Bullying & Why We Fear The Next Academic Year

The cold wind of change blows right through the homes of many parents when they consider the next academic year. 

We contemplate the impact of rejigging classes on our offspring  - the breaking of allegiances, the smashing of carefully forged bonds all in the name of "character building". 

Will classes be kept together?, we wonder. Will they be split? Which teacher will become the hero or heroine of our kids' life next year?

It should be a time of some excitement but unfortunately I suspect in some instances, classes will be rejigged not with the academic development of the pupils in mind but rather to avoid dealing with troublemakers and bullies. 

The idea, I am assuming, is that by mixing pupils up, you defuse the bullying behaviour by breaking up cliques and gangs. In my experience, this is totally ineffective as the bully will simply regroup and find new victims.

No, it seems that, for all the verbiage given to avoiding bullying and zero tolerance policies, it seems that in some quarters, the answer is to play academic chess with kids' education rather than address head on bratty behaviour with the parents concerned. 

Don't bother playing "name that bully" because you can't. Staff seem to close ranks to protect the miscreants often on the basis that these are troubled children themselves. Whilst this may be true, it is a bitter pill to swallow for those of us whose children are being picked on.

Even at the age of 6 and 7, the mean girls are starting to emerge and whilst the adult thing to do is to have sympathy because I believe most behaviour is learned (and by that I mean learned at home at this age), it is really unsettling knowing that your child will be exposed to this and will have to learn to stand on their own two feet. 


It's no wonder Tae Kwon-Do is so popular. We have a black belt or two in the family and I feel a lot more confident that Ieuan can stand up for himself now that he has taken this up. We are encouraging Caitlin to do the same.

source:  www.principlespage.com

The husband says that when he was in school, all aggression was taken out on the rugby pitch between the lads, but girls are something else entirely when it comes to bullying behaviour. We start fighting against each other at an early age when we should be learning to work together. Sisterhood? Pah! 

And sadly, I think many boys are missing a strong male authority figure in their life to give them a lead in what makes a man really strong. Clue: it ain't hot-wiring a car, scaring old ladies and frightening anyone shorter than you. How do we deal with this?

All we can do, I guess, is encourage our children to talk to us openly and without fear of judgement. We need to teach them the communication skills to defuse potentially volatile situations and to develop their self esteem so that they know what is and is not acceptable. 

More than this, we need to find a way to work with schools so that anti-bullying policies become living, breathing entities and not something written on a piece of A4 and locked in a filing cabinet.

Read more

We'll All Be Poorer If We Ban Teaching Shakespeare's Works In Schools

Watching Dame Helen Mirren's acceptance speech for her BAFTA Fellowship in 2014 was memorable not only for the class and elegance Mirren always exudes but for her recognition of the importance of teachers in our lives and also, tacitly, the importance of our great works of literature. Mirren ended by quoting Prospero in William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Image credit:  Pexels - William Shakespeare

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep" (The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1)

There has been much rumbling over the years about whether Shakespeare should still be taught to our children. Worse still, there have been cartoon and other dumbed down versions in a misguided (in my view) attempt to interest children in the Bard's works.

Before I had my children, I used to work as a part time English tutor and one year the 'O' level text was probably my favourite Shakespeare play - "Macbeth". My pupil was a 15 year old boy whose predicted grade was 'D'. 

Upon querying what teaching methods were being used, my eyes were swiftly opened to the rather ramshackle and disinterested way I suspect literature may be being taught.

"Have you actually read the play" I asked. "No". "Does your teacher read the play out loud in class?" "No". "Does your teacher get you to read out loud in class?" "No".

When I was learning Shakespeare in school, everyone had a copy of the text and we read the entire play, line by line through the class. 

It's only when you read Shakespeare's (or indeed any other poet's) works out loud that you get a sense of the true meaning of the language and the implications behind the rhythms. 

It gives the teacher a chance to explain idioms and how the meanings of words and even the interpretation of the whole play can change over the centuries. 

Call me old fashioned, but I'm not sure the subtle nuances and beauty of our language are ever all that apparent either by re-writing Shakespeare in text speak, Cockney rhyming slang or "gangsta" rap. You get me?

I also hate modern reworkings of the play where the director has had a "vision" and decided to portray Henry II as Robocop and dress everyone up like extras from The Matrix. 

Yes the themes and meanings of Shakespeare's works are universal - that's why they stand the test of time, but when you are learning them, you have an opportunity to better understand the history and social mores of that period. 

For example, I always remember being taken aback by my lecturer's assertion that the central theme of "Romeo & Juliet" was not, for an Elizabethan audience that of "star crossed lovers" but instead of parental disobedience.

