Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Truancy

So the truancy figures haven't gone down after ten years of throwing money down the drain. Here's what should happen in my opinion:

Pass a simple law that says any child found truanting should be arrested along with their parents and made to spend a whole day from 8 until 6 in a blank room with no windows, doing the most boring activities that the teacher (who swaps every hour) can come up with. Parents employers informed, £50 fine taken from wages or Benefits. Believe me they would never, ever do it again. Total cost- a couple of million in overtime for the teachers.

Here's what happens at the moment:

Pupil truants and parents deny it, come up with some lame excuse or just say that they can't control their brat. If the pupil truants repeatedly (say 500 times) then the school can beg their Education Welfare Officer to beg the Council to take the parents to Court. The EWO finds some reason why she can't do it so the teachers beg again, and again. A year later the EWO eventually agrees.

Six months later...

Council decline to take parents to Court. (Parent is mad/has promised to improve/is drunk)
Pupil truants another 500 times, school begs etc.
Council take parents to Court. Parents given a stern warning to improve.
Pupil attends school for a month.
Pupil then starts truanting and the whole process starts all over again. (Unless the child is in the last two years of school in which case nobody even bothers as the Council won't try to prosecute because of the time delay in going to court.)

Total cost of various ludicrous initiatives, vandalism, muggings and burglary committed by truants-£Billions.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Hmmm...

Well, so much for the Telly. I thought they edited out all the good bits and just showed me as a whining teacher, or even worse 'a victim'; which is certainly not what I wanted.

Still I suppose that's the viewpoint they were after, and as more experienced people have said; you get what they wish to portray, not what you want to say. I was probably naive to imagine anything else, so hey-ho.

It's pretty dumbed down TV though isn't it? I'd never seen it before.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

The Man on the Telly

If you're not doing anything tomorrow (Wednesday) at seven, you can see me ranting incoherently to Angelica Bell on the One Show (BBC1). We filmed for about twenty minutes and they will edit it down to about four, so I've no idea what it will be like. Hopefully they will keep in the bit where I leap in front of Angelica to save her from being eaten by a crazed dog. Well that's my side of the story anyway...

Oh. I'm the one with the red woolly hat. It was freezing.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Ashes to Ashes

If your average Head was a bit more like Gene Hunt and a bit less like Frank Spencer, then we would not need to spend a small fortune on teacher recruitment adverts.

Monday, February 04, 2008

Turn Your Talent To Teaching

I heard one of the new teacher recruitment adverts today on the radio. A cheerful sounding fellow was explaining about how many galaxies there were to a spellbound class (apart from one wag who very politely asked had he seen them all, Sir?) He claimed to have once been an astrophysicist, which got me thinking:

How many ex-astrophysicists are teaching in the State Comps?

Maybe if you had been caught pointing your telescope at the local gym's outdoor aerobics class, then I suppose you might be asked to look elsewhere for a job. Although to be fair, the Government seems to be doing its best to get scientists to consider other careers by cutting £68 million off the Science budget

Also, if you made a joke about calling a galaxy 'Fred' to a group who were intelligent enough to be listening, then I don't think they would politely laugh; I reckon they would just think that you were a prat.