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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

Poetic Diversion

13/3/2024

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I wrote about teachers and thought I’d finished, but my poetry correspondent sent something to share. What? Well, I’m truly sorry if you don’t have a poetry correspondent. They’ll serve for a small retainer or a large drink and will hold you to account for Every Thought. 

This poem’s by Roger Garfitt, who I’ll grant isn’t a household name. Even more obscurely, it’s about another similar, Paul Francis, ‘on his retirement as Secretary of Border Poets’. A niche, I know, but we need nice niches in terrible times.

Tunnelling determinedly into obscurity, the poem’s about a conversation between two other poets - but now we’re motoring. This pair are favourites: the magnificently impenetrable Geoffrey Hill and the slightly-less-so David Harsent. Hill’s departed to hassle the hereafter, but Harsent’s still among us, with a lovely mane. Here is it in full.

You and I come from the same stock, David. What changed

your life? Geoffrey asked. For me it was the 11-plus.
Not so for David, who’d fallen downstairs the week
before the exam. And the 13+ only took him to Aylesbury
Tech, chose by his parents over the Royal Grammar School,
High Wycombe, because Aylesbury was where they did
their shopping. What changed David’s life was getting a job
in the local bookshop after he’d left school at sixteen.
 
And so they chatted, the policeman’s son and the bricklayer’s
son, at the Reception at the Palace for Fifty British Poets.
You and I were not among them, Paul, but I remember
the passion with which you spoke of the vision that led
your generation to teach in comprehensive schools,
the sense that change was there for the making – the chance
you took again with the Border Poets, to catch the undertones
in the landscape, the lives lived almost out of earshot.
 
Why am I inflicting this upon you? Let me count the ways. 

I’m delighted by the semi-debunking of the rosy post-war Grammar School story. It didn’t work for everyone, and the injustice of a child’s future being decided on one day – stairs notwithstanding – still shocks. I love the move to the passion for comprehensive schools and the vision of a slightly younger generation, of people throwing themselves at a better world. I’m poleaxed by the last line.

These febrile times allow the loud, the powerful and the wacky to dominate national discourse. I write just after the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister, disparaged the nation to the rest of the world, saying we’ve been highjacked by extremists. Our eardrums can barely bear the dog whistle frequency. Last week the Chancellor offers tax cuts despite wrecked public services clearly visible to the rest of us. No money for education, bar drop-in-the-ocean funding for twenty special schools and a terrifying trailer for a public sector productivity plan.  No living soul knows what that means, but it lands with the authentic klump of bad news.

The dream of the comprehensive school is for everyone: the quiet, the shouty, the struggling and the successful: the advantaged, the lost, the quick and the thoughtful. It gives everyone a chance, and puts change within reach of the whole community. That’s not just exam results but through knowing and being embedded in a community within a community, of living as well as learning.

So, thank you to the poets who illuminate our lives and the teachers who devote themselves, their love and their skills to the potential lived just out of earshot. They make sure that children are seen, known and loved. Despite everything, they know that change is there for the making, if not in this generation, then surely in the next.
 
CR 6.3.24               
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Dipsticks

22/5/2021

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Not that you’re interested, but I have an aversion to clipboards. When a bright young thing proposed improvements to our walkabout procedures demanding clipboard use, I decried the plan. However, the second half of same plan proposed walky-talkies which are unendurable so I wound my neck in and compromised on the clips.  As it happens, it’s worked a treat.

Once I’d recovered from that, A Paper I Don’t Buy appeared on my dinner table courtesy of a visit from my mother-in-law. It had a front page news story about online parents’ evenings. These, says the Recovery Tsar, are the answer to a problem I’m pretty certain has never previously hit the front page, secondary school parents’ evenings’ congestion. Slick software doles out time in packaged 5-minute blocks that the most loquacious pedagogue or parent can’t subvert. All schools are trying this. Conversations are focused, what’s not to like?

Oh tell us, Luddite, I hear you groan, above the wind outrageously buffeting year seven happily around the yard.
My own children were at the school I last led so their father did parents’ evenings. He had a flexible job, a speedy bicycle, a notebook he used each year, a preference for facts over speculation and a brisk manner. Online parents’ evenings would suit him just fine. Not perhaps so for other parents who like to get to know a teacher, or are less confident being upfront about what they want to know, or shy, or worried, bewildered, at home in another language, without hardware or software or the leisure to learn how to use it. Or who just prefer the humanity of face-to-face meetings.

The story in the paper took a particular view of parents’ evenings focusing on what a pain it is to find a parking space and how annoying the queues are. Really? I know people who’ll queue round the block to get into a cool new restaurant or buy a street food shrimpburger. Music festivals and holiday parks are just one long queue with intermittent entertainment. Why is a queue to talk to your child’s teacher suddenly the worst thing in the world?
I’m undecided on online parents’ evenings so far, but I know that some people can’t use them and some people might never enter their children’s school that’s the solution, which would be a loss. I was shocked that the Tsar declared himself so early and immoderately in favour, bedecking himself with flimsy middle-class tropes. It didn’t look as though he was using a very long dipstick and it made me think the less of him.

