Insect days

The wise head meets Ofplod

 Two teacher days to kick off. The first one to compare tans, peeling skin and holiday / helliday stories (those where you take your kids) and slope off early for an end of summer glass of something fresh with happy smiling colleagues. The second to dissect the appalling exam results which push us below our usual bog standard with the Once Wise Head, a Teresa May lookalike, with bulging eyes and dangerous pulsing vein in her temple wanting answers. Our unlamented erstwhile year 11s scored 10% below their tracked and predicted grades meaning that our localish rightly much maligned rivals are above us in the league table - a bit like being Blackburn Rovers compared to Wigan Athletic. From bad can come good as this may  have an unwitting effect on the various toads on their final last ultimate final warning who will no longer fear being downgraded to the more scabiferous unBSFed neighbours.

So a whole day was spent crushing data, scratching heads, blaming departed HoDs, faulty systems. Reasons made and excuses found and still much vagueness as we have 20 new teaching staff - in percentage terms a shift of 25% - who had nothing to do with it. Doubtless this will be the basis of the various fun filled PD sessions as the dread shadow of OFSTED looms ever larger and nearer.

Moreover, after much insinuation that we were crap a brave colleague opined, to a laser beam stare from the Wise One, that with the social and economic demographic of the catchment area there may well be more than a hint of a correlation between that and the underachievement not just crap teaching. In other words you can't make Ming from mud. Added to that, there is an awful lot of cynicism in the area not surprising when there is 20% youth unemployment nationally and higher still among the good folk of Grimmouth. Our brighter kids consider the idea that University is too expensive and the best job on offer in a few years might be with mum's (latest / next) boyfriend. So why study when there is bloody Facebook, games, cheap booze, drugs, sex which are all way more interesting than getting your revision done for an education that, from the perspective of many, will probably get you nowhere.