What they're all doing wrong

I hope all teachers employed in the schools of our 'leafy suburbs, rural market towns and seaside resorts' are reflecting mightily on their worthlessness today, as demanded by the law of our Failure Finding General, the Schools Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw.

Fortunately, he pops up on Radio 4 to help parents root them out, these dreadful teachers, warning the nation's mamas and papas - as they package up Tinkertop to get her pronto to Bash Street Juniors - that some of these useless members of school staff 'don't know what good is'. See? Some of these teachers you have so far relied upon in loco parentis have never seen good!

Thankfully, the government will save you all; they have strategies from their Olympian height of wisdom and central school planning. Send in good teachers by parachute. Make sure you clear the school playground of children, and keep your eyes open for the helicopters.

These highly paid fixers will come and show up these failures for what they are. Then they will deliver what is government certified as good.

I'm sure this will be greatly reassuring to all parents and the bad, bad, failing teachers. My bet is, the failures include that old stock of mature women in their mid-50s who have worked at the same school for 25 years; welcomed the kids of parents they remember teaching as kids themselves; who talk about their jobs in terms of local community, and who see their role as bringing warmth, encouragement and enjoyment to a child's school day (as far as ever possible while under the cosh). But, as all hard-working parents know, such meagre local ambition must be removed for the sake of UK global good.

Parents, this morning and every school morning, you can do your duty towards the great Wilshaw-Gove enterprise.

Simply remove all trust from your child's classroom teacher. Look suspiciously upon her. Those spectacles she wears are a sign of her degeneracy and show she is secretly bent on damaging your child in her care. Greet her in as frosty a manner as possible. Ask questions to trip her, then make much of her stumbling. Strive to make her feel worthless and guilty.

You may, if you are properly onboard this global race for public achievement, quietly consider how she can self criticise, a goal you may be able to assist in, if you stand her on a platform, hang a name-and-shame board about her neck and pour ink over her head.

Right. Got that out my miserable soul.

Did something far more positive, which made me feel joyous to be out the clutches of Wilshaw and sorry for all of you who are almost daily scarred by the scaly claws of good.

Took Tiger, Squirrel and Shark to a willow-weave and storytelling performance, organised by the wildlife watch team, all of whom bring fun, warmth, and gentle enjoyment to everything they offer. Lovely, and local. Which in my opinion, is not a bad ambition.

Please don't let this happen in England

Dig has received an offer. It's from a company in Hong Kong: one of the many educational support companies dedicated to creating a joyful environment for learning and development of children!

I say, let's look closely at that offer Dig; I seek a natural, joyful learning for our children! This could help me along!

Dig says we're offered a discount on a short course of two preparation classes. The classes would teach us about the admissions interview we must undergo for the school of our choice. The classes would also coach our children on how to perform at interview on the big day.

Then he says, Oh no! It's too late!

On closer inspection, the offer for joyful learning in the interview prep class seems only to be for children aged 2 and 3.

The University of Grit. For ALL your learning needs!

Thanks to the news, I told Shark that her degree from Southampton University is probably in the balance.

It depends how many tenners I can stash in my knicker drawer. I warned her. Debts of 30K do not happen to a child without a lot of parental involvement. It's probably not going to be that high if she carries on munching her way through the Pricey Ricicles. Sacrifices from us all are in order.

But I'm offering consolation. Because, from what I can make out, Lord Browne's just waved a big green flag for private companies to expand into UK Higher Education.

Shark, think about it. I can make a company happen and put on a degree course in fish and water, no problem. With the fees you now owe me, I could buy a paddle pool, fill it with water, chuck in a few mackerel, and Bob's your uncle. I mean, what more is there to a marine thingy course? A couple of waves? A few graphs in an exercise book? I could do those.

You want a teacher? I could stitch together a private contract and get Squirrel to turn up every Thursday and draw a picture of the Lesser Known Fairy Fish then you could go and research where it lives. How about that?

Obviously, I will take into account the cost of all this to you. It's no good charging you too little for my marine thingy course, because everyone would think the course I was offering was crap. No. I have to charge you A LOT. Then everyone will think I'm offering a really fantastic course!

