The Blackboard Diaries

No budget? No problem

2012-02-29T12:46:00.005-08:00

A fellow teacher was tasked with organizing a series of events for World Book Day.

The budget? £0

This struck me as completely unreasonable. How could the school expect something impressive and yet offer no financial support? Yet it is hard to blame SLT. The school's financial position is dire and they have a responsibility to mind the pennies.

This teacher has pulled it off. There's an author coming in, there's a book swap event, an opportunity for students to create their own bookmarks and much more.

I don't tell this story to suggest that the cuts won't hurt. There are parts of education where the loss of money will be felt and students will suffer. This story, however, is a wonderful example of someone who was not dissuaded and who focused on what could be achieved. It would have been easy for him to decide the task was unworkable. Instead, he made it work and students are going to gain.

Inspiring what you can do with nothing.

The Poetry Surprise

2012-02-23T13:17:00.002-08:00

I was expecting it to be a disaster.

Bottom set Year 10 and Romantic Poetry did not seem likely to mix well. The early responses were not good.

"Why do we need to look at this? I'm not going to be a poet when I'm older."

or, more simply,

"This is bullshit"

Yet they are enjoying themselves. They like the puzzle of teasing out a poem's meanings. They enjoy picking out the different techniques. Some are even starting to appreciate the imagery.

It turns out these students aren't close-minded. I was close to making the mistake of deciding that they wouldn't "get" poetry before I'd given them a chance. I tried to come up with fun ways into the poems and they surprised me by actually giving it a go.

Technology working and not working

2012-02-17T10:56:00.004-08:00

A year ago, no-one at my school know what an eportal was.

Now they are at the centre of the school's behaviour policy. Eportal is a web system that tracks student behaviour. A student does something good and they get a positive eportal. A student does something bad and they get a negative eportal. Simple.

It's a fine example of new techonology improving things. Previously, behaviour was logged haphazardly, in different ways by different teachers or, in many cases, not at all. This easy-to-use system has vastly improved the way students' progress is tracked. A form tutor or head of year need only glance at a student's eportal profile to see all their eportals, each accompanied by a short report. Parents have also been very impressed by how comprehensive a picture the system provides.

It hasn't, however, been all good. Eportal also contains an alerts page. It is meant to be an easy way of giving staff useful information. For example, an alert can be issued if a student is being sent home for illness and their teachers will see it. The alerts page has, however, become an excellent way of passing the buck.

Here are few recent entries:

“Y10 students seen smoking outside the gym.”

“Y11 students running around corridors during break.”

"Students throwing litter in playground."

Teachers put these alerts up and then put their feet up, pleased that they have “responded” to the trouble. As a rule, most teacher then read the alerts, shake their head and do nothing. Logging an alert has become a useless substitute for action

The lesson? New technology may be very exciting but it only actually helps if you work out its correct role.

The thin line between ambitious and ridiculous

2012-02-12T12:27:00.001-08:00

In the eyes of others, all my department's hard work is reduced to the number of students who get a C in their English GCSE.

The percentage of students securing at least 5 A-Cs (including Maths and English) is crucial in determining the school's standing in the league tables. A drop or even just a lack of progress will hit the number of applications. And Ofsted will be upset.

Our Headteacher has been set stern targets for this year and teachers are grumbling. The general view is that he's picking these numbers without any understanding of reality.

There is a tricky balance here. For targets to be meaningful and motivational, they have to be achievable. Yet there is also a need for ambition. If your notion of achievable is based on what has been done before then the school won't get any better. There is scope for being bold. Staff will inevitably feel pushed and under pressure; I'm afraid that's sort of the point.

Your homework is . . . nothing

2012-02-06T14:25:00.001-08:00

I read a piece of research the other day that confirmed something I'd long thought.

It was a meta-study looking at the factors which impact on attainment. Bottom of the list was the setting of regular homework. This came as no suprise to me. I've long seen the setting of homework as an exercise in futility.

