This summer we’re doing split family holidays – the toddler gets a holiday to ancestral lands with each parent and the baby gets no holidays. It’s just the tip of the iceberg for second children, I expect. The first ancestral holiday to Northern Ireland with Dad was this week – by all accounts a success.
I’ve spent the last three days with a sick baby, but there has still been a surprising amount of free time when there’s just one kid. Hint hint, past Meri. Some things I’ve checked off the to-do list:
- Washed and hidden a tiger costume which the toddler would certainly have stopped me from doing if he had been around
- Took some overdue children’s books back to the library which the toddler would certainly have stopped me from doing if he had been around
- Added Lewisham school data into my school choice project (a lot of the trains that come into London Bridge go through Lewisham, so)
- Created a reading list about pensions, part of a Great Figuring Out around our family finances
- Put a bunch of baby items for sale on eBay
- Finally figured out what has gone wrong with a knitting project. I’m making my first cardigan, a project which I started more than a year ago and which ground to a standstill back in January or so. If you don’t think knitting is an intellectually challenging pastime, try intarsia. A spreadsheet was required to untangle it all.
- Booked my UK Citizenship exam for October!
I also added a new data point to my informal survey of how other parents around here think about school choice. The mum of a child starting school next year spoke exclusively about the schools’ facilities – one nearby school is rumoured to be getting a new play area designed by someone who designed acclaimed playgrounds in Stratford. Another school she praised for being well lit, and so on. I think it’s another one for the ‘local as long as not horrible’ camp.
I wonder if there is a kind of social aversion to admitting that you’re interested in academic performance. It seems to be so rarely brought up, yet I think more parents than say so must be looking at it. Maybe parents think it’s too ‘hard’ of a factor to care about and that it’s better to care about soft values like how pleasant the grounds are.
we were definitely interested in the academics of the schools, but it’s hard to disentangle them. partly, cos the last published data was pre-covid and everything feels like it’s changed since. partly, because success is v much dependent on the starting point for the kids – so what would be a stretch for some will be idling for others. it requires good teachers and good leadership to do the best for each kid – and resources – at which point you’re back to softer values assessments! and estimating how much money they have for teaching based on the state of the lighting :D
It is very hard to disentangle it – everything is a proxy, isn’t it? Maybe you could use the ‘progress’ scores to say how well a school is catering to the needs of different students. And there is data on school finance including how much is spent on teaching, but I haven’t done anything with it yet. I’m not sure where it comes in.