Unfortunately, lots of them come along at the same time

Something said recently by David Cameron, set me thinking of the Thatcher years. He had said so many of Thatcher's ideas were now being recognised as great, suggesting I suppose that he and Gideon fully intend to continue implementing such wonderful policies as destroying the public sector, privatising anything that moves and casting another generation onto the slag heap.

But it made me think of one very practical example I lived through of how Thatcher's "grand ideas" completely changed one aspect of our society.

One person's economy is another's quality of life

In the 80's I was commuting into Waterloo, then taking two buses to get to the school I taught in, on the Old Kent Road.

When I started doing those journeys every bus had a driver and a conductor. As the Tory cuts took effect I saw the progressively deteriorating effect on travel in London. It may be apocryphal, but the Thatcher quote about only failures needing to take a bus, seemed to be evident in the transport policy concerning them.

A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure

Slowly the friendly conductor, who helped on board the old, the infirm and the young parents with kids, was got rid of. It took longer at each stop because no-one was there to direct and the driver had to take the fares, creating long hold ups of cars behind the bus. Pretty soon the drivers alone in their cabs got frightened of the passengers and heavy duty plastic screen were put in between them and the people getting on. Queues and travel in London got slower.

Once that minimal contact between driver and passenger was eliminated with tickets bought before getting on, the driver became dramatically more distant. Old people who might have been helped by a conductor, now got thrown around as driving became more erratic and less connected to the people in the bus. I saw the service deteriorate around me.

In other words buses became less of a service to the people who used them. Besides, important people didn't need them anyway.

So much of what happened under Thatcher was the elimination of care and public service. It's all happening again.

The public sector is now again being dismantled. The teams that have grown to support the people they serve are being broken up, individuals made redundant. Things that matter to ordinary people are being scrapped because the "important" ones, the millionaires in cabinet have no need for them.

That's the way it is. Let's face it, when you get on a bus how likely is it that George Osborne will be sitting next to you. His oyster card would only be used to buy the oysters to accompany his champagne.

Remembering Racism in South Africa (and so much more)

An article by Victor Dlamini (link at bottom) reminded me of the privileges accorded to me as a visitor during my time working for a Charity in South Africa.

Between 2003 and 2008 I worked supporting the introduction of new technologies to the "formerly disadvantaged schools". In inverted commas because for most "formerly" was entirely the wrong word. The key initiative I worked with is a wonderful organisation that produced outcomes envied across the world and I have written in many places of our partnership work. As a visitor who spent 1/3 of the year in Africa, I was able to benefit from many advantages. The exchange rate only one of them. However, as recently reported in Trip Advisor, South Africa is one of the friendliest places on earth.

I worked with schools in many different communities across wealth and racial divides. The coloured community, which still describes itself this way, faces as many problems as the Xhosa. Schools are still poorly equipped and lacking the resources that many take for granted. I also worked with schools that were still largely white and when I visited often reminded me of visits I have made to Eton! Fantastic grounds and buildings, rowing teams and swimming pools.

I worked especially closely with some Xhosa schools in Guguletu and Khayelitsha. I loved the enthusiasm and warmth of the staff who were sometimes teaching classes of 50 learners. On several memorable occasions I took classes in ICT or Maths, speaking English to students who need that language for school work but went home to speak isiXhosa. 50 kids or more stretches ability and patience. In my attempts to be part of these groups I tried to involve myself in all aspects of school life. I managed to secure over £1/2m of support, product and sponsorship for schools here.

I was asked to formally open one school's ICT Lab on a blazingly hot Cape Town day, in a large tent erected just for that purpose. This was a big event for the whole local community and many were invited and turned up for hours of celebration, talks by education officials, local politicians and me! I went for a celebratory meal with the whole of the staff a few days earlier. It was then that they explained to me that they were expecting several hundred guests and they would be providing lunch, all cooked by the staff themselves. Chicken, pap, steamed bread, tripe, spinach etc. prepared on school grounds and on portable gas cookers. I couldn't resist! To their astonishment I said I wanted to help. They tried to tell me as the main guest, I shouldn't but agreed it would be original. Only condition, it was customary to bring a knife.

