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Bring me a Shofar

28/5/2022

Looking forward to half term? I’m not following my usual May path of getting onto a train somewhere hot straight after school, but going to West Wales and back for the Jubilee. Time’s running out for us older folks – not including the Queen, of course – and I may safely bank on not seeing another Platinum Jubilee. It seemed churlish not to return to London to potter about in the crowds.

I like to do a bit of shopping on my hols, between books. Even a different supermarket is interesting to me and I’m a sucker for everything from weaving in the wilds to the magnificent pharmacies of France.

We’ve been having two different kinds of trouble with shopping here. The first is linked to two large shops of the modern type which opened opposite us but don’t really want children’s custom. I get that hordes of youths hell-bent on unhealthy snackage deters other shoppers who may have more cash. I know that handling teenagers isn’t to everyone’s taste and fear arouses anger which generates trouble, especially when highly caffeinated comestibles are in the case, but it's not as if the existence of the school was hidden to the planners. We are big enough to see.

Similar happened in my last school, with a magnet sixth form like Tallis, but gathering also from semi-rural areas. Young drivers couldn’t park in the car park but could in the local streets. This drove residents crazy. Yes, they needed practice parking tidily, but didn’t we all? Young citizens with full licences and insured cars also have parking rights. Responsible young shoppers, some picking up a few things for the family on the way home, could be allowed to go to the shops everyone else goes to, with a bit of planning. We’re working on it.

The second shopping trouble isn’t actually about the shopping. Our local parade, as local readers know, can be a troubled spot, so we operate a post-school curfew. From time to time, working with the police, we ban everyone for a day or two. This infuriates lots of people, but keeps our children safer for a while. Supervising the streets, however, is hard, and one of the things that would help is good CCTV. Some adults have strong feelings about being filmed: I have strong feelings about keeping children safe. We could work together on this.

Anyway, returning to the shopping, I am delighted to update you on Lord Agnew and his champagne. From Schools Week:

The government will not reveal its costcutting advisers’ recommendations to balance the books at two Hackney schools held up as success stories of the controversial scheme… [They] found savings totalling £303 million after visiting around 1,000 schools and trusts. Just £17 million of savings had been made six months after visits. But neither the DfE, the schools nor Hackney council – which commissioned the visits – would release the reports following a Freedom of Information request. Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “If you’re going to say that if you get these cost-cutters in you can all save money, then there absolutely is an obligation to say how it is done. An FOI previously revealed that the government’s own research indicated more than half of schools reported the advisers did not identify new ways of saving money.”

I expect the fridges full of Pol Roger are still humming along, if they weren’t raided for lockdown parties. Perhaps they were part of the Wine Time Friday fridge battery (WTF as the acronym apparently used, do they think we’re stupid?). Obviously they don’t have to worry about the electricity bill.

I look out of the window onto a sunny day and a sprinkling of cultural dress for the eponymous day. Does what I wear every day count for the cultural dress of an English Headteacher? An online assembly - we have to have them online at the moment because every space is taken up for exams, 22 room changes today - is about to start for year 10 on the Jubilee.

Bradshaw’s been delivering these assemblies which explain everything about the monarchy in 15 minutes. We start with the meaning of Jubilee, a concept first used about 2700 years ago, meaning a shout for joy which started a time of rejoicing or a time of release. After 7 years a year of Jubilee required people to review their community relationships and debts, even more so after 49 years. We could do with that.

When the Queen was 21 she made the famous speech in which she said:

I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service.

Which, monarchist or no, you have to admit has a better tone than either WTF, taxpayers or sorry we upset people, didn’t realise it was banned, didn’t know it was a party. Could we all perhaps try a little devotion to service?

There’s a Tallis English challenge for over the hols that invites age-appropriate use of 18 words. I’ve inaccurately divided them into two groups. For your Jubilee homework, which best fits the Queen and which best fits the government? Give reasons, 19 marks.

Gumption, humungous, iconic, lucid, esoteric, Zeitgeist
Kerfuffle, quaver, cantankerous, miffed, obsequious, discombobulate, defunct, collywobbles, capricious, ennui, idiosyncratic, ubiquitous, Zeitgeist

Jubilees in the ancient world started with a blast on the shofar. Find me a ram.

