School Daze
My Search for a Decent State Secondary School

It should be simple. When your children reach the age of 11 they go to the comprehensive down the road. The one funded by those taxes that you've been paying all these years. But what happens if the local comp is an academic black hole - there are hundreds of them - where the majority of children cannot achieve the undemanding task of getting five GCCEs with a grade of C or better? What do you do if the next alternative gets great results, but it's a faith school and you don't go to church? What then? Fake religion? Move house? Hire a tutor to try to cram your children into a Grammar? Become a professional fraudster to fund private school fees (for one couple featured in this book, that was the preferred option)? One thing is certain. You'll panic. It won't be the sort of brief panic you get when you think you're about to crash the car, but the long-term kind of stress that goes on for years. Andrew Penman knows. He started panicking about his children's secondary education around 2007 and hasn't stopped.