Category: Parliament

Time and Present

21/12/2023

The best gig I ever went to when I was young and didn’t need to go to bed at nine, was in ’84 or ’85 at Loughborough Student’s Union, near to where I lived at the time. Headline: Elvis Costello, supported by the unknown Pogues, whose percussion section was a chap who hit himself on the head with a tin tray. What a night. So, while I was sorry that Shane McGowan had died I wasn’t necessarily surprised. He had, as the man said, warmed both hands before the fire of life. It did lead to a spirited discussion chez nous on Best Pogues Song. Rainy Night in Soho, Sickbed of Cuchulainn, Billy’s Bones or, obviously, Sally MacLennane. You decide.

But for the last dozen years or so MacGowan has only reminded me of a sad drive on a beautiful day to a memorial service for a Headteacher who’d taken his own life. I was listening to a collection of Irish songs and poems and the matchless little recording of MacGowan reciting Yeats’ ‘An Irish Airman Foresees his Death’ came on. It’s a short poem about futility and the future, magically done. Last week it made me think again about Ruth Perry again, but also about time and memory.

Today would have been my grandfather’s birthday. He was born in 1899, a very long time ago, but I remember him clearly and dearly and have a sort of link with the Victorian era because of him. My little grandchildren should live into the 2100s so that’s a whole other era into the future. I’m obviously thinking a lot about past and future at the moment. It’s my last Christmas here at Tallis and as a serving teacher: I won’t do all this stuff again. No Christmas assemblies or jumper days, no school Christmas lunch or staff get-togethers, no writing of hundreds of cards to say thank you at the time of year we think about gifts and human kindness. No need to nag about working right up to the end or bracing ourselves for a short half-term full of mock exams and budget worries to come back to. No more travelling through the dark into silent building with the smell of the Christmas tree scenting the foyer. No more Santa-ing about the place to drop off bits and pieces on the last morning of term.

But the traditions and the life of the school will carry on next year, because time and human life are like that. I’ll be doing something else, but Tallis will do its thing. That’s how great community schools work. The children will be doing their thing too, as they potter and lunge about the place.

It’s this I’ll miss most of all and am trying to experience every day fully. Overheard this week alone: two boys, context impenetrable: ‘You understand it’s the same day in Australia, don’t you?’. A year thirteen, going into a languages classroom ‘I don’t know any French, not a word’ following two younger souls practising Latin verbs. In another block, another sixth former, entering cheerfully with ‘I hate this classroom with a rare passion’.

Interestingly, the House of Lords report Requires improvement: urgent change for 11–16 education (parliament.uk) hates the EBacc with a rare passion. This zombie Gove dream is still a headline measure for schools. It’s all but wrecked the notion of a broad and balanced curriculum in many places where people are fearful of judgement or just love compliance. The Lords, bless ‘em, are fed up with it and have issued a cease and desist order in no uncertain terms:

The Government’s ambition that 90% of pupils in state-funded schools should enter for the EBacc sends a strong message as to which subjects should be prioritised, which is echoed by the references to the EBacc in Ofsted’s handbook and recent school inspection reports. Faced with the pressures of a high-stakes accountability system and stretched resources, schools have understandably organised their curricula in line with the EBacc’s requirements, often deprioritising creative, artistic and technical subjects as a result.

The Government must immediately abandon the national ambition for 90% of pupils in state-funded mainstream schools to be taking the EBacc subject combination. The EBacc subject categorisation, and the EBacc entry and EBacc average point score accountability measures, should also be withdrawn in their entirety, and all references to the EBacc in the Ofsted school inspection handbook removed.

…. and the ground ploughed with salt. I know why Gove invented it, but its time is up. Anyone listening?

So as we call time on another calendar year may I wish you good memories and a happy future. I hope the bells ring out for you, too, for Christmas Day.