I also thought: front page? Who owns the software?

Today brought a piece from another news provider which used public sources to tot up which individuals have the most impact at the jolly old Dept for Ed. There are five of them, not including the Recovery Tsar, though the pointy-elbowed so-called Behaviour Tsar is right in amongst it. Even looking at the next few on the list aren’t very representative. I reckon only one-and-a-bit of them actually work in a school, and one of the others certainly has a software interest. What kind of dipsticks are they?

Down among the oily parts on planet Tallis we’re coping with imponderables. First, Teacher-Assessed Grades. This is hours upon hours of work the exam boards, whom we are still paying in full, usually do. Second, Covid. Despite the national cheeriness we’ve had an upsurge in cases. Every one has an effect on our community, of lost teacher or learner time and having to make do as best we can. Third, terrible weather.

Here’s what could help us. Exam boards giving us some money back or at the very least stopping saying that they’re also working harder than usual, which can’t possibly be true. An end to stop presses that teachers can’t assess fairly and will only give the right grades to clever pleasant students, as if we were all corrupt or stupid. A moratorium on doomsday forecasts of the effect of lost learning on poor children’s futures: social mobility had stopped long before everyone started coughing. No lemming-rush towards social mixing and foreign holidays. Some sunshine on the yard.

I overtook a pair of ambling year 12s on my way out of the rain this week. The shorter, not a model of industry in year 11, said to the taller ‘It is what it is. You’ve just got to get on with it.’ I backed this sound general advice so he offered me more ‘He’s a capable lad. He just needs to stick in’ as if he were a forty-year classroom veteran.  Reaching the hall I goggled at ENTRANCE and EXIT ONLY signs, next to each other on the same door. In staying phlegmatic under ridiculously competing vicissitudes, I have much to learn from the young.

I’m perfectly happy with party politics and a free press. I put up with exam-obsessed schooling and I’ve even grown to love a clipboard. What I cannot bear is a feeling that decisions are made by or to placate people at such a distance from schools that you can’t see them with a telescope. Here’s a message for all Tsars and the ministers who own them:  stop justifying yourselves and endure with us for a while. Develop a preference for facts over speculation. Find a longer dipstick.
 
CR
21.5.21
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The calm before...

6/9/2017

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Welcome to new readers. I write a blog at least once a fortnight and more often if I feel particularly opinionated about something. Some blogs contain useful information, but there’s a lot of that elsewhere on the website, so these pieces are reflections on the state of education as seen, 39 weeks a yea,r on Kidbrooke Park Road.
This week’s piece is in two parts. Part 1 is before our children come back to us, part 2 after. I’ll tell you how the day went!
 
September 6th 2017 part 1

We’ve talked and tidied and ourselves for two days since the holidays ended and now we’re ready to welcome our young people back. We think we’re ready now, so we’ll fling wide the gates and get the show on the road for another year. Term begins with welcomes to new starters – largely year 7 and year 12 – lots of assemblies, raucous and refined reunions, some tears (from anxious parents) and a lot of hugging. Day 1 is peak hug, which is saying something.

Saying goodbye in the summer term is a really strange experience. We have a lovely last morning, a bit of a celebration and then everyone walks away and disappears back into the undergrowth. People joke about schools being very peaceful without children but actually, they’re not schools at all without children, just big public buildings filled with emptiness and unanswered questions. Two odd ones today. What’s the difference between a noticeboard and a sound baffle? and Have we enough desks?  I’ve never given the former a moment’s thought or thought to worry about the latter. I expect it’ll all be fine. What if I’m wrong?  No-one’ll be able to hear anything and everyone’ll have to squash up for a day or so. Of all the things I lost sleep over in August, they didn’t remotely feature. Cripes.

September is simultaneously the best and worst time to do new things in school. It’s the obvious time because it’s good to make improvements with a fresh start, and the worst because the holidays wipe your memory and you can’t remember the motivation for arcane changes. How did we say we’d avoid that bottleneck? No, really? Cor blimey. A new rota, please, pronto.

I’m not so cavalier about the other questions we think about before the year begins. Why are we teachers? What are we doing it for? What do we really want for our nations’ young people? Do we have any way at all of measuring it? I’ve not written yet about this year’s exam results, apart from the information on the website here. In a nutshell? Sixth form results were jolly good again, with lots of young people getting a great boost into next thing. Year 11 results are a bit impenetrable this year, as Mr Tomlin’s Q and A document explains here: everything’s changed again and will change again again next year. In both sets of results some amazing achievements at all levels, some triumphs against adversity, some just deserts, some inexplicables, some wild inaccuracy, some re-marks. Is it too soon to hope for a new emphasis on our children as children, not examination yields?