Think about this, Shark. With your support to get me started, I can attract proper research. Like, how many Sainsbury's mackerel fit in an average-sized paddle pool from Tesco Direct? You see? Fair and balanced. I'm bound to find a starving lecturer to do that one for me. Some desperate geezer who needs a job and a 5-minute slot on BBC Radio 4 morning show.

Once I've got the research in place, then I'll rise up the rankings! I'll join the UK equivalent of the Ivy League! Serious money will pour in. Research funds from Tesco Direct. Promotion from the Eat More Mackerel Board. Endowments from Sainsbury's. They'll be falling over themselves to get at my door.

Shark, don't interrupt. I'm on a roll. We'll advertise overseas and milk the foreign students. Especially the loaded ones who are as dim as a bucket of rock. Better still, ones who are both dim and don't speak English. I'll sell them pre-sessional foundation courses, English language support sessions, and fish identification modules.

Yes, the dim ones will need somewhere to live while they're in the UK. Good thinking. I'll chum up with a property developer, build a few tower blocks with a toilet on the 10th floor, then we'll rent the accommodation to a university that's been around a bit. I don't know. How does Sussex sound?

But it won't stop there! The world's wide open! I'll only need a few quid more from you, Shark, to make a pitch for educational database management, learning platform co-ordination, educational software support and student administration. I'll have to fight off Capita. They'll be sniffing round, now they're at a loose end what with the Labour government contracts going up in smoke.

But just imagine what this could all lead to Shark! It's what Lord Browne wants me to do! It is my calling! My very own properly funded private university!

Shark, let's get started. You give me the 30K now, and I'll roll out the advertising banner.


Thank you Mark Steel and the Joint Venture Watch from UCU. Apologies, probably in perpetuity, to Southampton University.

Feeling defeated? Me?

Fuck 'em. Yeah. OK, I know. Drunk blogging might not be a good idea. But it's therapeutic. And Grit's been on the cooking sherry since 4.15pm. Now she has more than a bra to get off her chest.

It all started because, believe it or not, Tuesday 19th January was Big Day.

The Big Day has more drama than Coronation Street. More intensity than Russell Crowe's forehead. More passion than a Mills and Boon romance set in Arthritis ward B with Doctor Smith behind the curtain.

Because Tuesday 19th January was the place to be in this year-long run up to the next step: the Committee Stage of the Children, Schools and Families Bill. Whoopee. The Bill that changes a fundamental right about who has the final say in your choice of education for your kids.

The one that says the consequence of non-compliance with the state on allowing them to licence you, subject you to their approval of your power supply, and demand you submit your annual plans for further inspection, is a School Attendance Order.

Now the blasphemy and cooking sherry start to make horrible sense, don't they?

Let's call them coping strategies.

Because I am an average done-no-harm home educating parent who chose off-template parenting and weird lifestyle. Like the freedom to visit the seaside out of school holiday time. For that, I am one of the poor sods about to be blitzed by a government order to be inspected for overcrowding, monitored for lesson plans next July, and faced with a local authority official, asking me in steady tones if I am aware that the government now has a legal right of entry to my home on a 2-week notice.

Of course if I refuse this type of support, I must have something to hide. Like our privacy, Shark's freedoms, 14 gallons of cooking sherry and the amusing way I tie the kids to the radiators and mock them with goats.

So console me. Round here, January 19th was Big Day. I was anticipating it. For weeks.

And I couldn't get Parliament TV to work. Not live. Not on archive. I have tried to watch the footage of this committee, several times. Everytime I go to the site, the router suffers an apoplectic fit, freezes, and refuses to do anything unless someone consoles it with some soothing button twiddling. I daren't go to the site now, or even link to it.

You might be grateful about that.

But I still believe that the committee stage of a Bill is a real information stage, where you can hear many voices arguing over points in a much more helpful way than from the big Balls Wall bashing the boxes.

You could go over to Gill's place instead. There you can see extracts. At some stage I will see the whole lot, and then no-one can stop me having a proper fingerjabfingerjab.