Two days later I was collected at my central Cape Town hotel at 4.30 in the morning. The early morning ride round Khayelitsha collecting some teachers without their own transport, being handed mugs of tea and various breakfast foods at every house was one I shall never forget. Not least because my "driver" was the young ICT technician who had rigged the biggest stereo system in his boot and decided that the time we were together would be my introduction to kwaito.

Arriving at the school by 6am we set to preparing food. They wouldn't trust me with the chicken, so I was set to washing spinach at an outside tap. 5 plastic sacks full of the stuff. I also got to stir the chicken as it stewed in pans.

I was presenting at 12, so I had to get changed into my suit just before, as the other guests arrived. When I emerged, hands clean and freshly scrubbed,the "important people" had arrived. I did my friendly thing and talked to all, practising my very limited isiXhosa and Afrikaans.

At one point, one of the officials, from the coloured community, took me aside. He said he had to warn me about the food. He said it was never a good idea to eat food in these "black schools" as you could never trust it, and that I as a foreigner would probably suffer. He also said that he often pretended to be Muslim, so that he could excuse himself. I am sure he meant well, but this expressed so neatly the lack of understanding between the different communities in the Western Cape.

I told him I had helped prepare the food he was being offered and I could guarantee it's hygiene and the care taken in providing it.

I have been taken many times to restaurants off the beaten track by my best friend in South Africa, the Principal of one of the biggest schools in Southern Africa with over 2000 learners. As part of the coloured community he had been on the stage with Nelson Mandela at one of his first ANC rallies in the Western Cape after his liberation. He took great pleasure taking me into places where as he said, ten years earlier he would have been refused admission. Yet when I started to arrange network meetings for schools wishing to join my schools association, I was always startled when white and black principals from the same area would admit this was the first time they had ever sat and talked.

My principal friend was shocked the first time I took him with me into Khayelitsha to visit a Xhosa school. The communities do not mix on a day to day basis. One Saturday evening colleagues from a Khayelitsha school took me out for a meal and drinks in bars in Guguletu. All of us were middle aged and the looks we got from the youngsters out on the town were of the "look at the oldies" type, rather than look at that Umlungu. Later in the evening we sat in a small informal bar. A group of men drinking with gusto on another table were clearly discussing me. Comments and gestures made that clear. To be honest I was a little worried. My colleagues however, showed no concern. When I asked them what the situation was they patiently explained that most of the men were Heads and teachers from local schools and one of them remembered me from a school visit. Racial sterotyping? Our group suddenly got much larger for the rest of the evening.

I loved my experiences and the people in South Africa. I met people from all communities dedicated to creating a new South Africa, one with opportunities for all.

But the legacy of apartheid still continues to cast a long racist shadow in so many ways.

Ubuntu: "I am what I am because of who we all are."

Partnership Project Unites African and UK Schools

Victor Dlamini http://www.citypress.co.za/Columnists/The-Cape-of-backdoor-racism-20110507

Kwaito

On being rude on Twitter (and Johann Hari)

I have written here several times about the lack of basic courtesy that is often Twitter's hallmark.

I have been guilty many times. I have so enjoyed making fun of Danny (Beaker) Alexander and Nick (#noddingclegg) Clegg. I am afraid I have let my spite go to extremes when the nonsense of Govian education policy bites us once again. So because I don't know these people personally, I have been rude.

Trouble is, once you meet people here, or at least talk to them in thoughts bigger than 140 characters, I find it harder to be merely rude at their expense. It's that basic courtesy thing. Also just because you disagree on politics doesn't mean you won't share a love for John Martyn, Western Cape Pinotage or Anne Tyler.

So I have talked at length with some politicians, bloggers and educationists whose views on the Tory road to the future I violently disagree with. Isn't it better to state your view, correct theirs where you can but continue the conversation?

