At a recent open evening for a high-achieving London prep school, the head was besieged with questions by eager prospective parents.
Eventually, he fielded one final question: 'What is the ideal candidate for your school?' 'Orphans,' he replied, without missing a beat.
He was, of course, joking, but even so, parental input into schools is not necessarily the unalloyed force for good it is currently being portrayed in political circles.
'Parent power' is a theme embraced by all political parties, all of whom appear to believe that mums and dads should be allowed to have a go with their own personal slice of the education budget.
The Labour party, the Lib Dems and, of course, the possibly soon-to-be-in-power Tories have all stated that parents should be able to set up schools to complement or, indeed, compete with, existing provision.
'Parents generally know what's best for their children,' said a Conservative Party spokesman.
'We want to give them the freedom to provide it.
' It may - or may not - be true that parents know what's best for their own children but, having seen 'parent power' in action, I very much doubt they know what's best for mine.
At the London primary school attended by my two sons, parents certainly did their utmost to undermine what I consider a good education.
In Year 6, my oldest boy had an outstanding teacher, the kind of teacher every school is crying out for.
Intelligent and funny, creative and lateral-thinking, he was one of those inspiring individuals who could really engage the minds of ten-year-old boys and girls.
What's more, he could spell and punctuate.
Unfortunately, this particular teacher was not unduly interested in some of the more tedious aspects of the National Curriculum and eventually - after some high-octane intervention by parents - he and the school parted company.
In this instance, to use a Key Stage II colloquialism, parent power 'sucked'.
Lest it be forgotten amongst the current 'set 'em free' rhetoric, parents already have considerable power to intervene in the way schools operate.
Every state school in the land has 'parent governors', elected by their fellow mums and dads, whose duties, in the words of the government's website, include: 'setting strategic direction, policies and objectives', 'appointing, challenging and supporting the head ' and 'reviewing progress'.
Why, one might reasonably ask, do they need any more power than this, and is it wise to give it to them? Historically, the 'home-school' balance has been a fluctuating one.
In the 19th and early 20th century, parents were kept at a careful distance from the classroom behind safely locked gates.
The school knew best and few queried their authority.
In the 1970s, however, there was a dramatic shift in educational philosophy and the parent-teacher relationship mutated into one of 'equal partnership'.
The Thatcher years brought further alteration, with the free-market notion that the parent was an educational consumer, a role new Labour has been happy to endorse.
Indeed, it may be argued that this Labour government has became the consumer's champion, acting like Which magazine, with its published league tables and Ofsted inspections to enable the customer to pick this year's 'Best Buys'.
Now, yet again, it appears we've seen the dawn of a new age: the parent is to become the employer, appointing heads and setting curricula.
It was the Labour government, which under the Education and Inspection Act of 2006, first gave parents the right to set up their own schools.
This legislation has not, in fact, led to a flood of parent-founded schools, since the ultimate say so still lies with the local authorities, who remain understandably reluctant to create new school places when there are already existing places going spare.
Only a handful of schools have been completed under this 'Parent-Promoted' scheme: Elmgreen School, a comprehensive in West Norwood; Bolnore Village Primary, a primary in Sussex; and JCoSS, the Jewish Community Secondary School, a VA comprehensive in Barnet, which will welcome its first intake in September 2010.
Marketing consultant Jonathan Fingerhut, a parent and founding member of JCoSS, has certainly not found the process easy: ' It took an unbelievable amount of time, effort and resources.
Without access to lawyers, accountants and property people, it's would have been like shifting chairs on the Titanic.
If I'd known what I know now when I started out eight years ago, I'd never have begun.
' The Tories, however, are intending to make the process considerably simpler and intend to free up both funding and planning regulations to enable parents to establish schools which will challenge those run by the local authority.
The argument is that competition from parent-run schools will improve 'standards' all round.
'Local authorities act as a monopoly.
Any monopoly leads to complacency.
Only by competition, will they have to fight back,' is the Tory Party line.
Interestingly, the majority of parents do not seem overly enthusiastic about these new opportunities.
A poll carried by the political magazine Prospect earlier this year found that only 11 per cent of those surveyed thought it was a good idea to let parents run schools.
The other 89 per cent may have good reasons to be concerned about the degree of self-interest this type of schooling represents.
In Sweden, one model for current Tory policy, 'parent-led' schools frequently don't last beyond the six years it takes the founders' children to leave.
'What makes a school succeed over time is an embedded culture, not one subject to the personal interests that parents bring to bear,' says Tim Emmett, development director for the educational trust CfBT.
Emmet is also concerned that a parent-led system is 'dangerously susceptible to enthusiasts'.
What, he perhaps means is the type of parents I witnessed at my children's primary, who lobbied to exclude those with learning difficulties on the grounds that they were 'lowering standards'.
