Makes me want to say, fuck the guidelines they suck…. what do YOU think would be best but they will not deviate from the party line. If they do, the local authority will be on them hushing them up in quick time.

I have thought about starting a blog about it all to be honest. Posting his homework, the marking he gets in his book, the school reports we get sent, on line for people to really see what is going on. If this year carries on like last then I just might do it.

I apologise to your Mother about my rant about teachers and to anyone else who is a teacher and yet is trying to make things better but I would say my general experience of most teaching staff I have come across is, keep the parents out and give them just info to keep them quiet. They only really want to talk to you if you child is badly behaved, in fact behaviour is their TOP RATED favourite subject. Learning, progress, achievement and expectations seem to be way down the list of topics they want to discuss.

Mollyxxx

Ps… Opps, did that just turn into another rant?

My Mum’s a teacher and… well a lot more actually, but not in mainstream education, and she and her colleagues take great pains to get round using the national curriculum – which is a fucking disgrace. She is making changes but, of course, it costs money which – as you say – is a problem. She works 90 hour weeks and gets paid nothing – good education itself costs money, and the teachers aren’t getting it. Except in state education where the curriculum costs nothing, the teachers aren’t trained properly, and yet they still get the money. Fu-cking dis-grace.

I’ll talk to her. Maybe she has some solutions. If anyone does, she does.

I’m also aware that this issue is something that people don’t have to face until their children are in education, and by then the fight can feel really futile. The situation with your son really sucks because you’re right, his options are… not really options! The change that needs to happen in the system is going to take a long time, and when your children are being given sub-standard education you want (and should have) immediate results. Therefore, unless you’re bearing children over a 20 year period, it really feels like there’s nothing you can do for YOUR children. And it’s not good enough.

But the issue is bigger; it’s not just about the best interests of existing children, but about the future of generations and generations of people to come.

We need answers; we need solutions. And I aspire to bring them to the surface.

The school my son goes too has the most appalling results when it comes to GCSE’s & A’levels. Last year between September and Christmas he was set 4, yes a massive 4, pieces of homework and told to read for 30 minutes A WEEK!

In the end after much emailing the school I was finally invited to meet with one of the deputy heads. I asked her about this and other issues and even said, no wonder we are raising a generation of morons when this is the standard of expectation. As you can imagine my comment was greeted with silence and much uncomfortable shifting in their seats.

We have met with them on 4 occasions now, not with the aim of criticising but to try to encourage them to raise standards and share with them how it looks from our side. What started off as enthusiasm on their part has slowly changed to tolerance and finally boredom when we don’t go away as I am sure they had hoped.

What I see is a system riddled with teachers who only know how to teach to plan, how to tick boxes and how to do teach to a national curriculum that has stifled creativity and excellence in teaching and has instead created a conveyor belt system to teaching. Teachers bitch about pay and demands on them but they can kiss my arse as far as I am concerned. Where else in the world do you get a 13 weeks paid holiday a year, a job for life and guaranteed pension? My son’s school is mainly worried about me buying him the right school uniform and ringing me up when he is not wearing the correct school shoes. I felt like saying to them.. “I will make him wear his school shoes when you fulfil your side of the bargain and teach him something”

So what are my choices for my son, leave him where he is and continue to constantly battle and fight with the school to obtain him a mediocre education at best and in the process know that he is being failed by the school or give up the fight and move him to a better school out of the area. Neither way is ideal, with one he maybe gets a better school but he is unsettled, leaving friends and possible even resentful about my decision and the other way….. effects every prospect he has for even a slightly decent education.

At the moment the fight goes on but I won’t send my daughter to that school if it the last one left standing. I would rather keep her at home. My son needs the discipline and environment school provides and so being at home is not an option for him but quite frankly the current school system in this country SUCKS. It is hugely divided depending on your postcode and your income, if you can afford to pay for education then you okey dokey, if you can afford to live near a really good school then you are okey dokey…. the rest of us…. we get the government churned out national curriculum taught by robots who have been bought up within this system themselves and then trained to be teachers by this system. They love plans and charts and tick boxes and standardised report forms where they just tick a box and don’t actually write anything specific about your child.

I apologise for ranting on your blog. This is a subject the fires me up. I want to stand with you Harper and demand a better education for my children. One where they are taught to be creative inventive, curious, and engaged and one that has expectations of them achieving something and yet I know that unless something changes very son my son will be deprived that.

Mollyxxx