Showing posts with label Latymer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Latymer. Show all posts

Thursday, September 19

Grammar school - bargain education - demanding postage stamps with menaces

A bag of chips
Today we went to look at a propective school in Edmonton, North London so surfing took a rest. The event required the measure of spiritual lift that only a bag of chips can fulfil.

North London is a reliable place to find chip shops - Hackney has Faulkners, Islington has a couple in Upper Street and here's another in Edmonton: traditional with pickled eggs on sale. At 90p this complete meal, just add salt/vinegar, represents incredible value for the best rush of cholesterol you can buy. Flavours available: cooking oil, fried chicken or fish. 

Whathehec we needed cheering up after this evening:

How to pass a couple of hours and get to feel you don't matter
Edmonton, North London is home to a state funded grammar school that parents clamber to get their kids into. For the reasonably well to-do, Latymer is a no-cost option to a private school. The school open day was packed, its organisation shambolic and the atmosphere seething and tense. To suffer this is the price you pay to come here. Without reflecting on the quality of the teaching that takes place, we came away that free brings its disadvantages. Hec if they're this bad at marketing, just imagine how you're going to be treated as a customer with a teenager needing some help.  

The school's incredible popularity has generated unusual rudeness towards parents. While teachers was only too pleased to explain their craft, the school admin are off-putting, discouraging and blatently rude. The message: you're very unlikely to get your child in here, we don't need the business, go away. And this is what my taxes pay for. It's embarrassing. 

Hilariously, this school which clearly spends little effort or money on marketing pleads poverty. They insist on a payment to handle each application for a place. The price is a book of stamps or an asked-for shamelessly two pounds. And they're quite rude about it! Contrast this to annual school fairs in Islington and Hackney where some schools are happy to press a few pounds worth of glossy print in your hand. 
Because of an imminent move elsewhere we're not able to consider these schools, nevertheless the Islington and Hackney schools left us with a good feeling about state schooling. The Latymer School sadly shamed it. I hope the PR improves.

Latymer grammar school - bargain education - demanding postage stamps with menaces