Go on, go over and see. Then at least you can make up your mind that you were right all along not to give a toss.

Like going into a butcher's and asking the customers to go vegan

I should follow Tiger's lead. Because we all sit down to supper, and we pursue a conversation about something pointless, like syrup.

And suddenly up shoots Tiger, with urgencies, and imperatives, and important things to think and do, and books to read and no time to waste, and she shouts I'm leaving before this conversation gets any more stupid!

I admire her. That's what I should do. But I don't.

I go back into these online worlds to preach to the non-converted, where no-one gives a rat's arse about home education, and less than a fig about changes to UK educational law, and I post stuff like this:

My strength and my weakness is that I am an active participant in the education of my three children.

By 'active' I mean I take on as much of the everyday education of my daughters as I can. So my children don't go to school. I use services, other professionals, support and help where I feel I need. By this mixed method, I believe that my three daughters, all aged nine, have a fantastic, creative and mind-opening primary education.

It is an education my children lead, and it is built around them. It develops their interests, their expressions and their thirst for knowledges in all different areas. In any random week of the year we might visit an art gallery, join an educational party for a museum workshop, spend the day in a craft project run by a local community group, read a novel together, join a geology walking group, and attend external lessons in languages and sports. It's a wonderful mix; it's a renaissance education; it's an education that draws the best of everyone, and uses the people, experts and professionals in our community to the full.

It's also my weakness.

This government does not trust me to provide this education. And it wants you, other parents, not to trust me either.

Last year, this government spread the news that children who were educated outside of mainstream education were 'hidden'. 'Everyone knows', they said, 'that these children are vulnerable, abused, forced to marry, exploited...' Because they were told this, many people unquestioningly replied, 'yes, we know'.

This laid the groundwork for a fundamental shift in education law. Tomorrow, the Children, Schools and Families Bill has a second reading before parliament. In it, I can be denied my choice to provide the education I have built for my children. The local authority will be given the power to say I am officially untrustworthy; that I cannot prove I am providing a rich education; that my children will be better off, safer, in a school that can monitor them and provide them with a state sanctioned education that is provided for everyone. No choice. No individual education. No personal freedom. It would not matter that my children might be lost in this system, or that they might hate it, find it restrictive, narrow, alien. They would get the same as everyone else and that would be FAIR.

But it won't be me, my family, and my children alone who are punished for being different, for finding different off-template solutions to our problems. The state power held in this bill will limit you, too, whatever educational choice you make. Because it passes the ultimate decision about the education of your child to the hands of the state.

Why doesn't this government trust me? Why doesn't this government trust you? Why does it want to licence my education? Inspect my home? Interrogate my children?

I think this government would simply like to better control everything that we all do.

I don't know why they want to control. Perhaps it is good for business. Perhaps from more control, accurate statistics can be passed over to large-scale enterprises about service provision, shopping habits, our 'lifestyle needs', our basic choices, so that all these areas can become controlled, managed, ordered, and monitored too. Where is the trust in a community then?

Yet they want you to think this is all such a good thing. Of course you can't trust people to make educational decisions for their children! Of course we can't trust YOU. The government might say, 'to show what a good job we are doing, here is the proof! Percentage points on GCSE passes; levels of attainment targets; the number of boxes ticked that your child can achieve in all areas in comparison to any other child!'

I sometimes feel helpless in the face of this controlling, centralising, and mistrustful approach. And I feel if we are passive, if we say nothing, then the state will roll further and further into our homes; into our lives; into our decision-making; into our choices; into the very relationship we build with our children, because ultimately, the state will say to the child, you cannot trust your parent to know what's best for you.

I am involved in education, so maybe I can be discounted, because maybe most people out there trust the government to do that job; maybe people need to have that trust in order to function. I don't know.

But please be aware that changes in any education law potentially affect you. Please find out about them.

Finally, because I cannot sit back and do nothing, say nothing, there is a petition here with the words:

'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to uphold that parents have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of their child, to not undermine parents legitimately fulfilling their fundamental duties, and to assume that the best interests of their child is the basic concern of parents unless there is specific evidence to the contrary'

Please sign it.

