Daughter Number Four has barely started fifth class and already the secondary school discussion has intensified. This is partially fuelled by her friend group – they are terrified they won’t all go to the same place – but also by the system itself.
Without really thinking about it, we have meekly obeyed the notifications from the national school to attend the various secondary school open days, as have many of the other parents. We keep bumping into them. Some seem to have already made up their minds; others don’t seem so sure: perhaps anticipating a difficult conversation with their child, or the other parent, who might have other ideas.
All the schools have been lovely: especially the students who volunteered to shyly stand at the door and greet the adults or demonstrate their skills at science or bun-making. Everyone trying to project the best impression. Irish secondary schools don’t nakedly compete for students like in some other countries, but presumably they do like to see their application numbers increasing: a sign that they are doing something right and burnishing their all-important reputation as a Good School. For many parents, word of mouth can be the deciding factor.
Pleasant as the school visits have been, none of them have been that useful in determining where Daughter Number Four might flourish, and most importantly, be happy. There’s no metric by which to make that judgment.
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It can be easier to come to a decision if the child has a particular interest in art or judo or learning Mandarin. But few 10-year-olds have developed such ambitions. There are various lists (including one published by The Irish Times) that relay what percentage of each school’s pupils go on to third-level education. But that’s a highly generalised piece of information that may have no relevance to Daughter Number Four in a few years’ time. Out of her four siblings, only one of them has a job connected to what she studied at university. The rest are doing just fine, but it has had little to do with how many points they got in the Leaving Cert.
And that’s them: Daughter Number Four’s story will be her own. She may prove to be highly academic. Or she may not.
There are a few websites that give scores to schools in Ireland, based, again, on the “progression rate” to third level and, in some cases, inspection reports by the Department of Education. At least one of the websites feels the need to tell you the median house price in the area each school serves. I’m sure there’s a completely legitimate reason for doing that, but the inclusion of such a detail has the distinct reek of classism. The more expensive the houses, the better the school is likely to be.
And within the Irish school system, it still seems to be largely the case that “better” means academic. Getting good grades at Spanish or biology is a sign of intelligence. Training to be an electrician is still viewed as a consolation prize.
If we choose a school that she loves, we may well succumb to the temptation of self-congratulation, eliding the fact that all we did was get lucky. Because we have no idea what kind of person she’ll be in two or four years. We have yet to see what strengths and weaknesses she’ll develop. We have yet to discover the myriad other factors – friends, teachers, random events – that will influence how she feels about her school.
She certainly doesn’t know. She sometimes asks us what we think she’ll be when she grows up.
In all this there is a tendency to overthink the decision, and be overprotective. We want her to be happy, of course, but a bit of grit in her life will be no harm either. You learn far more from failure than success. Ultimately, it’s a wild guess about the future. But isn’t everything?
