Music Scholarships for Independent Schools, Do they encourage child abuse? Options

[Alicia Ocean]

We have a few local independent schools - not specialist music schools, that's rather different - that offer a discount on fees by way of a scholarship in various fields. There's generally a maths scholarship, an academic scholarship, a sports scholarship and a music scholarship.

I know an eight year old entering for grade 5 piano this term. It's essential to the parents that this child continues to show outstanding achievement to maintain their music scholarship and hefty discount at their school. The child gets back from school at 7pm (no homework as it's done at school) and then has time for tea and practice before bed and then doing it all again the next day. I can't say whether the child is enjoying this routine but I know the mother is very, very strict about practice. Isn't this sort of pressure on a child a form of abuse? Are the music scholarships perpetuating this? Any thoughts?

[Swell Box]

Swell Box I am moved by your story.

Yes state schools still work hard on not praising students who do very well in whatever subject. When I was training as a teacher it was certainly discouraged. "Think of those who will never get a prize and how they must feel", was the mantra. Competitions were a complete no no. Coming from a Grammar school background myself, where on speech day prizes were not only won they were aimed for with the winners congratulated by all, I did have some difficulty adjusting to such a concept. However all students should be encouraged not actively belittled for their achievments.

Thank you Ayshah and everyone else for your understanding.

Sadly I think a lot to state school teachers have lost sight of what they went into teaching for, and have become cynical, jaundiced and institutionalised. As Soccermom says, this has been going on for a long time, and seems to be getting worse rather than better. I don't suppose that unionisation, being on the payroll of a local authority and constant meddling and imposition of targets by politicians of all parties has done much to help.

In this regard I find it significant that many teachers in state schools cannot wait to retire at age 50 or 55, whilst teachers in public schools seem happy to work until the state retirement age or beyond. There must be a moral to this somewhere?

To be fair, our children's school is 'otherwise good' in most respects, but quite a few of the teachers seem to let their political views get in the way of teaching, and I daresay they have the full backing of their union and the local authority to do this. Quite a few of them also seem to fall over themselves to score PC Brownie Points.

In particular there seems to be an obsession with celebrating mediocrity, such as awards for those who have scored 90% attendance, whilst those who have achieved something really worthwhile are overlooked in an effort to make those who would rather spend their lives on X Boxes feel more comfortable with themselves.

I have to say that music was a particular challenge for the reasons that I outlined above. Indeed, it got to the point where I contacted the Board of Governors and the exam board as we felt that our son was being treated unfairly for purely political reasons, and was effectively being denied the opportunity to study music on the instrument that he loves.

Although this was never admitted, the main issue seemed to be that our son was receiving private music lessons from an excellent teacher who had not long retired from a well known public school in the area. His school's HoM felt this was unfair on other pupils who did not have the benefit of such tuition. Clearly there was a clash of ideology which had nothing to do with music or our son's best interests.

On the subject of peer pressure, our son was effectively 'outed' as an Organist when he was caught playing Bach in the music lesson. This caused him a few problems and a bit of name calling for a while, (although I think the problems were more in his mind than anyone else's). This all stopped when he gave his first public recital. Some of his 'friends' from school went along, ostensibly to heckle, and were taken up into the organ loft. The instrument concerned is quite big, and certainly very loud up in the loft, and they quickly realised that a bass guitar is not the only 'cool' musical instrument in the world!

Our son has had many hurdles thrown in his way since then, (all man made, and most involving 'oddballs' in our local church), but has overcome them. He is now throughly enjoying himself as Organ Scholar at a church in Newcastle which has an excellent musical tradition, and is planning to study music performance at Uni starting next year.

There was a chance for him to apply for a sixth form organ scholarship at his organ tutor's old public school. This would have been ideal, but he would have had to study a pure, rather than applied science at A-Level (which he would have enjoyed), but there was no option for him to take dual award Science alongside Music at secondary school, so that avenue was closed.

In short, if we knew what we know now seven years ago we would have done anything to get both of our children into a public school; scholarship or not. If your child has the opportunity I would say go for it.

SB