I love finding the slightly acidic quote or picture that backs up my gut feelings and gets others looking and commenting too.

As an ex teacher, but someone who has worked within education all my life, I prefer the staffroom discussion to the playground brawl.

I also feel we all need to be aware of criticism and adapt our own comments and views when someone takes the trouble to point out mistakes, or misinterpretations. Sometimes we keep quiet.

Yesterday lots of people were tweeting about something Churchill is supposed to have said re. the Arts. You know the one - "What then are we fighting for?" Trouble is I used that a long time ago and many people came back and told me that this was one of those myths we all like to pass on. Didn't jump up and correct yesterday because the underlying thought resonated, Tory Arts cuts are counter-productive.

Bit like the myth that I still repeat even though people tell me it is apocryphal. The one about the Tory Cabinet minister forced to travel on London Underground for the very first time? The story goes that he asked his secretary to book him into the Dining Car. Works, because we all feel that the cabinet millionaires just aren't aware of what ordinary people experience. And no, it wasn't Boris Johnson.

So, I want to listen, be amused, be engaged and occasionally be corrected. And like almost everyone else on Twitter, I want to be loved too.

Johann Hari wrote his Indy column today about how Ed Miliband needs to be better understood, to be clearer in the way he speaks.

I objected to one line, which I think was supposed to be a casual throwaway joke about isiXhosa, one of the languages of South Africa.

"In interviews,(Ed M).... will casually back up his points by referring to "the IFS", or "the OBR" – which may as well be in Xhosha click language for all it means to most people"

isiXhosa speakers hate the way those who can't reproduce the intricate sounds of their language make fun of it. He can't even be bothered to spell correctly the language of 8 million people in South Africa, 18% of the population. (Xhosa not Xhosha) Using this for his "funny" wasn't and I objected to it in the comments and on Twitter. He promptly blocked me, blocking any debate or discussion.

In South Africa the plethora of official languages in that multi-cultural society, is often the subject of the satirists.

Pieter-Dirk Uys has been satirising African politics, society and language since and during the days of apartheid. I sat in one of his performances and although my Afrikaans is limited his jokes still made me laugh and often made me cry. He told one story of problems caused by having to use all 11 official languages on signs. "Imagine someone approaching a gate and seeing all the official versions of "Beware of the Dog". By the time they had read to the bottom, the Zulu speaker would have been bitten!"

Made me laugh as this was in the context of a man who had lived through the changes, loved his country and continued to humourously criticise all he felt was still wrong.

If Twitter can add value to our perception of the world and society we need to engage in the debate and still see the humanity in the people we criticise.

I feel sorely let down by Johann Hari in that endeavour. Quite a few have responded to me by DM or in open tweets. Several comment on this growing trend. "one of those cause journalists whose main cause is his career". By "blocking he is as bad as some of those he criticises. Criticism obv OK as long as it isn't of him!"

Well yes. My thoughts too.

Johann Hari Independent Article

Pieter-Dirk Uys

all 11 official languages

Why did that chicken cross the road?

The answers that people might give now


Teresa May: I am proud of our police force and it was not their fault that the chicken lost its leg

Douglas Adams: 42

Descartes: It's not pink, it's not spam

Gaddafi's security chief: Give me just five minutes alone with it and I'll find out!

Hamlet: That is not the question

Ken Clarke: I fell asleep, what was the question?

Margaret Thatcher: this chicken's not for turning

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature

Nick Clegg: I told it my principles were on the other side

Stephen King, Education and Coalition Horror

In the nineties I taught ICT in a small mixed comprehensive in Berkshire. Having arrived there from an inner London school, I noticed a lot of differences between the kids from the two areas. If you have ever played Monopoly you will have a notion of the value of the Old Kent Road and lots of the kids who lived there didn't put a much higher value on themselves. My first few weeks in the Berkshire school on the edge of a country town was spent getting used to the accents and them getting used to mine. The country yokel cry of "Please Sir" I really thought was their attempt to take the piss out of my London voice. The willingness to stand up when asked also came as a bit of a shock. These kids were different to the multi cultural environment I had spent the first 17 years of teaching in.