I do think there's something to be said for reading homework (planning a post on this sometime soon). Written homework, however, never works. A couple of students do it well. The same students who really didn't need to do any extra work. Most rush off something very poor. A good number don't do it, setting off a tedious cycle of sanctions to get the work done, inevitably to a poor standard. At the end of the process, a lot of effort has been expended and some paper filled but very little gained.

If students are taught well, there isn't much need for them to be taking written work home. Most teachers are setting it out of tradition rather than for any particular aim.

How not to allocate scarce resources

2012-02-03T10:07:00.000-08:00

A personalised timetable is one of those cunning euphemisms that education specialises in.

For the uninitiated, it gives a sense of a learning being carefully designed to meet the needs of students. In reality, it's a way of schools being able to keep on roll students who they haven't been able to expel.

Students who get personalised timetables are those who've proved themselves so disruptive that the school decides they can't be kept in normal lessons. A personalised timetable has fewer lessons than a normal one. The school is pretty pleased about this as it keeps these kids off-site for much of the time. Someone else's issue.

They are, however, entitled to tuition in all of the core subjects. Our English department is therefore obliged to provide every member of this dream team with 1-1 tuition for two days each week.

So whereas the brightest and most determined students struggle to get the help and support they patently deserve, we offer it to those who have shown zero interest in their education. It's unproductive and it's unfair.

An unhelpful intervention

2012-01-29T15:03:00.000-08:00

The boy was sitting at the bottom of the staircase. He was sobbing into his hands. A crowd of teachers were doing their best to persuade him to get up.

He had run out of his lesson and come here to hide. I know him quite well. At first he ignored me in exactly the same way that he'd ignored everyone else. Finally though I persuaded him to come with me back to the department office. I assured him that no-one would be angry with him, that he could have some time to himself and then he could discuss whatever had upset him.

We walked around the corner and the Headteacher saw us. He began to scream at the boy, telling him off for wasting the time of him and his staff. Within moments, the boy was back on the floor, again in tears.

It's hard work to build trust with challenging students. It takes considerable effort and patience. It is incredibly galling when another member of staff destroys it in a moment's ignorance.

When teamwork doesn't work

2012-01-26T14:03:00.000-08:00

I found a teacher in tears. It had nothing to do with her students.

She's a trainee and is making an impressive start in the profession. She manages behaviour well in some difficult sets and comes up with imaginative lesson ideas. So why the tears?

Two of her fellow trainees were planning lessons together and sharing resources while excluding her. The pair had also commented to her Head of Department that her lesson planning was not as organized as it should be.

Competition in any workplace is inevitable. As human beings we all like to be better than each other and every school is full of teachers desperate to begin their journey up the greasy pole.

Yet helping out and supporting your colleagues isn't optional. You are in a school to ensure students are getting an excellent education and working together with colleagues is part of making that possible. If you create an excellent resource, be excited about others wanting to use it. With so many other things to contend with, it's depressing that workmates should ever be obstacles.

The Failed Escape

2012-01-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

It all started with a telling off.

The student had turned up late and had been informed by his form tutor that he would be have a detention that evening. He wasn't having anything of it. He stormed past her and out of the classroom door.

How he managed to get off the school premises without being seen has yet to be established. In theory it's impossible; every exit is either locked or supervised. Yet he pulled it off. One rather neat trick which is popular with some of the students is to hide at the delivery entrance and slip out behind one of the cleaners.

Panic all around. Members of senior leadership dashing around madly, desperate to establish his whereabouts. Several were ready to go and look for him.

Then he returned. Drenched. His escape plan hadn't been well thought through. He had got out and sat on a wall in the rain until, wet and cold, he returned.

Plus points for cunning. No points for long-term planning

Turn over your papers . . . NOW

2012-01-14T05:44:00.000-08:00

I couldn't sleep the night before.

My bottom set Year 11 set were taking their English Language GCSE exam the next day. I lay there in bed worrying about what I hadn't taught them.

