take a step back and ask if the massive tuition fees (and living costs) of their child spending 3 (or now, increasingly, 4) years doing a mediocre course with poor relevant employment prospects is really worth it - being able to say that their child is at university versus saying 'actually no, he decided it wasn't what he wanted and is looking for a job instead'. This is one of those tough conversations of parenthood - not just going along with something because Apple of One's Eye met a nice tutor at open day and now wants to do it; but saying 'Actually darling, what exactly are you going to do with that?'.

3. I am a massive fan of a break between school and university. Many young people (and I say this as a parent, a teacher and someone who now teaches and studies at a university myself) just trot a path between school and university with very little deep thought about what they are going to study and why they are going to study it. Schools tend to assume that a student in sixth form will go to university and little discussion is offered around alternatives. Having enjoyed a subject at school isn't a reason for doing a degree in it (and no I am not saying that studying something you are passionate about should be off the agenda - but if you're passionate now then wait and see if after a year away your passion burns as bright - if it does, you won't have lost anything). Many 18 year olds are spectacularly immature and haven't ever looked after themselves; they head off to uni for a good time and don't think much beyond Freshers' Week. The luxury of those days has gone - take a year or two out, get a proper job, do a bit of voluntary work, travel a bit maybe (not to Thailand on the Bank of Mum and Dad - fund yourself for something a little less obvious), and see how it all feels when you have had to sort out your own dirty laundry for a few months. Not only will you take a better and more informed decision about whether you want to go to university and what to study if you do; you will also have acquired some very useful transferrable skills for when you pop out of the other end and into a hostile job market. And you might even have a bit of money to cushion the expenses of university.

4. Employers have a role to play too - lots of 'graduate level' jobs weren't graduate level a few years ago and you used to train on the job. I don't understand all the funding and structural implications of this but smell a government policy behind it somewhere...

It is a tough world out there but it can also be a rich and rewarding one. For it to be so, however, young people need to be encouraged to look at all their strengths and talents, not just the obvious ones (which in England tends to mean what your academic strengths are), to be prepared to think outside the box and to look at ways in which they can contribute which go beyond getting a well-paid job. There are many very needy people in society, and in the wider world; and at a time when economic growth isn't a given, and maybe anyway it ought not to be, we need the brightest and best to lead the way towards a better future than that which we can currently offer.

+++++1

Amer, are you me?

In fact, I'd go as far as to say we should rename this thread "managing expectations".

And my dad big believer in the gap between school and uni and had us all do it. He said you cannot go to university without knowing what its like to support yourself. I mean, it was modest - not rent a flat or anything, but get a job, pay keep, sort our own finances out, do a humble job, realise that the world doesn't owe you a living. There was no paying for me to go to Africa and build a school or whatever (all very admirable but surely defeats the object if your parents pay for you to go). It did me the world of good.

I agree. My own school used to say a gap year was a bad idea for some of the sciences / maths as you'd forget so much you would struggle at the beginning of the course. I'm not sure in hindsight that this was good advice. If it was a problem, it could be overcome by doing some revision of the relevant subjects before starting - and of course, if one was keen on one's chosen subject, that would be a pleasure not a chore!

How to afford a house is a different matter now.

It so much depends where you live / work how much of a problem this is too. Having a (some) lodger(s )can help significantly.

Personally I don't think that my children are idealistic and expect everything to work out just because they may have a good education. Just reading the news and looking at experiences in our own family and friends tells them this isn't so. We encourage them to do well because we want them to do their best (which isn't just about getting the top grades but the best they can do) and our take is that doing well at school means they have more choices than if they don't. However I also want them to do well in other areas of their lives. In my job I see a lot of adults who have 'done well' but who are lonely and depressed by their lives. Education should not be the be all and end all of things.

Also living in London they are aware that the buying their own home will be near enough impossible!!!

During the mad, bad late 1980s my father used to worry that the greed of his generation would stifle any opportunity for his children to afford their own homes. Then, the price correction in the 1990s allowed his recently graduated children to hop on the market. Who knows what the future holds.

nyr

Its funny isn't it (not really!) but the house my parents live in, and obviously I grew up in, was bought on solely my dad's salary as a new hospital consultant. My mum wasn't working. It was 1970. Its a large, rambling vicarage in an acre of grounds. Us children had all the benefits that went with all that space, however scruffy, it was lovely.
Fast forward 30 years and I and my husband were earning a combined income reasonably in excess of what my dad was earning when they bought the vicarage, yet we couldn't hope to buy anything near as big.
We are the generation that are living in the houses that we thought of us for significantly much lower paid, non-professional households, in our childhood (not in a snobby way, I simply mean income). I find it depressing that houses have gone up beyond the income rises over the years, even allowing for the 90s when pay rises could be 8-10%! I love our house, not complaining, but do I wish we could have bought a big vicarage in an acre of grounds like you could in the 70s? **** yeah! Sigh.

Working in pharma, I used to spend an awful lot of time in out-patients waiting areas, reading old copies of Country Life sometimes - it was amazing, even just in the early 1980s, that what we paid for this house could have bought a 4 bed detatched, large garden, Queen Anne/Georgian, in the home counties!!!!!!!!! Maybe it was always thus.

Blame the Daily Express/Telegraph etc. and the people who read them and swallow all the claptrap they spout. They're the ones constantly peddling the line that rising house prices make people wealthier when it's blindingly clear that the opposite is the case.

ninanina wrote:‘When you’re at school, you’re told to get good grades so you can go to university,’ says Richard.
‘Then at university, you’re told to get good grades so you can get a good job when you graduate.
‘But at no point do they tell you that, even with a good job and good wage, you still won’t be able to afford a place of your own.’

But that pretty much used to be true going back as going to University was for only 7-10% of the population so getting a degree actually meant something - even if it was from a Poly or from Aberystwyth. So coming out of university with a good degree meant you would probably get a job and begin the lifetime of climbing. Now you need to make sure you are going to one of the better universities and potentially doing a post grad to make yourself stand out from the crowd of average. And in the old days you didn't pay for it and got a grant! Now you pay for it and it means so much less!

I've always thought my children would hopefully (and really should) follow a logical path and go to university and build themselves a life etc. - unless they weren't capable and found themselves a trade etc. But now I don't see University as necessarily being the best way forward for them.