I really hope that, when Caitlin and Ieuan start to study English literature, the works of our greatest authors are requisite reading. We need to preserve these works, not least to help maintain the ever denuded English language as it seems to sink beneath text speak, business jargon and lazy spelling. 

I cringe at the number of tweets from businesses where the writer doesn't know the difference between "there are" and "they are", "you're" and "your". This is basic stuff, surely?

So I applaud Dame Helen for reminding us that the great actors and actresses of our time still owe a debt to one of our greatest writers, William Shakespeare.

And by the way, after re-enacting "Macbeth" (which is mighty tricky when there are only 2 of you - we spent lots of time laughing), and trying to explain how the play's themes are still relevant today, my pupil got an A.

Read more

Lib Dems Propose Free School Dinners For Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Children in England

At today's Lib Dem conference in Glasgow, Lib Dem Leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, revealed his "showstopper policy" - that the Government is proposing to offer free school dinners to children in the Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 stages of education in England from September 2014 (i.e. 5-7 year olds).

Money is being provided for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to emulate the English scheme, however, it will be up to the respective devolved governments to decide whether to spend this on free lunches.

www.theguardian.com

The £600m plan is estimated to save families an average of £437 per child and, in a Coalition trade-off, the Lib Dems have given the go-ahead for the Conservatives to announce a tax break for married couples which could be worth around £3 per week.

Free school dinners will go some way to make up for what some viewed as the penalising of middle income families by recent changes to Child Benefit.  According to The Independent, some 400,000 children already receive free meals but an estimated four in 10 children living in poverty do not currently qualify.

Read more

Sports Day - The Final Frontier For Mums

School sports day. One of those occasions where I wish I hadn't spent most of my PE lessons hiding in the toilet pretending to be the poster girl for Alldays. (The Bodyform woman always sang far too loudly and probably had chronic laryngitis).

Ieuan in sports kit with obligatory party hat and balloon

I did use to make an effort at hockey and loved to play Left Back, but largely because the LB on the vest matched my then initials. I still can't do a forward roll (forget backwards, consider Swiss). So I am determined that Caitlin and Ieuan will have at least a modicum of sporting prowess. They both ran a normal race (see I don't even know the term) and an obstacle race against the polite applause and cheering of the crowd of parents. 

The sound of this was drowned out by the woman bellowing at the front like a wounded buffalo - "mooooove it, moooove it". I don't know what came over me. In the same way, I cannot explain why I routinely cry at every school play and concert.

Still, I know it's not just me. I think many mums returned home beaming with pride and updated their Facebook statuses to the effect that their offspring ran like Mo Farah or Jessica Ennis. Hmm. No pressure then. 

I tell my two winning is good but it's all about trying your hardest and taking part. Just in case sporting prowess is inherited from their parents' genes!

Read more

Is it wrong to take a primary school child out of school to attend a WEDDING?

A while ago, Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir opined that taking a child out of school to attend your wedding day is wrong. Hmm. Leaving aside the issue that in time gone by having a child out of wedlock would have made you a social disgrace (in which case I'd be the talk of the Village), I find it hard to understand why some female journalists are so 'anti-women' and, particularly in the case of the Daily Mail's Liz Jones, so anti-family.




I also can't understand the draconian insistence that children must attend a full term of school in their nursery or reception years when they cannot even read or write (and in some cases are still wearing nappies)!

Of course I can see that attending school on a regular basis teaches valuable life skills which will stand kids in good stead when they enter the employment market but can we please use some common-sense? What if you happen to die in term time? Will your bereaved partner have to request permission to take the kids to the funeral?

The headmistress of our local Infants School is wise enough to understand that sometimes circumstances like this do arise and a few days absence per term are overlooked. A few days, mind, or the local authority fines start accruing.

The children also have a teddy bear they are allowed to take with them and photograph so that pictures can be included in his holiday album.

Whilst holiday companies continue to fleece parents mercilessly during school holidays, I'm sorry to say that absences are only to be expected.

A recent trawl of cottage letting websites revealed that some companies were adding as much as an extra £100 per week during school holidays. Basic economics or basic greed? You can fleece me once, but I won't be coming back! The same principle of not removing kids from school during term time doesn't seem to apply, I note, for school trips abroad!

It would be interesting to see what would happen to a holiday company that did not inflate its prices during school holidays. Would it sink without a trace or would it attract loads of loyal family customers?

Either way, it's time for a radical rethink about this issue or there'll be more staycations than vacations - and that, ironically, given the cost of living in the UK, could be even more expensive for families.