I was in school by 7:15 for a pre-exam breakfast. More surprisingly, a large number of my students were. The idea is to make sure they got a decent meal before the exam and to take care of any last minute concerns.

It's quite possible that none of this set will pass. They are very weak and find everything about English tough. Yet even if that does turn out to be the case, I do feel I've achieved something. These are some of the most disengaged students in the school and when I first taught them it was a battle just to get them to put pen to paper.

Now, the vast majority turn up to class and try. They get through the work. They enthusiastically ask questions. They've started to take an interest in passing. The students I started with would not have turned up at 7:15 on their exam day; several wouldn't have turned up at all. Whatever happens, this change of attitude is something I can cling onto.

We sat in my classroom waiting to go over for the hall. I'd never seen them like it, silent with anxiety. I crack a few poor jokes to lift the mood and then it's time to take them over. As I see them taking their seats in the hall, ready to do their best, I feel a little bit of pride.

The canteen: the missing part of the school food debate

2012-01-14T05:39:00.000-08:00

My school canteen v Southern Fried Chicken. According to The Guardian, the battlelines are being drawn. Schools are going to get the freedom to offer price promotions and compete with takeaway food outlets.

Though the scale of his success may be disputed, Jamie Oliver’s campaign has ensured that school food is a political issue.

Yet there remains a major gap in this debate: the canteen itself. When students choose to hang around in the playground with a pack of crisps they are rejecting the place as much as they are the food.  Even if, as at my school, students aren’t allowed off the premises, they can bring in crisps to eat in the playground. They know that a couple of hours later they can pick something up from one of the many takeaways they pass en-route to the bus stop. The choice exists and it’s right that schools accept this.

Even those who don’t think it’s a school’s duty to feed its students well should recognise that teachers have to deal with the results of poor diets. When I see some of my students walking to school and having a “Red Bull breakfast”, it’s unsurprising that they don’t start the day in much of a mood for work.

It is no revelation that price increases put students off food. The research cited by the Guardian suggests that a “10% increase in the price of meals triggered to a drop of between 7 and 10% in the number of students eating canteen food”. I’ve seen this in my school.

I’m sure plenty of you have just read this and felt irritated that a time of cuts to key parts of education, I’m talking about nice canteens. Yet this proposal is rooted in grim pragmatism.

The scene is probably familiar to you. Lengthy queues for food. Long tables and benches. Clinical lighting and white walls. As some schools have proven, it doesn’t take much to make this slightly more pleasant.

Introduce a system of staggered queuing. Put something up on the walls. Turn on some music. Have round tables with proper chairs. I saw this in place recently at a school and was impressed by how much more convivial it made the atmosphere.

Lunchtime at many schools is the worst time of the day for behaviour. At my school, it’s the time when fighting and bullying are most prevalent. Such lunchtime chaos is consistently carried into afternoon lessons.

Creating a place where most students want to go and have lunch will help schools to control behaviour. Perhaps some of our frenetic teenagers might even discover the pleasure of sitting down and enjoying a conversation over a meal with their friends.

Originally published on Liberal Conspiracy

Welcome to the Warzone

2012-01-09T14:40:00.000-08:00

It was a creative writing exercise.

We'd been working on how to describe a place using all of the senses. Students wrote a description then I had to guess the place.

There had been a shopping centre, a beach and a park when a particularly vivid description came up. Raucous noise, a splattering of debris and violence all around.

I guessed a warzone. The student told me it was the playground.

Even allowing for a touch of poetic licence, the description was shocking. How students perceive their school is of huge importance. If they see professional place of learning, they are more likely to decide to learn. But if they see it as a place of total chaos then bad behaviour is the natural response.

It also reminded me that, however well I and other teachers think we know a school, there's a side of it that the students only ever really see.

Why training days shouldn't be pointless

2012-01-03T13:15:00.000-08:00

Back at school and have survived the first day of inset.

For those of you from outside the world of education, inset days are training days. No students but lots of seminars. In my experience, they are nearly always a wasted opportunity.

