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Half term at last! I’m going to try to have a bit of a break this week, although I’m going to have to do some work at some point. We’re going away for a couple of days at the end of the week, so I’ll have to get to it sooner rather than later. I had a lazy day today though - I didn't get up until about ten, and then fell asleep on the sofa after lunch for about three hours! I hate doing that though, because I feel as though I've just wasted the day.
It’s the first time I’ve worked full-time since I trained – even though I’m still working at two schools, and one of my jobs isn’t permanent. At school #2 I’m basically setting up a department from scratch, which is good experience, I hope. Although given the paucity of teaching jobs in my subject in this area, I have no idea when the experience of being a de-facto head of department will come in useful. And the school I’m at still isn’t in a position to be able to offer me a permanent position. I can’t remember if I’ve explained this before, but I’m currently covering for someone on long-term sick-leave. If I’m still there at Easter (and the school has said they do want me to stay on after Christmas), then she’ll have been off for a year. I don’t know the regulations, but I guess they’re obliged to keep her job open, even though she hadn’t been at the school for more than a couple of days!
But I’m enjoying it, despite the uncertainty. Even though I’m only there three days a week, I feel as though I’m a valued part of the team, my input and suggestions are taken seriously – and it’s a hell of a confidence boost. It reminds me that I am good at this – I couldn’t have done it a few years ago, and probably even last year would have still been thinking I couldn’t do it, but it’s amazing what you can dredge up when you have to!
The big education news story this week is that sex education is going to be made compulsory for kids from age 5 upwards. Naturally, it’s caused a furore in some quarters as there always is when anything to do with sex education is mentioned. I don’t know what to say really. I’m certainly not against it – it’s just that I don’t think that the burden should fall on teachers. Having said that though, I wouldn’t advocate what happened when I was at school, which is that all we were really taught was the mechanics in biology lessons. But by that time, my mum had already sat me down and give me “the talk” which did encompass more than just the mechanics. And of course, I intend to do the same for my kids. Elinor will be getting a talk at school towards the end of this academic year, and I’ll make sure that I’ve told her all of it in advance.
Of course the plan isn’t to tell five year olds what bit goes where – anyone with half a brain should realise that the emphasis with younger children is going to be on the relationships side of things. BUT – it’s NOT the sole province of schools to do this. It’s our job to educate and inform, yes. But with something as sensitive as this, is there any question that the first port of call should be with parents?
Also this week - Behaviour in schools worsens. No shit, Sherlock. The number of kids who are repeatedly excluded from school for short periods is increasing rapidly. Why don’t we just exclude them permanently? I hear you cry. Well, it’s not that simple. The government has basically told schools that they have to cut down the numbers of kids that they expel. So instead, the kids are just suspended repeatedly for several days. They come back to school for a day, and then get suspended again and so it goes on. Details of the number of permanent exclusions are also included in league-table figures, so there’s yet another incentive to keep them down. But the thing is – the majority of these kids are never going to succeed in mainstream education, and all they’re doing is taking up time and effort that could be spent actually teaching the kids who do want to learn. That’s not to say that these kids should be consigned to the scrap heap; no there are alternatives like PRUs (Pupil Referral Units) but there aren’t enough of them and they cost money.
Also, at a recent training session I discovered that it costs around £7000 for a school to permanently exclude a pupil. That’s about £4000 in lost funding, and the rest to pay for the lawyers etc. And once you’ve succeeded in having the exclusion upheld, you’re likely to get a phone call the next day asking you to take in a pupil who has been excluded from another school – so some schools are opting to keep “the devil they know”. Hamstrung doesn’t even begin to describe it.
I mean, what on earth do we do when confronted with a 5 year old who takes a knife into school saying he planned to attack a teacher so that he would be moved to another class.
”The article was confiscated, parents and the police were informed and the matter was fully investigated.
"The child was made aware of how serious the matter was and we feel everything that was done was appropriate."
The boy was suspended and evaluated by psychologists.
Yes. And? Where the hell does a five year old get the idea that it’s okay to do something like that? It’s not something that would ever have occurred to either of my kids – you have to ask what sort of household that child is growing up in.
I’ve seen a few articles about this on the net, but haven’t come across anything on the telly or radio - teachers at Movilla High School in NI have refused to teach a pupil who assaulted one of them. NASUWT members are now on strike, because they have not been paid, even though they were teaching all their other classes – just not the ones which included this pupil. As Frank Chalk says. “Top Marks.” It’s about time teachers stood up for themselves when faced with behaviour like this – the school apparently did nothing and although the kid is now going to be charged with assault, he’s not been kicked out.
