An Education Secretary here in the UK once announced that he wanted every child in Britain to get “above average results.”

On a similar theme, I am employed by the Catholic Church in this country to foster, inform and nurture faith in Catholic school children. Education authorities have narrowed this down to: an ability to explain religious belief; an ability to identify how religious belief informs religious and moral behaviour; a knowledge of religious symbols; and an ability to talk about the differences between your own religious beliefs and other peoples’.

On this basis, St Francis of Assisi has achieved a mixed result, averaging out at Level 3, which is pretty good for my seven year old daughter but not so good for the Saint who founded a major religious order.

Abu Hamza, who this week was charged with inciting religious hatred and the Americans wish to extradite to face terrorism charges, does far better according to the official guidelines. He has achieved a Level 7, which is an “excellent” result for a 14 year old. This is because he is very good at using the four Attainment Strands to motivate his followers into religiously-inspired action, having specifically identified the different religious beliefs of his – erm – targets.

In order to have an average, we must have a set of data. In order to choose the topics on which to base the data, we need to know what targets we want to achieve. In order to choose the targets, we need to know what everyone is achieving now, and build upon them. For this, we need to know the average.

Finally, an anecdote from school:
one of the railway companies only achieved 75% of trains reaching destination on time. The following year, they improved – they achieved 100% punctuality. How did they do this? When a train was running late, it didn’t stop at stations on the way.

First, with OFSTED approaching, a little history:

nine months after my first ever OFSTED inspection, Little Madam was born

then, eight months after my second OFSTED inspection, Little Nutter was born (one month prematurely…)

finally, nine months after my last OFSTED inspection, guess what happened?

Anyway, yesterday I was very upset. During the course of the morning I realised that I had lost my ring. A small gold signet, engraved with my initials, given to me by Darling Wifey on the day we got engaged nearly fifteen years ago. Vanished. (It was found in Little Madam’s school car park by another parent – who handed it in to the school secretary. But too late. Someone, probably me, had driven over it.)

So now, not only am I the dangerously fertile bloke who must be kept at bay for the next month, but I am also the insensitive git who doesn’t take care of gifts lovingly bestowed upon him by his unappreciated wife…

Tomorrow, I have a major deadline at work. The school inspection starts in three weeks, and the top man is in to collect the paperwork in advance of Big Brother’s investigation into what we do.

So, like a good little teacher, I have been busying myself with all those bits of paper that say nothing at all about what actually goes on in the classroom, but upon which the future of our school depends.

So while I was working hard, Little Nutter grabbed all the milk we had (in a six pint bottle) and poured it down the sink. I had to pop out and buy some more.

While I was out, he found a bottle of shampoo and poured it all over the floor in the front hall. Darling Wifey had to clean it up. Little did she know that he had hidden the bottle of conditioner to empty all over the sofa while she was distracted.

Stressed?

Many thanks for attending this meeting. Apologies for the confusion over who was responsible for supplying the coffee and chocolate biscuits, and the Chair promises not to attempt to shorten meetings by banning these essential items again if everyone else promises to stop hitting him.

Item 1 The budget.
This year’s budget was presented in a fifteen page spreadsheet printout, with all hypothecated capitation indicated in a Verdana font and projected deficits printed in white on black. The department considered this document in silence for fifteen seconds before approving it unanimously.

Item 2 Forward planning
The Deputy Head of Department gave a lengthy speech on his opinions regarding the necessity of actuating long-term strategies in anticipation of the performance enhancing attributes of future planning-objective-meeting strategic developments. He demonstrated the department’s new computer projection system and interactive screen as an example of his prognosticitive analysis of implementive asset management in future short and medium term planning.

There were no comments.

Item 3 Communications.
Several of the part-time members of the department expressed their dissatisfaction at the present system of communication, feeling that as they were unable to network with full-time staff during routine break periods of the day, they were missing out on essential information and policy shifts.
The Head of Department thanked them for their valuable contribution, and asked them to draw up a policy review document for communication management with part-time staff for consideration during the next lunchtime forum meeting.

Item 4 Resources.
In an attempt to save money, the Head of Department suggested a change from broad-ruled file paper to narrow-ruled file paper, increasing the amount of handwriting per page by almost 43% and resulting in a projected saving of almost 3% of the annual budget.
Regretfully, this item occupied the next 2 hours 30 minutes of allocated meeting time, and the rest of the agenda has been deferred for the next meeting.

Politicians, with their superior wisdom and sense of civic responsibility, have decreed that we humble teachers need to be monitored and assessed at regular intervals to ensure that we are held accountable for our activities in this essential field of human endeavour.

This is kind of like letting your local neighbourhood cat burglar tell you off for nicking stationery from work.

The OFSTED system relies upon two things: firstly, a standardised curriculum; secondly, measurement of pupil performance against targets. It also focuses upon encouraging the most effective use of resources.

A little investigation of the history of education in England brings us to the 1862 Revised Code of Practice, which introduced these very same principles into British schools.

Matthew Arnold (poet and school inspector of the 1890s) said that the system of school inspection was, “a game of mechanical contrivance in which the teachers will and must more and more learn to beat us.” Wade Nelson (professor of educational leadership at Winona State University) said more recently that, “Identifying specific teaching processes as the causal component of student success by any credible measure is so difficult that it’s practically impossible.” Prof. Nelson has one advantage over the UK Government: he has bothered to read history, and discovered the lessons learned in this country by 1897 when the system was abolished (last time.)

It was in place for 35 years last time. For history to repeat itself, we should be heading back towards sanity by 2023. And I plan to retire in 2025.