Motherload

Thinking about The US Admissions Scandal  had me reflecting on my own pathway through Higher Education and Oxbridge back in the 80s and 90s. Wow, it only cost me bulimia and an overdose to get into Cambridge. Cheap at half the price!  Luckily, after my own head of department ended my career as a lecturer at Cambridge, because I'd had a baby, it became financially impossible for me ever to pay Cambridge to get that baby into Cambridge. Or change the broken system from within. Or indeed, save for a pension.  Instead, these days, Cambridge comes to me as an alumni, asking for money.  Oh, and so does Oxford. I went there too (Just look for the Ingrid Wassenaar Library).  These days I earn a living supporting schools and students from different kinds of background through the Oxbridge process. My main goal is that they should mentally survive it. I'm a Tiger Mother who won't be pushing her kids through the Oxbridge mill.  External ma...

Radio 4 Woman's Hour was getting all steamed up this morning about the social rights and wrongs of tutoring children during the school holidays. "Socially divisive", "giving the posh kids an extra leg up they don't need", "impossible demands placed on young shoulders", etc etc. According to some amongst us, children turn into vegetables during those precious few weeks of summer, and need to be kept nose to grindstone lest they forget how to spell, punctuate, do times tables and stand still in the lunch queue. I've been tutoring children and young people from 11 to 18 years old for the past few years, and it's completely changed my views on what tutoring actually is . In the summer holidays, most of my tutees stop, unless they are preparing for a selective entrance exam that's going to come up early in the next academic year. These poor souls have to keep going, yes. I find it next to impossible to force my own poor children to d...