CR
27.5.22

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An Epilogue with Goats

15/5/2022

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On the day when ninety-one thousand civil service jobs were declared superfluous and a Russian tank battalion sank in the Sivertsy Donets we had our leavers’ assemblies. Shirt-signing in the yard and a big group photo, then into the hall. Frankly, I’d expected better weather. Some have been wearing sunhats for weeks, entirely unnecessarily. Anyway, the vibe was happy and this year’s fashion included shirts with golden names stuck on the back and some seemingly bespoke for the purpose of signing.

It's not the first time we’ve ever done these assemblies, but the echoes of Covid ring loud and long. While I was listening to the end of Ms taking leave of her year group, I was transported back two years, to a hastily-cobbled-together assembly in March 2020 to say goodbye to year 11 because lockdown was beginning and school was closing, suddenly. I felt quite queasy.

The day itself isn’t like leavers’ days of old. We don’t do lengthy study leave any more and this one was put in to mark the transition from the ordinary timetable to the exam prep sessions adjacent to the big days. The very do itself today abutted the first external exam just after lunchtime. Timing was key but the gods of Friday 13th will have their fun and we had a total AV and IT collapse at the very assembly when slideshows and photomontages with emotional soundtracks are de rigeur. Doughty Ms and her team had to busk while technicians of all kinds clustered around and eventually a trolley, like a mobile ICU, was rushed in. The careful dovetailing - getting Year 11 out so Year 13 can get in – all went to pot. I intervened and moved the boundaries. Everyone was supportive. Children of all ages and sizes had a lovely time. See you on Monday, exams are upon us.

Today, their tutors praised them and reminisced publicly. Some sang, some rapped, all gave awards – for character, and Goats. Goats were new to me as I don’t mix with sporting types, but it pleases me as an acronym and it worked for the tutors. Greatest Of All Time at….arguing, football, falling off chairs, organising, saying hello to everyone, looking after new people, keeping the peace, being tannoyed for, speaking the truth without fear or favour, looking good…. while Sir and Ms blinked back the tears.

These young people have had such a rocky time. We were interviewed by the BBC for a piece to go out on Monday about the return of exams, so I had seven in the Sports Hall yesterday pretending to sit at exam desks (‘Quick! No! Get tidier ones out!’). They all spoke urbanely and calmly about their preparation and how they’re feeling. Ready, but anxious. Who knew? The Beeb may have wanted something more hysterical, but we’re too cool for that. As the soundtrack to one of the slideshows today said:

Feeling my way through the darkness
Guided by a beating heart
I can't tell where the journey will end
But I know where to start

I think they do. I hope they do. But the world they navigate is more difficult than it used to be and harder than it needs to be. Our national discourse is polarised and unreasonable and no one cares about the example that sets young people. Measured argument is rare, and the things the adolescent brain likes – a laugh, a bold insight, a new fact, a bit of outrage – have run riot like knotweed. It takes real commitment and determination to want to see the full scope of an issue, to want to create a thoughtful, reasoned view without being ridiculed, to resist the superficial, the easy answers. It’s so hard when you’re young and don’t know anything else.

Today would have been my grandmother’s 121st birthday, but, obviously, she isn’t around to blow out what would be an impressive range of candles. She was a clever girl from a modest background who became a teacher. She used to quote poetry and I think I first heard Masefield’s Epilogue with her Geordie accent. It's not a piece I recite to children because they might think I’m making personal remarks, which we’re stamping out at Tallis. But it’s what I thought of today when I watched six hundred young people emerge from the hall, rubbing their eyes in the sudden sunlight and wondering what will happen next.

I have seen flowers come in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces,
And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,
So I trust, too.

CR
13.5.22

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Frolics and Detours

3/5/2022

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I am indebted in this blog to Paul Muldoon’s volume of poetry of the same title, and, in particular, his 1916: the Eoghan Rua Variations. In it, he discusses the contrary nature of the longevity of English power in Ireland. Caesar and Alexander fell, so why not the English? Well worth a read.
Faber London 2019 ISBN 978-0-571-35499-8.

Now the world’s been brought low. The wind’s heavy with soot.
Alexander and Caesar. All their retinue.
We’ve seen Tara buried in grass, Troy trampled underfoot.
The English? Their days are numbered too’

Some people are a pundit’s gift. Social Mobility Chair Katherine Birbalsingh is a worthy successor to Lord Agnew and Gavin Williamson in these Pulitzer-worthy pieces. You’ll recall that I heard her say (to a thousand school leaders) that she didn’t know what the Social Mobility Commission was doing? This week she’s said that she has no idea how DfE White Paper GCSE targets can be met, and that fewer girls choose physics because “physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy……they don’t like it. There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think they would rather not do.” This she backs up fully with detailed evidence: “The research generally … just says that’s a natural thing….I don’t think there’s anything external.” Surely her days are numbered?