CR
21.12.23

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Ladies on the Bridge

20/10/2022

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Picture the concourse with its bridge running round it? There’s a jutting-out bit outside block two from which one might sing, survey troops or start a revolution. This never-before contested spot has been adopted at break and lunchtimes by a small group of year 7 girls who can barely see over the railing. They keep a close eye on everything and appear to have found a way to track my (random even to me) movements. Today I was fruitlessly searching for The Colleague With The Answer and these ladies apparated before me in two out of three blocks. I have high hopes for them. If you’ve read Anna Burns’ Milkman - and if not, why not? - they are the Wee Sisters. Intelligent, determined, resourceful, good-humoured and not to be underestimated.

Speaking of what you may not have read, among other journals my household takes the Church Times. My co-inmate, who may be reasonably expected to value this organ of the Church of England, curses it roundly and reliably every time it assaults the letterbox, demanding of the heavens why he is expected to read such drivel. Me, I like the cartoons, the minor gossip and reading just how badly church people can behave to one another when they forget themselves. One article this week looked at values having replaced religion in binding people together. That’s fine when the values are such as equality, justice, accountability, kindness and honesty – but what if the values are self-referential, are about ‘living your best life’ or similar?

Watching the sorry spectacle of current parliamentary politics, it occurs to me that the former PM must have really wanted to be PM. Perhaps she thought she deserved it. Perhaps they all did, all the ministers and who’ve come and gone recently. Perhaps they wanted their hour on the stage, their soundbite moment. Perhaps refusing to talk to the OBR about policies already shared over champagne by the super-rich, or dreaming of planes to Rwanda, or bullying other adults in the lobby queue, or spouting crude tropes about the wokerati or taxis, North London and the BBC were so exciting, so life-enhancing that subsequent ignominy will be worth it? The tale of an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Most of us in the public sector would prefer a better résumé.

Two men present themselves to my mind’s eye. One is the former PM, at whose feet much of the blame for the collapse of behaviour in public office must lie. The second is the Secretary of State for Education, Kit Malthouse. He chose to characterise school and college leaders as ‘hanging on to mediocrity’ and needing ‘constant attention and constant pressure’ to ‘drive it forward’. At least we know where he stands, but upon what evidence does he erect this calumny? I expect he believes that everyone outside the privileged bubble is necessarily mediocre and that all we need is a good shake so that we can be thrustingly excellent like…… Like who, exactly? Like the private schools whose results mysteriously dropped by 40% now that exams are back? Like Tory MPs?

If I wasn’t too mediocre to write a piece on values and virtues, I’d start with the hollowing-out of public life when assertion is the key performance indicator. That what enables the party of law and order to starve the police and the courts of money, the party of levelling-up to give tax relief to the super-rich. Twenty years ago we smarted under deliverance as a political mechanism, where measurement seemed to be more important than content, but that looks like responsible government now. At least politicians were trying to do something rather than just be someone.

And so we need to be really careful about how we teach children to be in schools. Innocent aspirational slogans like ‘Be the best you can be’ or irritating reminders to ‘Follow your dreams’ really won’t do. I’ve ranted at length about schools adopting canonical verse from If to Invictus and what that might mean for humanity, captain of my soul and all that. Self-actualisation is laudable as long as it is not at others’ expense. Our skills must be put to the public service and the common good. Kindness, fairness, honesty, respect and optimism are more important than trampling your neighbour because you‘re worth it.

We had 1525 people through the doors last night for post-16 open night. Everyone one of those young people had hopes and dreams. We’ll try to help as many we can get the qualifications that should open doors, if the vested interests of the elite don’t hold them shut, and if they can afford to eat while studying. Over the years, I’ve met young people who were entirely self-centred at the end of year 13, but they were my failures and they are few. Most of them are fired with the passion to change the world for the better. Now my fear is that exhortations to do good and serve humanity look hopelessly old-fashioned. I tell children that they could be Prime Minister – but please, not like these people.

Ladies on the bridge, over to you.

CR
20.10.22

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Though much is taken, much abides

5/3/2021

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Trigger warning: another rant about the misuse of Victorian poetry follows. Stop after para 6 if you just can’t stomach it.

