Week No 39 2012

Tendring Topics.....on line

‘What goes around, comes around!’

 Michael Gove’s idea of an English Baccalaureate having English, Maths and a Science as compulsory subjects, with assessment of pupils dependent upon an examination taken at the end of the years of secondary education, without ‘modules’ and without course-work being taken into consideration, has been condemned by some of its opponents as ‘going back to the ‘80s’.   I would have been inclined to say that it was going back fifty years earlier than that, to the 1930s and would have been inclined to add, ‘and is none the worse for that!’

            I can see little, if any, difference between Mr Gove’s proposals and the examination that I took in 1937 at the age of sixteen, before leaving school at the end of my secondary education   Our exam was not called a Baccalaureate (though I remember our French master telling us that that was the name of the equivalent exam taken by school leavers in France) but the London University General Schools’ Certificate examination.  To gain that certificate we had to study and pass an exam in at least five subjects which had to include English (grammar and literature), Mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry) a Foreign Language and a Science.   I think that most of us took six subjects – the only Foreign Language taught at my school was French, and my other subjects were History, Geography and General Physics.  The last of these was reckoned to be the scientific ‘soft option’ as it was guaranteed to be about scientific principles only and to have no mathematical questions! 

The pass mark was 40 percent.  Those who achieved this mark in the four compulsory subjects plus one other, passed the exam and gained the certificate.  Failure in any one of those subjects meant failure in the whole exam.   Those who gained at least 50 percent marks in the compulsory subjects and one other subject, were awarded ‘Matriculation Exemption’.  Matriculation was the admission examination to London University.   We all aimed at ‘the Matric’ (and that’s what the exam was often called) and I was successful.  Very few of us though even considered the possibility of going to London or any other University.  In those days Universities were not for ‘the likes of us’ working class kids.

            Possession of that General Schools Certificate, especially with the added ‘Matric Exemption’ was the key to a ‘white collar’ job and perhaps the first step towards qualifying for a minor profession.  I would certainly not have been appointed to my first job as Junior Clerk/Student Sanitary Inspector (nowadays they’re called Environmental Health Officers) with Ipswich Council’s Public Health Department without it.  My school studies had been tilted away from the sciences, but my very creditable pass in ‘General Physics’ helped me secure that job and, many, many years later the basic knowledge of science that I had acquired at school certainly helped me to write half a dozen commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage!

            There are two myths (at least!) about Michael Gove’s proposals that need to be exploded.  The first was one that I heard put forward by a representative of the NUT on tv this (18^th September) morning.  This was that children, having had no previous experience of exams, would be suddenly faced with a vital life-changing one at the age of sixteen.   That simply wasn’t true in the ‘30s and doesn't have to be true today. At the end of every term at my secondary school we had written examinations taken under ‘exam conditions’ in every subject that we had studied. The results of these exams were included in an end-of-term report to our parents.  They also received a half-term report usually based on informal tests to which we had been subjected.  That surely was true ‘continuous assessment’ – and not just the teacher’s opinion.

            At the end of the term prior to taking the General Schools’ Certificate exam we had a ‘mock exam’, usually consisting of questions from previous General Schools’ exams.  From this, pupils, parents and teachers could get a good idea of the likely results in the real examination a couple of months later.

            The second myth is that children would swot away during the months, days, hours, before the final exam and would fill their heads with material that would disappear from their memories within days!

The Stour at Bridge Cottage, Flatford Mill, in the heart of the ‘Constable country’, where we exam candidates relaxed on the day before our exam ordeal began.  Under the wooden foot-bridge can be seen two of the skiffs that our school hired for the day. Bridge cottage once belonged to painter John Constable's father.         

