This half term is dragging...

Have been back a day - novelty has faded.

Ignore previous post. Just want to sleep.

Good to be back...

Quite excited about the start of the new half term. Five crisp shirts in the wardrobe and the suit has been dry cleaned. All lessons planned and I'm fully rested. In a more innocent age I used to sing the Gary Glitter song that goes "Hello! Hello! Good to be back, good to be back Hello! Hello! Good to be back, good to be back" at the start of each half term, but these days you cannot be too sure who is listening!

Tuesday is Pancake day which makes the week even more special.

Still, by the end of Wednesday I'll be counting the weeks until Easter.

As an atheist I spend a great deal of time looking forward to religious festivals!

Common Sense

The BBC tells us that "Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says it is unacceptable for parents not to know what their children are up to at night. " Well few would disagree. So let's do something about it. Any under 16 (or a 16 year old still in compulsory education) who is out without a responsible after 10pm is taken home and parents get a £80 fine. No flim flam - do it to everyone. Double it to £16o if they are out and have alcohol with them. I for one get a bit fed up of teaching hung-over children.

Last month I asked a 15 year old why she looked so tired on a Wednesday morning. The answer - she was still drunk from the night before.

Back to 1979

Grass-roots Conservatives are already calling for an attack on public services. Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome is saying that an attack on public services will be vital after the next election and that Cameron should tell the voters about it during the campaign. I hope that Mr Cameron is ready to say which hospitals, schools and fire stations he is going to close. Who will not get a care home place and who will die from lack of medical treatment. If not he should stand down and let someone else have a go.

Little Rock all over again.

The Daily Telegraph is all in a huff about the allocation of school places by lottery. In the front-page story they worry that middle-class kids are losing out because they cannot get into the best schools - schools their parents have paid for via expensive houses in good parts of town.

The Telegraph rants that "pupils applying for places this year could effectively have their futures decided "by the roll of a dice". As opposed to the much fairer system of allocating places according to how much you can pay for a house. They go on to point out that "Children can be forced to travel several miles every day after being turned down by their local school" - this happens whatever the selection criteria. Indeed, middle-class parents often subject their children to long journeys to attend "good" or private schools - but that's clearly not a problem. Neither is telling lies about where a child lives, or their religion, or their membership of the Scouts and Guides.

They quote Robert McCartney, the head of the National Grammar Schools Association:"There is something mildly offensive about a child's future being decided by nothing more than the roll of a dice." - as opposed to flawed 11+ exam. Incidentally, in a selective system students have to travel miles to grammar schools as they rarely close to their homes.

The English Education system operates on a "separate but equal" basis - but like its counterpart in 1950s America it is separate but not equal. More poor kids go to crap schools than rich ones. Where you are born and the family you are born into shapes your educational chances and that's not right. If children were treated in this way because of the colour of their skin there would, quite rightly, be an outrage. However, the size of a family's income is seen as a more acceptable basis for discrimination.

Bible Stories

The Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, has told the BBC that students do not know the Bible or tales of ancient myths and legends and that this make teaching literature hard.

This reminds me of an incident during a long-ago Ofsted inspection. The subject inspector (who followed me around like a shadow for a full week) came to my lesson on Monday period 1. It was a dark overcast day and the students were looking at the language and style employed by Martin Luther King in his March on Washington Speech. The sixth formers were loyal and wanted to do well, but struggled with the Biblical references. I tried to move around what was quite a big group and encourage them, but like Alistair Campbell, they didn't "do God".

Eventually the inspector moved around the room and settled on one student. We shall call her Sarah. He asked Sarah where some of the phrases came from. "You may recognise them from Handel's Messiah", she said. The inspector smiled. He was happy that she knew "something". He beamed when Sarah added that in fact they were references to the Bible. He almost collapsed when she quoted Chapter and Verse. Sarah was a strong Catholic and the only student who knew what the hell King was referring to. The inspector left a happy man.

Some years later Sarah wrote to me. She had gone off and done great things and thanked me for my support. The letter started with "You probably do not remember me..." - but I will never forget the Christian who saved this atheist from an Ofsted Inspector's wrath. That lesson set the tone and the final report cited the lesson as good practice.

Maybe all Mr Motion needs is a Sarah in every class - not only to raise the "God Quota" but also to lift his flagging spirits with a thank-you letter some years later.

Nick Seaton Strikes Again

Nick Seaton, of the "Campaign For Real Education", has posted on today's ConservativeHome that the apostrophe is under threat from local authorities. Yes, it seems that as well as collecting our rubbish, gritting our roads, teaching our children and lighting our streets, local councils are now on a mission to scrap the apostrophe. Well it's good to see that councils are no longer trying to make us all be gay or live in nuclear free zones - they seem to have lowered their sights. In an attempt to become grammar's answer to Pastor Martin Niemöller he claims: "Get rid of apostrophes, then the use of commas and full stops (already happening in many schools and colleges) and what happens to accurate spelling?"

