General Chat

Well done to your daughter Claire, Kitty I could not agree more. :-D :-D

My daughter attended a school that had it's ups and downs shall we say...she went on to Uni and has now been teaching for the last 13 years!

Claire ..............


well done to your daughter.

So much depends on the individual teachers AND on the parents' support at home.

We find it is the parents' support that is often missing here ............. there is a culture in parts of North America that believes that teachers are responsible for everything in a child's life, that the parents have no role to play.

In Canada, that is often due to the ethnicity of the parents, and to helicopter and astronaut parents.

I happen to believe that a teacher is responsible only for teaching the children and for support in school. Not for educating in social life or acting as guardians.

Wonderful Ann......it is all about individuals, not sweeping statements :-)

This thread was the first I'd heard of the Russell Schools!!

I note with interest that my Alma Mater is a member :-)


In my day, we talked about Oxford, Cambridge, the red brick universities, and the "upstarts" :-)


My Biology teacher at school would not let me apply to Manchester University ............. not that I wanted to as it was too close to home. Her reasoning was that the Zoology school believed in Lamarckian inheritance .............. in other words, a giraffe grew a long neck because it needed one.

Equally, she wouldn't allow me to apply to Hull because it was too new.

Those were the days when you applied to each university individually not to a central clearing house.

Several of my friends from school went to Keele University which was BRAND new, with some very different ideas of how schools were organised ............ they were mainly on the Arts side. One became a very famous economist in the university world.

Later, a new colleague of my OH's turned out to have also gone to Keele in that same intake, and graduated with a very good science degree.

Thank you Claire, well done to your daughter :-D

We do need more contributors with first hand experience.

I have been to Cardiff lmany times. I own a house there in the Penarth Road, let at a peppercorn rent. I have rellies in Cardiff. I lived in Bristol for years and turned down a job in Newport, Mon.

I like Wales after all my cat was born in Risca. I once owned a house in West Wales when such things were in fashion. I have climbed a few mountains inc Tryfan and hiked up the Pyg track on Snowdon. I really love Llandudno.

And Cardiff ? As Errol says it has plenty of bars and restaurants though it always feels a bit edgy late on. I never need to stay in a hotel good job too. Behind a veneer of modernisation the city hasn't changed all that much and has failed to become the Welsh capital in the same way that Edinburgh is the cultural capital of Wales, Manchester of northern England, Newcastle the NE and so on. The shopping used to be better than Bristol but this is no longer true.

I freely admit I know next to nothing about schools in Cardiff other than that my rellies there prefer not to use the state sector. I just put up a list as a response to a question wondering where Errol was referring too. I was more than surprised to see that of 16 schools in Cardiff ratings varied from terrible to poor though to be fair several seem to be sorting themselves out. Not all.

It is of little surprise that the largest school has been taken out of the hands of the LEA and seems to be doing ok now.

From what I have seen of modern UK state education most of it looks a royal mess and about as far away from the interests of children as could be. Never ending testing and marking, never ending rating of schools, forcible teaching of subjects that a child hates and has no feeling for (about to get much worse ), no time to just experiment, to dream a little.

The idea that a few days away from school will wreck a child's education is laughable. That is the whole problem. After more than ten years of state school so many children know nothing useful or interesting that they learned at school. What they have learned is that they hate schools and with good reason. Hence the poor results in Cardiff. The only other explanation is that the citizens of Cardiff are thick which is not my experience.

Those who succeed (?) are allowed to load themselves with a lifetime of debt and serfdom as they try the impossible trick of paying off their degree, paying the landlord and bringing up children all at once.

Rollo I have no idea why you claim Cardiff hasn't changed that much. I know of few places that have transformed as much as Tiger Bay a place we avoided into Cardiff Bay, a desirable place to live and be seen.

And thank you all for your comments, I am a very proud Mum.

city hasn't changed much? you are joking - it has been transformed - if my parents were to see it today they would not recognise it - I have lived in Cardiff all my life and can quite easily get lost these days south of the city centre - the docks, long gone, has been transformed and is now Cardiff Bay - a fantastic place to visit

Oh dear I have one daughter who lives in a very nice area just outside Cardiff, has paid off her student loan, owns 2 houses, runs a large government department and has 2 children.

Not too bad for someone who took her degree at UWIC.

poor child - you must be distraught :-D :-D

I am Ann....lololol :-P

Coming down to Cardiff for a wedding at the weekend. Staying in a lovely hotel on The Bay. Can't wait.

you'll love the Bay - always something going on down there - take a look in the Millennium Centre - it's lovely :-) :-)

I've never been to Cardiff, all our connections are in North Wales, and that is where we have spent time and know most about.

When you haven't been to a place, one has to rely on hearsay ............... from people who live there and from reports. Then you have to hope that you get both sides of the coin, and can make a somewhat fair analysis of the situation.


I was once a member of a British Expats site ..... and that was a real eyeopener. Most of them were a lot of whingers.

Not happy in the UK, and not happy where they had moved to because it wasn't the UK :-D

I did find that I could get a totally opposite view of places where I had lived from others ....... a very interesting experience! Others loved places I'd really disliked, while some hated places I loved!

It all depends on your experience with a place.

you could have stayed with me Guinevere - remember if you visit again :-) :-)

Thanks, Ann. :-D

I have family there and usually stay with them but we're keeping well out of the way this time. They have enough to do.

We're taking a few extra days to explore the places I used to love when I stayed with my grandparents in Barry. I'm hoping to persuade the OH that a few hours in Gwent RO would be time well spent. He has ancestors from South Wales as well.

Oh and of course we're going to the Dr Who exhibition. <3

I keep trying to get everyone to go to St Fagan's

I love St Fagan's, we may well visit there and Roath Park, where my aunt lives.

The castle is well worth a visit
the Arabian room is out of this world

and the Museum is lovely too :-D :-D