Please Grit, next time, just take the Tiger route.

Life is this French stick

A day of astonishing achievement here at The Pile.

I drive to the local town market because I am very chi chi and I buy stylish artisan products. Anyway, I have had a big fight with everyone at home, and Dig is packing for South America, so I may as well go out.

To console myself, and prove I am morally right to insist the children label a map of Brazil, I buy this.




What is it? you whimper. But it is a lovely crisp French baguette, of course! Freshly baked today! I think from a variety of angles you can appreciate the full local-made artisan beauty of it. I feel, in a metaphor of life, it may represent futility and purpose.

Now you know what I am up against, living in Smalltown, facing another week of home education while Dig is elsewhere wearing his lumberjack shirt. It is an uphill struggle.

I bet you feel better about your life now.

Graham Badman saved my marriage!

Readers of this blog might sometimes guess, reading between the lines, DIG ISN'T HERE and, when he is at home, DIG WORKS AT HIS COMPUTER.

When Dig is at home, working at his computer, it is usually for a deadline that is impossible and requires 18 hours work a day. The stress will cripple this entire family, squeeze the pressure on the delicate Grit, and bring a dense oppression to this marriage, until Grit arrives prostrate at the floor and has a big squeal. And in that big squeal words might be heard, to the effect of

YOUF*KINGIGNORANTARROGANTB*STRD

followed by other delightful epithets, delicate phrases of tenderness, and a sustained verbal assault on how shoving one's chosen life partner under the 12.20 Virgin train to London might be a rational thing to do.

Now I cannot deny that in this house last night there arose from this kitchen turns of phrase which sounded a lot like the above.

But this morning, Dig and Grit stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Here we are, happy. United. Husband and wife.

It would feel good if this united front was due to a night of steamy passion. It was not. It was the mutual discovery this morning of the endeavours of Graham Badman.

We have looked each other in the eye, equally, problem shared, and started laughing.

For readers of this blog who are mystified because they come here simply to discover what new disasters and triumphs can be manufactured by a home educating family of five (but mostly four because one is never here), I should explain a background story.

A little while ago, the Department for Children School and Families (DCSF) put up Graham Badman to write a review of home education. A panel of names was supplied along with Graham to make it look like the review was independent; Elizabeth Green of the DCSF provided 'advice'.

Whether you're for or against the recommendations, we can take it the review was not independent but originated from the DCSF with Badman as the front man.

The report recommended a variety of measures, all of which led in the direction of social control and not much in the direction of home education.

To prove that all home educators needed intervention by government, Badman came up with a strange statistic playing on middle England's fear of the words 'social services'; he suggested many home educated kids are more likely to be 'known' to social services. As the report was published, the NSPCC linked stories of abused kids and home educators. Some newspapers repeated these claims. Tie it all up, and you get child abuse + social services = home education.

The government clearly thought they could get away with it. Let's face it, home educators are a disparate bunch containing the widest variety of all society. In this group there are the posh, the desperate, the mad, the sane, the middle class, the non-mainstream, the unconventional, the Radio 3 listeners, the pink hair enthusiasts. Who would speak up for this lot? Who would dare?

Home educators put up a fight. With freedom of information requests, they proved the statistics that Badman collated did not stand up to scrutiny. Worse, the statistics were manipulated to give the public a misleading and defamatory impression of home educated parents and children.

Let's say the reality. Children in home educating households are less likely to be preyed upon by abusive adults; they are more likely to be protected from predators, from bullies, from abusers; they are more likely to have the space and freedom to grow, and to have their educational and life needs met by their parents and family.

But the DCSF, wounded by this reality which keeps on coming back to them, then replied, That's it! We're not giving you home educating nosy types any more ammunition! The statistics you want are not interesting! Because we say so! And what's more, some people are poking fun at Mr Badman!

Well, Grit can't make it any worse, so here she goes.

Graham, you saved our marriage!

Because this morning, Grit and Dig wake to see that Graham Badman has written to the DCSF, I want more time to prove that home educators are a bunch of abusive layabouts who are inept and known to social services! I want to show the world that I was right!