As I said here, I and my colleagues at school regularly receive risk assessments for certain pupils, telling us that we could be at risk of injury. That’s the school covering it’s arse of course. But what other professions are put in this position? Okay, there are a few where it’s to be expected that people are dealing with violent behaviour on a regular basis – you’d expect it in a prison or on a phsychiatric ward. But in a school??
More and more trainee teachers are failing the basic literacy, numeracy and ICT tests and having to re-take them several times. These are mandatory tests that you have to pass before you can qualify. They are taken online, and if I remember rightly, 30 minutes (each) is allowed for the literacy and numeracy tests and 40 or 45 minutes for the ICT one. As someone who’s never struggled with maths or English, I wasn’t worried – until I did some of the mock tests online. I was actually having trouble with the maths one, which really worried me. (I was just scraping a pass). But on the day I did the maths test, I went into the test centre, sat down – and was handed a piece of paper and a pencil. “What’s that for?” “Your working out,” was the answer, as if I was an idiot. Well, clearly I was, because the reason I’d been having trouble with the mock tests was because I’d been doing ALL the calculations IN MY HEAD.
Once I’d got the paper and pencil, the thing took me ten minutes and I passed, no problem. Same for the literacy. And 15 minutes for the ICT test.
But I know people who have had to take these tests three or four times. Which amazes me. With one exception, they were all younger than I am by at least fifteen years; which could perhaps account for it, because they were probably at school at a time where teaching kids to read, write and add up had fallen out of fashion. But the thing is, these days, you need to be educated to degree level (and have got a 2,1) to become a teacher, and you need to have good GCSEs in Maths and English. So if these tests are an “insurance policy” – they’re not really working.
It’s worrying though. I’ve had documents – reports, for instance - returned to me for correction, but I’ve not made any mistakes! It’s not my fault if the person “checking” it doesn’t have the same grasp of spelling, punctuation and grammar than I do!
Rant over for now. I'm just waiting to see what enormities of stupidity the next week brings.
It’s the first time I’ve worked full-time since I trained – even though I’m still working at two schools, and one of my jobs isn’t permanent. At school #2 I’m basically setting up a department from scratch, which is good experience, I hope. Although given the paucity of teaching jobs in my subject in this area, I have no idea when the experience of being a de-facto head of department will come in useful. And the school I’m at still isn’t in a position to be able to offer me a permanent position. I can’t remember if I’ve explained this before, but I’m currently covering for someone on long-term sick-leave. If I’m still there at Easter (and the school has said they do want me to stay on after Christmas), then she’ll have been off for a year. I don’t know the regulations, but I guess they’re obliged to keep her job open, even though she hadn’t been at the school for more than a couple of days!
But I’m enjoying it, despite the uncertainty. Even though I’m only there three days a week, I feel as though I’m a valued part of the team, my input and suggestions are taken seriously – and it’s a hell of a confidence boost. It reminds me that I am good at this – I couldn’t have done it a few years ago, and probably even last year would have still been thinking I couldn’t do it, but it’s amazing what you can dredge up when you have to!
The big education news story this week is that sex education is going to be made compulsory for kids from age 5 upwards. Naturally, it’s caused a furore in some quarters as there always is when anything to do with sex education is mentioned. I don’t know what to say really. I’m certainly not against it – it’s just that I don’t think that the burden should fall on teachers. Having said that though, I wouldn’t advocate what happened when I was at school, which is that all we were really taught was the mechanics in biology lessons. But by that time, my mum had already sat me down and give me “the talk” which did encompass more than just the mechanics. And of course, I intend to do the same for my kids. Elinor will be getting a talk at school towards the end of this academic year, and I’ll make sure that I’ve told her all of it in advance.
Of course the plan isn’t to tell five year olds what bit goes where – anyone with half a brain should realise that the emphasis with younger children is going to be on the relationships side of things. BUT – it’s NOT the sole province of schools to do this. It’s our job to educate and inform, yes. But with something as sensitive as this, is there any question that the first port of call should be with parents?
Also this week - Behaviour in schools worsens. No shit, Sherlock. The number of kids who are repeatedly excluded from school for short periods is increasing rapidly. Why don’t we just exclude them permanently? I hear you cry. Well, it’s not that simple. The government has basically told schools that they have to cut down the numbers of kids that they expel. So instead, the kids are just suspended repeatedly for several days. They come back to school for a day, and then get suspended again and so it goes on. Details of the number of permanent exclusions are also included in league-table figures, so there’s yet another incentive to keep them down. But the thing is – the majority of these kids are never going to succeed in mainstream education, and all they’re doing is taking up time and effort that could be spent actually teaching the kids who do want to learn. That’s not to say that these kids should be consigned to the scrap heap; no there are alternatives like PRUs (Pupil Referral Units) but there aren’t enough of them and they cost money.
