Harrumph!

Welcome to my blog! You can read all about me (if you're really that interested) on the side bar. I hope to post reasonably regularly since there's plenty to be posting about.

Yesterday was a classic in the wonderful world of the English primary school (sorry my Celtic brethren but we English are peculiarly discriminated against with SATs). I turned up for work to find the Boss almost apoplectic about a number of things (the Boss will one day be carried out on a stretcher if he keeps popping his catapetl).

Firstly, he shared the county's latest advice (straight from central government courtesy of Mr Balls) on sustainable schools. This took the form of a conference and workshops to help governors, heads and teachers to get to grips with the concept. No problem there, I hear many say, though in fairness does it really need a conference? However, the conference started with an introductory film which included footage of 9/11, earthquakes, tsunamis, soldiers shooting children and other natural disasters, mixed in with more man made ones.

Can anyone tell me what earthquakes have to do with sustainable schools? Or for that matter 9/11? Is this an example of the sort of flagrant scaremongering that schools should be educating children to beware of? What is even more upsetting is that public money has been spent on this pack of lies and propaganda and it actively undermines the very ideals that it is supposed to be supporting.

Could this money have been channeled into actually educating (gasp!)children? Films don't come cheap and I suspect an awful lot of Forest Schools in primaries across the country could have been set up for the same price. If we assume a film cost £20,000 and a Forest School costs about £1000 (I should know since I have done it on a £1000) then 500 children could have received some direct input on sustainable schools if one assumes an average class size of 25 (and only one class per school attending). I suspect that the film cost more, as I am sure many of you do too.

More will follow about violent extremism! I might be violently extreme.