As the Grauniad said, this prompted anger from leading scientists.

‘Dame Athene Donald, a professor of experimental physics and master of Churchill College, Cambridge, said the comments were “terrifying” and “quite damaging” and questioned to which research Birbalsingh was referring in suggesting that girls had an intrinsic lack of appetite for maths and physics.

Dr Jess Wade, a physicist at Imperial College London who campaigns for equality in science, said: “I honestly can’t believe we’re still having this conversation. It’s patronising, it’s infuriating, and it’s closing doors to exciting careers in physics and engineering for generations of young women. Whilst girls and boys currently choose A-level subjects differently, there is absolutely no evidence to show intrinsic differences in their abilities or preference.”

Rachel Youngman, the deputy chief executive of the Institute of Physics, said: “The IOP is very concerned at the continued use of outdated stereotypes as we firmly believe physics is for everyone regardless of their background or gender.”

Surely the inevitable will eventually take its course? Surely she’ll eventually be moving along?

Sadly, as with the PM, no one is surprised. KB was the Deputy Head who sank her own school at the Conservative Party Conference in 2011. Four years later she set up a Free School and now calls herself the strictest headmistress in the country, as if that doesn’t raise more questions than it answers. Invited to reflect on the scalability of her model, she says – all schools should be like mine, look at the quality of the artwork. (This echoes her 2011 claim that children in state schools didn’t read whole books, in comparison to fee-paying children who might read four or six a year). What? I saw the artwork, which was nice, but lots of us have remarkable teachers eliciting fabulous stuff. Many of our students would think four to six books a year pretty thin stuff. Her pronouncements are often met with well-raised eyebrows. Surely one day she’ll have to give up?

I wonder. We have a DfE which appears to be better led in the ‘I want this: Ofsted will inspect it and I’ll name and shame those who aren’t managing it’ style. Around, above and below sit all kinds of Tsars and Tsarinas, favourite MATs and pseudo-research. KB is, to the current government, a very attractive figurehead for the not-very Tory endeavour of social mobility, her media-savvy performances a wonderful distraction from the job in hand. Just like the PM.

And yet why say that about girls? KB’s school-based pronouncements about the need for total control and discipline are all about clearing a space for potentially disadvantaged students to not-fail. Because they aren’t given any choice, they are freed to achieve. It is an argument, certainly. So why doesn’t it work for girls doing physics? Shouldn’t the same lie in store for girls with no family history or university or science thinking about storming that citadel? As Mandela said, freedom is indivisible. You can’t raise the economically disadvantaged while oppressing those disadvantaged by gender. Why would you?

Part of me wonders, flying in the face of the political zeitgeist, if this latest set of gaffes might dislodge her from favour. Perhaps the cup might pass to someone else’s more reliable lips? Perhaps she’ll get what’s coming to her? Then I look hard at the evidence before me and the sorry context in which we’re in and give myself a shake. Personal integrity is less important than a snappy soundbite: blame and distancing are more worthwhile than trying to solve an intractable problem; sounding iconoclastic is all that matters. Brexit happened thus, and we sink under its weight.

Clever people don’t make accidental gaffes. The PM has never said anything he didn’t mean to say, whether he meant it or not. Oxford-graduate KB may or may not care about girls in physics, but she cares hugely about herself, her profile and her future. Raising the numbers of girls in A level physics and Further Maths has been a long and painful journey for all thinking schools. I wonder if she knows this, has tried her best and not-quite succeeded? She’s had all the plaudits for so long that perhaps she can’t risk-assess admitting failure.

The world’s topsy-turvy, though. This dust’s the dust that fanned
Caesar and Alexander as each gained ground.
Tara’s under pasture. At Troy, it's clear how things stand.
For the English, their time will come around.

Where next? From Social Mobility Tsar to oblivion, the Lords or a safe seat? I don’t think she need worry. I think she can say what she likes. I’ll keep you informed.

CR
29.4.22

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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

Bring me a Shofar

An Epilogue with Goats

Frolics and Detours

MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

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