Today I went straight from work to visit politics students at Christ’s Hospital and bore the life out of them and on the way home I passed through Horsham and remembered that there was a planning meeting going on which my colleagues in Horsham Labour party were addressing so I stopped off for that.

More about that later. Probably.

Today’s events made me all nostalgic for several reasons.  First of all, the visit to Christ’s Hospital remined me of my own time at school.  Obviously my school was nowhere near as grand, but it was still a co-educational boarding school out in the country and I was wondering how life in such an establishment will be different now, and how it would be similar.

I remember my last year at school very fondly.  Video games were very much in the future, as were video recorders, let alone computers and the internet.  If we had Spotify at school would it have made life better or worse I wonder?  Certainly we would have been exposed to more tunes, but would have missed out on listening to the same few Yes and Genesis albums over and over again.

If I remember rightly, our last summer was a glorious one and having got exams out of the way, we spent a lot of time swimming, sunbathing outside the pool, and making use of the athletics facilities – not that you would believe it to see me now.  And punk was just starting to filter through to us as well.

Chatting to the students, I speculated that mobile phones must make everything different. At my school there was a single pay phone between 250 pupils so phone calls home were a rarity.  Now they can be texting friends and family all the time.  They pointed out that mobile phones are not allowed for the junior years.  In my mind I was just thinking that bottles of Captain Morgan rum were not allwed at my school but they were stashed away in the senior common room anyway

The Horsham council planning meeting made me nostalgic in a different way, for a different time.  Although the set-up was totally different to Crawley’s committee rooms, there were enough reminders of my time as Chair of Development Control – the inaudible sound system, the press scribbling away, the endless maps.

I have been to a few of the Crawley planning meetings since leaving the council but at those I felt that I knew exactly what was going on because the people and surroundings were so familiar.  In many cases I could guess what the councillors were going to say before they said it, because they were returning to familiar favourite topics.  In Horsham tonight I appreciate more what it must have been like as a first-time visitor.

A few of the councillors are now familiar to me, as is the chief executive, but it took me a while to work out who was in the chair and which people round the table were planning officers and other staff.  Not being able to hear anything much that was said did not help of course.  Nice to see that a fandamental failure to understand that microphones work best if they are spoken into was not just a peculiar trait of crawley councillors!

Having sat through that I feel I should retrospectively apologise to every member of the public who ever attended one of the planning meetings I chaired.  I did try to introduce all the dramatis personae at the beginning and make some explanation of procedure to the public, but I now realise that I probably did not go anywhere near far enough.

Anyway, I think we got a result, of sorts, in the planning decision, and I had a thoroughly good time at the school, on top of a reasonably productive day at work so all together I think it was a good day.

I will be glad when people stop asking me if I am going to transfer from Horsham to Crawley as a candidate though.  There are four very good reasons why I can’t/won’t – the fifth of which is that Horsham Labour party has already paid some money towards printing election leaflets with my name all over them.

Having said that I do have reservations about it.  In practical terms I wonder how many parents are capable of providing the depth and breadth of education that a school full of specialist teachers can.  I consider myself reasonably well-informed and capable in basic science, maths, English, and art, all backed up by a not-too-bad library and of course the internet, but I don’t think I could teach a child all of that.  I certainly couldn’t teach a child so that they reached a higher level than me.

There must be parents who can do that, and that makes me wonder how they find the time to embark on full-time education and how they fund it.  Also, if they are that capable, why are they keeping it to themselves and not using those skills – perhaps by being a teacher in a school?

As for the motives, how often is the real fear not that a child will be victimised, but that they will be exposed to ideas the parents do not approve of and might one day form their own opinions?  How many of these home-educated children are being protected from bullying and how many are being protected from Darwin’s theories, for example?

I think it can only be good news that local authorities now have the right to inspect parents who are home educating, for all sorts of reasons, but I still think that in most cases it is the children who are missing out on opportunities to develop interpersonal skills and also to develop the ability to cope with adversity – to thicken their skin a bit.  Is there a danger of children growing up so protected and sheltered that they are really going to find it hard to cope with the real world?   How are they going to cope when thrown into the workplace?  Or are they going to follow their parents and not work but stay at home educating their own children?