Stephen King : 49 books and counting

We got used to each other though. One of the things that was exactly the same in both schools, however, was the way in which boys had distinctive tastes in literature and English teachers just couldn't understand it. In my new school most of the English Department was female throughout my time there. Every year when learners chose the novel they were going to read and write their GCSE Book review on, the same problems emerged. Lots of the boys wanted to adopt a Stephen King Horror and most of the staff tried to dissuade them.

There was the underlying feeling that "King was trash" and something more "literary" and appropriate should be selected. In the last few years we have heard a lot about how the Harry Potter books have got kids reading, well 20 years ago I think King did the same thing for teenage boys.

Running ICT access meant I got lots of students asking me for assistance when they were doing research. A common complaint was the hostility many felt when a King book was their choice. Some of them kept at it, often choosing the nastiest title they could find, just to be awkward. A bit like fumbling with fags behind the bike sheds, or trying to get to porn sites in the ICT Lab. All bravado.

But I have always loved Stephen King's books. I love the ability to tell a story that starts with real life events and real life people that you care about and want to learn about. Rarely do I pick a King book up and not want to keep going until I reach the end of the story. Some of his novels are sensational rubbish but some of them I would seriously place among the best written in the English language. And for anyone who has never picked up one of his stories and has a snobbish view of them, read one: that's a challenge!

I would say Misery, Dorothy Claiborne and Hearts in Atlantis are among the best. The novellas such as Stand By Me and Shawshank, superb.The horror is subsidiary to the suspense and character development in most of his writing.

So to go back to the nineties. I was called to arms! I thought I should take up the cause of the King and argue my point on behalf of all the boys who wanted to do their review of one of his.

When I got my chance to put my case and talk about the language, the writing skills, the story telling ability, I was a bit shocked. At the time I did this, none of the teachers had read any King. It wasn't part of their cultural background. It wasn't what they knew. They had no experience of reading what the people they were responsible for liked or kept them going. They dismissed the aspirations of this group of boys who wanted to read what they wanted to read, not what someone else foisted on them. Hopefully, most of these boys went on to read a much bigger collection of literature but often the set books became hated books because they were made to read them.

I have this relationship with Dickens. Bleak House was my set book at A level. I was told to read it. Never did and still haven't up to this day.

So, a few points there but a wider one. Watched Andrew Neil's Posh and Posher yesterday. Apart from the fact that Mr Neil needs someone to explain to him what Comprehensives really are and do, and that if all the private schools were closed as Labour should have done in 1997 then education for all would be so much better; apart from all that it is pretty damn clear that all the millionaires from Eton and Oxford and Cambridge in the Cabinet have no idea what people in UK are really like.

No idea at all. They don't share our relationship with the world. Osborne needn't worry about cuts, his Trust fund will carry on isolating him. Gove can carry on organising the world so that schools reflect the education he suffered. Because none of them are really linked in to what people really want or see. There is good stuff going on in our communities. Stuff that the millionaires don't see, don't understand and don't care about.

Reminds me of Stephen King and the English teachers.

TIES - the novel. Free Intro chapter

Its funny how someone can learn so much about themselves from telling someone else. You start to talk and you start creating a person who you want to exist. You begin by making things up. Then the way you tell the story means that it really does become true. The person you are talking about becomes the one you want to be. Love has a funny effect on everything

He picked up the tie and ran its softness through his fingers. Silky, smooth and such a contrast to the haze of colours that seemed almost deliberate in their sensual assault. He would never have worn this tie in any other situation but the one he was about to become a willing part of. For so many years now he had worn the easy forgotten but nonetheless declaration ties. Crisp and unaccentuated. Eyes were drawn to them but did not linger. Nothing there to draw conclusions from except the quality, the very essence of a wearer who didn’t need to try. The few times he had stepped away from this notion of the inscrutable he had been acutely, irrevocably embarrassed. Not just for himself but also for all the eyes that had rested on the affirmation round his neck and moved on rapidly in case they were forced to learn much more than they wanted to know. But now the tie was finally resurrected because it was time to meet its maker.

