Mrs Roberts Writes

The Menace of the Years

18/10/2020

Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Protection of Invictus. Someone has to act: things have got out of hand.

My mother didn’t care for poetry, but she furnished my habit from youth and provided the Oxford Book of English Verse from the Literary Guild Book Club. I liked gung-ho stuff and learned a lot of it. Invictus was a favourite as I was all for self-realisation – though she had another term for it. It drives me MAD when I see it misused.

When I read of a school where everyone has to ‘follow Invictus’ and the children are encouraged to learn it by heart I nearly had to self-isolate with rage. I may be misinformed but apparently they suggest that children choose their friends by whether or not they’ve committed this Henley to memory. You can picture the windswept coastal playground chat:

I say old man, have you learnt Invictus yet? It’s bally good, you know.

Sorry, old thing, don’t think I’ll bother. Prefer to focus on the ladies, what?

Well I’m the sorrier, old fruit. I’m afraid it’s curtains for you and me. Can’t be seen with chaps of your sort. The Chief wants us all to make our own path by following his every instruction and you just can’t argue with that. No need to make a face, it’s perfectly clear to me. Toodle-oo.

What kind of person wouldn’t take up this challenge? asks the school. Well, one who had read the poem.

Invictus is a great piece of Victorian rhetoric written by someone who had a terrible early life (and incidentally may have been the model for Long John Silver). It speaks of the undefeated human spirit and is where we get the phrase ‘bloodied but unbowed’. Allow me to quote the last verse:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Schools are pretty hot on charging scrolls with punishments. We call them detention lists, or sanctions or corrections. Children who do their own thing no matter what are prone to end up on these scrolls. If they persist in being master of their own fate they will, sooner or later, be shown the door and invited to take their unconquerable souls elsewhere. Invictus is not about conformity, uniformity or obedience. It is about taking a long view of the difficulties of life and deciding to win through endurance.

Don’t misunderstand me. Telling children that they can escape the grinding poverty and hopelessness of their birth is an entirely good thing. I’ve led a school in those circumstances and I sympathise with the aim – but it can’t be at the expense of truth. Captaining your soul to a good berth requires a following wind and predictable seas.

The photographer Chris Killip died this week and his collection In Flagrante has followed me from house to house. They’re photos taken in the north-east between 1973 and 1985 and illuminate my memories of the same time in the same place. ‘Youth on a wall, Jarrow, 1976’ was for many the definitive image of the time, but as a work of art it is itself timeless.

The school that the boy on the wall went to wouldn’t have bothered much about Invictus. The education he got might not have been up to much and he was probably selected for it, luckily or unluckily. In Jarrow in the seventies his prospects would have looked pretty bleak at 16, but he’d have been used to bleakness. Would it have helped him to go to a school where he had to learn Invictus by heart? Hard to say. If the school was well-run and kindly, energetic in finding jobs and filled with skilled teachers then the poetry could have been an added bonus, a consolation in troubled times to come. If not? Would he have turned the blame in on himself for being insufficiently unbowed? What does the picture say to you?

And now? He sits on the wall rather than going to school. He missed 6 months of education last year and ran wild in that time, with criminals. He might get a grade 3 in English if he works hard with a gifted teacher, but its still a fail. He can enrol at a college with next-to-nothing, but he’ll have to carry on fighting GCSE maths until he’s 19 while youth unemployment heads for 20%. With what does he captain the small ship of his fate through these menaced waters?

Children deserve to be told the truth. They are free to read poetry and they are the master of their souls but neither puts food on the table. Learning Invictus and repeating it in a community of Invictus-chanters will not prevent you from failure in a system that requires 30% to fail. We can choose as a nation not to provide for the most vulnerable but we cannot escape our responsibility.

It is shameful to download the failure of the state into the hearts of our children and mask it with the 19th century equivalent of ‘just follow your dreams’. They deserve the truth – and they deserve an education system that cares about them all.

CR
16.10.20

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The falling rain's own sons and daughters

3/10/2020

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I wrote to parents some time ago with the happy news that we didn’t have a plan B for social distancing, keeping year groups apart and rain - except for coats and umbrellas. Today was monsoon protocol day and thankfully, children turned up in the coats, largely. We’ve got the umbrellas for staff, new, highly visible, personally labelled and carefully branded. Only 2% of them fell apart at the first gust, so that’s not too bad.

However, our senior folks are logisticians to match Heathrow, Disney or the Army and when we saw the forecast they jumped to it like good ’uns. Our devised routes and wet weather zones worked a treat. Year 7 in the canteen, Year 8 at the east end of the sports hall, Year 9 in the dojo, Year 10 at the west end of the sports hall curtained off from Year 8, Year 11 in the main hall.

We have routes. Routes to get them to the zones, out of the zones, to the toilet, to the lunch queue and back again. We have routes to detention and places for anyone who gets too excited. We have different rules for packed lunches, sandwiches and Friday fish and chips and a DMZ between Year 7 and 8 dining. We have routes to the prayer room and the library. We have more routes that you could shake a stick at. And we adjusted them all so that Year 11 could have a live assembly in the sports hall about Year 11-y things: exams, working hard and what they might do next year.

We have staff. Heads of Year who didn’t sit down all day, teachers who volunteered to manage zones even though they taught all day, support staff who hold the world together.

And we have children, who did what children do, at various heights. They sat on the floor and chatted, they leaned against the walls and read, they speculated on romance and annoyed each other quietly. They ate tidily and asked teachers how they were. They had elastic bands to confiscate and water bottles to spin, but they held it together. They lined up indoors and waited patiently to be led away. Some of Year 8 didn’t cope so well with a whole day indoors, but they’re at an awkward age. Some will need a bit of re-setting next week, nothing new.