Or, alternatively, parents like journalist Toby Young, who is currently advertising his attempt to start a school near his West London home where Latin will be 'compulsory for all till the age of 16.
' Now let us look for a minute at this particular 'enthusiasm'.
Latin has always been a snob subject, the language of the ruling class.
First, of course, of the Roman conquerors, later of the church and finally, of the country's leading public schools, who set themselves apart from the hoi polloi by concentrating on the Classics.
In Acton, this particular curricular stipulation will, without a doubt, attract the type of parent seeking to exclude society's 'rougher element'.
As a social edit it should be successful but, in terms of a 21st-century education, it's clearly bonkers.
Even Eton, the ultimate public school, no longer demands its pupils study Latin beyond Year 9 and the country's largest examining body, AQA, stopped setting Latin GCSEs in 2006.
If Young and his fellow parents are so keen on amo, amas, amat - why don't they just start up an after-school club? Otherwise, call me an old cynic, I believe they're using my taxes to fund a socially elitist school.
There are, of course, some very legitimate reasons for parents to demand a new school from the state.
They may, like Jonathan Fingerhut and his fellow parents, find their children excluded from their own faith school over a difference of belief, or they may live in a area where their children are forced to travel great distances to any school at all.
Certainly, the New Schools Network, a charity recently established to improve education through increasing the number of independent, innovative schools, has found no shortage of parents who believe they have the wherewithal to provide an alternative.
'We've only been open a month, and we've been inundated,' says twenty-four-year old Rachel Wolf, a former education adviser to the Conservative Party, who founded the organisation.
But inundated by whom? The New Schools Network certainly seem to have a full gamut of what I call parents doing the 'playground moan', with gripes about large class sizes and poorly behaved children.
What these parents seem completely oblivious to is that this is not a particularly original departure.
Indeed, one might reasonably argue that every parent in the land wants small and disciplined classrooms and this aim is hardly likely to be furthered by splinter-group schools fracturing the per capita funding.
But what the New Schools Network case studies demonstrates even more clearly is the parental mindset.
'Janet and Mark', a pleasant young couple from Bedford featured on the website, have two young daughters who they wish to give the best start in life.
What is deeply disturbing about them, however, is that they are also both teachers.
' Five years ago when parents came to view my school,' says Mark.
' I would have said look for curriculum and variety.
Since we've had children, however, it's just made me brutally aware that fundamentally what we want is our children to be happy and fulfilled' From rational professionals to emotional time bombs in two easy births.
Bring on the orphans is what I say.
Eventually, he fielded one final question: 'What is the ideal candidate for your school?' 'Orphans,' he replied, without missing a beat.
He was, of course, joking, but even so, parental input into schools is not necessarily the unalloyed force for good it is currently being portrayed in political circles.
'Parent power' is a theme embraced by all political parties, all of whom appear to believe that mums and dads should be allowed to have a go with their own personal slice of the education budget.
The Labour party, the Lib Dems and, of course, the possibly soon-to-be-in-power Tories have all stated that parents should be able to set up schools to complement or, indeed, compete with, existing provision.
'Parents generally know what's best for their children,' said a Conservative Party spokesman.
'We want to give them the freedom to provide it.
' It may - or may not - be true that parents know what's best for their own children but, having seen 'parent power' in action, I very much doubt they know what's best for mine.
At the London primary school attended by my two sons, parents certainly did their utmost to undermine what I consider a good education.
In Year 6, my oldest boy had an outstanding teacher, the kind of teacher every school is crying out for.
Intelligent and funny, creative and lateral-thinking, he was one of those inspiring individuals who could really engage the minds of ten-year-old boys and girls.
What's more, he could spell and punctuate.
Unfortunately, this particular teacher was not unduly interested in some of the more tedious aspects of the National Curriculum and eventually - after some high-octane intervention by parents - he and the school parted company.
In this instance, to use a Key Stage II colloquialism, parent power 'sucked'.
Lest it be forgotten amongst the current 'set 'em free' rhetoric, parents already have considerable power to intervene in the way schools operate.
Every state school in the land has 'parent governors', elected by their fellow mums and dads, whose duties, in the words of the government's website, include: 'setting strategic direction, policies and objectives', 'appointing, challenging and supporting the head ' and 'reviewing progress'.
Why, one might reasonably ask, do they need any more power than this, and is it wise to give it to them? Historically, the 'home-school' balance has been a fluctuating one.
In the 19th and early 20th century, parents were kept at a careful distance from the classroom behind safely locked gates.
The school knew best and few queried their authority.
In the 1970s, however, there was a dramatic shift in educational philosophy and the parent-teacher relationship mutated into one of 'equal partnership'.
The Thatcher years brought further alteration, with the free-market notion that the parent was an educational consumer, a role new Labour has been happy to endorse.
