No Country For Old Men (or Women)

The Guardian reported this week on the record number of teachers baling out.

The latest workforce survey by the Department for Education (DfE) found that 40,000 teachers resigned from state schools last year – almost 9% of the teaching workforce, and the highest number since it began publishing the data in 2011 – while a further 4,000 retired. 

From observation, I’d guess that the 40,000 includes many who have opted for early retirement but are still technically of working age; this represents something of a looming crisis because, while the government points out that nearly 48,000 joined the profession in the same year, this is not like-for-like replacement. The current orthodoxy - that teacher training is all - means that experienced specialists in Physics or Chemistry could well be replaced in the A level classroom by NQTs with, say, a Sports Science degree from a former polytechnic (assuming the school finds a new physics teacher at all).

From friends and family to chance meetings on walking holidays or elsewhere, we are encountering newly-retired teachers in their fifties all over the place, many of them in the shortage subjects like Physics, Chemistry or Modern Languages. Being in the business ourselves we know that, unless they have other sources of income, these teachers will have taken a substantial financial hit to get out before the age of 60.

The Guardian doesn’t have to look far for an explanation:

Teaching unions blamed poor working conditions and the long-term erosion in pay for the exodus, while Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said: “This is yet more evidence that this incompetent Conservative government has created the perfect storm in recruitment and retention of teachers. 

With rather more of a worm’s-eye view of the situation, I’d beg to differ, at least over the direct culpability of the government. True, older teachers have long been accustomed to seeing their incomes outstripped by friends who went into other jobs or professions, but those who objected would have left years ago, while younger staff went into the profession knowing the pay structures. Government initiatives do make extra work and complicate the job, certainly, but they have far less impact than the day-to-day frustrations generated by the antics of senior management - at least the sort of heads and deputies who manage to impress interview panels and climb the greasy pole In today’s climate. 

And then there’s the fear factor. Barely a week seems to go by at present without news that yet another unfortunate teacher has fallen foul of the management over issues of gender or allegations from pupils and, in cases like the subject of the previous post, it’s increasingly hard to escape a sense of ‘there but for the grace of God’, especially given the way some younger colleagues seem ready - or even compelled - to harangue their elders about gender identity and white privilege at every opportunity. With pupil behaviour plumbing new depths and orthodoxy saying ‘believe the victim’, teachers are more vulnerable than ever before to accusations from all sides.

One school I know publishes a staff list in order of arrival at the school (the list was recently reinstated after a brief hiatus when one of the high-ups apparently decided it was too divisive or hierarchical or something) and it highlights what may be a national trend; twenty years ago, the majority of those named were long-serving teachers who had been at the school for ten years or more, last year, three-fifths - sixty percent of the teaching staff - had been in place for less than five years.

This influx of mainly younger staff, together with the resulting lack of continuity and stability for staff and pupils alike, is changing the nature of the working environment, creating an embattled older minority of teachers wearied by virtue-signalling brash young colleagues, endless awareness courses and pointless schemes and initiatives, all the while living in constant fear of denunciation for saying or doing something which would have been perfectly acceptable a decade ago but which, today, could end a career or worse. Small wonder, then, that many are choosing to retire early, despite the financial penalties.

It’s nothing new for older staff to feel under-valued in a progressive climate and children will survive this as they have survived previous upheavals in education, but it’s hard not to feel frustrated at the wasted opportunities and the vast amount of wisdom and experience being lost from the system. 

“I saw [insert name here] with the Devil!”

Another day, another witch-hunt.

This one (updated here) concerns an experienced History teacher in his fifties working in supply who, despite initial reservations, agreed to cover a year 7 science lesson for an absent colleague, teaching from National Curriculum resources on puberty. He thought the lesson had gone well but, at the end of the following day, the supply agency contacted him to tell him there had been a complaint.

Apparently the pupils, two of whom had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, were upset by his attempts to explain and contextualise the information and had accused him of crude gender stereotyping; instead of dealing with it internally and asking him to clarify the matter, the school had reported him directly to the local authority safeguarding body.

The authority immediately cleared him of any wrongdoing (and, he says, ‘criticised the school’) but the head still chose to escalate the matter and referred him to the DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service, the body which clears teachers to work with children - or bans them from doing so). The DBS finally confirmed last week that there was ‘no case to answer’ but the damage has been done; the referral must be reported to all prospective employers for the next five years and, as numerous unjustly wrecked careers will testify, head teachers often prefer to believe there’s no smoke without fire. 

From professional experience, I’d say this whole business smells very odd indeed. Covering a single lesson for an absent colleague in another department almost always means providing supervision while pupils complete set tasks or homework; it is very unusual for a non-specialist cover teacher to be asked to present new material to pupils, let alone deliver a lesson in such a sensitive subject area. 

As for his alleged comments, he is supposed to have crammed a surprisingly large amount of offensive gender-stereotyping into a single lesson and the phraseology sounds interestingly uniform in tone and language register. Mr Higgins describes the allegations as ‘untrue’, taken out of context or the result of a misunderstanding - to that list a cynic might be tempted to add potentially leading questions, unwitting or otherwise, on the part of those investigating the affair.

(On the subject of the reliability of pupil recollection, I was once summoned to explain why a year 7 pupil had written, for homework, a poem about ‘punishment beatings’ and ‘guts hanging on barbed wire’, which he insisted had been the subject of my English lesson. It took the demonstration of twenty-odd rather wobbly but uniformly charming haiku about trees, clouds and flowers to convince the management that, prompted by the mention of Japan, he had spent that part of the lesson daydreaming about his favourite [and completely age-inappropriate] WWII computer game).

All in all, it looks suspiciously like a set-up; a humanities supply teacher instructed to deliver a science lesson - on puberty, of all things! - without being informed that the class contained two pupils with gender dysphoria. For the head teacher then to ignore the findings of the local authority safeguarding committee and go directly to the DBS - a course of action usually reserved for serious concerns about sexual or physical abuse - suggests that someone was determined to ensure Mr Higgins would never teach again. 

It’s always possible that a young or inexperienced head was manipulated by a cabal of aggressively self-righteous pupils (the world of ‘The Crucible’ gets closer every day; it’s worth bearing in mind that the real Abigail Williams was only twelve years old) but, based on the hostility of some younger colleagues towards those of us deemed deficient in virtue-signalling fervour* and their apparent lack of any sense of humour (or proportion), I would not rule out the possibility that Mr Higgins, possibly unwittingly, gave offence to a militant activist among the staff (or senior management) who decided, for the greater good, to remove him from the profession by any means possible, including exploiting his willingness to help a colleague by teaching a lesson completely outside his area of expertise.