The fault is on both sides. Most teachers I know turn up in a negative mindset (I'm not exempting myself from this). They expect the sessions to be useless and therefore make no effort to get anything out of them. In that sense, we can be like our worst students.

Yet management also don't make things easy. Too often the sessions are vague and uninspiring.

One very good session leader once set out her criteria for a successful session; can a teacher walk away with an idea that they can use in the classroom tomorrow? Answer yes and that's a good session. Anything else is fluff.

In a school like ours that is trying hard to turn itself around, inset days should be valuable. It wouldn't take much to make them so.

A resolution of sorts

2012-01-01T06:40:00.000-08:00

Every teacher has students who they have written off.

They've tried everything and it just isn't working. The student doesn't care and eventually neither do you. In many ways it's a self-defence mechanism; call the student unteachable and therefore he/she's failings no longer seem the teacher's responsibility.

I've been flicking through "Never Work Harder than Your Students" by Robyn Jackson. I came across a line where it mentioned that “every single student has strengths. The best teachers find them.”

Now in many ways, this is the kind of cheesy cliched line that irritates the hell out of me. I think what a lovely feel good sentiment for someone who doesn't actually work with challenging students. Slightly reluctantly, however, I'll admit that it's true.

I started thinking about my “unteachables”. There's one boy who is constantly rude and aggressive. Yet when we talk about context, he has such an interest in history. There's a girl who cannot stay in her seat. But put her in an argument and she always holds her own.

These students do need to make changes; if their behaviour continues, it will keep harming their progress. Teachers do, however, need to remember that there are strengths. Amid all the frustration, we need to do our best to use them.

Should a holiday be a complete holiday?

2011-12-28T05:38:00.000-08:00

“Yeah but you're on holiday half the time.”

Such is the response to any teacher who moans about their workload to their non-teacher friends. And yes, it's pretty sweet; I like my working life being broken into small, easily digestible chunks.

How much work should teachers be doing during the three months-ish per year we have off? Some are jealously protective of the time, proud that they never take any work home. They insist they will have no problem getting all their lesson planning done during term. In contrast, I know others who write off whole weeks of holidays as “work time”.

The decision is entirely personal. No one in senior leadership offers any instruction on it, no one can check up on what you've done.

If we, as teachers, want to be taken seriously as professionals then holidays can't be purely time off. No teacher can honestly say that during the frenzy of term, they have as much time as they'd like to plan. Our obligation is to deliver the best lessons we can; if doing that means putting aside some of the precious holiday time, so be it.

Or pick up a teaching theory book. I know we're all convinced that we know what we're doing but would there be any harm in seeking out some new ideas?

The unexpected gift

2011-12-22T09:17:00.000-08:00

He's possibly the naughtiest student in school and he's in my form.

He often shouts in my face. I've sat with him countless times when he's been withdrawn from lessons. On one occasion, I had to persuade him to come down off a roof.

On the final day of term, he walks into my office without a word. He hands me a present and I'm speechless. He smiles and walks out.

We measure our working lives in achievements but, years down the line, I wonder if it won't be moments like these that define our careers.

Tis the season to be ill

2011-12-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

How ill is too ill?

I know teachers who have taken a day off for a headache. I know others who will come in with a raging temperature. My school is pretty trusting. You ring up, say you are ill and no questions are asked. You fill in a small form on your return which no-one ever seems bothered about (like much of school paperwork, I have no idea where it finally goes). The only teacher I've known to get into trouble was one who took the day off “ill”, before coming to perform at the school talent show in the evening.

I've always been proud that, even when I'm feeling like death, I drag myself in. I feel guilty about making someone else do my teaching. I'm nervous about being seen by other teachers as a slacker.

I'm no longer sure this minor martydom is a good idea. In a previous life, I had a desk job. When I felt rough, I could hide behind my desk, do very little work and scrape through to the end of the day. Teaching doesn't let you hide and good teaching requires energy. An ill teacher struggles to teach decent lesson. Perhaps as importantly in a school like mine, they won't find the composure to deal with difficult behaviour.