Indeed, it may be argued that this Labour government has became the consumer's champion, acting like Which magazine, with its published league tables and Ofsted inspections to enable the customer to pick this year's 'Best Buys'.
Now, yet again, it appears we've seen the dawn of a new age: the parent is to become the employer, appointing heads and setting curricula.
It was the Labour government, which under the Education and Inspection Act of 2006, first gave parents the right to set up their own schools.
This legislation has not, in fact, led to a flood of parent-founded schools, since the ultimate say so still lies with the local authorities, who remain understandably reluctant to create new school places when there are already existing places going spare.
Only a handful of schools have been completed under this 'Parent-Promoted' scheme: Elmgreen School, a comprehensive in West Norwood; Bolnore Village Primary, a primary in Sussex; and JCoSS, the Jewish Community Secondary School, a VA comprehensive in Barnet, which will welcome its first intake in September 2010.
Marketing consultant Jonathan Fingerhut, a parent and founding member of JCoSS, has certainly not found the process easy: ' It took an unbelievable amount of time, effort and resources.
Without access to lawyers, accountants and property people, it's would have been like shifting chairs on the Titanic.
If I'd known what I know now when I started out eight years ago, I'd never have begun.
' The Tories, however, are intending to make the process considerably simpler and intend to free up both funding and planning regulations to enable parents to establish schools which will challenge those run by the local authority.
The argument is that competition from parent-run schools will improve 'standards' all round.
'Local authorities act as a monopoly.
Any monopoly leads to complacency.
Only by competition, will they have to fight back,' is the Tory Party line.
Interestingly, the majority of parents do not seem overly enthusiastic about these new opportunities.
A poll carried by the political magazine Prospect earlier this year found that only 11 per cent of those surveyed thought it was a good idea to let parents run schools.
The other 89 per cent may have good reasons to be concerned about the degree of self-interest this type of schooling represents.
In Sweden, one model for current Tory policy, 'parent-led' schools frequently don't last beyond the six years it takes the founders' children to leave.
'What makes a school succeed over time is an embedded culture, not one subject to the personal interests that parents bring to bear,' says Tim Emmett, development director for the educational trust CfBT.
Emmet is also concerned that a parent-led system is 'dangerously susceptible to enthusiasts'.
What, he perhaps means is the type of parents I witnessed at my children's primary, who lobbied to exclude those with learning difficulties on the grounds that they were 'lowering standards'.
Or, alternatively, parents like journalist Toby Young, who is currently advertising his attempt to start a school near his West London home where Latin will be 'compulsory for all till the age of 16.
' Now let us look for a minute at this particular 'enthusiasm'.
Latin has always been a snob subject, the language of the ruling class.
First, of course, of the Roman conquerors, later of the church and finally, of the country's leading public schools, who set themselves apart from the hoi polloi by concentrating on the Classics.
In Acton, this particular curricular stipulation will, without a doubt, attract the type of parent seeking to exclude society's 'rougher element'.
As a social edit it should be successful but, in terms of a 21st-century education, it's clearly bonkers.
Even Eton, the ultimate public school, no longer demands its pupils study Latin beyond Year 9 and the country's largest examining body, AQA, stopped setting Latin GCSEs in 2006.
If Young and his fellow parents are so keen on amo, amas, amat - why don't they just start up an after-school club? Otherwise, call me an old cynic, I believe they're using my taxes to fund a socially elitist school.
There are, of course, some very legitimate reasons for parents to demand a new school from the state.
They may, like Jonathan Fingerhut and his fellow parents, find their children excluded from their own faith school over a difference of belief, or they may live in a area where their children are forced to travel great distances to any school at all.
Certainly, the New Schools Network, a charity recently established to improve education through increasing the number of independent, innovative schools, has found no shortage of parents who believe they have the wherewithal to provide an alternative.
'We've only been open a month, and we've been inundated,' says twenty-four-year old Rachel Wolf, a former education adviser to the Conservative Party, who founded the organisation.
But inundated by whom? The New Schools Network certainly seem to have a full gamut of what I call parents doing the 'playground moan', with gripes about large class sizes and poorly behaved children.
What these parents seem completely oblivious to is that this is not a particularly original departure.
Indeed, one might reasonably argue that every parent in the land wants small and disciplined classrooms and this aim is hardly likely to be furthered by splinter-group schools fracturing the per capita funding.
But what the New Schools Network case studies demonstrates even more clearly is the parental mindset.
'Janet and Mark', a pleasant young couple from Bedford featured on the website, have two young daughters who they wish to give the best start in life.
What is deeply disturbing about them, however, is that they are also both teachers.
' Five years ago when parents came to view my school,' says Mark.
' I would have said look for curriculum and variety.
Since we've had children, however, it's just made me brutally aware that fundamentally what we want is our children to be happy and fulfilled' From rational professionals to emotional time bombs in two easy births.
Bring on the orphans is what I say.
Source...