And as I passed thought it all, I saw how open and inclusive they are, how friendly and accepting of the foibles of others – including the bizarre rules seemingly normal adults dream up for them. ‘We have to get there how? Really? Oh, ok then.’

I love Don Paterson’s poem Rain. He talks about looking at lives as if they were in the kind of film that starts with rain and follows its effects on the characters. The last verse moves me every time I read it:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood –
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters
and none of this, none of this matters.

The mess and the damp, the mildly frayed tempers and the setting-rights, the silly acts and the overreactions are all bearable, containable if we can rise up. None of this matters if we have hope and kindness, if we have love. It could have been the worst, but at the end of it, in an empty school, it’s been the best wet day I remember.

Thank you Tallis.

CR
2.10.20

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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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Phoning it in

8/3/2019

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Today I take my texts from the great poet Tomlin. We’ve adjusted our mobile phone rules, on which I have pontificated at length in the past and even in the press.

This was tannoy 1 on Tuesday, day 2 of the new jurisdiction. It caused groans.

The corridors, the walkway and the blocks are no phone zones
Don’t forget this simple rule also includes headphones

Things, as Mr Blair didn’t say, could only get worse. Changeover 2 cause people to bang their heads on desks, though I thought it a great improvement.

Help us keep a great big smile on all your teachers’ faces
By only using phones at social times in social spaces

This was followed by a specific warning at changeover 3. I think the scansion needs attention and there’s too much dangle in the second line.

Help us keep your phones and keep them firmly in your pocket
You don’t want to get to lunch when it’s allowed, but you have lost it.

He busked the next one but the final exhortation was perhaps the worst of all.

Thanks to all those students who can now go straight on home
For the rest, attend the green canteen for some harsh words and your phone

See how we model creativity to the children? I shall enter him for the Forward Prize for Poetry next year.

Changing a rule in school is an interesting process. It takes us a long time to decide and we have to argue amongst ourselves for weeks until we come up with an agreement. Children then have to be warned and the infrastructure put into place. In this case, consistent instructions, seven assemblies, tutor group scripts, padded reusable envelopes with labels, lists of names, boxes to put them in, safe places to store them, return mechanisms, FAQs with staff and, after a pilot week, tweaks to the system and a clear message for parents in the newsletter. That’s the easy part.

The harder part is actually changing our daily actions. In this case, moving the ‘no phones’ rule back from the classroom door to the outside door, and developing a consistent and safe way of removing offending items and retraining their owners. After that we work through the ones who just forgot, the ones who thought it wouldn’t happen to them, the ones who thought they’d test a new system until we’re left with the dogged recidivists who can’t let it go. That’ll take a while.

It’s been interesting to see how annoyed some older students have been by this. Unusually, we made the new rule fit post-16 students too, except for subjects where teachers need them to use their phones, or where it has long been allowed in a very thoughtful and controlled manner. We thought long and hard about this, worrying that years 12 and 13 would feel affronted by being treated the same as the younger ones – but then decided that the new rule was whole school.

Why? Because we try to model a way of living in community that will help young people understand the world and change it for the better. While we don’t demonise phones as such, we were losing too much lesson time arguing over them and that was in the sixth form too. We decided collectively that we weren’t helping our young people learn a more sensible way to be, and we’ve changed our minds.

And we’ve changed the way the adults act too. We’re not checking our phones all the time or walking along looking at them, except for the safeguarding team. We’re all in this together, because phones are addictive to adults as well as children and we can all demonstrate a bit of self-control.

The poet Nick Drake wrote about the ancient Aztec rubber ball game, in the voice of a young missionary priest who becomes captivated by it. He describes the ball:

I have it now
In the palm of my hand.
It is a small, dark ball, warm
As an egg, or a fallen star,
And decorated with skulls;
It is heavy as a stone, and yet
What spirit moves it? Whose god
Created such a wonder
That leaps for joy? And why
Does my body tremble with delight
To play the game again?
Pray for me, now –
For I find I cannot let it go.

Isn’t that like a phone? There’s a fear in the last line of being overtaken by something that you chose to do but can’t stop. That’s always terrified me. I think our new rule is both moderate and humane and I hope it helps young people to put their phones down from time to time outside school too. Perhaps to play football or write poetry, who knows?

Changing your mind after reflection and investigation is a sign of good learning and a hallmark of adult life. Our legislators could learn from this.

CR
7.3.19

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‘I’m not committed to love, I’d be fine with war’

16/9/2018

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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.

Why do we still know so little and celebrate even less the successes of comprehensive education? That a new generation of educational activists and administrators, including anti-grammar [conservative MPs] and many in the academy and free school movement now adhere to its principles so hard fought for half a century ago but rarely give it credit is not merely a form of disguised tribalistic discourtesy: it is also the result of a long-standing distortion of the historical record

She goes on to say:

It should not be forgotten that today’s widespread commitment across the political spectrum….to the idea of all children getting a shot at an ‘academic education is the direct result of comprehensive reform. It changed our attitudes for the better and should be built on, not dismantled.

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

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All year, it seems, we have been out at sea

15/7/2017

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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:

35,000 teachers left in 2015, and it’s a bigger number every year
Retention rates are plummeting (and there are more children every year)
Teacher pay’s fallen behind other graduate sectors
Recruitment targets for teachers have been missed for four years
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

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I have forgotten

3/7/2016

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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

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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

The Menace of the Years

The falling rain's own sons and daughters

St Kilda’s Parliament

Phoning it in

‘I’m not committed to love, I’d be fine with war’

All year, it seems, we have been out at sea

I have forgotten