David Behrens: Don't pick on parents like me... we're just fighting for our children's future

This is particularly true of schools, I've always thought. It's all very well for some transient education minister to criticise the performance of this or that secondary – but there's only so much that

even the best teachers can do with a building full of louts who are determined at all costs not to be taught.

Last week, a study by the charity Barnardo's poured oil on to our education system's troubled waters by suggesting that poor pupils were missing out on places at good secondary schools because, as the authors put it, pushy middle-class parents were better at exploiting the system

than their working-class counterparts.

In other words, they argued, sub-standard educational performance could not be blamed on parents whose neglect for their children dooms them never to rise above the mediocrity of the sink estates they inhabit; nor on bureaucratic education authorities who persist in propping up their creaking, self-serving school allocation systems.

No, said Barnardo's – the blame rests at the feet of respectable, middle-class parents who want the best for their children and are prepared to make sacrifices in order to rise above the vagaries and injustices of a school system that wants to reduce everyone to its own level.

Middle-class parents, of course, are an easy target as another academic year begins. They represent no obvious minority so there's no risk of political incorrectness. And they're not going to take to the streets

in protest.

But stigmatising them in this way is akin to criticising burglary victims for having amassed any goods worth stealing.

Barnardo's are not the first people to do it. Ed Balls built a career on it when he was Education Secretary.

But what is it exactly they are supposed to have done? Just how can pushy parents work the system to their advantage?

Well, says Martin Narey, the former chief of the Prison Service who is now the outgoing head of Barnardo's, they can move house. Or go to church. Or hire private tutors. Forgive me, but since when did going

to church constitute a crime against society?

In fact, if any of the above is now to be considered anti-social behaviour, I'd like to hand myself in right now to the correctness police.

Five years ago, I moved house, and a prime reason (though not the only reason) was to ensure that we lived in a good catchment area when the time came to send my son to secondary school. He starts there this week, actually.

It was a traumatic move. Even though the house market was buoyant then, we spent a year-and a half trying to sell. And we took a 60,000 hit on

the price.

But despite the sacrifice, am I now to consider myself at fault for denying my son's place at secondary school to someone else?

Barnardo's is right to draw attention to the over-complex and often discriminatory practices of many local authorities, and I don't doubt their conclusion that "poorer families are struggling to deal with day to day challenges and find the admissions process difficult to navigate".

Surely the answer is to rein in the authorities and simplify the

process, not demonise those who manage to figure it out?

And in any case, it still wouldn't attack the root cause of the problem – which is that there are too many schools whose results - and, most significantly, cohort – makes then unattractive. If all our schools were excellent, the admissions process would be a formality.

Which brings us back to Tom Lehrer's observation about life and sewers. The inescapable truth about undesirable schools is that nine times out of 10, the reason they're undesirable is that their catchment area is undesirable. Improve that and you improve the school.

Obviously, that's easier said than done – but it comes down to instilling in those who live there the same motivation that drives those who don't.

Maybe you need to legislate to do that. No new iPhones or satellite dishes for you until you can make little Jonny do his homework consistently.

What you can't do is perpetuate the notion of working-class families being dragged underfoot by the wicked, conniving middle-classes. Experience tells us that serves only to disenfranchise them all the more.

Yet it's exactly the trap that Barnardo's – for all their other wonderful work on behalf of underprivileged children – has fallen into here.

The truth is that parents who are prepared to fight for their children's future represent the hope for the education system, not the problem. And until we start to recognise and celebrate that fact, we're never going to make any progress.

David Behrens is the Yorkshire Post's digital editor.