Other practical considerations.   Schools have lots of facilities that you just will not have at home – every type of musical instrument, potters wheels and kilns, fully-equipped woodwork and metalwork shops, sporting equipment and so on.  Children can try all these things until they find one they like and get on with.  Will parents be able to afford and have the patience to keep buying these things on the off-chance they will be suitable?    A child could have a natural trumpet-playing ability that is never discovered because their parents are totally non-musical.

You may be well-educated and pretty fluent in French, but the child decides at fourteen that they want to speak German instead.  How do you teach them that if you don’t speak it yourself?    I think the danger is that it wouldn’t happen because there has been fourteen years of indoctrination that French is better to learn.  How do you teach a child to read music if you can’t?   How are they going to discover that natural cricketing ability if they are never allowed to mix with 21 other children?

Sorry, but I reckon home education should be a last resort in extreme circumstances and not a lifestyle choice for those afraid of having their children turn out different to themselves.

On the plus side though, it does mean you can take the kids on holiday during term time when it is cheaper.

The topic of discussion was suposed to be about why people, and especially young people, are less interested in politics these days.To be fair, although there were some diversions, the discussion did stay broadly on-topic.  I don’t think there was any real conclusion, but that is no surprise because anybody expecting a simple answer to such a question would be supremely optimistic.

The problem, of course, is that there is not a single reason anyway.  Every individual who is not interested in politics has their own reason so you can’t even just ask because all you will get is that person’s reason and not some mythical single unified cause of apathy.

Not that Collyer’s was the place to go and ask anyway.  By its very nature the politics society was full of people who are interested.

What was refreshing after meetings at work, in the Labour party or in the council, was the character trait of youngsters that they are quite happy to ask difficult questions honestly.  Faced with a candidate who, let’s be honest here, has no realistic chance of winning in the next election many adults would tactfully avoid mentioning that – plus a few who would go out of their way to just rub it in.  This evening I was asked why I am bothering to stand when I’m not likely to win.

A good question.  The normal honest answer for candidates is that they are ‘paying their dues’ and getting experience on their political CV for a future safe seat somewhere else.  That doesn’t apply in my case.  I would not be interested in standing in a safe seat hundreds of miles away.

For me it was mainly because there are enough people – at least 10,000 I guess – who agree with the Labour party and who want a candidate to vote for.  If they do not have a Labour candidate they are being denied their chance to take part in the democratic process.  Personally I would be royally pissed off if I did not have a Labour candidate to vote for.

The follow-up to that was to ask what is the point of standing with no realistic hope of success.  The simple answer to that is that it is the whole point of democracy.  If you decide that party A is guaranteed to win so no other parties stand then you don’t have democracy any more – just 400-500 constituencies with a single candidate and elections in just those which are marginal.

Of course, many would argue that I have effectively described the current situation under first-past-the-post, and unofficially I have to agree with them.

Anyway, it was worth the stressful drive from work (I hate driving in a hurry) to get a different perspective on things.  I hope the society thrives and carries on long enough to ask me back sometime.

We are always hearing suggestions from the opposition that the government inferferes too much, that policing/health/education should be left to the experts without politicans who do not know as much sticking their oar in, but they are hollow words.

I actually agree with the words the Tories say when they ask for the professionals in a field to decide how they should do their own job, whether it is the police, teachers, soldiers or fire fighters. Unfortunately I don’t think the Tories agree with the words: they just say them when they think it will make people like them.

A key phrase in the piece is:

Translated, this means that teachers would rule the roost, accountable to no one but themselves, using the outdated progressive methods of the Sixties.

Can’t have teachers ‘ruling the roost’ can we?  Using all that dangerous book-learnin’ they fill them with during their teacher training?

If I was a teacher I would be in the union for my own protection.  I certainly wouldn’t then vote for a party where influential people are openly declaring war on my union and profession.

(Hat tip to ZaNuLieBore over at Common Endeavor for linking to that article in their post about schools)

Despite one girl being English and the other Indian they look quite similar and were jokingly referred to as twins by staff and pupils alike.  Even the parents were quite friendly with each other – Jayne more than me obviously: in the split of responsibilities she does the socialising and I do the ‘new media’.  It works.

Anyway, the girs had a bit of a falling out over something trivial, the way teenage girls do, and stopped hanging out together.  Both sets of parents thought it was a shame, but didn’t do anything about it beyond making a few comments.