*As an illustration, I once had to defend myself against another teacher’s accusation of endorsing misogyny and promoting ‘toxic masculinity’’ while teaching ‘Of Mice and Men’, a GCSE set text; apparently, when quoting from the text, I failed to include sufficient condemnation of Steinbeck’s attitude to women. (I should, perhaps, point out that I am, unequivocally, female).

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

(The sign next to the bicycle says 'Experiment with ETON, not with our FAMILIES & COMMUNITIES'.)

The image is the cover of the NEU magazine for July/August: link here.

'O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts...'

Oh dear! I promised the Spouse I would stop thinking about the Dominic Cummings affair (I was getting very grumpy; I hate seeing anyone bullied, particularly where a young child is involved) yet here I am sitting down to write about it - tangentially, at least.

For anyone who has spent time in teaching, there's something very familiar about the way certain journalists are behaving. While I agree that the broadcast media have a duty to question the actions of those in power, there comes a time when their continued aggressive persistance starts to look more than a little juvenile: "Yes, Laura, I am well aware that Dominic jumped the lunch queue and no, that does not mean everyone else can do it too."

Over the past decades, over and above the demands of the curriculum, there are three things about which I have tried to teach all of my pupils: Occam's Razor, Utilitarianism and the Tragedy of the Commons (with a dash of Socrates thrown in).  The idea is to give them a toolkit with which they can approach and objectively analyse whatever life throws at them.

Having a framework of this kind is particularly beneficial for those pupils who, while capable and intelligent, find themselves permanently cross-threaded in the machinery of life. Frequently - but not exclusively - this is associated with something like high-functioning ASD (Asperger Syndrome), where being less able than most to rely on intuitive or conditioned grasp of societal norms means you frequently end up trying to work everything out from first principles on a logical basis.

Now, it is certainly not my place to speculate about Mr Cummings, but I'd guess from the 'weirdos and misfits' job description (and his reported lack of 'people skills') that he is no stranger to that way of thinking; in fact, his approach all along has been characterised by a willingness - or determination - to take things apart and question everything.

That being so, it was almost inevitable that, faced with a unique and complex combination of circumstances (including potential threats to his home and family), he would go back to basics and attempt to find the most rational solution possible rather than simply obeying the shorthand general advice that he, among others, had promulgated.

It's the tragedy of the commons, of course; one family group changing quarters makes little or no difference but a multitude doing so is a very different matter. Cummings, by reasoning from an individual rather than a collective viewpoint, opened himself up to the spittle-flecked (and somewhat ironic) bellows of 'Hypocrite!' from the crowd besieging his home.

It is possible that his judgement was impaired by the virus - the speed with which he succumbed to the illness on arrival suggests he may have been his usual incisive self - but, whatever the case, it is hardly reasonable to suggest that what he did entitled any Tom, Dick or Harry to pile the kids into the car and head off for a jolly day out at the coast, whatever the pundits may say.

Reason, however, has been taking a holiday, at least as far as a certain sector of journalism is concerned; think of the closely-packed mob shoving microphones and cameras in his face (are we allowed to say 'the pot calling the kettle black' these days?) or the endless attempts to shoe-horn criticism of him into unrelated news stories. Selective reporting - and what looks increasingly like the opportunistic settling of scores - has pushed the story onto the front pages and kept it there.

The end result begins to look more and more like an unrelenting attempt to unseat Mr Cummings (and possibly the Prime Minister) at all costs. Another thing I teach my pupils is always to ask 'cui bono?'; whether it's because of Brexit, the BBC, No. 10's internal affairs or simply party politics, Mr Cummings' problem is that, in his case, the answer is a very long list indeed.

Teaching and the Union Stranglehold

For anyone who has read the recent headlines on reopening schools and wondered why 450,000  supposedly intelligent men and women seem to be unquestioningly endorsing the NEU's machinations, a little background might be helpful.

For many teachers, union membership has nothing to do with collective bargaining, solidarity or marching under the glorious banner of a united brotherhood (or sisterhood). It's much more like having breakdown insurance for the car; you pay up regularly and then forget about it - expensive, but necessary in case anything goes wrong.

In a tight spot, the backing of a union can make a huge difference to the outcome; this, remember, is a profession in which head teachers rule an effective fiefdom where their word, however unreasonable, is law (the press can furnish abundant examples of those promoted beyond their moral and intellectual capabilities) and an unsubstantiated allegation by a malicious or disturbed teenager can lead to crippling legal costs or end a career.

The gross over-simplification that says children never lie about abuse has put a powerful weapon into the hands of dishonest pupils who want to settle a grudge or avoid disciplinary sanctions (it is almost always the strictest teachers who are on the receiving end of false allegations). While every school must have an effective safeguarding and reporting structure in place to protect pupils, there is a very real danger of cynical exploitation for nefarious purposes.

There is also the possibility of an unscrupulous - and possibly delusional - adult in search of a compensation payday or revenge for a perceived slight in the past. To that threat can be added the third-party element, such as a school administrative worker reporting a teacher for giving a stranded 17-year-old pupil a lift home or over-zealous police officers primed to give full credence to the 'victim', however far-fetched or antiquated the claims.

Until recently, union membership was effectively the only form of insurance available to cover specialist legal expenses and expert advice for a teacher facing an allegation of abuse. There's no such thing as the presumption of innocence here (suspension is a frequent first step in dealing with cases) and an accusation could come out of the blue at any time and relate to any period of career history; how do you prove your alibi for a date 30 years in the past?

The last is really the key to union membership; support over historic allegations is only available as long as teachers remain with the same union. Changing allegiance at any point in your career seriously reduces your options if a past pupil suddenly makes an accusation. The unions scramble for newly qualified teachers with massive introductory discounts and incentives, knowing that, once signed up, members are generally cash cows for life (as well as adding weight to the demands of the leaders).

Like many others, I made a conscious choice at the start to join a non-striking union; I disagree profoundly with the idea of putting politics before pupils. Unfortunately, the most suitable option, the  ATL (formerly the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association), was already under threat thanks to the infiltration of activists who did not share the majority ethos; in 1999 it affiliated to the TUC and, with the arrival at the helm of Mary Bousted, the leadership abandoned the moral high ground and began the downward slide - via its first ever strike - towards the eventual merger with the far more militant NUT.