Once upon a time Headteachers had to be trained for the job. During my second Headship I did the Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers (LPSH). Stop fidgeting, this will get more interesting. Winter 2006, York, as cold as it gets. I bought extra tights to put on under the several pairs I was already wearing.

It left two very clear memories. First, of an ice-breaker task on the first residential. If you’ve been on leadership training you’ll recognise the type of thing, build the tallest free-standing structure you can with newspaper, string, straws and suchlike. I thrust myself into a leadership space pronto and we set about winning the session.

Not only did we lose but collapsed without a useful tower of any height because I’d put myself into a position for which I didn’t have the skills. I’m spatially poor and struggle to imagine or manipulate shapes in my head, the last person you want engineering any kind of tower. I had no idea how to do the task and failed, taking others with me. In the collective debrief, I became angrily defensive and quite upset. Too few educators have those experiences, so common to children, yet still they bone on about resilience. Hold that thought.

The other memory is of my group of three for the year-long programme. A colleague served at the school in Middlesbrough where a child was stabbed to death by an intruder in 1994. Wisely, he wouldn’t be drawn on how the school was recovering, always answering ‘too early to tell’.

We’ve had quite an exciting time since I last wrote, but it’s too early to tell how it’s all going to go. We won’t really know for at least 10 years, actually. An unexciting half-term break was followed by announcements about the return and the not-exams. Tallis logisticians and the blessed LA have leapt into action and we’ll manage the return just fine, looking forward to it. The not-exams are more complicated and we are slowly gathering guidance from exam boards, to whom we are still paying huge amounts this year. Which seems peculiar, but there you are. Old rope, anyone?

Playing alongside, the relentless refrain about lost learning, catch-up and recovery, about potential lost earnings and disadvantage all as a result of lockdown. We use no such language on HMS Tallis. The children have had an extraordinary experience and they know less stuff, but they’re still adolescents with expanding and developing brains, which will get back to feeding properly very soon. Politicians, be quiet.

Which led to a discussion about the budget. I say discussion, but actually I was arrested by my interlocutor’s opening gambit: why are very rich people allowed to make decisions about money for poor people? She got the benefit of Roberts’ maxim 427 which is that no one who’s never stood in a supermarket queue worrying that their card will be declined should serve in Parliament. Young Sunak not being short of a bob.

Following it up in the paper yesterday morning, I discover that Sunak quoted old Tennyson’s wondrous Ulysses. Well, he said ‘that which we are, we are’.

..that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

As a rallying-call for coming out of coronavirus it’s not bad. It’s actually about old age, welcoming death and reflecting on a life fully lived. We can we debate other aspects another time, but suffice to say, even the reasonably sensible quotation of a much-loved poem has infuriated me. Oh, do let me tell you why.

Ulysses is misused by schools in the same way that Invictus is misused. Carve it on your doorposts all you like, but you’ll still expect children to yield most days. Not yielding is useful for a mythic warrior but very unhelpful in a Behaviour Policy.
The definitive quoting of same was by Judi Dench’s M in Skyfall. Leave it there.
It’s completely inconsistent with the message from Sanctuary Buildings where the mood music is set to Benny Hill-style panic with The Devil’s Gallop perpetually playing over the tannoy.

Yes, we are where we are. Yes, we want heroic effort when we get back together. Yes, young people may have been made weak by time and fate as everyone’s been locked in. Yes, they will be strong in will because that’s almost a definition of adolescence. Yes, we want them to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield in their learning.

But we expect many of them to do it in poverty. We expect them to do it trapped in a GCSE system where a third of them have to fail. We expect all of them to do it in the context of reverse social mobility which is worse than immobility because it entrenches, structures and guards advantage. Stories about lost earnings and the long-term failure of disadvantaged children, neither of which started with the pandemic, are messages from the heart of elitism to austerity’s children.

That which we are, we are. Know your place. Stop talking about rethinking assessment, school funding, the narrowing of the curriculum and the death of the arts. Stop talking about children’s mental health and teachers’ pay. Strive if you like, but you’re not equal, and we won’t yield.