That certainly didn’t happen in my school, the Northgate Secondary School for Boys in Ipswich.  Quite apart from the continuous assessment from end-of-term examinations, our Headmaster (Mr Alfred Morris) had a very strong dislike of ‘last minute swotting’.  He established a tradition that on the day before sitting for the first session of the General Schools’ Certificate exam all candidates would cycle (we all rode bicycles in those days!) from Ipswich to Flatford Mill where we would spend the day boating on the Stour, finally rowing up river to Dedham where we would enjoy a communal tea in one of the restaurants there.  We each took our own packed lunch but the school paid for the hire of the skiffs and for the tea!  Many of us took the exam next day with aching backs and blistered hands but, for all that, the results were usually pretty creditable.

A criticism of Michael Gove’s proposal is that there’s nothing in it for academic ‘low achievers’.   They, so it is said, are set up for failure.   Perhaps so – but if the exam were to be in carpentry or practical electrics, or in any other activity requiring manual dexterity I, and many others like me, would also be set up for failure.  At school my total uselessness at every outdoor game and sport (except swimming) also set me up for failure – and derision! Don’t blame education. Blame a social and economic system that generally rewards ‘white collar activities’ (particularly in the field of finance) much more generously than even the most highly skilled manual work.

I found my secondary education and its culminating examination of great value to me in later life.  My two sons, educated in the ‘60s in the days of ‘O’ levels found the same.  No regular reader of this blog is likely to accuse me of being an uncritical admirer of the present government.  The words mendacious incompetents spring to mind! Nor do I share Mr Gove's enthusiasm for 'academies' and 'free  schools' - free that is from local democratic control, but firmly under the thumb of central government. He who pays the piper calls the tune!'

 I do think though that there is merit in Michael Gove’s plans for secondary education, even if they are nearly eighty years old!   It is strange to find myself on the same side as the Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph rather than the Independent and the Guardian, but there it is.  I remember Polonius’ advice to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet:  ‘This above all, to thine own self be true’. It is advice that I do try to follow.

Policing the Police!

          Overseeing the operation of Britain’s Police Forces at the present moment are Police Committees, thoroughly undemocratic bodies that appear to be answerable to no-one but themselves. They need to be reformed, and since Police Force boundaries generally coincide with those of a local authority (either county or borough council) an obvious solution might have been to hand over their functions to the appropriate local authority.   That however is not the path that the Government has chosen.   They intend to have each Police Force under the wing of a single directly elected Commissioner – to be elected by us on 15^th November of this year!

           These Commissioners, says the government’s official web site, will aim to cut crime and deliver an effective and efficient police service within the force area. They will do this by:

·                            holding the chief constable to account for the delivery of the force

·                            setting and updating a police and crime plan

·                            setting the force budget and precept

·                            regularly engaging with the public and communities

·                            appointing, and where necessary dismissing, the chief constable

It will not be for the PCC to tell the professionals how to do their job - the legislation continues to protect the operational independence of the police by making it clear that the chief constables retain direction and control of the forces officers and staff. The operations of the police will not be politicised; who is arrested and how investigations work will not become political decisions.

            Do you fancy the job?  There’s no mention of the salary on the web site but I reckon it’ll be well worth having!  You’re not eligible if you have ever been convicted of an imprisonable offence, if you are a civil servant or are employed by a local authority in the Police Authority area (for Tendring District residents that means within the county of Essex).  Otherwise the field is open  to any registered voter in that area except that you’ll need to find another 100 registered voters to nominate you and you’ll have to hand over a deposit of £5,000 that will be forfeited if you don’t attract at least 5% of the votes cast.   Candidates may be independent or the nominees of a political party.

            There are currently six prospective candidates for our Essex area, three male and two female, three the nominees of political parties – Conservative, Labour and English Democrat, and three Independents.   Nominations cannot be made before 8^th October or after 19^th October.

            I shall undoubtedly vote, though I’ll need to know a lot more about each candidate before deciding to whom my vote will go. It is unlikely that it will be for one of the party nominees.  I would have preferred the Commissioner to have been advised by a directly elected committee but, since this isn’t going to happen, I shall want him or her to be truly independent; without, for instance, being subject to this kind of pressure: ‘Of course it’s your decision to make, no question about it, but - if you hope to retain Party support when it comes to re-election - you’ll………….