He had never even once considered throwing this tie away. Many other experiments, gifts and novelties had been discarded or disposed of when they became splattered with the residues of a great night out. Some had been used to tie the tops of rubbish sacks closed that had been filled with worn out shirts and trousers. Some had never even shared the wrinkled privileges of his neck. Yet this one tie had survived all the style rebellions, even if its place had slowly been re-ordered like layers on a computer graphics program or the objects in a PowerPoint presentation. The thought made him think that metaphor was good. Some computer presentations looked lean and right, others were cluttered with detail that distracted and diminished. Too much business, too much of everything. A lot of ties seemed to have the same effect. But this only made him worry was he talking metaphors or similes? Never sure but always worried. Worry seemed to hang from him, dripped down his carefully ironed shirt front, left him bathed in the sweat of regret.

Still this tie was so many things to him. Yes, it reminded him of some bitter memories from a time in his life when he felt uncertain about certainties, uncommitted to his commitments. Had there been another time like that? When had he ever felt so powerless and yet so totally involved? She had let him believe the impossible; she had encouraged dreams that wouldn’t last half a minute in the cold light of a New Cross sunset or the warm haze of a Nyanga daybreak. Yet she never lied. She talked to him of Chris, she told the fluid stories that made up the cold river of her life. She told him what Chris was and who he was and what he could do in anger or in sorrow. Or in both.

She had sought out his new; uncluttered and genuine warmth but never made him warm. She had brokered sympathy and affection, shown it but never let it move on. He could accuse her of nothing. She had always told the truth however much it hurt him. She needed somewhere to hide, someone to hide her. She asked for his help and he had given her everything, always knowing it would never be enough. He was compensation and he compensated for what she missed but he never once replaced or completed. She loved him honestly. She treated him to honesty but it was never enough for him. He showed what he felt but always held that final passion in check. Her need was not the same as his. He could satisfy hers, while she would never do the same for him.

She told him how much she loved Chris while living in his bed. She let him touch her, caress her and care for her but never let it slide down the wet and oily slope to more. She never allowed him into the silky forest of her desires. He was grateful for her bounty and her beauty. He knew if they were ever found together in this innocence they would not be understood. He knew that Chris would take him to blame, would turn his fierce cruelty on him first and her continuously and forever. The fragile structure of his care would be ripped beyond repair. Because although she had to now, for the present she could never really get away. Neither did she want to. His softness and kindness was just an interlude, a brief escape from what she really needed. However hard he tried to show that warmth and love was a better way to live, she still yearned for Chris’ hardness, his jagged steel, his rough demanding ego. His strength, his lack of care that seemed to make her feel she was all he needed.

But she had made him this tie. He hadn’t known of its existence until it was completely formed. He hadn’t seen the gradual steps to completion while she lived and ate and slept with him. He found it only after her departure, with a note that said simply thank you. She left his enveloping arms, his too enthusiastic caring and went back to someone who never showed he cared but seemed to have everything she wanted if never what she needed.

The note admitted nothing. The tie had said it all. Somehow she had quickly come to realise that he was not the free unfettered spirit he wanted to be. She knew his life would take a different turn. Would grow the heavy layers that would hide his secret desires and ambitions. She had been right. As always.