After some months of this, one of the teachers at the school called them both to their office and when they were there basically just locked them in together and left them to it.  A short while later they were all friendly again and happier for it.  Not only that, the staff were happier, and even fellow pupils were happier when they saw them again walking around together like sisters.  Everybody wins.

Just one example of why we are happy with Thomas Bennett Community College and happy to give praise where it is due.

They were closed because teachers could not get into schools to open the schools and it was going to be really dangerous for some children trying to make the journeys when there weren’t buses or tubes or trains available and it was very hard to drive

…I asked my department of wacky ideas to come up with some possible solutions to the perceived problem of closed schools, and they came up with these:

Encourage people to live near their work

Or failing that, encourage people to work near their home.  Apparently it amounts to the same thing.  Note the word ‘encourage’.  You can’t force anyone to live or work in a particular place, that would come under the umbrella of being a ‘nanny state’ or Soviet-style centralised planning, but a touch of social engineering is OK.

Half of all government policies are social engineering to some extent, and reducing the overall geographical separation of home and work (I had the jargon department make some input too.  And it shows) has many benefits to society – fewer journeys, mostly shorter, leading to reduced congestion, lower carbon emissions, less reliance on imported fuel, less pollution, less household income spent on fuel, more walking leading to improved health, etc. etc.

No need to try and move everybody overnight, just introduce some incentives so that it becomes more attractive to live nearer work and gradually those distances will decrease.  No need to resort to negative incentives like petrol rationing: I reckon positive incentives would do it just as well.   How about tax breaks or tax credits based on the distance between work and home (or proof of a public transport season ticket)?

When I was at primary school all the teachers seemed to live within 5 miles of the school.  Now half the teachers in schools I am familiar with here seem to live down on the coast.  That changed over time, and it can change back over time.

Encourage children to go to the nearest school

One reason why the state of roads concerns Ed Balls so much is that so many school pupils use them because they don’t live within walking distance of their school.  For some reason the entire system actively encourages parents to try and get their children into the C of E primary school twenty miles away instead of the one next door.

Let parents make the decision

A blanket closure of a school is presuming all children will be unable to get in, but some will have less trouble than others.  Let the parents decide whether their own children’s journey is dangerous or not and keep them home if they think the risk is too high.  We bow down to the idea of ‘parental choice’ when it comes to picking a school but not for whether they can make it in on a particular day.

If a child’s attendance record shows too many absences because their parents keep deciding the journey is too dangerous then maybe it just shows the initial choice of school was a bad one.   And maybe the initial choice of school will be affected by taking into account the number of days a child will be absent from their chosen distant school while their classmates are in there getting educated.

Flexible staffing

When I worked for a railway company it was assumed that everybody was coming to work by train because a) it was free for us and b) there was absolutely no parking available.  On days the trains were disrupted the company recognised we would find it hard to get into work, but we could avoid being forced to take a day’s holiday by reporting to the nearest station or depot that we could get to, booking on there and offering to help.

OK, for those of us in the IT department and not in possession of all the various safety certificates and training there was not a lot we could do, but it was a good principle.  Some large companies with lots of branches do the same, why couldn’t schools do the same?

An ad hoc arrangement could be a bit risky, but every teacher who lives more than a certain distance from their workplace could be allocated a school near their home, to which they could go in extreme circumstances.  With a bit of work you could have a decent contingency plan so that all schools would have at least 75% of the teacher numbers they need – and that would be plenty if 25% of pupils don’t make it in.

Thinking about it, you could even do the same with pupils and schools…  not good for continuing with ongoing curriculum work but pupils would end up mixing with different fellow pupils in new surroundings and having different teachers.  It would be education of a different nature. They might even find that the local school is not as bad as everyone said.

So there are three ideas which nobody seems to be promoting.  Instead the suggestions I hear are:

• Just accept it and stop moaning.  Its only the odd day.
  Has the merit of simplicity.  Not sure how well it would work if weather continued for a whole week or more though.
• Buy loads of snowploughs
  Not very cost-effective but it would work.

I’m not saying my suggestions are perfect, or even feasible, but why not take a lateral approach and look for less obvious and reactive solutions?

