As David Cameron seeks to capitalise on the Government's embarrasment about just how many economic migrants there are in this country, and how many of "our" jobs they're taking, and a Tory PPC speaks out in support of Enoch Powell's views, I thought I'd share this with you. The headteacher of North Road Primary School in his report to governors last week, wrote:
"Did you know that we are an increasingly cosmopolitan school? In addition to our predominanly White British pupils and our large Romany contingent we have Polish, Lithuanian, Czech, Greek Cypriot, Chines, Philipino, Hungarian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Vietnamese ethnic groups, plus many children of mixed race. We receive support for EAL from our LA "Language for Living" service and are buying in resources to help these pupils. The pupils are fully included in the life of the school. They bring with them new cultures and a richness of language and experiences that enhance our school".
Well written, David.
Last week was my first governors' meeting, which was lengthy and dominated by consideration of a huge number of papers and policies which makes one wonder just how much teachers' time is taken up with this sort of thing, rather than teaching. Still, I'm sure the parents of our primary school girl pupils will be pleased that we've adopted the Council's policy on providing education for school-age mothers!
I was surprised to learn that every incidence of racial abuse or unpleasantness among our pupils is fully recorded and reported on. Thankfully there are very few in our school, and I do wonder whether it's the pupils themselves speaking, or if they're just repeating something they might have heard at home, without understanding what their words mean.
Overall, not having been involved in education since I left school myself over 30 years ago, I was surprised at just how much paperwork, policies, programmes, targets, reviews, statements, forms, evaluations, standards and duties seem to be involved in the job of teaching!
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4 comments:
Alan Macnab writes....
The Government introduced some measures about two years ago as part of the Workforce Reform programme to reduce the administrative burden on teachers to enable them to devote all their time to teaching. I am not convinced that the measures are working.
My governing body, which is a Primary School up North Road from you, were amused to receive a report on the education of teenage mothers.
Scarily, I don't think it'll be long before we have a primary school-aged parent.
I am lucky to work somewhere which has introduced measures to remove some administrative tasks from teachers. Most primary and secondary teachers I speak to can't believe the level of support we receive.
Alan Macnab writes...
That's shocking Mike T. I thought it was biologically impossible (or whatever the medical term is)for a girl to become pregnant younger than 12 or 13.
My ignorance is due to the fact that I was brought up with a brother and have two sons of my own.
Girls are becoming physically mature much earlier than they used to. A Year 6 teacher I used to work with noticed a definite 28 day cycle of misbehaviour in the girls in her class. Of course, it could have been the full moon...
(Two sisters. Two daughters.)
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