            This November election has a feature that some may find surprising.  You remember that referendum we had last year that firmly rejected the idea of listing parliamentary candidates in order of preference, in favour of ‘one man, one vote’ and ‘first past the winning post wins’?   Well, voting for our Police and Crime Commissioner won’t be on a ‘first past the post’ basis. We are to be invited to indicate our first and second choices, the second choice to be taken into account if the winner doesn’t get an overall majority; much the same, in fact, as the system for which I voted in that referendum but that was decisively rejected by a comfortable majority!

Tendring Topics…..on line

Helping the Old and Disabled
Flatford Mill, once the home and birthplace of landscape painter John Constable, has been one of my favourite destinations for over seventy-five years! In my mid-teens I was an enthusiastic fresh-water angler. Usually I exercised my skills on the River Gipping, near to my Ipswich home. Occasionally though, taking a packed lunch from my mum, I would cycle along the London Road to East Bergholt and on to Flatford, to see what the Stour had to offer. The headmaster of the Northgate School, my Ipswich Secondary School, was strongly opposed to last minute swotting for exams. Accordingly he established a tradition that all candidates for the Matric (the national school leaving examination, usually taken at 16) cycled to Flatford for the day before the exams started (we were all cyclists in those days) and spent it on the river in hired skiffs.


In adult life, although I no longer fished, I found Flatford Mill as attractive as ever, and drove there on a number of occasions with friends and family, sometimes again hiring a skiff for a leisurely row up-river to Dedham. In recent years, I have had to rely on others to provide transport. Both my sons have driven me there on a number of occasions, reviving old memories.

Progressively limited mobility has meant that I can no longer stride over that wooden bridge and stroll along the river bank from which I had, years before, cast my fishing line. I can now do little more than walk, unsteadily and with the aid of a stick, from the disabled car park to the riverside restaurant for refreshment, and back to the car park again. On our most recent visit though we spotted, standing near to the restaurant, an electric mobility scooter with a notice announcing that its use was free, ‘enquire at the Bridge Cottage Shop’.

I have been using a mobility scooter (my ‘iron horse’) for years. My son enquired, and a friendly and helpful young lady showed me how the controls worked – not quite like mine but easy enough to use. She asked me a few questions, watched me do a short test drive (to make sure that I wasn’t going to drive straight into the river!) and entrusted me with the key!

The range of the mobility scooter is a little limited. The wooden bridge giving access to the Essex bank of the river is, for instance, out of bounds. However one can drive along the lane behind Bridge Cottage and the restaurant and shop, to Willy Lott’s Cottage and to Flatford Mill itself. Because maximum speed of the scooter is that of a comfortable walking pace, accompanying friends and relatives have no difficulty keeping up with it. The Mill has for some years accommodated a ‘field studies’ education centre where my then fifteen-year-old elder son once spent a week with a school party during his final years at Clacton County High School.

From the Mill it is possible to go on a pleasant circular route through the countryside, returning to the Mill and eventually to Bridge Cottage, where the mobility scooter is returned to its owners.

I think that, combined with the nearby car park for disabled drivers or their passengers, and the adjacent disabled toilet, it provides a valuable service for no-longer-agile visitors that deserves all the publicity it can get. Not many beauty spots and tourist destinations do as much.

Flatford Mill, viewed from the Essex bank of the Stour

‘Thanks be to God!’
On Tuesday of last week (12th October) when I posted the predecessor of this blog on the internet, the release of the thirty-three entombed Chilean miners was imminently expected. Originally it had been thought that the relief shaft through which they were to be lifted to freedom wouldn’t be completed till Christmas. Progress though, had been much better than expected. By 12th October (over two months ahead of schedule!), the relief shaft had reached the man-made cavern in which the miners were confined. A rescue capsule had been designed and manufactured and the liberation of the miners, one at a time, might possibly begin within hours. I had been delighted but had decided not to refer to it in my blog. There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip! I had seen too many unforeseen last-minute disasters!

