Away from the numbers

" 'No evidence' exam tagets work" Threatening schools where less than 30% of the pupils obtain 5 or more GCSEs at A*-C with closure does not actually work. Who says so? The NUT, perhaps? Another teaching union? The Green Party? The SWP? The Lib Dems? The National Audit Office, the mild mannered number crunchers.? Could be! What a shame neither of the big two English political parties can grasp this.

Sherlock Holmes Strikes Again

Hmm... apparently the Senior Leadership Team are 'concerned' about the falling Religious Studies GCSE results over the last five years. This wouldn't by any chance be the same Senior Leadership Team that has reduced RE's teaching hours by 36% over exactly the same period? I wonder how other examined subjects in the school have coped when their teaching time has been cut by 36%...What you mean to say no other subject has had their teaching time cut like that? Really? If reducing my teaching time by 36% did not have an impact on GCSE results, frankly, I really would be worried.

Ofsted inspector suspects wood might be bear dumping ground.

"Too much maths taught to test" apparently. Who would have thought it? You insist that GCSE league tables are published and that they must include maths results. You introduce de facto payment by results for teachers. You threaten schools with closure where less than 30% of kids get 5 or more GCSEs (including Maths) and then you discover that those pesky teachers are teaching to the test.

Well the only good thing about this latest bit of nonsense from Ofsted is that it will be greeted by derision by just about everybody and it further undermines this organisation's credibility - you might remember that this is the organisation that has mangled the English language and indeed reason so much that satisfactory now means unsatisfacory. If you can remember that sine theta equals opposite over hypotenuse you will probably not be able to remember why it does. Most parents who take an interest in such things would probably think that rather than spending two lessons explaining why tangent theta equals opposite over adjacent, Mr Robinson should be teaching something else that will get little Johnny through his maths exam.

Goodbye, Mr Stinky.

Reading an excellent post on Miss Snuffleupagus' blog has made me think about the man my friends and I knew and loved as Stinky - Mr Sinclair. He taught us History at A level and was simply inspirational. He never pretended to be our friend, if he had a sense of humour he kept it hidden from his pupils, but we adored him. Why? His knowledge of his subject seemed amazing, the passion he had for his subject unmistakable. He could be withering in his criticism of your essays, or of you if you had a habit of handing them in late - "Gentleman Loser, why is it you want to go to university when you so dislike writing essays?" Twenty three years later I can still feel that shame. Quite simply he was one of the most inspirational teachers I have ever known - certainly of all the teachers that taught me. Like a lot of fifty somethings during the late 1980's he got out of teaching because he could see the writing on the wall, the arrival of the National Curriculum and all of that - and although his early departure from teaching was very sad it was absolutely the right move for him. OFSTED would have hated him - learning intentions were decided upon five minutes into the lesson when we reminded him that we had done John Pym a couple of months beforehand. I imagine he would have been taken to task for his failure to embrace the new technologies and pedagogical orthodoxies but I can't help feeling that teaching is very much poorer for the loss of Stinky and his kind.

Fidem Serva

We are apparently in danger of becoming a society segregated along religious lines, so says the new campaign group Accord. The Rabbi of Maidenhead - not noted for its ghettos -fears that the current system damages community relations.

A long time ago, the Catholic school in which I taught was broken into and vandalised one weekend. The statues and crucifixes dotted around the school were well and truly Cromwelled. One colleague gave an assembly to the pupils containing slides depicting the damage done. I was very interested to note that the pupils who were most indignant and indeed hurt by these scenes were Islam. I was interested and surprised because of Islam's strictures against idolatry - I would have predicted that our Hindu pupils would have been more upset than the Muslim pupils. Perhaps they could see through their differences and recognise a shared sense of the sacred that had in some way been violated.

Yes - that's right Muslim and Hindu kids going to a Catholic school. If faith schools promoted bigotry - why on earth would Hindus, Muslims, Jains and Pentecostal Christians do such a thing?

Cycling To Work

Since November 2006, I have started to cycle the three miles to work. This move happened not as a conversion to eco-warrior status but because the other half dropped her hours at the job that gave her a company car. Walking would take too long (45 minutes) and despite the good local bus services, the bus would not be much quicker. As it is the bike ride only takes about ten minutes longer each way than the car journey did.

The wonderful people of the local bike shop have been enormously helpful in offering advice and support in what has turned out to be a new enthusiasm. Apart from the bike (ridgeback meteor - hybrid - pictured) I have found the other bits and pieces very helpful.

• Altura rainproof trousers (night vision ones) which are rolled up and in the bottom of the...
• Altura pannier
• Altura Jacket yellow - it just goes over my shirt and tie (I have a jacket hanging up at work) - I don't need a shower after getting to work (especially not wearing a rucksack)
• Flashing Lights
• D-Lock and cable
• Bottle cage and bottle - it is surprising how thirsty you get
• Pump and inner tube and tyre levers (not needed for punctures yet but a good security blanket)
• Bike stands (two - one at home the other for work)

Granny

On Saturday November 4th 2006, Granny would have been 100. Sadly, she passed away in 2004 and never got a telegram from the Queen. As a life long royalist she would have loved that.

Granny was one of ten children and herself had ten children, thirty four grandchildren and quite a few great grandchildren. She endured many hardships throughout her long life. She was marginalised by her family when she became a Catholic, she lost a son, Billy, during the Clydebank bombing. She gave birth that night to another boy, Tom who was born deaf. Her husband, Wullie was seriously injured from the blast and rendered blind. Tragically, Tom was killed in a scooter accident as a young man.

Shortly afterwards one of her granddaughters, Andrea died in infancy. Her eldest son, Peter died in 2002 as the result of an accident some twelve years before which had left him paralysed from the neck down. On the face of it, this sounds like a tale of woe. Jean Hastie was, however, one of the most cheerful people you could hope to meet. She had a great repertoire of one liners, an infectious laugh that often left her and others with tears of laughter running down her cheeks, and a wonderful sense of mischief. I enjoyed her piano playing and singing, the fact that she retained her love for the royal family and support for Glasgow Rangers F.C. despite, or possibly because, she was surrounded by Celtic supporting republicans.

I'm not sure of the best way to honour her special day, perhaps I could break the habit of a lifetime and support Glasgow Rangers this weekend (they're not playing on Saturday though and in any event they're playing so badly at the moment) , she wasn't a drinker so that rules that one out, and she wasn't one for solemn commemorations. Maybe the best way is to try and remember just how lucky I was to know and love this special woman.

In the pictures above, Granny can be seen as a schoolgirl in 1912 and shortly before she was married in 1931.