This is what someone once said to me. I like to think that if they had known I was state educated they wouldn’t have said it but you can never be sure.
We’ve all heard the recent figures that 93% of the UK population is state educated. So, why does this elitist attitude towards them still exist?
I’m not ashamed of my schooling: I’m proud of it. My school was underfunded and, through no fault of its own, underperformed. Classrooms hosted an average of 31 pupils who were the responsibility of just one teacher. Often, due to stress or illness, teachers were absent for extended periods of time and there wasn’t the support system in place to provide adequate cover lessons. Some students had home lives that, again, through no fault of their own, disrupted their education and held them back from achieving. But you’d be wrong to assume that all this made my school a bad place to be.
Despite it all, I had teachers that supported me. I had a Spanish teacher who gave up their lunchtime to provide revision sessions during exam season. I had a science teacher who pushed me to perform my absolute best. I had a deputy head of year who invited me into her office on multiple occasions to chat, laugh and cry and, in all honesty, I wouldn’t be here today without her. I also made friends with whom I share fond memories of lazing on the field during a summer lunchtime or walking home during thunderstorms, our feet squelching in our shoes.
Of course, these experiences aren’t confined to just my school, or even just state schools. The point is, however, that a lot of state schools aren’t always that bad. They have their problems but they shouldn’t be undervalued or dismissed. In reality, my school enabled me to succeed. My devotion to education began inside the classroom walls of a brutalist concrete building which led me all the way to St.Andrews and Oxford. I am at Oxford because of it.
Unfortunately, it is easy to feel embarrassed of receiving a state school education in places like St.Andrews and Oxford, especially when hearing comments like above. But I am not embarrassed. I am fiercely passionate about reducing the glaring inequality that exists between private and state schools in the UK. For fear of sounding like the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson: every child deserves the right to high quality education. Why should 93% of the UKs school-aged population have to fight harder for better grades, better opportunities and, consequently, a better quality of life in the long run?
This doesn’t mean that I have something against private schools because I don’t. At the end of the day, as children we don’t have much control over where we receive our education. I have worked with children from a diverse variety of backgrounds, both private and state, and the one thing that shines through them all is that they just want to learn. So, it isn’t about bringing private schools down but instead raising up state schools to the same level.
In fact, I am so committed to this idea that (much to that person’s probable dismay) I have decided to become a teacher…in a state school. What better way to make an actual difference? And I can’t wait to get started.
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