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Ross

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Hi guys,

 

As part of my university course I'm doing some research into the effect of family breakdown in relation to educational attainment.

 

Would be great if some of you could complete it. It's designed for those who experienced a parental divorce/separation during their school years.

 

Please note, due to university research restrictions, you have to be 18 or older to complete the survey.

 

Link is here.

 

Any questions, just ask.

 

Cheers,

Ross

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Not myself, but the smartest kid in our school went through a parental divorce in Year 10, and was told he could take as much time off as he needed to get over it. Unfortunately he abused this and decided to "need some time odd" very selectively. At first he started going home Monday afternoons because he didnt want to play rugby. Then he started going home Wednesday afternoons because he didnt want to do Home Ec. Then he didnt bother with Wednesdays at all because he wasnt keen on French before lunch.

 

Eventually he just stopped coming to school at all and didnt sit the GCSEs with the rest of us. He did eventually sit some at home and got 5 passes, but now this lad who had a quite frankly scary intellect is a complete waster sponging off his much older girlfriend, and works in Spar.

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I don't think it has too much of an effect, especially given how common it is now. I was getting straight A's until Year 10, even though my parents had a horrible, bitter divorce when I was three - I only fucked up my GCSE's because my Mum started going away for weeks on work and I was able to skip days at leisure, at least for a while until the 'twag man' caught up with me and expulsion was threatened. Managed to pull it back at College though (A-Levels I thought were easier than GSCE's in that although it was more difficult, the spectrum of subjects was a lot lower so you could cram in a lot more even if you were lazy).

 

A lot of my fellow classmates who flunked exams had perfectly functional, loving, two-parent families.

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I'd go along with that, focussing on three/four subjects was a hell of a lot easier than ten buzzing around your mind, especially since they were the ones you had chosen. Even with "options" we all still ended up with some crap we weren't interested in/had no aptitude for.

 

And yeah, of my friends that did poorly at school/life did so because their parents were rubbish at raising them, not because they split up, and similarly I have friends with divorced parents that did well for themselves because they always had the support of both parents and were given a good start.

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Done. Parents split up when I was 9, currently in the 2nd year of a BA at 26. Can't say the two facts are completely unrelated. Hwever, being in a situation where most of one's classmates are 5-7 years younger than you can have its advantages.

 

One criticism of the survey: why do the questions about age only accept whole numbers? I wanted to put '24 years 11 months' for the age I started my degree, then I tried just '24.9' but it wouldn't take either. I really do think the fact I'd almost reached a quarter of a century before I could call myself an undergraduate is significant, whereas one of my delusional, moronic colleagues had only become an adult the month before.

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Added my answers in also :thumbsup:

 

Interesting to see if these are real questions asked by the government to a degree. By that i mean if they see seperations as directly effecting school performance.

 

Personaly it didnt really effect me at all, i was upset of course, but if anything i got a bit more into my work and ended up doing alot better than i thought i could ever do. Now in my 20's, i finished college some time ago, and through personal choice did not attend uni. Since then have a full time job, and my own little family unit that is very strong!

 

Sounds really silly, as i know its worse for some people, but although my parents could of handled it better at times.......it really was between them, and didnt really effect me at all.

 

Glad to be part of a survey like this :thumbsup:

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Im not going to fill the form in as my parents have been happily married for 30 years (their anniversary today in fact), but i had a quick two pence worth to chip in. I work in a high school with the 'problem' kids and just wanted to point out that its not always emotional turmoil of parents splitting that can cause issues at school, one of my current year 11's has 48% attendance this year, why? Because her parents split up and her mum moved 30 miles away, and my student decided to live with her dad. Now when she goes to visit mum on the weekend, mum won't let her come home, through a mix of emotional blackmail and physically taking away her means of travel (train fare etc), mum also sees it as a way to get one over on dad. Sadly, her games are fucking up her daughters future

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Thanks to everyone who has completed it so far. I really appreciate the responses and its interesting to see a variation of opinions. I think obviously one of the main points is that no two situations are the same and that everyone is affected differently. For one person it may have made minimal different but to someone else it could have really changed their life chances.

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