I woke up soon after 4.00 a.m. on the 13th. It was long before I needed to get up but I knew from experience that there would be no more sleep for me. I wondered what was happening in Chile. There was bound to be something on BBC World News. I switched on my bedside radio to learn that the first trapped miner had already been brought to the surface. The second was on his way! And so it continued all day – a smooth, perfectly organised rescue operation. The target had been one rescue an hour, but this was exceeded. It took less than twenty-four hours for every one of those thirty-three miners to be snatched from what had seemed likely to be their grave.

I watched much of the rescue on tv. It was a wonderful to see the tearful joy on the freed miners’ faces, and on those of their parents, wives or girlfriends, and their little sons or daughters, as they were reunited after weeks of fear-filled separation. Some of the freed miners knelt on the ground and crossed themselves, thanking God for their deliverance. ‘How ridiculous to credit God with this rescue!’ must have thought the disciples of antifaith zealot Richard Dawkins. ‘It obviously owed everything to the skill and determination of we humans, and nothing whatsoever to the imaginary world of the supernatural!

Really? Then who, or what, was it that had persuaded those humans to devote hundreds of thousands of pounds, the experience and skills of an army of rescue workers, and weeks of potentially profitable time, to the rescue of just thirty-three poor Chilean miners? It certainly wasn’t fundamentalist Darwinism. Those miners had lost the possibility of contributing to the infinitely slow evolutionary process of perfecting the human gene – the sole ‘purpose’ of our existence. Put their loss down to experience and get on with living.

Nor was it the service of Mammon, the third millennium’s most popular god. Mammon’s three abiding virtues are Productivity, Profitability and Cost Effectiveness (and the greatest of these is Cost Effectiveness!) Never was there a less cost effective exercise than that of bringing those Chilean miners – thirty-three low value human resource units - to safety.

I suggest that it was what we Quakers describe as ‘the promptings of love and truth in our hearts’ (sometimes called ‘that of God’ or ‘the Inward Light of Christ’), God’s gift to every man, woman and child in the world. It was this that had inspired and urged on those untiring rescuers and those who had organised and funded their efforts. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done these things unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done them unto me!’

Centuries ago, St Theresa had said, ‘In this world God has no hands but ours to do his bidding, no feet but ours to run his errands’

Of course the miners were right to thank God for his goodness. So should we all.

‘The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind’

That answer, provided by Bob Dylan in a famous ‘protest’ song of the early 1960s is certainly part of the answer to the solution of Britain’s energy problems. It could also help solve some of Tendring District’s economic and employment problems.

Tendring Council is bidding, against competition from Germany, the Netherlands and other parts of the UK, for Harwich to be developed as a ‘wind farm port’, building and maintaining the hundreds of wind farms already built, in the process of being built, or planned for the future along England’s east coast.

Council leader Neil Stock is reported as saying that the potential is enormous. ‘It’s a real opportunity for the town and would bring in skilled jobs to revitalise what is a struggling area…..we are talking hundreds of jobs and, with the boost to the economy, it would mean thousands’.

In Harwich’s favour would be the fact that it is already an internationally known port, and its central and easily accessible position convenient for the Continent, with a major wind farm offshore at Clacton, and positioned midway between the wind turbines off the Kent coast, and those off the coast of north-east England. It could be developed where a new container port had been proposed at Bathside Bay. Mr Stock said that the current economic climate meant that that container port couldn’t have been provided ‘for at least a generation’.

INTend, Tendring Council’s private enterprise regeneration agency, has been given the job of turning those ambitious hopes into reality – a brilliant opportunity to prove to its critics (including me!) that it really can earn its keep.

The Council’s bid has the backing of Harwich and North Essex MP Bernard Jenkins. Perhaps it is just as well that Harwich is no longer within the constituency of Richard Carswell – Clacton’s climate-change-denying MP. I fear that he might have been unable to show much enthusiasm for the development of an alternative source of energy.