Grammar School Expansion - Good or Bad.

In 1998, Labour passed laws banning the creation of new grammars - selective state schools - but allowing existing schools to expand if there is sufficient demand.

In my opinion this heralded the decline in education standards.

No longer were children streamed by ability, the era of the non-competitive-everyone's-a-winner had arrived.

Brighter children were, and likely still are, ignored, the badly behaved were allowed to disrupt classes and the teachers focused on the middle ground.

England is now due to have its first new Grammar for 50 years after an existing school is to be allowed to open an annexe on a new site in Kent

There are some very good Secondary Modern schools out there, but I can only think that allowing the brighter children to attend grammar schools can only benefit the country as a whole.

I know that in previous posts I have bemoaned the fact that I spent 6 years at an Independent Grammar, assuming that I would have turned out differently had I gone to a Comprehensive, but my home life would have been the same so I probably would have still been the miserable so-and-so that I am now.

Let the naturally bright and the children with the desire to do well attend the new Grammars.  Let them excel and stop holding them back!

Showering after school sports.

Recently a study was carried out by a group from the University of Essex suggesting that pupils who do not shower after PE or sports are less active than those that do.

A BBC report on the study can be found here.

Now I know it is more than a few years since I left school (come April it will be 28 years) and things have changed in those (almost) three decades, but we didn't have a choice about showering.  We HAD to shower regardless of how active we were, or weren't.

We had a communal shower with pegs outside to hang your towel on.  Once you were out of the shower and had your towel wrapped around you, you had to walk past whichever sports teacher was on shower duty so that she could see that your shoulders, face and hair were wet.

The only time you got away without showering was if you were on your period, this was noted on a register so that you couldn't get away with it too often.

And of course, as we were all told in the first year, we were all expected to be using 'internal protection', as it was called by the teachers, by the start of the third year (which I think is year 10 or 11 in today's terms) thereby allowing us to shower.  This edict actually offended me more than the communal showers!  

We had one period of PE and one of swimming each week, and an afternoon (3 periods) of sport per week, this was tennis and athletics in the summer and hockey (up at the school playing fields) in winter.

Not once were we allowed to leave without showering, nor were we allowed to leave in anything other than full uniform.

It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it wasn't horrific either, it was just something that had to be done and so we did it.  

Did you have communal showers at school?  And did you have to use them?

Now I understand why we were made to do sports at school.

Out of the last 7 days, I have spent 6 at my study provider in Birmingham and the 7th at work, and I feel drained. By the time I reached study day 4 I could have easily fallen asleep in the classroom.

The simple act of dashing from the classroom to the train station, dragging my study materials with me, really did wake me up and that was when I, finally, made to connection between study and exercise.

You do need to move about to wake you up after intense study periods and that is what they were trying to do for us at school, it wasn't intended to be the torture I took it for.

I didn't hate all sport, I loved swimming, I started going to the swimming baths as soon as I was out of nappies (no waterproof swimming nappies back then) and I was taking lessons by the age of 3 (there were no mummy/baby classes then either), so enjoyed swimming at school always picking it when there was an option.

I also enjoyed hockey, I played in the days of the 'bully off'', no sanitised passback for me.

In the summer, when we had to do athletics, I opted for the javelin, shot and discus, the attraction possibly being that they were all originally weapons, though I didn't make the connection at the time.

So maybe I should be grateful to Mrs Thomas, Mrs Friebe, little Mr Jones and big Mr Jones instead of seeing them as medieval torturers, they were trying to do their best for us!

My two pen'orth - rewards for doing what is expected.

It has been in the news recently about a girl who missed out on a 100% attendance trip as she had a day off to attend her mother's funeral.  Even minor celebrities were up in arms.

And yes it was a shame that she had to miss out.

But instead of blaming the school which just seems to me to be following the (current) rules, maybe we should wonder why we started rewarding pupils for doing what was just expected of them?

I know it has been a few years since I left school, but back then you were punished for not attending, unless you had a very good reason and a note from a parent or guardian - clearly the poor child in the news DID have a very good reason for being absent.  We certainly didn't get taken out for meals just because we had managed to tear ourselves out of bed and stagger out to the car to be driven to and from the classroom every day.  

I had to walk the near mile to and from junior school, secondary school was a bus ride away, unless they were on strike in which case it was a 2 mile walk each way.  And I still managed to get there every day.  Even when I didn't want to.  Because that was what you had to do.

Assemblies seem to be a major event these days too, we had one every morning and parents did not attend.

Good behaviour seems to be rewarded too these days, years ago you would not dare misbehave because you would be punished.  My secondary school even still had the slipper and the cane.  Teachers would throw chalk or boardrubbers if they thought someone wasn't paying attention to them.

When did it all start going wrong?

Term Time Holidays

When I was growing up, if we couldn't afford to go away in the 'Coventry Fortnight' as it was known (this was the two weeks that the factories shut down) we didn't go away.

Taking me out of school was never even considered, admittedly this was partly due to Dad not being able to pick and choose his holidays as back then factory workers took them as dictated by their employers.  Mum worked in a more flexible workplace.

If we didn't go away, then days were spent in the garden, at the park or at the allotment.  We would also go fishing and for picnics.  Before we were in a position to be able to own our own car, Dad would borrow a car and we would drive to the seaside just for the day.

I enjoyed going on holiday but I didn't really miss it when we couldn't afford to go.  We saw, and still see, a holiday as a luxury or a privilege, not as a right or a necessity as it seems to be considered today.

Like I have said before, these days, everything seems to be 'me, me, me' and never mind the rules or the consequences.