CR 5.3.21

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St Kilda’s Parliament

8/10/2019

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Crossing the yard I encounter a group of year 11 boys, usually of the laid-back sort, hopping about in an agitated manner emitting squaws. ‘It’s the bees, Miss’. I can’t see any bees, so I issue a sympathetic tut and counsel them to have a care for easily crushable smaller children.

These smaller members are more confident now and generally navigating themselves accurately. Just as well, as the only bottleneck I’ve seen this term was caused by a kind year 10 stopping to explain and direct. At lesson change. On the bridge. He hadn’t done the mental risk assessment: the child could have fended for himself until he got inside a building rather than bringing a third of the school to a standstill. Still, everyone was patient and it’s the thought that counts. The same small scholar was being towed about by a teacher next I saw him. Perhaps he’s not good with maps, timetables, diagrams: it takes all sorts.

I met with the new teachers – those just starting out on their careers - and we talked about ethics and the values behind their work. We tried to root the language of ethics in daily experience. Selflessness in helping a child at break or taking a job off a burdened colleague. Integrity in the rock-like consistency of the everyday. Objectivity in marking and assessment and how hard it is, in dealing with facts and not opinions. Accountability in handing over the test scores to your head of department no matter how ropey they are. Openness in asking for help. Leadership in being a tutor, a role model, always the adult in the room.

And the personal virtues: trust that fairness will prevail. Wisdom in planning for student misunderstandings and knowing what to worry about. Kindness in every interaction. Justice in handling disputes. Service in seeing the task through. Courage in apologising when you’ve made a mistake, or being brave enough to speak out in a meeting, or dealing with angry parents. Optimism after watching an expert at work in the classroom and believing that you’ll get there, believing things will go well even on an overwhelming day.

I’ve devoted years to making sure that that first list – the Principles of Public Life – are better known in schools. They bind us all and we should use the language as we go about the formation of children in loco parentis. The second list are the personal virtues that make us worthy to be in charge of the nation’s young, that means parents can trust us. What we do is important, but so is how we do it. Remembering that every day is a true mark of our profession.

Someone sends me a poem he thinks I’ll like for Poetry Day, St Kilda’s Parliament by Douglas Dunn. I do. I’m trying very hard not to think about parliaments at the moment but this moving piece is based on a photograph taken in 1879 by Washington Wilson, fifty years before the islands were abandoned and the people chose to move to the mainland.

The parliament of the island’s adult males met daily every weekday morning in the village street. Women had their own meeting. Without rules or a single leader it considered the work to be done that day according to each family's abilities and divided up the resources according to their needs. Everything was done for the common good. Wilson wrote ‘by a majority the order of the day is fixed, and no single individual takes it upon himself to arrange his own business until after they unitedly decide what is best’.

In the picture the men stand in two rows looking at the camera and the poet, in the photographer’s voice, talks of the community’s life on the poor land, and how he imagines they see themselves. The final lines are calming and unnerving all at once.

Outside a parliament, looking at them,
As they, too, must always look at me
Looking through my apparatus at them
Looking. Benevolent, or malign? But who,
At this late stage, could tell, or think it worth it?
For I was there, and am, and I forget.

Perhaps the best we can hope at the end of this particularly agitated and unpleasant phase of our national life, outside a parliament, looking at them, is that we forget and look back with equanimity and wonder if it was worth it. But benevolent or malign? Who will make that judgement?

I’m saddened that the Principles of Public Life haven’t been invoked in parliament this autumn. The standard of national debate would have been improved by them and our community spirit less coarsened. I’m saddened that we are so divided. I’m saddened so many of our leaders are cynical rather than principled, insulated when they should be embedded, reckless where they should be careful, flippant where they should be serious and sloppy where they should be diligent.

I discover that the people of St Kilda had never seen a bee, unlike my jumpy boys. I wish that was the biggest trouble that lay in store for them as they grow up. Most of all, I wish for a recommitment to the common good.

