Straight (Forward) Thinking: Goodbye to Year 11

Straight (Forward) Thinking: Goodbye to Year 11: "To each of you This is always a bitter sweet moment. We have come to know you as part of the Winton family but equally like any proud pare..."

Goodbye to Year 11

To each of you

This is always a bitter sweet moment. We have come to know you as part of the Winton family but equally like any proud parent we recognise there is a time when our young need to fly the nest. For each of you that time has come, it is your turn to enter into the world with all of the opportunities and challenges that this will bring. What advice can I give you and what is my wish for each and every one of you?

Firstly always be true to who you are, listen to your instincts they are usually spot on. Do not simply follow the crowd, make your own mind up and have the strength of character to follow it. Be a force for good with everybody you meet, treat them with respect even when this is hard to do. Do not tolerate a lack of respect towards you but deal with it in a polite and courteous manner and when this is not enough, leave those people behind. Be resilient do not give up when something is hard to achieve, for it is these things that will make you stronger and are worth having.  Finally there are no short cuts in life, drugs will not make your life happier or more fulfilled, money is not the route of happiness and very often the more difficult choice is the right one.

I wish you every happiness for a life fulfilled, take the opportunities that come your way, embrace the challenges that life will throw at you in a positive and determined manner but, most of all at the closing of your day be proud of who you are.  As the song says, “Je ne regret rien.” (I regret nothing)

21st Century Learning - A redundant title

I am still attending conferences where the speakers talk about 21st Century Learning as if it is yet to happen. The reality is that we are eleven years into the 21st Century and whilst many of us would agree it has yet to happen, what we have is 21st Century. The challenge for forward thinkers is how to arrest this notion in government of a regressive system of education that drags us back to a 20th, if not 19th, century view. A system based upon agricultural and industrial models long since passed. Here in lies the schism between education leadership and management. The problem is that many in the teaching profession are in exactly the same place as parents, they are not willing or perhaps able to recognise, the changing young people in an expodentially expanding world. The teaching profession is a conservative one resistent to change, ironic I know, but a reality none the less. We are in an industrial and social revolution on a par with any in the past. We do not seem to be able to future think. A year seven student starting in my school this coming September will retire from the British workforce, if they are lucky, in 2070. What will this world hold for them?

Creating the conditions for desperation

The biggest accusation labelled against the British Empire and Imperialism generally was that it was responsible for stripping countries of their wealth. Last night I experienced close up something that makes me question how far we have moved on.

We had organised a day trip to Boulogne for our Year 7 students and were returning from a successful day out when one of our coaches developed a worrying knocking sound at the front. When the coach pulled into the services the drivers found two illegal immigrants hiding in an area underneath it, between the bumper and the front wheels! When we checked the second coach we found another human being so desperate to enter this country that they were prepared to hang on for grim life to the bottom of  a multi tonned vehicle hurtling along  the  motorway network at 70 mph. These three Sudanese stowaways were in this perilous position for the best part of three hours before they were found. I discovered from the police who attended that another person had lost their life on the M25 earlier that day doing the same thing they had lost their balance and fallen onto the motorway. Why?

When you read in the papers of the hedge fund listing on the stockmarket and earning its directors £25 billion and you read the charges against said fund in relation to wrong doing in Africa you have to ask yourself how far we have come from those times when we stripped the continent bear?

Somebody made the statement to me recently 'the problem with Africa is a lack of governance.' Do we bear no responsibility for this? Have we not created the conditions for this sending the message that we will buy your support. The number of undesirables in power now growing rich on our development funds or have been supported in the past are too numerous to mention.

When young men risk their lives to come to this country the question remains are we still creating the conditions for desperation?

Land of the Bland

I cannot believe how nervous I am about starting this blog. I want people to read it but I feel somehow totally inadequate. Is this normal?

So why am I doing it? Five years ago if somebody had asked me to describe myself, 'laid back,' would have been in that description somewhere. So why is it that my kids now call me the 'grumpy old man' or, even worse, the 'educational bore'? Perhaps, because that is exactly what I am.

 I am now older than the PrimeMinister, okay only by a few months, still it marks a new phase. I can remember being young enough to still consider professional football a possible career choice and now even the job of Prime Minister has passed me by! How did that happen?

What the disappearing decades do give you is perspective and in a world where sound bite policy making has become de rigueur then perhaps perspective is required more than ever. Also, politics has become the domain of the mundane, of  those too frightened of the tabloid press to express an insightful or 'heaven forbid' conviction held  opinion. Where is the meaningful oppositon in the 'land of the bland?' This has to come from us, the mere mortals in this world who strive to make a real difference whilst making sense of the political rhetoric too readily made into policy.