Wednesday, March 19, 2008

News

Sorry I've not posted for a few days but I got stuck inside my divan bed whilst playing hide and seek with my nieces. It was a stupid hiding place- God knows where they got the idea from.

Here's a quick roundup of the latest daftness going on in schools:

1) Parents are lying to get their children into decent schools Well blow me down! Of course they do; they make up false addresses, rent flats in the school's catchment area for six months and pretend to live there, print out fake Council Tax bills on their computers and even offer money to complete strangers if they will claim to have done a house exchange. They promise a donation towards the new school minibus or if all else fails, offer the Head some cash over a quiet drink.

I know all this because I have shown friends how to do it. My advice is simple: do whatever it takes to send your child to a decent school.

2) Pupils who make malicious allegations against teachers should be put on a list Absolutely right and the numerous Teachers Unions have been saying that for years and will continue to say it for ever more, but do absolutely nothing. They could set up their own website tomorrow if they wanted to. In fact feel free to use the 'Rate My Pupil' section on my blog.

It's the same story with the endless moaning about the Rate my Teacher website. Sabotaging it or rendering it completely useless would be easy, but would require action which is always harder than just complaining.

3) Schools Minister Jim Knight thinks that classes of 70 are just fine He is as mad as a fish. My Granny was taught in classes of up to 100 and can read and write better than your average 16 year old (despite leaving at the age of 11) but their teachers simply beat the living daylights out of the naughty kids, whereas we are told to empathise with them and dream up excuses for their attitude. I've taught classes of 7 and been unable to prevent screaming mayhem. Most teachers in crap schools are ashamed to admit this sort of thing, but if you are a parent then it's important that you realise that it happens every day.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

My advice is simple: do whatever it takes to send your child to a decent school.

I followed your advice. I pay school fees.

BLISS

No SATS, no targets, no arse-witted initiatives, no disruptive little tw4ts in the classroom. Just hundreds of happy, well-behaved kids in classes of up to 45.

My children are happy, motivated, hard working, not interested in the telly, and well behaved.

No, it's not because I'm a super parent. It's because my wife and I sold our cars and now cycle to work in order to pay the school fees.

Anonymous said...

Would you like to know a really nasty little story? Four years ago, a 16 year old girl at our local comprehensive decided she was "in love" with the music master. She'd already been gently told by the French teacher that her behaviour towards him was imappropriate and although he was flattered, he would be breaking the law if he reciprociated. Very clever, and it flattered the little minx - I've known her since was three and she's always been a spoilt and self absorbed brat. The music master happened to be gay (couldn't care less, he is a good teacher) and told this child to stop being silly. Wrong way to go about this spawn, Sir! She started to tease him and wind him up in her tutor class and eventually she was removed from his tutor class. This is unheard of at our school. Only leaving school, pupil or teacher, ends the tutoring system at UpItself College. Now it so happened that the unfortunate man had left his email address up for music activites information. Madam sees a way to get her own back on him and forges an email address for a boy in the attempt to intice the unfortunate teacher into a honey trap which he duly feel into, whereat this little bitch announces that her former tutor is a paedophile! He was very lucky in that the school, staff and pupils and a lot of parents supported him. How was she punished? She was not invited to join the sixth form and that the only reason she wasn't excluded was because she was doing her GCSES! Is it just me that finds her actions positively evil?

oldandrew said...

Regarding classes of 7:

I had a class of 7 for my year 11 class today. I had to send 2 out for being rude to me. I did provoke them. I asked them to do some work on the last day of term.

Perhaps I should have just asked them to bring in toys?

Ranting Teacher said...

Class of 7 + full moon rising + last day of term + special needs diagnosis for more than half the class = headbanging, yelling and screaming, and manic laughter. And that was just me.

Anonymous said...

I'm not a teacher but if you have a class of 70 doesn't that mean 4 set of homework times 70 to mark each night?

I've just been to a parents evening and it was organised chaos. How would parents evening happen if someone taught a class of 70?

Sounds like we would need a rift in the space time continuum to a universe with 52 hour days and 10 day weeks.

It sounds like a typical headline grabbing ploy by an ignorant shiny arse.

Anonymous said...

Hi, Frank! I've just ordered a second copy as my 20 year old daughter got half way through the one I almost certainly bought but lent to my parents and they didn't return it, on Sunday. She was shoved into the lowest band at senior school as her middle school teacher hated her (it was mutual). She was pushed up two sets as soon as she'd been at senior school for 6 weeks, with everybody saying "Why on earth is she in this stream?" (I still have the form). She says you have got it spot on about badly behaved classes - and this is UpItself College which has broken into the top 200 comprehensives - God help all teachers!

Anonymous said...

More daftness (from Scotland).

The Other Half and I went to our local primary school for a morning workshop aimed at explaining the transition from nursery to primary.

It wasn't too bad—even good in places—apart from the total fluffy muppet of a P1 teacher who alternated between saying "I don't want to patronise you, but..." and "I'm sure you already do this, so I won't tell you anything you don't know".

What was revealing came at the end of the workshop when the school's deputy head urged all the parents present to sign the attendance register.

She said it was vital that we all signed as part of their funding is dependent on the number of parents attending workshops like this. It's something to do with being to able "evidence successful school-customer partnerships".

Say what? School funding is dependent on parental attendance? What stupid apparatchik came up with that?

Our local school is fortunate to be in a rural area with a lot of housewives who don't work in paid jobs. That meant quite a good turnout—they're expecting 30-40 children in the intake and had about 25 parents present.

I'm a crofter so I could reorganise my day to suit, my Other Half is a teacher and was able to get a couple of hours off, and about six more parents were able to wangle time off too. The rest were stay-home mums.

But if the school had been in a more commuter-belt/urban area with more single, working parents and more working couples, attendance would have been much, much lower.

The result is that our school gets more funding because our local demographic means more parents can attend, while others miss out because parents can't.

We have another two workshops coming up and we, the Other Half and I, had planned to do one each. We'll now both have to attend both to help keep the numbers and funding up, as will many other parents.

One lady, a nurse, was trying to work out how she could change her shifts and her husband's so they could both come, too. Again, she didn't want to school to miss out on funding (and it was clear from the location of the workshop—the school library—that it needs the money).

The more you think about funding based on parental attendance, the more stupid it is. I suppose that's why it appeals to the stupid ****s who now run everything.

Oh, and we also had to fill in a customer feedback form, too, so the authorities could analyse our response. I was about to write "what a load of bollocks" on the form, until I realised the numpties would think i was writing about the school and not them.

(And a quick laugh after that bitter rant. The word verification is reading "havuvd"! )