The turnout of ATL members for the merger ballot was 25% (with 73% of those voting 'yes'). A minority of activists carried the day, while the 98,000-odd teachers who did not vote in favour were dragged willy-nilly into the placard-waving world of 'one out, all out!' and the sort of industrial action some of us wouldn't touch with a barge pole, all so that the joint general secretaries could proudly proclaim that they head the 'largest education union in Europe'.

Now my mailbox is bursting with e-mails - chummily designated 'from Kevin and Mary' - instructing me to sign petitions or e-mail my MP endorsing the NEU's stance or, this week, inviting me to join the 'biggest ever online union meeting'. There's more than a touch of self aggrandisement in their endless hyperbole as they set about furthering their political ends; the satisfaction they appear to derive from the resulting power kick is almost indecent to watch.

As one of the 'nearly half a million' the union leaders are so fond of using as their justification, I'd like to point out that I, for one, am not at all happy about it. 

The Old Boy Network in action

This week brought an interesting coincidence; just as I was pondering the end of my fifth decade and considering what I had - or had not - achieved so far, an e-mail arrived from my alma mater.

On leaving school, by a set of curious chances, I found myself in the hallowed halls of an ancient and prestigious seat of learning. In this august environment, I embarked on an unexceptional academic career and thence to a vocation-led commitment to the chalkface, well away from any public forum.

If I were less contented with this obscurity, I might feel a certain envy when the annual college magazine announces that yet another member of my cohort has taken silk, been elected to Parliament or achieved high status in the world of banking, journalism or the BBC. While I have been enjoying a quiet and uneventful existence, my former fellow-students have, it seems, permeated virtually every aspect of British public life.

That being so, I invite you to consider the circular e-mail I received this week, bearing in mind that its content is addressed to former members of a single Oxbridge college, an enclave within the wider University.

It begins innocently enough, with an invitation to join a new alumni network with four aims; firstly to 'Reconnect':

Find and reminisce with fellow graduates, see what they have been up to and stay in touch.

So far so good, though I can't say I'm exactly tempted; I am so far removed from my 20-year-old self as to be virtually another species and I have no desire to meet anyone who knew me back then. In any case, I doubt I would find anything to match the wealth of experience, expertise, humour, creativity and warmth that exists in the blogs listed on the left.

Next comes 'Give Back':

Introduce, employ and offer to act as a mentor to our graduating students.

Altruism, yes, but also a leg up for the boys (and girls) in the career market, a hint of what is to come next under the heading 'Expand':

Leverage your professional network to get introduced to people you should know.

I'm not sure what that actually means, but, under the management-speak, it certainly sounds remarkably like the Old Boy Network, at least in the context of uniting graduates of the same college online. I'm reminded of a fellow-student who switched place cards at a formal dinner to put himself next to the Master on High Table - now there's someone I really don't want to 'find and reminisce with'.

 Finally, there's 'Advance':

Advance your career through inside connections working in top companies.

And that, in a nutshell, is what everyone who didn't attend this college or one like it is up against in the search for jobs and promotion, at least in circles where such a background is seen as desirable - and this, remember, is before networking on a University level kicks in.

Many of those invited to join the college network can be found in the higher echelons of industry, banking, medicine, government, the media and countless other branches of the Establishment where, if this e-mail achieves its purpose, they will doubtless be joined by others simply by virtue of having passed through the same medieval gates.

"It must be right; I got it off the internet..."

Remember the Canvey Island nativity play?

The “Christmas Tale” stars a pair of robbers, named Bob and Bill, who raid a jewellery store in broad daylight to steal a manger full of rubies and emeralds.

There's a similar theme at work in a grammar exercise recently given to primary school children across the Estuary in Sheerness. We know this because one parent was so 'shocked' that she was apparently obliged to go to the local press and have it reported, complete with carefully posed photographs.

In an exercise designed to test the appropriate use of the pronouns 'I' and 'me', children had to complete the following sentence:

Hand ..... the money before ..... put a bullet through your head.

Could it, perhaps, be part of the continued attempt to reflect modern urban society in the school curriculum? And, if so, can we look forward to the same thing emerging in, say, Maths,

If Liam and Kane steal £140 and divide it in the ratio 3:4...

Physics,

Sayeed takes a BMW without the owner's consent and drives it into a wall at 70km/h....

or Biology?

How can Shanice and Amii use this graph to record the growth of their cannabis plants...?

Educational orthodoxy demands that work set should be as relevant as possible to the lives and interests of pupils - though it's not clear whether that would extend to a crime-themed nativity play in an area which had recently seen several armed robberies  - which raises some interesting questions about the test paper's provenance.

We do know it was downloaded from the generally respected Times Educational Supplement resource-sharing site. It's an excellent example of the spurious authority lent by the imprimatur of the internet; an unquestioning teacher seems to have handed it out without the proof reading which would have detected the rank illiteracy (or devious trap) of asking pupils to use 'I' or 'me' to complete:

When I asked the Scotsman if he enjoyed haggis, he looked at me and said ‘Och .....’ 

I doubt the 'bullet' sentence caused any lasting damage, though it does seem unnecessarily crass to include it in a grammar exercise for primary-age children. What concerns me more is the idea of teachers indiscriminately trawling the internet for off-the-peg lessons and homework with no guarantee of quality.

Over the past 50 years, the nature of education has shifted from imparting knowledge and skills to teachers being expected to keep pupils - or 'learners' - entertained. The result has been a desperate scramble for novelty while trying to satisfy the demand for constant exhaustive record-keeping - senior management and inspectors do love a brightly-coloured progress chart or graph! - and a corresponding lack of consistency in what some of us would call the basics.

Borrowing back a comment I left at Julia's place recently, on a post highlighting the effects of this degeneration,

Truly we have an education system at which the rest of the world can only wonder!

'Victorian Poverty' - Spectre or Chimaera?

Teachers are bringing an extra packed lunch for poor pupils, washing their clothes and even cutting their hair as they warn of a return to Victorian poverty.

This, via the Telegraph, is according to a survey by the NAHT, which reports that, by their calculations, schools are spending an average each year of £2000 (primary) to £3000 (secondary) on basic school equipment, washing clothes and feeding children.

And who is to blame? Why, the evil Tories!

"This is money that schools are having to find to help families who have been left high and dry by cuts to public services."

Though the union spokesman is generous enough to share the responsibility around;

“We know that whichever political party holds power after next week, deeper cuts are coming.”

