Mrs Roberts Writes

Go to the window

23/11/2019

I often tell you that I’m looking out of the window. I wouldn’t want you to think that’s all I did, but my window – as is befitting – is a particularly interesting one with much to see. It’s sometimes so interesting that I have to intervene. On Wednesday I looked up and saw a small person sitting on a bench at A Time Not Authorised for Sitting Outside. Fortunately a teacher much more experienced with the older sort skidded to a halt and parked himself. I watched their deep conversation during which it transpired that she’d taken being ‘sent out’ literally. Children in the northeast used always to describe being sent out as being ‘flung out’, conjuring an image of centrifugal force, but even that didn’t extend to leaving the building.

You never know what they don’t know. We discovered some 16-year-olds yesterday who’d never played a board game, had no idea of the conventions, didn’t know any card games. They were offered this chance as part of the Tallis Choices Community Day. Younger year groups had time on sustainability, relationships, violence, drugs and careers, but year 11 get a bit of support in how to make the right choices in a year full of exams. This included what to do to relax, on the grounds that many of them are a bit anxious, and mocks start in a fortnight. Yoga, team games, board games, relaxation, meditation and a bit of optional crochet.

But you never know how they see themselves. One chap who’d opted for the crochet fetched up in XFN Study Hall (expectations, effort, engagement) with it later and calmly sat down to while away an hour with the wool. XFN isn’t optional and it’s only for those who’re strangers to the flashcard. You don’t have time to crochet quotations from An Inspector Calls even in 1 hour 45 exam, so that little bit of creativity had to be suppressed. Kindly. There are places to relax and there are places to work.

And places where sitting zipped into your puffa with your bag on your back ready to spring is a little unnerving. Year 12 were debating all day and I muscled in to judge the final. The chair was inexperienced and keen to learn, but didn’t look very relaxed and also had to be warned about applauding one side more than the other. Be more Bercow, I advised. On the way in I followed some people so tall I couldn’t see their heads, boys whom the gutter press would characterise as arrogant yobboes, clinging to one another in case they have to articulate an unprepared thought. ‘I’m going to sit next to you. I can’t speak out loud even if I’m asked’. Mind, off-the cuff may make more sense than another who confidently told me ‘you can catch death from meningitis’.

Either of which were preferable to year 11 on healthy eating. How was it? ‘It’s all about the poo, Miss. You’ve got to get it just right.’ Thank you, indeed it is. Oh look, there’s someone I can talk to about the weather.

Or politics! Which brings me neatly to heads’ priorities for school funding which I’d like to share with you in the necessary purdah-imperative spirit of impartiality, having taken my puffa off.

An adequately-funded National Funding Formula for all schools
Proper funding for SEND and High Needs provision which is in crisis
Adequate post-16 per pupil funding rising from £4000 to £4760, not £4188 as planned
Funding for social care, policing, counselling, behaviour support and all the other unfunded extras now expected and required of schools

A published 10 Year funding plan as recommended by the Education Select Committee
Clarity about future costs and future revenue streams
Salary increases fully funded by new money.
An independently verified benchmarking tool for school funding
Independent statistical analysis so the system doesn’t have to rely on the IFS and EPI for accurate and unvarnished funding analysis. (On this last, government have referred to a headline investment of £14 billion into schools and the UK Statistics Agency riposted “There is, however, a risk that the figures could mislead: for example, people who read no further might expect that the headline figure of £14 billion refers to an annual increase. We therefore encourage the Department and Ministers to continue to provide appropriate context when making statements on school funding.”

Does this sound unreasonable? I don’t think so. If we really cared about children we’d have 10-year funding plans which couldn’t be unpicked by governments. Children’s futures are too important to leave to politicians.

I discovered a brilliant poem two weeks ago, Anne Carson on Troy. It ends

Morning arrives. Troy is still there. You hear from below the clatter of everyone putting on their armour. You go to the window.

My window shows me a community training and arming its young for honourable, truthful and kind citizenship in a sustainable democracy. When I go to that window I’m full of hope: when I look the other way out into the world the clatter is there, but the armour is all wrong.

CR
22.11.19

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Whistling

7/5/2018

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It’s a large site so there’s a time lag when it comes to gathering everyone up after break and lunch and posting them into the right rooms. The whistles go in order, canteen disembarking first, basketball courts, fields then everyone else. Whistling is creative here so we do it enthusiastically in fancy rhythms. We could set up a Thunderers Orchestra, the acme of creative crowd control.

A whistle makes shouting unnecessary. In a particular context and time, the whistle means: do the next thing, reset your expectations, desist. I happen to know there’s a nautical signal flag that means ‘stop carrying out your intentions and follow my instruction immediately’ but a whistle is much quicker than that.

Long before the end of lunch one wet day this week I wandered into the canteen in search of hot food and found two sirs chuckling to themselves. A child had been running (indoors! near cutlery!) so a desist and reset whistle was sounded. Upon which 200 children gathered their affairs, put their hoods up and went tidily out into the rain, which wasn’t really the intention at all but made life a lot simpler, if wetter. An old grey whistle trick.

On the other side of the freezing yard, this penguin weather has made the year 11 study hall suddenly more popular - or it may just be the ides of May. So, I write in the silent company of 28 boys and 1 girl, all allegedly working. 9 have headphones in - could be GCSE Pod, could be Tassomai, could be Shostakovich for all I know. 17 have eaten sandwiches, one a large bar of Fruit and Nut. As it's spring and the heating’s off, 20 of us are wearing coats. Two are trying to discuss the work silently because I won’t let them speak, one has been gazing at a strand of his hair for 10 minutes as if all the knowledge in the world was written on it in very small print. They’re a rainbow nation, fidgeting through revision, silently. Borrowing a pen silently, reading poetry silently, sharing revision cards silently, not-before-time silently, satisfaction-of-a-job-well-done silently, 2-weeks-to-go-panicking silently. Blowing a whistle would be cruel at the end so I tell them the time quietly and they too gather their affairs, put their hoods up and move tidily into the rain. They’re still working as they go: It’s hydrogen, man; there’s a gothic theme to Jekyll and Hyde; these equations don’t stay still; I’ve done the reading for next lesson, have you? She’s setting us a twelve-mark question. I’m going Library after school.

