Entrance Exam Fever
Like most parents, Jill and Paul want the best possible school for their 11 year-old son. As a result, Jack is facing entrance exams...
Jill's story:
Jack's fed up with having to do practice papers. He's come home from school tired, then has to do a paper this evening and then face the post-mortem after the paper to see what he's done wrong. One school he went for there were 1700 children who applied for 200 places - it's just a lottery.
Before one particular exam he doesn't sleep and he said, "what if I don't get into this school, what if I don't do well?", and I thought, what are we doing? That first school I was miffed because he was good enough to get in but not good enough on the day and children have to accept that kind of rejection.
It's quite affected us as a family, it's affected our spare time and my expectations of my daughter. It's completely destructive and it means our entire life is focussed on our one child's education which is probably why the younger one's been messing about and being rude at school. This whole experience has made me determined that we're not going to put Laurie through this. He says, "I'm clever too."
I was awful after one exam. He'd made such a silly mistake and I said, "Oh Jack you could easily have answered that," and he got really upset and he stormed off down the road so I did have to run off down the road and apologise.
Jack's not been allowed to buy any computer games while he's doing these exams. As Paul told him, if he plays all the time on computer games, he's not going to get into all these schools! We did say he could buy a computer game after it was all over.
Parents don't talk to each other in the playground because of this. You'd think you'd be able to rise above it but you can't - people are under so much stress and pressure. I've
even forgotten people's birthdays because of the pressure - our life has been totally on
hold.
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