Now, I admit I am slightly puzzled. This country has a long history of people who, in conditions of abject poverty, kept the doorstep spotless and the children well-scrubbed, while more widely-travelled members of clan Macheath have seen youngsters in immaculate school uniform issuing from tiny mud huts in the African bush or slum dwellings in India.

What, then, are we to make of this?

He cited a case of a teacher in Hackney, east London, who had to teach a child how to brush her teeth after the pupil came to school with food in her teeth and toothache. 

Other teachers had to provide their students with toothbrushes and monitor that they brushed their teeth during school hours.

Or this?

“Teachers give pupils new clothes while they wash their dirty clothes and prepare breakfast for them..."

According to the NAHT spokesman, poverty and poor parenting are inextricably linked:

“If you’re a poor child growing up in what seems like Victorian Britain at times, schools have to provide basic parenting and other services.”

With a certain interesting irony, I could borrow the Left's customary modus operandi and protest that this is deeply offensive to the many parents who, despite desperately straitened means, manage to give their children breakfast and bring them to school as clean and neatly-dressed as possible without any outside help.

This seamless elision of poor personal hygiene with government policy is at best simplistic. Teachers report that there are children arriving in Reception class unable to use a knife and fork or hold a pencil and some are barely toilet-trained (possibly the real reason for installing school washing machines); the level of support required to overcome such monumental parental inadequacy is surely beyond the means of any UK government.

Meanwhile, far from being an extra mouth to feed on limited resources, a British child can now be a goose that lays golden eggs. For some low income households, the weekly child benefit (£20.70 for the first and £13.70 each for the rest) may be doubled or trebled once benefit payments and tax credits are taken into account; under the circumstances, although poor money management undoubtedly plays a part, the term 'Victorian poverty' is hardly appropriate, however appealing to headline-writers.

There have, sadly, always been parents who neglect their children. In previous centuries, poor sanitation and malnutrition compounded the damage done by parents too busy, idle or intoxicated to care or whose mental or physical incapacity rendered them unable to meet the needs of a dependent child. Where possible, relatives or neighbours might step in to help - plenty of today's pensioners can testify to the once-common practice of taking in someone else's children.

The advent of the Welfare State quite rightly ensured that, along with healthier living conditions, practical help and support were available to those on the margins of society but, however well-meaning its founders, the twin evils of unwieldy bureaucracy and poorly-targeted benefits have conspired to undermine its function as far as child-rearing is concerned, complicated by the vast burden placed on the system by early parenthood, fragmentary family structure and deliberate exploitation.

Throwing money at the problem is not the answer, however. My own dealings with Social Services and benefits offices (as both 'client's representative' and temporary employee) revealed a monstrous logo-ridden, Left-leaning, meetings-with-biscuits office culture which, though it would definitely benefit from substantial pruning, is likely to have been preserved as a safe haven for those wielding the knife while front-line services bear the brunt of 'government cuts'.

In any case, according to a document from HomeStart* (a charity which arranges for volunteers to work with families in difficulties):

The volunteer thought that it did not matter how wonderful an array of services you can have on offer for families. If they do not have the emotional ability to be in a place to recognise that they need them, or how to actually go and ask for help, it can be a waste of time.

That the Welfare State is fallible is undisputed; that teachers or schools will quietly step in to help deprived children in genuine emergencies is, I should hope, a given. However, such necessary assistance cannot and should not be conflated with regular measures to counteract ongoing parental inadequacy, incompetence or laziness, least of all in the interests of generating political capital.

*The document provides case studies of families in crisis - a sobering catalogue of teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, substance abuse and mental illness, sometimes repeated over several generations. The State simply could not afford to fund what HomeStart volunteers are doing unless other public services were cut to the bone.

I know someone who, having been helped by HomeStart, has herself become a volunteer now that her own children have left home - that is surely the way forward, rather than relying entirely on an overstretched welfare budget. The crucial thing is to break the cycle so that the children can avoid the same problems and a formal welfare system is not necessarily the way to accomplish it. 

Stranger Danger and Pork Pies

Food for thought this week:

Two youngsters reported being approached by a stranger as they walked to school along Coppins Road on Thursday.

They claimed to have run away from the man and reported the incident to teachers when they got to school.

Schools have strict protocol for situations like this; the other pupils were warned and text alerts were sent out to parents - no doubt causing much fear and alarm.

The police were called and investigated the alleged incident, as a result of which:

A spokesman said: “Officers have spoken to the two boys who reported the accosting incident and are satisfied that it did not take place.”

It would be satisfying to think that the boys were soundly told off for lying and required to apologise to all concerned for the unnecessary panic and the waste of police time but, alas, it may well not be that simple.

As plenty of ex-teachers have found out the hard way, most school policies require pupils' stories of threats to their well-being - however far-fetched - to be accepted at face value, thanks to the grossly-oversimplified orthodoxy that 'children don't lie about abuse'. A false story is thus deemed to be the product of misunderstanding or error.

In an attempt to establish the truth, pupils are likely to be told that withdrawing the story will not result in punishment. However serious or malicious the allegations or wide-reaching the consequences, they can walk away scot free - though they may be offered counselling to address any 'issues' that could have encouraged them to come up with the story in the first place.

There have always been children who have a complicated relationship with the truth; our forebears dealt with it though a combination of chastisement and the fear of God but, in our more enlightened age, the stakes have never been lower.Whether the motive is idle mischief-making or deliberate malice, children know that a lie is unlikely to bring about any serious retribution, whether human or divine.

The idea is for the school to offer pupils an easy way out so they can back down without fear of punishment; the law of unintended consequences says that, a few years down the line, the lesson such children have learned about their own importance and lack of accountability is likely to bear dangerous fruit.

Step away from the sherbet!

"I don't want my children exposed to these traders."

It's the oft-repeated protest of a concerned parent, though the subject in this case might come as a surprise to those of us old enough to remember the school tuckshop.

With obesity rates among children soaring, sweet-sellers outside schools have been labelled irresponsible. 

Nottingham City Council is considering banning them from streets around three schools.

It appears that some enterprising chaps have taken to turning up outside schools with vans selling sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks, which has stirred up a hornets' nest of healthy eating issues, road safety and discipline. According to one parent:

"My children also say they have heard that some students are often late to classes, as the trader will always stay until the last student is there."