Once again the ConservativeHome team have allowed Nick to make sweeping assertions about teaching and learning in schools, only this time they have let him make sweeping statements about local councils in general.

But it gets worse. He starts to see this so called problem as a threat to society as we know it:

Defending apostrophes and other punctuation is not mere pedantry. Some places have a King's Road and a Kings Road. Lacking a full postcode, which does an ambulance head for in an emergency?

Oh I can just see it now:

Caller: "Hello 999. I'm on Kings Road and there is a serious accident, lots of blood, fire, death and chaos."
Operator: "Is that with or without the apostrophe?"
Caller: "It's the one in the centre of town near Boots"
Operator: "Sorry can't help without the apostrophe information - they'll all have to die."

Or what about his claim:

Ambivalence about spelling is dangerous too. What if a doctor proscribes a drug for someone because they have a life-threatening allergy? Make a mistake about one letter and turn proscribe into prescribe and serious consequences are almost inevitable.

Does he really think doctors use these two words in notes. No of course not - but is makes misspelling scary! Use -ly instead of -ley and the bogie man will get you!

Spelling matters - teachers say so!

Lookalikes

I am a great fan of political blogs (of all colours) and Xbox 360 games. I have been playing Civilization and noticed that the scientist on the game bears a striking resemblance to Kerron Cross, the Labour Blogger. Follow the link and see if you agree.

Credit Crunch

The BBC are running this story about kids being worried about the recession. Well it's certainly playing on their mind. Two year 7s were walking past my room and one asked the other for a crisp. The crisp laden child gave the other a small crumb from his jumbo-sized packed. His friend moaned at the rather me meagre offering. "Credit crunch init", replied his friend.

By the way - I should have stopped them eating crisps on the corridor, but I did not. By all accounts my lack of action undermines everyone else and helps create chaos. For that I apologise.

Sheer nonsense - Yes I know it's unoriginal!

The BBC have a story about Sir Alan Sheer's report into poor behaviour in schools. It looks to me as if he wants more scare resources diverted away from the classroom and pumped into a small number of badly behaved students.

This part of the Sir Alan's report is nearly, and I stress nearly, right. He accepts that schools cannot cope with such behaviour. Well done. That's not because we are hopeless, it's because we have other things to do - like teach the mass of the populaiton who behave and want to learn. Take the thugs away and give them proper support - but don't do it schools. Give them medical or behavioural modification treatment in places where throwing chairs, spitting, swearing, hitting biting and kicking can take place without risking the health, education and safety of the bulk of the population. Let's face it - no matter how much help we give very disruptive kids they will not be sured over night and so will continue to disrupt lessons, damage life chances, waste resources and cause stress.

One more thing - Keep those bloody social workers away from my classroom Sir Alan.

Telling Phibbs - Puntastic!

A bit sad to see that Cllr Harry Phibbs over at ConservativeHome is suggesting that children in care be put into boarding schools. Why should looked after children be pushed into institutions like this. They surely need to enjoy some form of stable family life and not be pushed into boarding schools for 2/3 of the year. What is more, a disproportionate number of Looked After Children have special needs. I wander if these public schools would want to take them in and depress their league tables. I think not!

Basking In the Sun

Looking at the case of the 13-year old who has become a dad after making a baby at 12 made me think about the whole sex-edcuation thing. Do schools do a good job in this field. Well may be not in this case I thought. Maybe if his primary school had bought as set of these dolls from Hong Kong, the whole thing could have been avoided.

But then I had to ask: How many days off school did this boy have? How much parenting took place? Is he so stupid not to know what happens if you have sex? - the vast majority of 12-year olds know full well that a+b=c! Does putting him on the front page of The Sun and making him naitonal news really help discourage none-too-bright celebrity-seeking teenagers from having babies.

In the end though, this is a non-story - the fact that it is news shows us how rare it is and therefore maybe not a problem. When politicians like Balls and Cameron appear on the news talking about it they give it an importance that it does not merit and maybe, like the Sun make some youngsters think this could be a route to attention and fame that they crave so much, but do not get at home.

Hello, Mr Chips

Here we go! I have been dithering about it for about 12 months and I am ready to blog. So, with half term upon us I have made the leap.

By the way - I hate half term. I'm always ill and have piles of marking. By the time my virus has passed and the work is done it's time to go back. I feel robbed.