I return to the Tallis Hug. For new readers, this quite a feature. Students here hug each other desperately as if waving goodbye to an émigré, when they part for a lesson. They hug when they reconvene in sheer relief that the loved one is safely returned to whichever draughty part of concourse or canteen is home. This is inexplicable to the northerner for whom a raised eyebrow is an embarrassingly gushing show of affection. And they come pre-programmed. 

Directing canteen traffic in the early hours of the term small child rushed up to me with a story of lost bag, shoes and bus before leaving home, followed by confusion and excitement in school. ‘Now I’m FINE!’ she squeaked. ‘Can I get a hug?’ ‘No!’ I squawked, rearranging her outstretched arms and backing into a dinner lady. ’We don’t do that here!’  Which, as explained above, is patently untrue. What I meant was - you’ll find plenty people to hug here, but not adults and certainly not me. The exuberance of youth. 

In telling this rocket-propelled putative hugger something about the Tallis way I was – rather magnificently – following my own instructions. My theme for the year is Tallis as usual. We don’t want to invent any new ways of doing things this year, just to do everything we already do better, and more consistently. That’s not to say that we won’t have some creatively eccentric new ways of teaching, but we want our running procedures to be reliable, predictable and better.

Which subtle segue leads me into the general state of our education system. Not enough money, 40 000 fewer teachers that we need, exam system that can’t bear the weight put on it, financial scandals etc etc. My solution to most worries is reading so I’ve just finished Melissa Benn’s Life Lessons. Benn is a tireless campaigner for community comprehensive schools but in this little piece she also turns her attention to the state of adult education and the universities, as well as schools, proposing a National Education Service. (Before you reach for the pen to report me to the Secretary of State for contravention of Staffing and Advice for Schools September 2018 para 5:33 (expressing political views) this is not quite the same as the one that Labour talked about a bit at some point.)  It’s well worth reading, not least for this.

One of the things we often say at Tallis is that the comprehensive dream is a vision every bit as precious as the NHS, and every bit as complicated. Model communities of local young people taught with expertise and equity is a blueprint for a better society. There are other barriers, mind, and I’ll talk about my next reading book, Robert Verkiak’s Posh Boys next time. 

Reading was on the agenda in year 7 assembly too. ‘Reading makes you kinder’ said Ms R. ‘You all need to read more’.  Perhaps the year 11 boy who bizarrely told Sir in English that he wouldn’t need English after leaving school could be persuaded that he might need kindness? Not that the conversation I had with Sir didn’t have its odd turns.  It was in discussing the choice of poetry for GCSE that he gave me the title of this piece. Which poems would you rather read?

We are committed to love at Tallis in that we are committed to kindness and service. Part of that is to be reliable, predictable and better. War and love, love and service, expertise and equity, creativity and eccentricity: Tallis as usual, hold us to our promises.
 
CR
13.9.18

Just for excitement as we swim for shore, a fire drill. We hadn’t had one for a bit so it was beyond exciting for the hordes. Consequently, squealing at the start. Subsequently, a repeat next week, quietly. 

On my way to my appointed perch I was introduced to a famous photographer, a distinguished-looking chap. On my way back, I reprimanded a small child for practicing leaping right over benches while 1600 people were moving around. I may need to return to him, but he won’t be hard to find.

Last week was busy busy: a super-cool concert for the Greenwich Music Trust, a day out at Tate Exchange for Curriculum Leaders to think, sixth form taster days, Headstart Day for year 6, a visiting author, a Holocaust survivor, the Visual and Media Arts Exhibition, Sixth form Party, Year 11 Prom (including pink and white carriage and horses), a community day on food, year 11 and 13 leaving ceremonies and the early close that went with them and a new curfew at the shops to enforce.

This week so far: new staff induction day, a piano and singing concert, governors, a tea party for older folks, more camping (further afield, wetter), university visits, UCAS clinics, teachers’ research projects deadline, year 10 careers events, non-uniform day for the Red Cross, a controversy about gazebos, as I write, the Piano Recital. Tomorrow the last internal interview of the year and a governor visit about student anxiety. Next week: an international food fair, the year 7 disco, a farewell barbecue, the Curious Incident, a visit from another school’s sixth form team, four awards assemblies and finally, the big gathering that marks close of play. 

All this, you understand, on top of the teacher’s day job, teaching and learning, timetabling and planning, rewriting schemes, tidying round, assessment and testing, sharing skills, worrying, supporting, negotiating with the world and more trips and visits. Next year’s plans not just to write but set up. Building maintenance, and wondering what to do now so many budget headings are empty four twelfths of the way through the year. It’s no wonder when the dog visited again before camping in Kent we fell on her as if she was a therapy animal.

So you can imagine I’ve had a few thoughts about the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation that the 1% cap on teacher pay stays firmly pulled down over the ears of the profession. No money, they said, but we’re ‘deeply concerned about the cumulative effect’ of five body blows teaching’s sustained:

1. 35,000 teachers left in 2015, and it’s a bigger number every year
2. Retention rates are plummeting (and there are more children every year)
3. Teacher pay’s fallen behind other graduate sectors
4. Recruitment targets for teachers have been missed for four years
5. There’s no money in the system.  Even the 1% is unfunded.