That one, at least, is in the school's court, always assuming that The Powers That Be have left staff with sufficient disciplinary sanctions to deal with persistent willful lateness. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, has gleefully seized on the story and found itself a suitably emotive quote from another parent:

"To me, it’s no different than a drug dealer peddling drugs to addicts."

It is highly opportune that this story should turn up at the same time as a mass media condemnation of sugar consumption - a phenomenon tackled with panache by Leg-Iron and passion by Longrider. It's difficult to tell, amid the feeding frenzy of diet advice, 'expert' opinion and fake charity opportunism, exactly who is jumping on whose bandwaggon, but the issue has produced a startling degree of unanimity in the chorus of disapproval.

And it may be a deduction too far, but is it really a coincidence that this onslaught has coincided with media focus on the West Indian slave trade and the ill-gotten economic benefits derived by Britain from the resulting sugar industry, along with a demand that both should feature in the school curriculum?

Today's schoolchildren will be bombarded with anti-sugar slogans and carefully-designed PSHE programmes to demonstrate the risks - look how well it's worked with drugs! - and an army of state-funded busybodies will doubtless swing into action writing stern health warnings to accompany 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and 'Mary Poppins'.

Just as the Temperance movement indulged in flights of hyperbole in its portrayal of the 'demon' drink, the Righteous are rushing to attribute a plethora of ills past and present to the consumption of a legal substance which most of the population manages to use without ill effects. There is more than a a whiff of religious fervour in what is clearly seen by its proponents as a moral crusade.

Under the circumstances, I suppose it's hardly surprising that selling sweets to children has produced such a dramatic overreaction.

You heard it here first

From last week's post here:

Once upon a time, there were teachers who devoted heart and soul to introducing their pupils, however poor or deprived, to classical culture, correct grammar in speech and the kind of general knowledge and manners that would equip them for any social situation... 

If social mobility is to be increased, the answer is not to abolish private education but to give state school pupils the opportunity to experience what the progressives took away.

From today's Sunday Times:

Children at state schools should be taught manners, "how to speak in coherent sentences", foreign languages and team skills  from as young as seven if they are to get to the top and improve their social mobility, a leading independent school headmistress will say tomorrow... 

"Social mobility in Britain will not change until the education system changes."

An interesting coincidence, perhaps (unless this blog is far more influential than I thought), but inevitable in the sense that the conclusion is such an obvious one - at least to those without a vested interest in the educational status quo.

Update:
And there's more - Janet Daly in the Telegraph this weekend, writing about progressive education :

Schooling was no longer about encouraging children to escape from the milieu that would sink their feet in the concrete of low expectations. It was consciously designed not to do that: not to imply in any way that the child’s background was inferior – however impoverished or genuinely deprived it might be. To impose correct grammar, or academic content, or “bourgeois culture”, on working-class children was a form of social imperialism.

An independent thinker

Whenever I hear wailing and gnashing of teeth over the lack of social mobility in today's Britain, I think of the 1980s theorists who told aspiring teachers not to correct pupils' - or rather learners' - regional dialect, impose on them our own cultural and moral values or mention the works of over-influential Dead White European Males such as Mozart, Da Vinci or Dickens (Shakespeare is still more or less acceptable, I understand - but only in modern dress or rendered in Jamaican patois).

It was not always thus. Once upon a time, there were teachers who devoted heart and soul to introducing their pupils, however poor or deprived, to classical culture, correct grammar in speech and the kind of general knowledge and manners that would equip them for any social situation - anathema to the progressive educationalists, whose socialist hackles rose at the idea of the noble working class aping the aristocracy.

It was not unusual for such teachers to lend books to children, invite them into their own homes on a regular basis or even take them to theatres concerts or art galleries (at their own expense), making sure that even a child from a deprived or barely literate family could acquire the cultural background then considered necessary to pass a University entrance interview - imagine the reaction if a teacher tried that now!

Before the progressives took control and weeded out those who wouldn't toe the line, and in the days when career opportunities for women were considerably more limited, the teaching profession attracted many intelligent and rational people with a strong independent streak. One of them was a great-aunt of mine whose personality made her a force to be reckoned with; she would never have been prepared to conform sufficiently to fit in with modern expectations but, in her day, she did a great deal of good in a deprived industrial town.

A born educator with no children of her own, she saw it as her role to instruct the younger members of the family at every possible opportunity;  I've been reminded of one particular childhood lesson by both the question of foodbanks and  by Julia's post today.

It was the mid 1970s and we were out shopping in her home town, where a substantial number of the inhabitants were overweight and clearly unfit. When one particularly large young woman lumbered by sipping a fizzy drink, my great-aunt sighed and said that that it was a shame that malnutrition was such a problem in a supposedly civilized country.

I was baffled; I had seen pictures of starving Ethiopians on Newsround - wasn't that what malnutrition looked like? My great-aunt patiently defined the term and explained that we were seeing the effects of a poor diet, with a lack of vitamins and protein and the over-consumption of sugar and starch, a diet at odds with the cheap and plentiful produce in the market where we were.

The worst thing about it, she said, was that those young women, through either ignorance or idleness, would be unlikely to ensure that their children or grandchildren had a proper diet and learned not to over-indulge in treats; the consequences for future generations would be painful for them and expensive for the rest of us. Government intervention would accomplish nothing; they - and their children - should be taught to think and act for themselves.

Four decades on, it looks as if she was absolutely right. She died before I was old enough to appreciate it, but I owe her a great deal; she taught me never to trust politicians or journalists and to regard with deep suspicion any religion that requires of its followers a combination of blind obedience and large families.

While teachers like her can still be found, many of them are now in the private sector, away from the demands of state bureaucracy, ideological imperatives and unreasonable management policies - though it was once common practice, what teacher, now, would dare offer individual help outside school to a promising pupil from a deprived background? The teacher training establishments have ensured that a high proportion of those who reach the classroom under their aegis are herd animals rather than independent thinkers.

If social mobility is to be increased, the answer is not to abolish private education but to give state school pupils the opportunity to experience what the progressives took away.

Not in my name

     Wilcox said, "Who were you trying to hurt?"
     "Hurt?"
     "A strike has to hurt someone. The employers, the public. Otherwise it has no effect."
     Robyn was about to say, "The Government", when she saw the trap: Wilcox would find it easy enough to argue that the Government had not been troubled by the strike. The Students' Union had supported the strike, and its members had not complained about a day's holiday from lectures. The University, then? But the University wasn't responsible for the cuts or the erosion of lecturers' salaries. Faster than a computer, Robyn's mind reviewed these candidates for the target of the strike and rejected them all.
     (David Lodge: 'Nice Work', 1988)

One might well ask the same question of the teaching Union members who, this week, presented parents with the difficulty of occupying their school-age children between 8.30am and 3.30pm on a weekday, a move hardly likely to garner public support.