The anger was most acute in cities where every schools was shut

The most generous thing I can think of to say is that he is misguided and got sucked into a Daily Mail fallacy where finding one example of some sort of abuse of a system or circumstance is to discredit the system and not the abuser.

Who would be willing to say categorically that there are no children who are just not high-fliers but who have league-table eyeing teachers or in-denial proud parents happy to attribute results to dyslexia rather than admit that a child is just not bright or that a teaching method has failed?   It must happen but that does not mean dyslexia does not exist.

That is like saying that migraines, back problems or stress are often faked to get time off work or disability benefits so therefore migraines, back problems and stress are all non-existant “cruel fictions”.

One thing that holds back proper acceptance of dyslexia and other problems is bandwagon-jumping fakers who cause other people to assume real sufferers are also faking.  The other problem is idiots like Mr Stringer who fall into that trap but have a platform to perpetuate the misconceptions.

I had a member of staff with dyslexia.  He was extremely clever: quick-witted, able to make sense of technical concepts and identify the causes of faults.  His reports of his successes were sometimes hard to understand of course.  At the time I left, we were looking into speech-to-text software and spelling checkers as a possible help for him.  We didn’t even consider just tellng him to pull himself together and spell properly – his knowledge and skills were a positive benefit to us, despite the writing.  He also helped us meet targets for percentages of disabled employees, but that’s another matter…

Had Graham Stringer just said that the incidences of dyslexia might be exaggerated,  with false diagnoses preventing the real problems from being addressed in some cases and possibly adversely impacting the treatment of real or more serious dyslexia he might have made a positive contribution to the issue. Instead he made himself out to be an idiot.

After months of seeing Chrystal come home late after staying behind at school for an extra hour or two and seeing her spend hours doing homework upstairs and generally putting in a lot more time and effort than I ever did for O Levels (even though I was at a boarding school and so less distracted than anyone at a normal school) I will, of course, take offence at the inevitable chorus if the overall results are any good: “standards are dropping”, “exams are too easy now”

If Chrystal and her friends are typical, kids are putting in a lot more effort now, so if results are better I won’t be surprised.  As a letter-writer in one of the newspapers suggested this week, you might as well complain that the 200 metre sprint is getting easier because the runners are faster than they used to be.

The TBCC things occupied most of the large hall at K2, with parents filling the grandstand and the floor being filled by year 11 students – at least 200 of them.  There were speeches, some dancing, speeches, handing out the ROAs, speeches, extra awards, speeches, music and a few speeches.  A lot has changed since my day, but teachers still like to talk as much as they ever did.

It was a good day though.   I don’t know when all this was invented, but they didn’t have it when I was at school.   Maybe its all the result of us Brits seeing portrayals of American graduations and proms on film and TV and wanting to do something like that over here, but it does do a bit more to mark the end of school than we did.

What seems strange to me is that they are effectively leaving school before their exams have been taken, so Chrystal has now left school but goes back there to sit exams and do revision – but not (I hope) in that order.

After all the speeches and awards, one of which found its way to Chrystal, everyone dispersed and then met up again at the school in the afternoon after changes of clothes and visits to the hairdressers so they could get on coaches to go up to London for a riverboat disco. ¹   The girls all changed into more dressy evening outfits.  The boys’ idea of changing for the evening was in most cases to just lose the jackets of the suits they wore in the morning.

It was all a bit scary seeing them them all dressed up and looking so grown up, but it was encouraging all the same.  Thomas Bennett has come in for a bit of criticism lately for its results, but the evidence of the graduation told a different story.  It was a bunch of kids who appeared happy, well-balanced and confident.  Many had gone through some vocational training at Central Sussex college and are leaving school already partly qualified.

The attitude of the school was summed up pretty well by one teacher (Mr Sheridan I think) who said “Here at Thomas Bennett we are always looking for new ways in which our students can succeed”.   So if someone really can’t get high marks in traditional subjects they do not write them off but make the effort to find something which they are good at.  It might not do wonders for league table placings but it seems to prepare the kids better for life after school.

The one thing all of them failed to learn, of course, is that schooldays are the best days of your life, but that has always been the case.  I sort of wish they had a graduation ceremony when I was at school.  At the very least I would have liked one of those ROA folders.  If I had one of them I might now be able to find my exam certificates.

1. Do they still call them discos?