Tendring Topics .....on Line
Failing Schools
I'm sure that it must have come as something of a shock to most Clactonians to learn that two out of our three secondary schools were among 600 nationwide that were threatened with closure because of GCSE results that didn't reach the government's minimum standards.
We knew that the new Bishops Park College had been put into special measures by Ofsted in November but understood that good progress had since been made. I am sure that I must have been one of many who were astonished to discover that Colbayns High School was also on the 'black list'. Colbayns High School Head Teacher, Nick Pavitt, had after all, been seconded to Bishops Park for three days a week to try to help them out of their troubles. It seems though that he had problems of his own.
Mr Pavitt claims that the government's target was a figure 'plucked from the air' and that it failed to recognise the individual circumstances of each school. Perhaps so,but is the government's target all that unreasonable?
Warning of possible closure was given to all schools where less that thirty percent of pupils attained GCSE passes between levels A and C in five subjects. These had to include Maths and English. In other words the government suggests that after five years of secondary education, at least three out of every ten pupils should be thoroughly numerate, literate in their own native language and not totally ignorant of the world around them. 'Plucked from the air' it may have been, but it is a target that is straight forward, easily understood and doesn't seem to me to demand an absurdly high standard.
The government's communication was too, only a warning of possible closure. I imagine that there would be careful consideration of the individual circumstances of each school before any drastic action was taken.
I certainly would never make light of the problems that some teachers have to face. During term time children spend about six hours of each day in school. The remaining eighteen hours (and twentyfour hours a day at weekends and out of term time) are spent either with their families or outside 'with their mates'. Children who receive little or no encouragement at home and who hear 'book learning' constantly denigrated by their friends, are unlikely to shine at school.
One suggestion to help the situation was to effect a merger of the two schools. All the parents of children attending them were invited to write in giving their opinion of the idea, or to attend a public meeting at which it would be discussed. At Colbayns High School there are currently 1,350 pupils. Just eleven parrents wrote in and seven attended the meeting. At Bishops Park College there are 554 pupils. Fourteen parents wrote in and three attended the meeting.
How would you interpret that result? Apathy, lack of interest in their children's education, inability to see how a merger could affect the situation one way or another, conviction that the governors of each school had already made up their minds anyway, are all possibilities that came to my mind. However it became clear that there was yet another way in which the result (or lack of result) could be interpreted!
After a joint meeting of the governors on Thursday 12th June Mr Pavitt told the press, 'Governors reviewed the responses from parents in the light of the total number of students on roll, and judged that the overwhelming majority of parents were content to trust the governing bodies of both schools to make the right decision to secure the future of secondary education in West Clacton'. Now that's what I call really looking on the bright side!
With this assurance that the parents were wholeheartedly behind them, the governors agreed to form a federation of the two schools in a bid to drive up standards. Staff and students will continue to work and study at their present schools but will have opportunities to work in both. Work will now begin on appointing the twenty people who will mak up the new governing body with representatives of all concerned groups. One of the new governing body's first tasks will be to decide on the leadership and management arrangments at the schools.
Somehow I feel that it is going to take more than the appointment of a new governing body and the juggling of leadership nd management arrangements to push up those GCSE results next year. I wish the new governors (and the teachers and children involved!) the very best of luck. I think that they are going to need it!
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Following in Robin Hood's and William Tell's footsteps!
Will we Clactonians have our own representative among the competitors at the 21012 Olympics? Fifteen years old Colbayns High School Pupil Jodie Barnes certainly intends that we will!
Jodie not only lives in Clacton but in the same road as myself. She is a teenager who doesn't 'hang around' with her pals every evening and weekend, bored out of her miond and moaning that 'there's nothing for young people to do in Clacton'. Sadly, her father David, well-known locally as an expert darts player and as the proprietor of a stall in Clacton's Covered Market, died last November of a brain tumour at the age of 56. Less than a year earlier Jodie had taken up archery with the Priory Bowmen in St.Osyth and had already progressed to a point at which she was representing our county in competitions. Before her Dad's death she was sufficiently confident of her ability with a bow to be able to promise him that she would compete in the 2012 Olympics in his memory.
Jodie is determined to honour that promise. She has since gone on from strength to strength, travelling round England to compete and coming in first in a number of junior competitions. Currently she is twentieth in all England and is still gaining experience and perfecting her archery skills. Jodie's Mum told a Gazette reporter that Jodie's determination in the field of archery is having an effect elsewhere in her life. She is now achieving straight 'A' s for her school work.
