Does it really matter which school my daughter goes to? | Steve Canavan

I’m aware of this fact because Mrs Canavan has spent the last four or five months talking of little else but our daughter’s forthcoming education.

Well, that’s not quite true.

She’s also been talking a lot about the back bedroom and how it needs decorating but I’ve been able to deflect that by complaining about an ongoing and mysterious pain in my left shoulder, which completely rules out any physical labour of any kind.

So far she’s bought it, though I almost blew my cover the other day by swinging Mary manically around in the air before remembering my story, saying: ‘Arghhh’ in a very loud voice, and then dropping Mary mid-air and, as she landed with a thump on the hard concrete path and began crying, saying: ‘Sorry but daddy’s got a sore arm’.

Sure I felt bad about hurting my daughter but it was important to keep up pretences and, besides, the doctors say her head wound will heal in time.

But schools. Mrs Canavan is obsessed, mainly over the question of which one to send our daughter to.

Now it’s fair to say I am a little more relaxed.

My attitude is that as long as it’s not a private school – each to their own and all that, but I’m firmly against a system based on how much money and privilege you have – anywhere will do.

There’s a primary school around the corner, for example, which seems perfectly fine.

‘Are we sending her there then?’ I asked innocently.

‘Of course we’re not!’ bellowed an incandescent Mrs Canavan, looking at me like I’d just suggested we strip naked and go outside to do 35 press-ups in the middle of the road.

Apparently its Ofsted report wasn’t quite good enough and a friend of a friend had told her she didn’t like the headteacher’s dress sense.

Now to me I really couldn’t care less where my kids go.

All schools have good and not so good teachers, but they all – in my opinion – give a decent level of education.

I went to a pretty crummy school.

I got bullied – my ears stuck out and I had acne, not a great combo at school – but, hey, it builds character and it’s not really held me back in life, other than having a slightly sore left ear from where Stuart Booth once grabbed it and dragged me round the playground shouting: ‘Look, his ears are so big I can take him for a walk’.

If I’d known then what I know now, I could have dealt with the situation in a mature and rational way and punched Stuart directly in the face, but I was too young and weak to know better so tamely let it happen.

But anyway, my point is that school is school, you’ll always – much like life itself – get good people and bad people there, and you just get on with it.

Mrs Canavan, though, is not so relaxed.

She has, I’d say, spent about 95 per cent of her free time over the last few months going on various websites and, as I’m trying to watch a fascinating documentary about the diminishing number of baboons in western Senegal, say things like: ‘Ooh, at (insert primary school name here) it says they continuously work hard to develop their ever evolving, exciting and engaging topic-based curriculum,’ or: ‘This one is strongly committed to helping children grow and develop the skills they need to be successful in life’, which, to be frank, I’m pleased about.

I mean, if their website said: ‘When it comes to helping children grow and develop, we’re mildly committed,’ I’d probably be a tad concerned.

I will absent-mindedly reply: ‘Ah right, great,’ to whatever she tells me, then she’ll get upset and accuse me of showing zero interest in our children’s future, and in turn – and here’s the really frustrating bit – I’ll miss what the narrator’s saying about how female baboons tend to be the primary caretaker of the young.

Mrs Canavan is especially irate that she can’t go and physically see the schools she’s considering sending Mary to.

Obviously and understandably, because of the pandemic schools can’t exactly have big groups of parents traipsing about, so most ‘visits’ are online.

‘How can you get a feel for a school on a computer screen?’ Mrs Canavan will whine.

‘Yes dear,’ I’ll reply (it’s my stock answer, though it backfires when it turns out she’s asked if I think she’s put on weight around the hips).

She got very annoyed recently when she sent an email to a headteacher four times and didn’t receive a reply, and spent a full week venting her spleen to me.

I do have some sympathy for her, and other parents in the midst of deciding where their children must go.

But come on, there are greater things in life to worry about – greenhouse gases and the increasing warming of the earth’s surface, worldwide poverty and hunger, and whether Senegal’s efforts to breed baboons in captivity can help halt their extinction.

Whichever school our children go to, as long as they’re not dragged around the playground by their ears, I shall be content.