The Children

Abstract

School No. 1937 is a neighbourhood comprehensive school, but because of the intensified programme in English it acts as a magnet, drawing children from further afield. It provides education for what may be considered a better class of pupil than the mass schools which run according to the standard general curriculum, and consequently it and the host of other schools like it attract complaints that they are bastions of privilege. Some have argued that they breach the comprehensive principle, that they are in fact selective schools, that they give their pupils advantages not available to children in other schools. They were said to enjoy better buildings than other schools, though in the case of School 1937, as we see in Chapter 3, this is certainly not true. Almost vitriolic articles in the Soviet press, during 1987 particularly, protested that the special English schools were being exploited by influential parents, who were bringing all sorts of sinister pressure to bear on head teachers to admit their children over the odds.’ They were said sometimes to be having their sons and daughters delivered to the school in official cars. Their children were known sometimes as dozvonochniki from the Russian for ‘to get through on the telephone’, since this was how they had been admitted. They were said to be the type who would enumerate the members of their family as ‘Mum, Dad, the chauffeur and I’.