Maybe I'm going soft but if you are too ill to stand in front of a crowd of rowdy teenagers then don't come in. Others might resent covering your lessons but they will appreciate not being coughed on.

A desperate hunt for a new teacher

2011-12-11T13:17:00.001-08:00

We have less than a week to find a new teacher.

For most of this term, one of the positions in our department has been filled by a supply teacher who can no longer come in. Cue panic-driven recruitment.

There is a vicious cycle at work here. Bad schools are poor at retaining staff and are often over-reliant on temporary staff. Aside from the obvious disadvantages this turnover has for students, it also makes it difficult to find good teachers. It forces the school to recruit at times of the year (such as now) when most good teachers are employed and not looking for work. The time pressure also means the school can't be that selective; they have to pick someone, even if the choice is small and unimpressive.

The first candidate was not a success. As part of the interview process, he taught my Year 8 set. My Head of Department described it as a shambles.

Teaching a lesson seems the only true way to test quality. It's also a very rare instance when the school hands over power to the students. They don't make the decision but the extent to which they choose to cooperate with this new teacher plays a key role in how the lesson will go.

It's an odd thought that the applicant's future is at least partly in the hands of a group of teenagers.

Is a lazy student my fault?

2011-12-06T13:54:00.001-08:00

He sat there and stared into space.

It was my Bottom Set Year 11's mock exam. In just over a month they will be doing the real one. Invigilating, I wandered nervously around the back of the hall. Mocks are the key indicator as to how students will perform in the actual exam. They are proof of whether I've achieved anything over the last two terms.

With an hour left, his paper was closed. I walked over, opened it and found almost half the questions unanswered. I looked at him imploringly and he shook his head.

Just how responsible am I for this? He's not the brightest student but I know I've equipped him with the skills to make a good stab at all of this paper. I clearly, however, haven't given him the motivation or confidence to do so.

As the January exams approach, I've been thinking more about this question of responsibility. My set will do ok but I know a few are going to miss their targets. I've taught them the course thoroughly and accessibly, built good relationships with parents to ensure home support and have run regular after-school sessions. Yet, in hindsight, it's always easy to identify things you could have done better.

Is it my fault if a sixteen-year-old cares so little they give up halfway through the mock exam? What hurts is that feeling of powerlessness; I don't know how to make him care.

p.s. The issue of who is responsible for exam results also links directly into the whole debate on performance-related pay, something I'd like to do a post on sometime.

Why the school musical matters

2011-12-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

I wasn't expecting to enjoy myself.

Musicals aren't really my thing and a musical adaptation of Cinderella was surely going to be too much to bear.

And yet I had a great time. The script was genuinely funny while I enjoyed the cheesy songs more than I should admit. I found the complex dance routines dazzlingly impressive.

Most importantly, everyone was having so much fun. The audience (encouragingly large, with plenty of parents as well as students of all ages) was roaring with laughter and clapping along to the music. Those on stage were clearly relishing the attention.

Events like these shouldn't be seen as an added bonus for the school. If we are to have a positive atmosphere around the place we need nights like this, where students, teachers and parents get together and enjoy an occasion. An evening like this does so much to make everyone proud of the school.

So let's add that to the much-vaunted "Development Strategy": must have more fun.

In school on strike day

2011-11-30T14:21:00.000-08:00

I went into work today because:

1. I had a lot to do.

2. I didn't want to lose a day's pay.

3. I was uncertain about the impact of the strike.

The school was closed for pupils and only about half the staff came in.

I was impressed by the way in which teachers respected the decision to strike or not as a personal one. No-one was put under any pressure either way. I'm aware this certainly wasn't the case at all schools.

There was a generation split on the issue. Older staff were much more likely to strike. Younger staff like myself seem less riled because they don't perhaps have the same pension expectations. I also think the older staff are much more comfortable with the whole practice of going on strike.