So here he was, finding the tie that she had known he would still possess. Finding a shirt that didn’t scream for separation from the delicate shades of this so soft thing. This was the first time he had heard from her directly in what? Twenty years? He had seen her briefly in strange and awkward situations. He had touched her once as they passed each other in a room full of people he was supposed to know better than her. People who he shared ideas and theories and visions with. But none had touched him in the way she had. They had exchanged startled looks, had stopped but had found the present movement of their lives had been just too strong to hang the moment on. The cold river moved on, shivering gently all the corpses buried too deep to rescue. The current was still so strong, entering that torrent again was what he wanted but he no longer had the strength to brave it. He could never carry them both again. Too many rivers had carried him; too many waters had kept him afloat. He longed to jump in but caution was finally too strong even for someone who felt he had passed again the one who had completed his soul. And torn it apart.

He was changed; he no longer hankered after someone from another life. But he had made some promises and he would keep them. Perhaps that man was here again. 50 years of birthdays had brought him 50 little people to share his life with. Every one of them demanded his attention. Every one of them was there. Every one had fought the long battle to work out who he was but every one was different.

His life had changed. He was now a man who earnt his living by making money for others. All the great ideals of 20 years ago were buried and forgotten. All the aching need for music and art had slipped away, just like she did. In the night. Across the river. Breaking ties.

And now it was nighttime again. And he was back at the river. She wanted him to sort it out for her like he had that time before. This time it wasn’t just one man coming back to get her. This time it would be all of them. All the vicious, the unkind, the cold, the grabbers and the takers. The people who never took their turn in the queue for loving kindness. The people who saw other people as unnecessary accessories, as extras, as cold meat. No man is an island but plenty become a fortress and love to watch the shattered bodies on the rocks below. Why did they seem alluring? Why did these men who never showed the beat of human kindness offer strange attraction? Chris was one of them, but she was his.

This time he would be fighting for real. He had never struck out in violence before. Words had always been the answer but these people weren’t reasoners, weren’t the rational, weren’t family men. But they were the Family. This time he had to do it for real. No game. No songs, no poetry.

Life itself had come back to haunt him. The little man he was all those years ago was still there, still inside him. But he would do it. For her. Ties? For real.

#govedefinitions - Defining the ridiculous

Gove needs some good advice on Education. He also needs some good advisers. I would readily offer to do the job but as I have worked in education all my life, I am probably someone he won't even talk to. After all to Mr Gove, Education professional is really an oxymoron.

What he wants is non-professionals setting up "free" schools, without qualified teachers, no restraints on the curriculum and essentially a return to the conditions in schools when he was just a lad. Latin, Dryden and blazers. His recipe for a successful school.

Yesterday we started a hashtag #govedefinitions that got lots of the twitterati coming forward with some excellent new versions of what we understood as education seen through the eyes of Mr Gove. Enjoy!

@alanmills405
#govedefinitions British Education. A new game for millionaires to play with the future of ordinary people.
#govedefinitions Qualified Teacher. ex-soldier about 20 hours ago via web
#govedefinitions Intelligent Debate. Daily Mail comment
#govedefinitions Success. What I did at school
#govedefinitions Geography. All the red bits on the map
#govedefinitions History. Kings and Queens of England
#govedefinitions Wider opportunities. Pardon?
#govedefinitions Trained School Support Staff. Who?
#govedefinitions School Blazer. The means by which a teacher maintains discipline and enthusiasm in their class
#govedefinitions Teacher. Anybody
#govedefinitions Technology. Chalk and blackboard.
#govedefinitions Latin. A dead language essential for the modern curriculum
#govedefinitions Education Professional. The enemy

r@ssat Holiday education fun from @alanmills405 - follow #govedefinitions and RT

@BorisWatch #govedefinitions 'Freeing schools from dogma' = 'Forcing schools to accept my dogma'
#govedefinitions 'Putting the teacher in charge of schools' = 'Putting Toby Young in charge of teachers'


@MattSL Matt Lent
#govedefinitions life skills: Speaking Latin, royal chronology & knowing how to pass a 2 hr exam to prove 2 yrs worth of learning
#govedefinitions streaming: different schools for the rich and for the poor


@ColinTGraham Colin Graham
#govedefinitions Government and Governor: both begin with Gove, the end doesn't matter.
#govedefinitions Religious Education = something the Minister for Schools does... oh, maybe not it's that Gibb chappy.
Teachers: Units of spending RT @homayon: #govedefinitions Students: Units of funding
#govedefinitions MFL is speaking English very loudly and very slowly for those who cannot converse adequately in Latin


@homayon Homayon Zeary
#govedefinitions Students: Units of funding
#govedefinitions 21st century skills: repetition, repetition, repetition oh and Latin!