Read more

I Feel The Need... The Need To Read

These days I have the attention span of a gnat. Time was when I thought nothing of reading Tolkein's "The Lord of The Rings" from cover to cover, or one of the great Bronte novels. I'd be lost in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors in "Wuthering Heights" as my train drew into the station on wet Monday mornings or imagining being shouted at by Anthony Robbins after another energetic chapter of the self help classic "Awaken The Giant Within" (nothing to do with sweetcorn).




Reading was an escape, almost a guilty pleasure. Ah, the sheer weight of paperbacks, the pristine paper and the unbent covers, just the smell of the paper. Nowadays I wonder whether the sales from the coffee concessions outweigh sales of actual books in the few remaining bookshops left.

In Oxford recently, we visited Blackwells. It was VAST. Wall upon wall of tomes with (obviously) an academic bias and it hit me suddenly that a good bookshop is truly a repository of knowledge. Now it might have been the cheeky glass of rioja at lunchtime, but I found myself whispering to hubby, "just look at all this knowledge, look at how much there is to teach Caitlin and Ieuan". Not just the basics of reading and writing, but the World's languages, science, philosophy, astronomy, psychology, the various areas of mathematics, religious studies and on and on and on.....

It made me wonder how much of our days today are spent in front of screens. Even in school at aged 4 and 3, my children are playing with computers and watching whiteboards. At home, they borrow the iPad and in restaurants we bribe them with "Talking Tom" on hubby's phone. At some level, I know this is not actually a good thing.

The logical consequence of everything being read on a screen or now via an 'app' is surely that it's changing the language and the volume of information we can absorb in one sitting. I've written before about, to me, the sad dumbing down of much of the copy in magazines and newspapers. Each year there are lists of new words which make the official dictionaries but these words always seem to be 'slang' to me, increasingly unimaginative and increasingly inelegant.

Our inability to absorb large chunks of information is affecting, I suspect, both how our children are taught, and how examinations are structured and marked. This inability affects our TV programmes - notice how in a typical Channel 4 or 5 programme, each new section of the programme post ad-break starts with a 5 minute recap of stuff you viewed literally minutes before. Lazy programming for lazy viewers?

I still remember how Horizon used to be, and QED and programmes about astronomy with Michael Burke and Carl Sagan. They made you think so hard it gave you a headache. Now today's science programmes seem to be the same level as John Craven's Newsround used to be!

There have been rumblings in the papers that the A level and particularly the A* will be replaced by some sort of baccalaureat examination - a tacit admission (at last!) that exams have been dumbed down but witness the furore this year and the demands for remarking of English papers where more stringent marking criteria had been applied. Our children need to learn that failure is the spur to even greater learning and greater knowledge - and that knowledge needs to be administered and stored in chunks, not soundbites.

Sometimes I find the 'noise' from the TV, PC, iPad and Phone, promotional advert screens and billboards just too much. I have a Kindle and I think it's a fantastic piece of kit but there will never be anything quite like a brand new book to me.

And you know what, if our kids are looking to dreadful icons like Tulisa or Chantelle as role models, we could do worse than stand them in Blackwells and tell them "you want to see true wealth? well you're looking at it."

*contains affiliate links

Read more

Let's Keep It (School) Uniform

Do you think it's important to wear school uniform?

Ieuan in his school uniform

Having just spent an arm and a leg on two sets of school uniform and school shoes, I was recently talking to a mum who said that she started the term off with her boys wearing school uniform but as the term progressed towards the holidays, she allowed them to go in a mix of uniform and casual wear.  

She couldn't, she said, see the point in making them wear something they didn't want to.

I think that if a school requests that a uniform be worn, it is actually in the interest of pupils, parents and teachers that it be worn.

Why?  Uniform is a great leveller.  It removes status symbols and creates an equality, at least in appearance. 

It is valuable in teaching kids that fitting in and adhering to rules and regulations will be a part of their life from now on.

Grating as it is to have to buy clothing which looks like it was made for some utilitarian army with precious little interest in colour, fit or durability, in general kids look smarter and, as psychologists tell us, that should help performance.

Nobody can deny that buying school uniform can add up to a significant outlay, but these days you can buy supermarket basics which do the job and a reasonable cost.

I had to wear a uniform from junior school (the 1970's) till the end of comprehensive schooling in 1982.  

I had a uniform for Brownies (which Club, I'm afraid I hated) and a uniform for ballet (hair HAD to be in a netted bun).  

Then for most of my working life so far, I've arguably had a 'corporate uniform' - suit, blouse, heels, lipstick, bag. I still struggle with my 'mummy' uniform - but that subject probably requires a separate post!

When you think about it, there aren't that many areas of life where there isn't some dress code or other, either prescribed or implied.

And anyway, if you don't have some degree of conformity, you've not got much to rebel against when you hit your teens, have you?

Are you for, or against school uniform?

Read more