If only other education stories in the news had been so equivocal. In what seemed like three ghastly days we had scandals about pay, exams and sixth form admissions. I expect that parents are at a loss as to what Heads think they’re doing?  May I offer a thought?  If, nationally, we can’t agree whether it’s important to hitch up our international PISA scores or worry about children’s mental health, in a system so deregulated that no one can speak for anyone else, we shouldn’t be surprised if people make odd decisions. Confused? Who isn’t? Let me get back to my sound baffles.

We’ve committed ourselves at Tallis this week to keeping our eyes firmly on our children as children, on what they need to fulfil themselves today and this year. We’re thinking about our broad curriculum, our commitment to inclusion and our diverse community. We’re thinking about persistence, discipline, imagination, collaboration and inquisitiveness. We’re concentrating on kindness, fairness, respect, honesty and cheerfulness. We’ll do that all year, every year, and we’ll teach our young people everything we know. At a time of nuclear threat and wickedness the world over, we’ll strengthen their hands through education so they understand the world and can change it for the better. 

CR 5.9.17
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Sorry

18/10/2015

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My Apologies

​Cultural notes 1: we had Radio 3 and the BBC Concert Orchestra live from Tallis launching the 10 Pieces secondary project. 21 young people played with the orchestra and the jazz group did their cool stuff. Potential highlight of the year and it's only October? Notes 2: theatre lovers are too late to go see Rob Brydon in Future Conditional at the Old Vic, remarkable because it doesn't put a foot wrong about education. Admissions, snobbery, state v private, teacher workload, culture and learning all covered sensibly. There's a wonderful section where teacher Brydon is compelled to write an apology to a parent and muses aloud about what he's sorry for. Sorry about the mother's life and the failure of hopes and dreams, sorry about the state of the world and the injustices of society, sorry about what a child seems doomed to turn into. ​
We've been apologising at Tallis this week. Year 7 had local history walks  last week (not all at once, you understand, that would be lunacy) and a group was remarked upon. On investigation, it seemed they had overheated with the sheer excitement of being out together for the first time and had not matched behaviour to venue. This kind of thing brings the sky down on a class. Form tutor, head of year, assistant head and I expressed shock and outrage. The hapless eleven year olds were packed off to reform their characters and compose letters of apology, each according to the vocabulary, shame and imagination available. 

The letters were wonderful. Deep and specific. Guilt was confessed and forgiveness begged. All apologised unreservedly. Several wrote about letting the school down and one pleaded that our august institution wouldn't be judged by 'this tragedy'. We corrected the spelling and posted them. Sorry. 

Apology is one end of accountability. Sometimes things go wrong despite our best efforts. Sorry it didn't work, sorry we did one thing and not another, sorry we made a choice that turned out to be wrong. Sorry we couldn't make something happen, sorry we ran out of money. Sorry doesn't put it right, but it oils the wheels of forward progress. And it can unnerve. Passing through the lunch queue last week I bumped into (sorry) a year 11 character and asked how she was. "Oh, you know, tired cold hungry stressed out, all of the above." I apologised and she had to laugh. "You're not going to do anything about it, though, are you?" I told her she'd feel better after lunch and that she should keep me informed. She said she liked hearing northern people talking, so I laughed too. Tired cold hungry is sorted out by a school dinner, and the stress might be a good thing depending on the work rate of the youth under advisement. But I'm sorry if its bad stress and I'm sorry if the system doesn't allow you to make mistakes and ends up commodifying you by unpredictable exam results. I note that when we had 31 GCSE results in one subject upgraded by re-mark no one apologised to us or the children. 

Back on the history walk, we had a whale of a time. An ancient philanthropic foundation, First World War shelling, Second World War shrapnel, Saxon mounds, Henry 8th and a brief history of time at the meridian. I brought up the rear so kind souls dropped back to keep me company. One has an ingrowing toenail, another's brother is frightened of squirrels. One used the walk as a recruitment event for scouting "We sleep in tents! We make our own meals! We crawl through mud!" One's worried about his Nan and another's Dad's a window cleaner (a cold job). Some didn't have jumpers on, some were equipped to accompany Fiennes to the pole. We dawdled and rushed as required and were sheepdogged by an irrepressible Head of Department. We rather swamped a bus but gave up our seats and got in everyone's way. Sorry for being young and foolish, cheerful and mildly ridiculous. 

Back in class, I finish the lesson with The News. What's going on, people? Someone said: black people are 3 times as likely to be tasered as white. A parent's opinion was proffered but that didn't satisfy us. I won't quickly forget the anxious and bewildered looks on children's faces as we failed to resolve it. I'm sorry that's the news. 

​And I'm sorry that the other news is about grammar schools. Sorry that David Willets' magisterial 2007 speech on the "overwhelming evidence that academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it" is (in his own words) like light from a dead star.  Sorry that other schools will have to deal with the anxious and bewildered self-reproach of failed poor 11 year olds. Sorry we prefer prejudice to evidence. 

CR

​15.10.15
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Thomas Tallis School, Kidbrooke Park Road, London SE3 9PX
T: +44 (0)208 856 0115    E: [email protected]
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