It makes a change. On another matter, during the morning I’ve been involved in a phone discussion about why we don’t have a schools ombudsman. Did you know that? The Office of the Schools Adjudicator just looks at admissions, we have tribunals galore, but no ombuds. Because of a deal done in 1972 we can’t even complain about that to the Local Government Ombudsman. There’s no importuning route for schools about local government or about schools for anyone.

It’s not as if we don’t need it. The new landscape of schools is, to put it politely, disparate. One might even say fragmented, confusing, chaotic, perhaps unplanned. It’s hard to know where the gatekeepers are when it’s not obvious where the gate is. Or if there is one. Either way, in the ungated field of a thousand blooms who’ll hear a whistle when it’s blown? Where does the frustrated taxpayer get justice or just a hearing?

Whistleblowing is real whistling. It needs people to stop, consider their actions, desist, reset and do the next thing right. It searches for shared and valued norms and expectations and a common language. It longs for quality in consistency, predictability, effectiveness and diligence. That’s not to say a whistle can’t be blown in anger, malice or delusion but that’s seething humanity for you. Access to support, a fair hearing and justice is a human right. As a rallying cry it’s a little arcane but Bring on the Ombudsman.

The DT showcase last night brought the sun with it, and wonderful work beautifully displayed, canapés and music. I went to look again this morning and found a smallish youth on his knees scrutinising the underside of a Bluetooth speaker in half a basketball, to see how it worked. I’ve commissioned the Black Lives Matter posters for my room and other public places: professional-standard stuff with a necessary message.

And overheard on the bridge: No, you can’t just crack open any egg and a chicken comes out. It doesn’t work like that.’ I assume this was a Biology or Food issue, not a comment on the local elections. It may form part of a campaign: School Ombudsman, because not every egg produces a chicken. I’d give the job to the little chap studying the speaker, he knew what he was looking for.

CR
4.5.18

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Bring in the May

18/5/2014

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Leonid Pasternak, The Night before the Examination, 1895

How do you feel about May, generally? Bit dull, weather unpredictable? Hard to know if you should wear a vest or not? Not for schools. Once you’ve got through April with a balanced budget and you no longer need to remember when Easter’s happening you’re faced with the mother of all months in the school year. Why May?

Exams, mainly. The years of preparation skid to a halt and the hall is full of exam desks and fearsomely specific, slightly surreal exhortations. ‘Do not be in possession of a mobile phone anywhere near this notice’. ‘Do not conceal pencils in a bag you can’t see through’. ‘Have you got your own angle measurer?’ You potter down to assembly to find an empty room with 100 neatly spaced folding tables woodenly indifferent to your uplifting story. You retreat feeling that the autopilot is a bit foolish and find your way impeded by 200 irritable and panicking teenagers waiting to go into the Sports Hall. You shush them helpfully, the cacophony stops at the door and within minutes all is silent as the tomb, and not a lot warmer (to keep them alert, and because it’s May).

We can’t have a quick look at the exam paper and then wander off any more, nor are we trapped in there counting bricks and trying to stay awake. We have to lurk outside at the end, interrogate survivors as they gasp for breath, then have a gander once it’s over. Is it better that the class you’ve nurtured thought the paper really easy or really quite hard? Do you want to know how they answered that question? You shudder as one says ‘Oh is that what it meant?’ You think the paper’s fair, and you know a bit about these things, but it’s an early exam and they might not have got into the hang of it. It’s only May.

The door opens and it’s another inspector, this time from the exam boards. He checks the rooms, the distance between the tables, the notices, the children who qualify for help, the safe, the locks, the rooms and for all I know the average height, weight and age of the invigilators. Lists are checked, boxes ticked, verdicts given. All’s well. They always come early, in May.

So some of our number are in exams, some on study leave, some not being given study leave because they can’t be trusted not to spend it staring into space, some in revision classes and most still chugging through week 31 or so of the year. How much more information can be stuffed into each ear? Not much, it’s already MAY.

If that was it, we’d just about cope. Two year groups will soon go and we’ll have time to reflect and plan. Except we can’t: the transfer window is about to close, because it’s May.

Teachers have to resign by set dates in the school year. If you’re intending to change school in September you need to resign by 31st May, but that’s usually in half term, so the real resignation date is nearer the middle. That means that if a school has a vacancy now, and wants to fill it with a serving teacher, the clock’s ticking, my friend. The advert goes in the TES, you cut the usual two weeks down to 10 days for applications, you plan the interview day, gather a panel, shortlist, re-shortlist because one of them’s got a job somewhere else, speed up everything so you don’t lose any more, interview, check references, appoint and then tell the timetabler what he’s got to work with for September. Being a mathematician he’s pretty phlegmatic and much too kind to mutter: ‘Couldn’t you have got your act together sooner? Didn’t you realise it was May’.

There is a land of lost content on the other side of half term as we enter the long final half term of the year. That’s when we get a good long stretch of teaching, meet our new little ones, start year 12 into year 13 with visits to university open days, reflect and plan. The pace doesn’t slow down, but the exam die is well and truly cast. We’ll get to the middle of July, take a deep breath until the results in August and then start it all again. In school there’s no time at all from May to September.

CR

14.5.14

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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

Go to the window

Whistling

Bring in the May

MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

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