What it's all about!

A week off - lovely. Don't believe a word of what any teacher says when they say that the best thing about the job isn't the holidays, it's the positive effect they have on the children they teach. They are lying, probably not intentionally, because they may genuinely believe what they are saying. But if the holidays were reduced to 5 weeks per year, they would be doing something else. Those children they've been waxing lyrical about will still require the "positive effect", but no-one would do the job apart from sadists.

I intend to do little, in fact, no schoolwork this half term, although I may venture near the school at some point as I may need to get somewhere nearby. I need to check what my IT class are moving onto having delivered their (frankly awful) presentations in the final lesson before half term. I must admit that having studied the data on my IT class I wasn't expecting great things, but their total lack of listening skills when the instructions were given at the beginning of every one of their last 15 lessons is astounding. Fortunately I can't see many of the class having to give a presentation during their working life, although I'm happy to be proven wrong.

There's a local private/public school also off on half term, where day pupils are charged around £18k per year. They have two weeks off for half term because this is such a long term - it's called the Advent term in public schools. Poor little darlings, but if my child went to the school, and having done a quick mental calculation on hours spent in school, I would question the justification of this 2 week half term. Having said that, the children who go there are almost certainly guaranteed good qualifications (although one can't polish a turd, hence the entrance exam to weed those who will fail exams out) due to class sizes being much less than 30, and therefore the teacher can actually help you if you are stuck. The teacher's don't have their time taken up with pointless stuff such as performance management and delivering formative feedback that is ignored, so the teachers can concentrate on what they are paid to do, namely teach rather than dig their way out of red tape and educational faeces.

I may be off work at the moment, but work isn't leaving me alone. I normally scour my Sunday paper for education-based stories, but the cupboard was bare, until I opened the local rag only to see a still from CCTV footage released by British Transport Police in conjunction with a bag stolen from a local train. The two young girls in the picture rang a bell immediately (or at least one certainly did, with her distinctive hairdo) and I'm 99.9% sure that the girls are in our Year 10. I have informed the police. It's a tactic that our headteacher/deputy headteacher should maybe think about since there have been a number of incidents this term that should have involved the police (drugs and thefts namely) but the school has opted to carry out internal investigations.

You may well ask why the school doesn't involve the police. The answer is this:

BAD PRESS MUST BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS

Pathetic isn't it? All it means is that the problem will increase as a 5 day exclusion isn't really a deterrant as they will just practise FIFA12, whereas a criminal record might be. We get back to a lack of consequences for the actions of children who will probably go on to be criminals because they don't understand any different due to the fact that their actions as youths go essentially unpunished. Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but we learn from our mistakes when a fitting punishment is given. We learn nothing is no punishment ensues.

No doubt I'll be chastised when I get back to school for giving the school some bad press, but I reckon I'll sleep easier knowing that.