The DCSF has of course granted Graham more time to find the statistics to damn us all, and off he's gone, looking, because he couldn't find any before.

But something else will turn up, won't it? There'll be a juicy story somewhere that links - wait for it - home education and pedophilia. And from the government's point of view, that will do the job where statistics will fail. Shove some shitty press stories covering abuse and home education through your letterbox, and if there was any sympathy for home educators, by the time the DCSF, Badman, Balls, Morgan and the press have had a go, they hope there won't be any soon.

So. The state of affairs today in this household is that Grit and Dig are looking at each other, and laughing. This government will continue to stitch us all up to achieve what they want. Possibly, a nice big database, not much freedom from you, and lots of social control.

On the plus side, there should be lots of jobs for inspectors, authorising agents, third-party data services, Capita Software, and people you don't know poking around your private life before declaring you guilty of something and a fine of £60 for infringement.

But as I said, for the moment, Grit and Dig have a common enemy. Graham Badman has brought us both together in united purpose. We're laughing, shaking our heads at the state of this government, and wondering whether life would be better together if we lived elsewhere.

Of course I won't say the idea of a common enemy isn't an attractive one if it puts the Grit and Dig marriage back on track and engenders such a state of togetherness.

...

Alert the authorities! Control of Grit risk!

Grit has been CCTV'd today, in Bedford, being irresponsible. She has been doing something I am sure she is not allowed to do, given her role as parent-teacher-adult-in-charge to vulnerable gritlets.

She has been caught loafing off, all on her own. Yes! Can you believe it? On her own! Without any children and totally alone!

So where are they? you ask. Where is the defenceless Dig and the vulnerable and needy nine-year olds, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger? Are you having a new patio laid, Grit?

Well, the children are indisposed, elsewhere. And you can bet that shiftless fat arsed grit has been enjoying her unregulated adult activity, and you sure can assume that this activity was of a non-supervised nature and totally not endorsed by all the parental-teacher licensing agencies Delyth Morgan could muster.

Because, get this, today I send Squirrel, Tiger and Dig off to Wales in a hire car to attend a funeral of someone they've never met, and I send Shark, upwards, strapped to a harness, along with a dozen other home ed kids, all atop a wobbly tower made of milk crates, under the pathetic excuse that this is an educational team-building activity day down the local outdoor centre.

Here she goes!


Hurry up Shark! Once you're up the top, I can abandon you to scoot off down Bedford town and into that Sally Army charity shop and blow your £1 dinner money in the cast offs department.

Really, I should be imprisoned for my own good and the safety of children.

Let's all help the Stasi!

Say YES to

ID cards!
fingerprinting in schools!
CCTV in all private areas including toilets!
security passes to access age-restricted areas
all personal data held on one big database!
electronic tagging for all!
national DNA database!
random healthy home visits from the family inspectorate!
licences for all family members!
suitability inspections on all parents!
curfews!
guided and monitored national curriculum lessons for every child - from birth!
outlawing of all non-state approved and deviant parenting!
training every child to expect monitoring THROUGHOUT THEIR LIVES.

Yes, says Grit! YES YES YES. All these measures will help keep my children SAFE!

And what could possibly GO WRONG?

The training on all the Stasi inspectors will be faultless. Of course Mr and Mrs Spooky won't apply to work with children! We can trust the state to carefully vet all individuals! More than we can trust our own grannies! Anyway, in the new order, Granny will need a licence too! But if she's got nothing to hide, she's got nothing to fear!

And in the interests of helping the Stasi, let me inform on my neighbour.

He walks in a funny way and he keeps 27 steps in various forms in his house. 13 are connected to the stairs, which is a deviant number, so he's guilty of something; 3 are connected to a kitchen step ladder which I have never seen him use, so he's up to no good with that, 3 are down to his cellar, which should be investigated under the new Cellar Investigation Inspectorate, and the rest are casually littered around his house and garden where A CHILD could fall over them. So he is clearly GUILTY of child abuse and neglect. Hanging's TOO GOOD FOR HIM!