An Education Rant

[dorsetgirl]

I just got a call from a guy from my sons’ secondary school, who announced himself as “taking over Key Stage 3; I’m an Assistant Head”.

He said he was phoning on behalf of the previous Head of KS3, who I tried to contact yesterday about my older son. He seemed surprised when I said I wanted to talk to her in her capacity as SENCO, not as Head of KS3. Then he asked me to explain what I wanted to talk to her about, so he could judge whether it was a Special Needs issue or not. This was only the first occasion in our conversation when he treated me as if I’m stupid. Actually, he came off as pretty stupid himself.

I said I’d wanted to discuss with the SENCO the possibility of taking the Learning Support Assistants off of preparing my son’s homework timetable for him, and allowing us to manage that ourselves. And his answer?

“Well, we do have to be a little bit flexible – homework isn’t always set, even if it’s in the timetable. I can understand that as a parent you find that a little confusing.” YOU PATRONISING FUCKER. ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?

“The LSAs are going through the priorities at the moment. If they decide to put [my son] into the model for this term...” Why would they not? He has special needs; he needs extra assistance from time to time. Just, he doesn’t need his timetable writing out for him any more. That’s what I phoned about, remember?

And dear God, I fucking hate it when teachers go “...oh, yes, my children do that too.” NO THEY DON’T. IT’S NOT THE SAME. YOUR KIDS ARE NOT AUTISTIC. IT IS DIFFERENT.

I said I find the school’s attitude on homework a little inconsistent and would appreciate clarification – on the one hand we are told they should work for no more than the stated amount of time, while on the other hand, if they work for three hours and haven’t finished they get punished. So which is it?

I got a load of waffle about that one, about policies etc, and I couldn’t help interrupting to ask if he’d read the Language Department policy. (I really don’t take well to being patronised and smoke-screened.)

“No, ma’am (yes, he’s American), I haven’t memorised all the policies.”

“I didn’t ask if you’d memorised anything. I’m asking if you’ve read it.”

“Well, now, I don’t want to get into the nuts and bolts of all that at the moment... “

SO FUCK OFF THEN, STOP WASTING MY TIME.

The bloke is a total waffling arsehole. He doesn’t have a clue about special needs as far as I can see. Fine, it’s not his role. But don’t feed me a load of waffle designed to hide that you don’t know. I AM NOT STUPID, I HAVE MAGICAL POWERS THAT LET ME SEE RIGHT THROUGH STEAMING PILES OF BULLSHIT!

And that Language Department homework policy? Well, that says that there is a scale of punishments for missed homeworks. Which is fair enough. BUT the policy – which they sent me a copy of yesterday after I expressed my concerns – applies equally to “Missed Homework; Incomplete Homework; Failed Tests”.

So you get punished for being a slow worker; if you’re still struggling to understand something at 11pm and your mum says you have to go to bed because you’re getting up at 6-15, you get punished.

And you get punished for failing a test, even if you’ve done your very best to prepare for it. The pass mark is 75%, and my conscientious and very hard-working eleven-year-old now has a detention in only his second week at his new school because he’s rubbish at French.