While members of the Government may have been mildly worried by the spectacle of massed protesters on Britain's streets, given the involvement of Socialist Worker and the banners exhorting "Strike, protest, occupy", it's hard to see what impact the march had on the machinery of the state.

That didn't stop the NUT's Christine Blower describing the strikes as 'a great success', which appears to mean that a large number of people had an exciting day out (some of them, apparently, rounding it off with a nice bottle of wine at Pizza Express - caveat: Mail) and showed the Government that they objected to current policies.

The people 'hurt' by this 'great success', meanwhile, weren't Michael Gove or the officials of the Department of Education, but working parents and - perhaps intentionally - those teachers who chose not to strike and were left to sort out the administrative mess.

The prevailing attitude was recently summed up by an otherwise intelligent and conscientious young teacher trying to explain his priorities: "That Gove, he only cares about results; he doesn't think about our working conditions at all!"  

It's not that I am indifferent to teachers' pay and working conditions; most of my family has earned its crust that way since the 1920s. For some of us, it's in the blood, and what worries the Unions most, I think, is that there are still teachers out there who would do the job as long as they had enough to keep body and soul together and would never consider deserting their posts for a day.

The progressives have tried to oust such dangerous subversives, of course. I once heard a very senior lecturer in the field openly scoff at the old adage that teachers are born, not made; the only way to achieve excellence in the profession was to follow him blindly to the sunlit uplands of the multicultural classroom and egalitarian methodology.

At the heart of the matter is the question of politics; even though many staff belong to a union solely for the legal protection and advice available (a necessity in today's litigious climate), the union activists take this as a mandate for mass withdrawal of labour and, sad to say, the pre-Christmas strikes last year showed that some of the herd, at least, rather like the idea of a day off for shopping.

If the purpose of the march were simply to show massed support for the unions, it could just as easily have been held during half-term; what difference would it have made to the Government? The fact that it was not is a clear indicator of how little value is placed on education by those directly responsible for providing it.

     "Yes, I was picketing."
What fun it had been! Stopping cars and thrusting leaflets through the drivers' windows, turning back lorries, waving banners for the benefit of the local TV news cameras, thawing one's fingers round a mug of thermos-flask coffee, sharing the warm glow of camaraderie with colleagues one had never met before. Robyn had not felt so exalted since the great women's rally at Greenham Common.

GCSE English - definitely no shades of grey

The GCSE row still rumbles on, with the latest salvo being fired by Ofqual today:

Too much pressure on schools in England to get good GCSE grades led to over-generous marking of coursework by teachers, the exams watchdog concludes.

In its final report on the controversy over this summer's GCSE English exam, Ofqual says external examiners had to raise grade boundaries as a result.

This sweeping statement has sent a predictable ripple round the battlefield as the various parties involved marshal their troops accordingly.

Heads said it was "outrageous" to blame teachers for the fiasco which saw some pupils get lower grades than predicted.

Meanwhile the shadow schools minister naturally demanded that the government sort it out and the unions - most predictable of all - are bandying around words like 'scapegoat' and 'blatantly wrong':

"The accountability measures do place tremendous pressure on teachers and schools, especially at GCSE grade C, but to say that teachers would compromise their integrity to the detriment of students is an insult."

Ofqual's chief executive is clearly aware of the dangers of accusing teachers of professional misconduct and has instead taken refuge in an attitude so patronising it could curdle yoghurt:

Ms Stacey added she believed teachers had marked the test "optimistically", rather than with a deliberate intention to inflate grades. 

"They are doing their level best to do the best for their students and they are bound, given the pressures they are under, to take the most optimistic view."

All of which serves to reduce the battlefield to a chess-board; a simple black-and-white layout of opposing forces.

The unions do as they have always done and follow the classic script familiar from all those years of grade inflation - all our members are above reproach and to imply otherwise is to insult hard-working and dedicated men and women.

Ofqual, meanwhile, 'has evidence' of widespread over-marking, which it attributes to the new GCSE not being 'robust enough'; although it does not go so far as to blame teachers, it firmly lays at their door the inconsistencies that led to the adjustment of grade boundaries.

And lost in the middle is all the grey stuff - that some teachers are more scrupulous than others. Whatever the unions would have you believe, there are some teachers out there who will bend the rules to improve a pupil's grade, just as there are others who, whatever the pressures on them, would be deeply horrified at the very idea of awarding inflated marks for exam work.

Such ambiguity does not suit politics or, for that matter, media-friendly soundbites from Ofqual, who, as we know, are not themselves averse to the odd bit of behind-the-scenes tinkering with results to achieve the desired effect.

This looks very much like an attempt to bury a messy situation behind the kind of dramatic outrage that completely obscures its original cause. Look, the public will say, it's the teaching unions getting hot under the collar again; nothing to do with us.

Thus it is that, regardless of the impact on individual pupils whose teachers marked according to the strictest of criteria, the official regulator has decided to endorse what may yet come to be seen as a landmark example of unjustified collective punishment.

Jeremy Forrest and the Faustian Pact

Back in the high-and-far-off-times when I first approached the chalkface, there was an unwritten code.

A new teacher is an anomaly; placed in a position of unquestionable authority, in loco parentis, he or she requires obedience and respect from pupils who may be only three or four years younger.

The trade-off for this and for the benefits of the profession - long holidays, a good starting salary and several dozen intelligent and articulate colleagues - was once clear; whatever you chose to do outside the classroom, you never socialised with pupils outside the school setting or allowed them information about your private life. After the heady freedom of your student years, it was time for teaching to claim your soul.

In a small town like the one where I first worked, this had clear implications; most teachers avoided certain places or types of recreation as a matter of course. The consequence of a keen-eyed sixth-former regaling his classmates with accounts of your extra-curricular activities was too much of a risk, however innocent your conduct.

To avoid being mistaken for pupils - a common occupational hazard for recent graduates when academic gowns ceased to be the norm - many young teachers adopted the mannerisms, dress and conduct of their elders while at work. In effect, in many ways, we stepped straight into middle age, as befitted adults expected to set an example of good behaviour to the young people under our literal tutelage.