My own loss (almost two years ago now but it seems like last week) makes me better able to understand the gaping hole in Jodie's life that has been left by her father's death, and to understand how purposeful activity can help to fill that hole.
As a fellow Clactonian and indeed almost-a-neighbour, Jodie certainly has my very best wishes. I hope that she makes it to the 2012 Olympics though, as that is the year in which the ninety-first anniversary of my birthday will occur, it isn't really very likely that I'll still be around to cheer her on.
Hopeful Olympic competitors face spiralling expenses for travel and equipment. Right now Jodie is seeking sponsorship to help meet these costs. If you are acquainted with any local millionaires eager to dispel the still-popular image of th empty-headed 'Essex girl', please suggest to them that Jodie would be a thoroughly worthy and appreciative recipient of any 'few thousand pounds' that they may have to spare. In fact, of course, she'd be grateful for any donations, however small. As the well-known tv advert assures us, 'every little helps'. Anyone who would like to help should phone Priory Bowmen on 01255 428191.
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The Lisbon Treaty
I was not one of those who joined with members of UKIP, readers of 'The Sun' and others, in jumping for joy at the fact that, in a referendum, the Irish had rejected the Lisbon Treart on he European Union.
Yes, I know that the EU as it exists today is a clumsy, thoroughly undemocratic hotchpotch of countries all trying to squeeze their own national advantage from the rest of us. How odd then, that the newspapers, politicians and political groups who have most eagerly drawn our attention to these defects, should now be applauding the defeat of a treaty that was ettmpting to remove them and to introduce some order and efficiency into European affairs.
perhaps though it isn't quite so odd when we consider that many of those who are so happy with the result of the Irish referendum don't really want the EU to be reformed. They'd like to see it abolished! Some have a romantic idea that in a world dominated by superpower politics the UK (which they think of as consisting only of England) can stand alone. Come the three corners of the world in arms and we shall shock them, if England to herself remain but true', may have been a viable policy in Shakespeare's day but it certainly isn't today.
Others may perceive the EU as a barrier to Britain's even closer association with the USA, perhaps one day becoming part of a new union renamed United States of Atlantica! It is not an idea that appeals to me.
I personally hold the currently unpopular view that Britain's future lies, and should lie, in closer economic, political and cultural union with our continental neighbours in a reformed and democratised European Union; a union in which the unelected European Commission has rather less power and the democratically elected European parliament rather more.; one in which the extent and limitation of every member's national sovereignty is clearly defined; and in which the perceived national interest of one country (even if that country were the UK) could not for ever impede the progress of the remainder.
It is, I believe, only in such a union, in which the UK would play an active, sometimes leading, part, that we could acquire the political and economic strength to to co-operate (and sometimes no doubt, compete) on equal terms with the world's currently single superpower and with the emerging superpowers of China and India.
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Afghanistan
Way back in February I expressed the opinion that the fanatical terrorists who are now fighting a bloody war of attrition against our forces in Afghanistan are the same 'gallant mojihadin' who were lauded (and covertly supported) by our press and politicians in the 1980s for resisting Soviet occupation in much the same way.
'Afghantsi', shown on 'More-4' at 10.00 p.m. on Tuesday 17th June was an extraordinary documentary in which during the final years of that occupation, a British tv film crew managed to film and obtain astonishingly frank interviews with Soviet soldiers at their base camp in Kabul, in a Kabul military hospital and, most surprising of all, at a lonely outpost halfway up a bleak mountain.
I can't do better than to quote from the Radio Times review: 'The soldiers explain, sadly and quietly, how they feel deceived by their government, how they soon learnt that the war was unwinnable (after every operation, the number of people against us would increase) and how deeply the violence had affected them. Even more powerfully, soldiers and their families mourn those who fell. rarely have the mind-numbing futility and countles individual tragedies of war been more lucidly presented'. Those young conscripts reminded me so much of the young men I lived and fought with in North Africa in 1941 and '42, and how much the grief of their loving parents reminds me of the grief of British parents that I now see all too frequently on tv, as they are told opf he loss of their son (and now there is a daughter) in Afghanistan.
One revelation that particularly shocked me as former prisoner of war was the grisly and agonising fate of any Soviet soldier who fell alive into Afghan hands. I won't repeat the sickening details but I could well understand why these young soldiers said that they always saved one grenade for hemselves if they could see they were about to be taken prisoner.
I hope that 'Afghantsi will be repeated on a more popular tv channel at a slightly earlier time - though definitely after the 9.00 p.m. watershed..
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