Schools therefore are ‘expected to make choices’ about who gets a pay rise and who doesn’t, based on performance. This makes perfect sense except that in the best schools all the teachers will be performing well, and there’s not an education system in the world where performance related pay’s changed anything. The raw materials teachers work with are too unpredictable, the outputs notoriously tricky to measure: put pressure on one part of the system and other parts suffer. The STRB opined that falling teacher retention rates and missed recruitment targets present ‘a substantial risk to the functioning of an effective education system’. Isn’t anyone worried about that outside teaching? We’re the lucky ones. Few new posts, few leavers. 
  
Here are some other things we’ve done this week. Engaged with the process of enabling young people from other schools to have a fresh start, from both ends. Waited for the phone to ring from the clipboard brigade. Tried to do our best for angry, unwell, distraught children and their parents. Tried to plan for examination courses where the specifications are barely approved. Taken part in the inspection of the local authority’s special needs work. Followed instructions from Operation Sceptre to tackle knife crime, in a context of no funding for youth work. Thought about money not less than all of the time. 
   
I quoted Causley’s great poem about the end of the school day being like a ship re-entering harbour in July 2014, after our first Piano Recital. After this, our third, it feels as though we’ve been out at sea all year on government storms. Do we long for doldrums?

Saxophone music drifted across the concourse as performers rush to hug one another before the concert and the young chefs prepare nibbles. Pianists gather in shirts and ties, unusual for Tallis, and discuss formal wear. I don’t mean to sound as if it’s just perseverance or endurance at this time of year or that misery dogs our days, far from it.  

It’s a joy. Thank you for sharing your children with us.
 
CR 14.7.17

​One of the poems at the annual creative writing evening at Tallis was I Have Forgotten. In it the poet lists the things from her life so far that she’d put in her rucksack perhaps in the hope of being surprised by it all when she found it again in later life. It reminded me of a boy a long way away and hopefully quite old now who, in his childhood, moved from carer to carer with his things in a carrier bag. Though he had a good long-term placement by the time we met, the damage was deep and he was hard to educate.
​
The evening under advisement is the product of a week at the Arvon Centre in Shropshire for our young people who are keen to write and willing to have it scrutinised and criticised by peers, teachers and a poet in residence. It’s a wonderful thing and we try to make it affordable for all who qualify, but each place works out a bit pricey and cake sales don’t quite bring home the bacon. We subsidise some through the School Fund, but that’s not exactly brimming with moolah in these straitened times. Anyway, the poetry was wonderful and the confidence of the young writers (and teachers who submit to the same discipline) impressive. What a memory.

​So I mused on school and memory as I trotted from place to place this week. A colleague asked : ‘what should we do about the EU vote?’ and I had to think. Not too much. Help the children to understand the enormity of what’s happened, and what the future might hold, but keep everything else normal so that there’s a backdrop for their interest and fears. London voted pretty solidly, so there’s no need to frighten them with the idea that all of a sudden people are less keen on diversity than they were a week ago. That being said, they should be able to look back and say ‘I remember when the vote happened.  We did such-and-such and Mr X explained what had happened. He was so right/wrong.’ That’s about as far as I get with a Brexit comment. The rest is silence.

So back to the memories. I was watching year 10 being summoned, corralled and sorted for exams. Girls cling to one another, boys thump each other companionably or mumble to themselves until they’re up against the piece of paper alone. We make them practice in year 10 in the hope that they remember it in year 11 and don’t waste time gazing about themselves. Everything’s easier in school if you have a fixed routine and the young people have something simultaneously to batter and shelter against. Then when they meet up in later life, or meet another former inmate, they can reminisce about how utterly wonderful and unreasonable school was and how it set them up for life.

HMCI’s been at it again: still people left to annoy but so little time. Children’s Social Care departments are useless: weak leadership and high caseloads.  Weak leadership is a shame, though with the constant carping it’s a blessed miracle there are any at all. High caseloads? It’s like complaining about big classes in schools and I’m lost for another way to explain it: if there isn’t a sensible high-profile training route to respected and reasonably paid jobs in local authorities with the money to support a decent staffing establishment then exactly how is the service to improve and the caseloads to reduce? Shall we just shout at people until they give up? Is that going well so far?

Which takes me back to the little chap and his carrier bag. His life was better because of a social worker who stayed long enough to see him into a better place. She was an unusual woman, determined and exacting. She kept structures tight and reliable enough so that he had a ghost of a chance at life. And it takes me on to a whole new annoyance about inequality and our current leaders who change their minds about how schools should run and what they’re for almost monthly so we don’t know how to safeguard our ethos and traditions. I assume that if you’re educated expensively and privately you go to schools with long histories and very clear routines. They’re exceptionally secure institutions, so if your life is a bit ropey you’ll be protected by them. If you’re not expected to live for most of the year with people who don’t want you,  perhaps the pain is lessened and the school experience gives you happyish memories where otherwise there might be nothing but sadness. Call it resilience if you like, but its really just luck and money.
 
CR
30.6.16