It was a pact entered into willingly by many who chose the profession - a sacrifice, but also a valuable way to reinforce the pupil-teacher divide as much for our own protection as for that of the pupils. While a few teachers flaunted their grasp of youth culture and their close relationship with pupils, the majority realised that they had to be as far above suspicion as Caesar's wife.

The intervening years, however, have brought temptation in the form of electronic media and thus far greater sacrifices. The same constraints that cause me to hide behind a pseudonym here render it highly inadvisable for me to appear anywhere online under my own name - and, as for facebook, the case is best summed up in the words of JuliaM (who has written several interesting posts on the subject): 'Facebook and teachers - like matter and anti-matter'.

It's not exactly an overwhelming temptation for grizzled veterans like me, I must admit, but I find something worrying in the way a new generation of teachers seems to have abandoned the idea of sacrificing certain aspects of social life as a result of their choice of profession.

When somewhere between 15% and 30% of teachers claim to have been subject to cyberbullying (depending on your source), you have to ask what they are they doing leaving themselves open to it in the first place. In the same way, one has to wonder about the level of commitment of teachers who allow their drunken holiday snaps to appear in facebook.

Teaching, like monasticism (or, perhaps more pertinently, the Roman Catholic priesthood), once had a dual intake - those with a clear vocation and those who drifted into it for want of something better; the latter were often weeded out within a few years unless they could develop the sense of purpose necessary to cope with the demands of what can be a highly stressful job. It is not unreasonable, I think, to suggest that they would also be more likely than highly committed staff to engage in inappropriate relationships with girls or boys in their care.

Take a closer look now, though, and the waters are somewhat muddier. The DfE is currently advertising bursaries of up to £20,000 for graduates who train as maths teachers - a sore temptation to a debt-laden twenty-something finding today's job market a challenge, even if he or she is temperamentally unsuited and ill-equipped to cope with the unique pressures and demands of a life in secondary education.

The sad truth of the matter is that, even allowing for media exaggeration, a man who tweets pictures of his latest flowery tattoos and expresses himself in overblown song lyrics, with his guitar-playing alter ego and his 'fairytale wedding', 'dream holidays' and romantic gestures, sounds as if he was neither ready nor willing to sign away the trappings of his youthful lifestyle in exchange for a successful career.

Paradigm shift

You know how you look at something you've seen a thousand times before and suddenly it strikes you, out of the blue; "So that's what's going on here!"

And, after a moment's consideration; "How did we ever let things get this bad?"

It's just over fifty years since Kurt Vonnegut published his dystopian satire 'Harrison Bergeron'.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. 

If you don't know it, please don't read on yet - go and look for yourself; it's not very long (the rest of you can carry straight on).
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OK?
Now consider the sneakiest device at the disposal of the United States Handicapper General: 

And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

and take a look at all the the teenagers - and people old enough to know better - walking around with headphones playing so loud that, even though the business-end is buried in the recesses of their ears, those  immediately next to them are treated to, in the delightful phrase of cartoonist Posy Simmons, "A faint noise rather like mice tap-dancing on a biscuit tin".

So intelligence-sapping are these devices that, as Bucko reports, a campaign has been launched to stop earphone-wearers ambling into the path of oncoming trains at level crossings. Researchers say headphones block out ambient noise; I'm more inclined - particularly since we've had the Urchin and his 'music' at home for some weeks now - to think that Vonnegut had it right and that being blasted with noise blocks out rational thought.

It seems ironic that, while we've been well aware of the attempts of various educational theorists to engineer a spurious equality among the young, they themselves have embraced a device that could have been expressly designed to impair their ability to reason.

"I coulda been a contender..."

The issue of school sports just won't go away. Today has brought two particularly interesting posts; Longrider wants to keep school sport free of government regulation while, over at Orphans of Liberty, James Higham has come over all mens sana in corpore sano.

The comments at OoL have been fascinating; for years I thought I was alone in my opinion of organised team games at school but I now see that there must have been many of us indulging in individual acts of rebellion and subversion in the face of an implacable enemy. If only we had been able to join forces!

My own school was an example of just how much can be done in the name of sport to alienate those who don't toe the team games touchline. I arrived at the age of ten, an active child used to walking long distances (this was before the two-car household became the norm) and keen on swimming and ice-skating, these being effectively the only sports on offer to the public in our area.

That being so, there was no reason to suppose I would not enjoy sport and, given opportunity and encouragement, do well at it. And then I met my nemesis; the games teacher. Let us call her Miss Fortune; it's close enough to the original.

Miss Fortune's stated aim was to "bring the bright children down a peg or two" in the interests of sticking up for the academic underdog - as a former pupil with distinctly mediocre qualifications who had come back to her old school to teach, she clearly felt she had scores to settle and did so with a vengeance.

The school wasn't top notch by any definition, though I am profoundly grateful for the academic and social education it gave me, and I think it's fair to say that even in an ideal world, none of us would have been troubling the Olympic team selectors, but Miss Fortune certainly did her bit to make sport as unattractive as possible.

Longrider describes how his success in other sports "counted for nothing at a school so deeply unimaginative that if the sport didn’t involve two teams squabbling over a ball on a muddy pitch, it didn’t exist." Miss Fortune suffered from a similar lack of imagination; her mind ran on a single rotating track of hockey, netball and athletics (and swimming on Thursdays - yes, she has appeared here before).

It also ran to a pre-arranged agenda; she chose, or perhaps I should say anointed, those who were destined to succeed at games and the rest of us were relegated to also-ran status - quite literally, on occasion; the results posted after the annual sports day frequently bore little resemblance to the participants' recollection of events.

Looking back now, I see that she had very limited expertise and must have lived in fear of being required to do something beyond it. Take gymnastics, for instance; the school had a well-equipped gym but we were never allowed to lay a finger on any of the apparatus, to the intense frustration of those of us who repeatedly asked to be taught to use it.

For the eight years I was there, it all gathered dust, completely untouched, except for the single occasion when we were, for some long-forgotten reason, required to dance round the vaulting horse (some of us fervently wishing that it could be set alight with Miss Fortune inside; years later, 'The Wicker Man' seemed uncannily familiar).

It's not as if I was devoid of any sporting ability. Miss Fortune's dislike of me meant that I had almost invariably incurred a punishment by the time we reached the sports field; as her default punishment was a three-mile cross-country run in difficult terrain, I usually managed to stay out of her vicinity until the end of the lesson - and, to her evident chagrin, ended up as a half-decent runner as well.