The Headteacher was irritated. He had been very keen to keep the school open, particularly after he heard that all the nearby ones would be shut. A school isn't allowed to ask its staff whether they will be striking or not and that uncertainty eventually left him feeling he had no choice.

And the kids? They were delighted. Many informed me that they would be spending the day playing football, ice-skating or shopping. These consumers who seemunconcerned about being let down.

I don't want my bottom set to join the one million

2011-11-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

I now know quite a bit about car bodywork apprenticeships.

There has been a shift in the thinking of my Year 11 bottom set. Suddenly, there is a lot of chatter about sixth form colleges and apprenticeships. The reality that they are leaving at the end of the year has finally dawned.

One student came to my office and asked if I could help him look up car bodywork apprenticeships on the internet. He had come to me because “I knew you would help me out.” It was a nice thing for me to hear but it's also worrying. No-one in the school had volunteered to help him and he couldn't think of anyone better to help than his English teacher. I did my best but I was hopelessly unqualified to offer advice.

His enthusiasm and seriousness surprised me. Put politely, he is not a model student. Yet this was his world and his ambitions. He just needed someone to give him a hand and no-one had done that.

In a society where over a million young people are unemployed, none of my students seem overly concerned. They all reckon that things will work out. Youthful optimism is refreshing but it will cut no ice in this grim recession. I fear for my bottom set. A combination of few qualifications and a complete naivety about the job market leaves them seriously disadvantaged.

Fighting the four letter words

2011-11-25T14:24:00.000-08:00

A student swore in my class and I didn't bother to reprimand him.

I know why I made this slip. Students use foul language in a way that is completely routine. Many seem unaware of its ability to cause offense and some are surprised when called up for it; they don't think they've done anything wrong.

I can't really expect to alter the way they speak. These words are entrenched, they aren't going anywhere. All the same, I've decided to have a real crackdown on swearing. I like the idea of my classroom being an oasis of civility.

p.s. Staff probably can't get too high and mighty on bad language. Come to the staffroom for a real explosion of expletives.

Me, Jay Z and the idea of a hero

2011-11-20T13:24:00.000-08:00

A Year 8 girl asked me whether I wished I was Jay Z. I considered briefly and answered no. I told her I liked being a teacher. She looked at me with disbelief.

“You're telling me you wouldn't wanna be rich and married to Beyonce?”

Part of me finds it depressing that so many students are obsessed with celebrities. It creates a view of success that is both unattainable and shallow.

I teach a unit on Heroes, both literary and real. We think about what qualities a hero can have. My students always seem surprised that there a people who have heroic qualities but aren't famous. It's a revelation to many because of the close connection they have between fame and success. They find it exciting that someone next door can be a hero.

We do inevitably end up discussing their celebrity favourites but this isn't a bad thing. For example, we can all agree that Jay Z does show a single-minded commitment that is pretty heroic. Maybe, just maybe the kids go away respecting him for reasons beyond his vast bank balance.

p.s. Many teachers are snobby about children reading gossip magazines. While I'd rather all my students were reading War and Peace, I reckon “Hello” and “OK” are better than nothing. They are engaging with language and I guess that's something.

Ill-gotten rewards

2011-11-14T14:51:00.000-08:00

While checking the list of children who were going on the Year 7 Reward Trip to the Science Museum, I got a shock. Top of the list was one of my most troublesome students, a boy who constantly gets in fights.

How had he been judged as one of the top ten students in his year? I was informed that he had a 100% attendance record. While I'm aware of the need to combat truancy, this seems to reward quantity without taking note of the complete lack of quality.

How not to sack someone

2011-11-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

A teaching assistant has spent two years supporting a severely autistic boy in all his lessons. One day the boy told her that she was getting sacked. He said that his mum had received a letter about it.

It transpired that the school had sent letters to all the parents of special needs children detailing the cuts being made to the learning support department. No-one had informed the department.