CR
4.10.19

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As cool as history

6/9/2019

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Thomas Tallis starts the year with Thomas Tallis. I play a little bit of the great man’s polyphony Spem in Alium at all the assemblies and this year I’ve used this Charles Causley poem too:

King’s College Chapel

When to the music of Byrd or Tallis,
The ruffed boys singing in the blackened stalls,
The candles lighting the small bones on their faces,
The Tudors stiff in marble on the walls.

There comes to evensong Elizabeth or Henry,
Rich with brocade, pearl, golden lilies, at the altar,
The scarlet lions leaping on their bosoms,
Pale royal hands fingering the crackling Psalter,

Henry is thinking of his lute and of backgammon,
Elizabeth follows the waving song, the mystery.
Proud in her red wig and green jewelled favours;
They sit in their white lawn sleeves, as cool as history.

It’s a lovely image of the daily church service of choral evensong and Tallis’s matchless music summoning the ghosts of the Tudor monarchs under which he lived and prospered. Tallis lived and prospered at court despite their bloodthirstiness and was both successful and happy.

I usually go on to tell my captive audience about particular challenges the world has thrown up that they will need to face as they prepare to be adult citizens, and what they can do in school to prepare.

I’d decided that I needed to explain what proroguing parliament meant, but ‘twixt writing the slides on Friday and doing the deed on Wednesday I was properly out of date and had to add deselection and the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. However, the message about being kind, polite and respectful didn’t need any adjustment, and I only had to ask one 13-year old to sit up. Who apologised, unlike some.

After that, off to class. Life’s full-on at Tallis so by break they’d already had one lesson and the littlest set off at the charge to get to our inexplicably-numbered rooms. I say ‘floor, block, room’ 20 times. It is a bit of a test.

Everyone seems pleased to see each other apart from a few international-standard grudge-bearers who are taken away to be reset. There is much jumping up and down and hugging, squeaky or semi-manly. It would be unfair to say that it was the same when the staff assembled on Monday. We are generally calmer and cooler and we thought about our future carefully and busily, looking at this year’s plan and working out where the priorities lie (simple enough – maintain post-16 excellence, improve GCSE progress). Expectations, effort, engagement.

Speaking of GCSEs there was an interesting press piece in the holidays about the fee-paying sector’s use of iGCSEs. The ‘i’ stands for ‘international’. This is nothing new, they’ve used them for years. Many state schools used to use them too, if the course suited children better: more coursework, for example, which helps some. I wasn’t too keen, not just because I’m a simple soul but because I think a nation’s children should be educated as one. If we say we’re doing GCSEs then that’s what people expect, not some fancy alternative.

So we’re now in a position where the children of the 7% use different qualifications from the 93% which is troubling. If schools share and transmit knowledge on behalf of society and if shared knowledge is fundamental to democracy and allows children to become useful citizens, shouldn’t they all have the same learning at school? Might that help breach the unbearable divides in our public life?

Directing zippy 11-year olds to their next berth is one thing, but teaching and modelling the values of good citizenship is another. We try very hard to tell children that the key to a successful life is hard work and kindness, but it doesn’t help when political leadership on both sides of the pond is characterised by inherited privilege, bluster and bullying.

I’m re-reading and re-watching Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, a real treat. In the first book he describes the British in India after the fall of Singapore hoping for ‘time, stability and loyalty, which are not things usually to be reaped without first being sown’. Perhaps that’s the government’s problem.

Tallis succeeded through creativity, endeavour and endurance despite the mixed behaviour of the kings and queens he served. As we prepare our children to understand the world and change it for the better let’s hope that we can also give them the skills to recognise the good and reject the rest.

CR 4.9.19

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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

Time and Present

Ladies on the Bridge

Though much is taken, much abides

St Kilda’s Parliament

As cool as history

MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

Archive

Categories

EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

Time and Present

Ladies on the Bridge

​Though much is taken, much abides

St Kilda’s Parliament

As cool as history

MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

Archive

Categories

Though much is taken, much abides