In fact, I proceeded to beat one of her Chosen in the 4,000 metres on sports day - though it never appeared on the results board; Miss Fortune, visiting the changing room afterwards, disqualified me for wearing the wrong coloured underwear.

All of this, besides getting some major baggage off my chest (thank you for listening!), is a long-winded way of saying that, however well-meaning the regulations or requirements, people like Miss Fortune do exist, and that no school aside from a small elite is going to have the staff or facilities to accommodate all possible types of sport without unrealistic financial investment.

That being so, it would surely be better to leave proper sports coaching and provision to outside clubs - nothing to stop them coming into schools as guests, of course - and allow schools to choose the level and type of physical activity on offer to suit the location, expertise of staff and interests of the parents.

James Higham makes a good point about activity being necessary - not too long ago, of course, children walked to school - but this does not mean they should be subjected to all the horror of team games.

Remember, if history is always written by the winners, team games are almost always taught - and advocated - by those who succeeded at them.

(Given the above, it is with a certain amount of wry amusement that I discovered that, according to the BBC's completely pointless 'which Olympic sport best matches your physique' gadget , I am exactly the same height and weight as a member of the British women's gymnastics team - a shame it's several decades too late!)

Quote of the day - end this cruelty to fish!

I would normally resist the temptation to steal a quote from Daily Mail comments - it feels like shooting fish in a not-very-clean barrel.

This, time, though, I couldn't resist it - especially given the piscine connection: 'Sue Previsor' from Doncaster, on the threat of the potential supervolcano bubbling up under Yellowstone (well, it is the Daily Mail) opines thus:

"lots off us dont care about the planet and abuse our plaice hear and this is what happens appocolipse"

Pure comedy gold!

Thinning out the ranks...

Hundreds of thousands of children face being taken off the special needs register because they have been wrongly labelled as requiring extra help, the Government will announce today. (Telegraph)

A bit of recyling today, but it's as true now as when I wrote it back in 2010...

If Jack swears at his teacher and throws his books around the classroom, is he a spoilt, rude child whose mother can’t or won’t make him understand what is acceptable or does he suffer from a behavioural disorder? It’s far easier to put him on the SEN register than undo fourteen years of indifferent parenting.

And when his mother arrives on the scene, guns blazing, demanding to know why he was given a detention, do his teachers explain what she is doing wrong or sympathise that she has to cope with his condition? Thus the school establishes its caring credentials and Jack and his mother are accorded the status of victims struggling against the odds.

So Jack and his mother go home satisfied that his poor behaviour is not his fault – or hers – and Jack ends up on the school’s special needs programme. In time, if he doesn’t swear or throw anything for a while, he may even be rewarded with that old standby, a trip to Alton Towers.

Everybody’s happy – except, perhaps his class teachers, who are warned not to damage his frail self-esteem with criticism of any kind and are thus rendered virtually impotent in the face of deliberate provocation. And there's a lot of it about; nearly a quarter of special needs pupils have emotional, behavioural or social difficulties.

When Ofsted blames poor teaching and pastoral care for needless SEN registration, this should not be forgotten. There are inadequate teachers out there; no-one would dispute that – except, perhaps, NUT general secretary Christine Blower;

“Teachers do a great job in often very difficult circumstances to meet the needs of all their pupils, and for Ofsted to suggest otherwise is both insulting and wrong.”

but school policies and progressive ‘child-centred’* methodology have led to SEN registration becoming a justification and muddying the waters for those with real needs.

The sooner the numbers are reduced and teachers can concentrate on helping pupils with real learning difficulties the better.


*the fundamentally sound concept of 'child-centred learning' - adapting materials and methods to the individual pupil's skills and abilities - was long ago seized on by uncomprehending jargon-meisters, whose literal interpretation of the phrase wrested power from teaching staff and placed it in the hands of the mob.


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Meanwhile, in another bit of timely recycling, this piece from the Tavern archives is sadly appropriate once more ....

'If Dickens had a spiritual descendant among today's bloggers, it was surely Anna Raccoon - tireless researcher, indomitable campaigner, witty satirist and gifted raconteuse. The blogosphere will be much poorer for her absence.'

Though it will not be the same without Anna behind the bar, the Raccoon Arms has been left in excellent hands; best of luck, lads - there will, of course, continue to be a link in the Tavern's sidebar for readers who fancy a virtual pub crawl.

carpe diem and gaudeamus igitur

Whiler JuliaM has a post on cost-conscious students unhappy about their canteen arrangements, a different message is filtering in from the Urchin's contemporaries.

According to the Urchin, the prevailing atmosphere, at least in the Arts faculties, is a kind of fatalistic hedonism. These youngsters have decided that their chosen careers are unlikely to earn them enough to have to pay back their full loans and, anyway, who cares about a debt that remote?

The inevitable progeny of a buy-now, pay-later society, they are busy spending the vast and unprecedented sums the student loan company has placed in their pockets with no thought for making the money last. 'We'll all be in debt forever anyway' goes the reasoning, 'so what will an extra overdraft matter?'

This has become such common practice that many landlords are now asking for a year's rent up front, trying to get their hands on the money before it is frittered away. Nobody expects an 18-year-old to be an expert at managing money, but whose idea was it to present these youngsters barely out of school with a lump sum of several thousand pounds at once?

A friend recently told me that his niece, against her family's advice, spent almost all her student loan on a new car, which she wrote off in an accident a few weeks later - on third-party only insurance. The clear separation of student finance from family influence - though funnily enough they still take parental income into account when allocating grants - has placed a huge burden of responsibility in the hands of little more than children.

When you add the sense of a lifetime of debt hanging over them whatever they do and a 'because I'm worth it' culture that sees borrowing as a commonplace solution - how many people nowadays actually save up for something they want? (apart from my wise and discerning readers, that is) - you have a temptation to seize every opportunity for indulgence that many experienced adults would find hard to resist.



Incidentally, regular readers may remember this from last August, when the Clearing system broke down under the weight of numbers as candidates tried to get places ahead of the fee increases this year:

'There's a sort of January sales atmosphere about the whole business; desperate candidates grabbing any course they can to beat the rush and universities accepting on a first-come first-served basis rather than selecting students on their potential suitability for the course.


It will be interesting to see what the drop-out rate is over the next year.'

I can't speak nationally - and I have been unable to find official figures - but of the Urchin's class at school, at least six have given up so far, making a drop-out rate of nearly 15%.