@ColinTGraham Colin Graham
#govedefinitions STEM: well in my book it means to stop, as in "stem the flow" but I suppose it could be part of a flower, didn't do botany


@tonyparkin Tony Parkin
A big thanks owed to @alanmills405 for the best meme fun this month! #govedefinitions was sheer creative genius :)

@ColinTGraham Colin Graham
#govedefinitions Combining DT and ICT: making hollerith machines using empty cereal packets and knitting needles, or watching Blue Peter...

@tonyparkin Tony Parkin
#govedefinitions Teachers Pet: that Jeremy rhyming slang, ever since him and those sporty types ganged up on me, just like at school
#govedefinitions BETT Show: It's odds-on that I won't show and will send little Gibb Minor...

@ColinTGraham Colin Graham
#govedefinitions Physical Education = using a big stick and beating them till they get it right.
#govedefinitions BSF = not quite mad cow disease but near enough to ban it anyway

@tonyparkin Tony Parkin
RT @gvibe: @tonyparkin liking your #govedefinitions (why, thank you kindly Ma'am. @alanmills405 came up with a cracker there
#govedefinitions Mobile learning : putting up more portakabins in schools instead of that wasteful BSF #ukedchat
#govedefinitions Parental Engagement: is not good enough... we expect them all to be married and churchgoing. #ukedchat
#govedefinitions Principals: what we in Coalition respect and value. Principles: what we in Coalition don't have and don't need #UKEdchat
#govedefinitions Class teaching: dividing up students naturally into their respective social and economic groups for educational purposes
#govedefinitions Transforming learning : wiring up the students' metal chairs to ensure the correct responses in SATs tests #UKEdchat
#govedefinitions Bullying: the creative force that made me the snide vituperative weasel that I am today #UKEdchat
#govedefinitions Student Voice - how a pupil responds when spoken to by a teacher, and not before! #UKEdchat
#govedefinitions 'Becta: the Future' - the new DfE film where we travel back in time to an education without new-fangled digital technology

@ColinTGraham Colin Graham
#govedefinitions "Finding new money" = damn, there goes the moat and the duck house...

@tonyparkin Tony Parkin
#govedefinitions I'm in favour of diversity - it's just like university, but you have two of them?


@ColinTGraham Colin Graham
#govedefinitions Grammar: omnes quaestiones et communicationem agi tantum latine
#govedefinitions modernization: allowing the use of slide-rules in maths exams, on a trial basis for A-level only...

@thewritertype paul bassett davies
#govedefinitions "Pupils." Juvenile nuisances. A necessary evil in order to obtain funding in the education business.

@ocm102 Olly May
Very much enjoying #govedefinitions

tafkam1979 Tafkam TES
Very much enjoying #govedefinitions

@camaxwell Colin Maxwell
Continuing Professional Development: Drill in the playground with Sergeant Major #govedefinitions

@jamperfect Jamie Perfect
#govedefinitions an ideology based on turning every state school into an independent school because it worked for him.

@superdooperal Alison Livesey
#govedefinitions School Governor (archaic).
#govedefinitions Holidays- the bit in between tests

@bootleian John Connor
@markpurves Have a look at #govedefinitions - it's not just us!

@BorisWatch Boris Watch
#govedefinitions 'The proper course of British history' = 'Only the bits where foreigners = targets for Our Boys'
#govedefinitions 'Putting the teacher in charge of schools' = 'Putting Toby Young in charge of teachers'
#govedefinitions 'Freeing schools from dogma' = 'Forcing schools to accept my dogma'

@AsherJac Asher Jacobsberg
@MattSL I think you've got that the wrong way round, according to #govedefinitions it's quill pens to replace computers, isn't it?