Also, at a recent training session I discovered that it costs around £7000 for a school to permanently exclude a pupil. That’s about £4000 in lost funding, and the rest to pay for the lawyers etc. And once you’ve succeeded in having the exclusion upheld, you’re likely to get a phone call the next day asking you to take in a pupil who has been excluded from another school – so some schools are opting to keep “the devil they know”. Hamstrung doesn’t even begin to describe it.
I mean, what on earth do we do when confronted with a 5 year old who takes a knife into school saying he planned to attack a teacher so that he would be moved to another class.
”The article was confiscated, parents and the police were informed and the matter was fully investigated.
"The child was made aware of how serious the matter was and we feel everything that was done was appropriate."
The boy was suspended and evaluated by psychologists.
Yes. And? Where the hell does a five year old get the idea that it’s okay to do something like that? It’s not something that would ever have occurred to either of my kids – you have to ask what sort of household that child is growing up in.
I’ve seen a few articles about this on the net, but haven’t come across anything on the telly or radio - teachers at Movilla High School in NI have refused to teach a pupil who assaulted one of them. NASUWT members are now on strike, because they have not been paid, even though they were teaching all their other classes – just not the ones which included this pupil. As Frank Chalk says. “Top Marks.” It’s about time teachers stood up for themselves when faced with behaviour like this – the school apparently did nothing and although the kid is now going to be charged with assault, he’s not been kicked out.
As I said here, I and my colleagues at school regularly receive risk assessments for certain pupils, telling us that we could be at risk of injury. That’s the school covering it’s arse of course. But what other professions are put in this position? Okay, there are a few where it’s to be expected that people are dealing with violent behaviour on a regular basis – you’d expect it in a prison or on a phsychiatric ward. But in a school??
More and more trainee teachers are failing the basic literacy, numeracy and ICT tests and having to re-take them several times. These are mandatory tests that you have to pass before you can qualify. They are taken online, and if I remember rightly, 30 minutes (each) is allowed for the literacy and numeracy tests and 40 or 45 minutes for the ICT one. As someone who’s never struggled with maths or English, I wasn’t worried – until I did some of the mock tests online. I was actually having trouble with the maths one, which really worried me. (I was just scraping a pass). But on the day I did the maths test, I went into the test centre, sat down – and was handed a piece of paper and a pencil. “What’s that for?” “Your working out,” was the answer, as if I was an idiot. Well, clearly I was, because the reason I’d been having trouble with the mock tests was because I’d been doing ALL the calculations IN MY HEAD.
Once I’d got the paper and pencil, the thing took me ten minutes and I passed, no problem. Same for the literacy. And 15 minutes for the ICT test.
But I know people who have had to take these tests three or four times. Which amazes me. With one exception, they were all younger than I am by at least fifteen years; which could perhaps account for it, because they were probably at school at a time where teaching kids to read, write and add up had fallen out of fashion. But the thing is, these days, you need to be educated to degree level (and have got a 2,1) to become a teacher, and you need to have good GCSEs in Maths and English. So if these tests are an “insurance policy” – they’re not really working.
It’s worrying though. I’ve had documents – reports, for instance - returned to me for correction, but I’ve not made any mistakes! It’s not my fault if the person “checking” it doesn’t have the same grasp of spelling, punctuation and grammar than I do!
Rant over for now. I'm just waiting to see what enormities of stupidity the next week brings.
no subject
On the Sex Ed side, we had a session each year from top juniors to 4th year secondary that wasn't just the biological side of things. In juniors, the girls got the talk about girls' bits, but once we got to big school we got information, OK mostly from visiting speakers, about contraception, STDs, relationships and pregnancy. It probably wasn't strong on the togetherness side, but we knew what caused babies and how to do it safely or where to go if we got knocked up. I think there was a lass in our year in the 4th year who got pregnant 'cos she couldn't work out that "408" was the house number of the centre on the main road. The bus stopped right outside!
I was stunned at the interviews with some teenagers on the radio the other day who said they had never "done" about contraception and pregnancy at school. PSHE lessons have been around for at least the last 10 years and I really don't believe that these things are not covered at least once in each of years 9,10 & 11. I can imagine that the kids bunked off those lessons, or didn't take any notice, but I honestly can't believe that *nobody* has covered these things with them.
no subject
Like you, I can't believe contraception etc. isn't covered in schools - I'll have to teach it next year in PSHE. The idea doesn't really bother me, but I'm sure that some teachers feel very uncomfortable with it. Which is why it shouldn't be left entirely to schools. But then, the government can't regulate parents. Unfortunately.
no subject
no subject
Thing is, these kids treat teachers the way they do and they know there's nothing we can really do to them. And also, I'd be willing to bet that a lot of them talk to their parents the way they talk to us, so we've lost the battle before it's even started.