Remarkably, the Headteacher didn't apologise. Everyone is wise enough to know that the sackings aren't his fault; they are the result of decisions made far above. With a touch of courtesy he could, however, make the process less painful and more dignified.

The mystery of the missing tooth

2011-11-05T12:24:00.000-07:00

“Check your students' mouths. Try to see if they are missing a tooth. Make sure you are subtle. ”

A trail of blood in the corridors had led to a lone tooth. On this afternoon, we are not just teachers but amateur detectives. It is rather hard to be subtle about looking inside someone's mouth. I did my best and thought I might have found the tooth's owner when I found a streak of red across a desk. It turned out to be lipstick. The toothless child was never found.

Broken Windows Theory

2011-11-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

It is now impossible to enter the school without seeing cracked glass. One of the entrance doors had its glass pane cracked by a hurled stone. No-one bothered fixing it. Over the last month, the other three entrances have all suffered the same fate. It's a very literal example of broken windows theory.

When those in charge don't care about the school buildings, students are encouraged to see vandalism as harmless fun. The school's appearance never gets discussed at meetings because it is seen as separate to the pressing behavioural and academic problems. Yet when students turn up at a dilapidated environment, it is instantly a struggle to convince them that school matters.

I'm not asking for an expensive rebuild; just the recognition amongst those in charge that appearances count. A lick of paint and a couple of new panes of glass would do nicely.

Inclusion and the Nutters

2011-10-31T14:52:00.001-07:00

The “nutters” was not an affectionate nickname. Between them, the eight members of bottom set had an encyclopaedia of behavioural difficulties. The explosive results rang down the corridors.

Finally the headmaster decided that he had seen enough. A small class with specialist support was supposed to have been the solution. These “challenging” students were, however, responding badly to spending all day with other “challenging” students. He decided that the class would be broken up and the students split among the other sets. Cue lots of irate teachers. The staff room consensus was that yes, bottom set had been bad but at least its troubles had been contained. Disbanding it seemed like a willful attempt to spread the chaos.

Actually, for most of the children, it worked. They found their new calmer classes preferable to the exhausting anarchy of before. They enjoyed learning. They enjoyed being treated just like all the other kids.

So inclusion works? Not quite. Those with the most severe problems have got worse. The school's special needs department has admitted defeat and the parents have been encouraged to take their children into a specialist residential school. But they don't want that. They are adamant that their child stays because they don't like the connotations of a “special” school. While the dispute rumbles on, the situation in the classroom gets worse.

We instinctively accept that parents have the right to decide what's best for their children. What, however, is to be done when parents and experienced educational specialists disagree? At present, the result is often an unproductive stalemate.

The Point

2011-10-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

Who I am

I teach English at a London school which was failing but isn't anymore. Its results remain the worst in the area. The school's surroundings aren't prosperous; over a third of our students receive free school meals.

My name is not Paul Pennyfeather.

Why I'm blogging

It's generally a bad idea to start a blog. The vast majority just clutter up the internet.

But I like Nightjack (now sadly gone) and Winston Smith. They write about their challenging jobs with candour and intelligence. In the process they say important things about the way society is. I'd be delighted to achieve something even a little bit similar.

I'm always surprised by how many people want to talk to me about my job. Everyone has an opinion.

"The kids/schools/teachers/beatings are not what they used to be."

"The kids should spend more time on spelling/counting/building walls."

In general, people don't much like the kids so they turn to the schools for the answers.

What this blog will do

1. Tell tales from “the coalface”.

: You may find a gripping portrait of the British education system.

You may find disjointed anecdotes that will make you laugh, cry or yawn.

2. Attempt to offer insight.

: I spend my working life surrounded by chaos.

Occasionally I try to work out what's going on.

What this blog won't do

1. Preach about how I am saving the world.

: I like my job and sometimes I think I achieve something worthwhile.

I don't, however, believe I am the Messiah.

2. Analyse every minor shift in education policy.

: I'll look at policy changes when they are interesting

I will ignore them when they are not.