@MattSL Matt Lent
#govedefinitions modernisation: fountain pens to replace quills
#govedefinitions decentralised education system: schools do what I say, but I don't get the blame when it goes wrong

@camaxwell Colin Maxwell
Citizenship: 'how to vote tory' #govedefinitions

@sharland Brian Sharland
#govedefinitions EMA: this definition has no funding
#govedefinitions pupil premium: one of nick cleggs pipedreams

@drugforum Andrew Brown
#govedefinitions guidance: unnecessary bureaucracy

@richardsw16 Richard Semmens
#govedefinitions EMA - Extra Money (for new)Academies

@CreativeEdu Pooky Hesmondhalgh
Not sure how to channel your creative juices now school's out?Think up some #govedefinitions #UKEdChat

@MattSL Matt Lent
@alanmills405 loving #govedefinitions

@dorristheloris Kelly Rennie
#govedefinitions QTS: Quasso, Territo, Sepelio (break,frighten, destroy)

@MattSL Matt Lent
#govedefinitions citizenship: being 'British'

@MultiMartin Martin Waller
RT @MattSL #govedefinitions student participation: putting your hands up to speak

@MattSL Matt Lent
#govedefinitions student participation: putting your hands up to speak

@sharland Brian Sharland
#govedefinitions ICT: an excellent subject on the study of how the telegraph helped forge the British empire
#govedefinitions computing: an excellent subject on the study of the Babbage machine
#govedefinitions going to correct my first definition
#govedefinitions PE: physical education and sport is a ... (this definition is only half funded)

@superdooperal Alison Livesey
#govedefinitions School days what teachers find themselves in after reading the Education White Paper

@sueellendixon sue dixon
#govedefinitions ICT: an excellent and relevant subject on the study of the wonderful Babbage
#govedefinitions parents - source of top up funding for schools whose budgets have been cut

@dorristheloris Kelly Rennie
#govedefinitions Teacher. Anybody who can afford to put up a few bobfor their own (FREE) school before Gove repays em OUR cash

@jowinchester Jo
#govedefinitions MFL - Latin/Hebrew in 60 hours for 4 yrs then wonder why rest of world seems to be better than us at language

@ronggordon Ron Gordon
#govedefinitions MP: nice little earner alongside £200 k columnist job allowing 3yrs max expenses & flipped home

@ssat SSAT
Holiday education fun from @alanmills405 - follow #govedefinitions and RT #ukedchat

@sueellendixon sue dixon
#govedefinitions An anathema - Thinking, critically adept children who question their educators and politicians
#govedefinitions History curriculum - the truth as we will now be told it
#govedefinitions phonics phonics phonics - the cure to all ills? Deny any good practice phonics them to death
#govedefinitions Local Authorities - a place to lay all the blame and deny any interference
#govedefinitions loving the creative suggestions. ' Free schools' - where the poor children will press their noses on the glass looking in

@philallman1 Phil Allman
#govedefinitions real terms increase in sch budget. about a 5% cut
#govedefinitions school sport. Rugger, football, cricket...in fact all those teams I was too weedy to get into...sob, sob
#govedefinitions Prefects. Those bullies that tormented me when I was at school...until I became one

@CreativeEdu Pooky Hesmondhalgh
Not sure how to channel your creative juices now school's out?Think up some #govedefinitions as started by @alanmills405

@ronggordon Ron Gordon
#govedefinitions Headteacher: anybody who was once in army

@dorristheloris Kelly Rennie
#govedefinitions Teacher. Anybody [who can speak Latin and quote from Heart of Darkness]

@Didy64 Diane
@alanmills405 Loving your #govedefinitions - would be funnier if they weren't so close to truth

@bobharrisonset Bob Harrison
RT @alanmills405: #govedefinitions Technology. Chalk and blackboard. and Gibb in charge of ICT?