UK teaching system the pride of the globe?

I don't like to think of myself as a working boy, however I am aware of the uncomfortable juxtaposition between being a national marker and being a teacher. On the one hand I see close up how the stress of exams has a direct effect on childen, how those results can end up with an uncomfortable and unfair judgement being made on schools and how individuals can be scapegoated on the back of such results. We all know however that schools do not sing with one voice, the boycott of SATS last year was affirmed by mostly schools who were going to do poorly, and ignored by those schools who knew they were going to do well or had a strong parent delegation who believe in exams at all costs. Well as a national marker I must believe in the assessments? WEll apart from the fact it eeks out an extra 1400 quid income I think that I do. We need to be careful in this country that exams don't go down the same road as sports day. (everyone passes them as we reach out to the bottom and ignore the top) This state of affairs would not be tolerated in the best (or even moderate) international schools and these schools are filling up more of our Universities as the current system in the UK is producing, same, unmotivated and ordinary students. No greater example of this is evidenced when gifted and talented came out. (now able and gifted) at the time schools had to do a register of 25% and this was the G+T register. Sad thing was that the top 25% of children in one state school wouldn't make the top 90% of children at a top fee paying school. So what you had in essence was talented for a failing state school and almost special needs were the intake was more able. This whole system was bound for failure, it would be admitted as a failure, but in the dwindling state sector failure is still a word that we haven't yet come to terms with so we say it is developing. Yeah right I am developing my language in Mandarin, I can't speak a word but I haven't failed as I am simply developing. Anyway the system has been left behind by many nations and by the International sector. Our education system in the UK was once held up as a beacon for the rest of the world and is now an ancient relic and a reminder of what can happen when you park your big fat backside and rest on your laurels.

John Bell

Well I have been doing this for 20 years nearly and the punch line never changes

When I was 23 I decided to pack in my job as a compere/entertainer for holiday organisations across Europe. One of the reasons I decided to call it a day at such a young age was the worry that in 20 years I'd still be cracking mother in law jokes and leaning on a mic stand telling the same jokes I told 20 years ago. It was a brave decision as at the time I was earning a lot more money than most 23 year olds and I was being paid to see parts of the world my friends couldn't afford to visit. However with mind made up I decided to do a job that made a difference. A job that was going to challenge me in different ways and a job that I would enjoy all the time. Enter teaching. Well even if I say so myself I have always been a good teacher (the compere experience gave me supreme confidence in my own ability and I have carried this forward into teaching) I developed a unique style and success (relatively) has followed. Yet now I still feel like the old compere. The audience changes but the jokes remain the same. The challenges that were different everyday are no longer fun challenges. Beauracracy (sic) targets, SATS, ECM, APP, etc etc etbleedincetra. The individuality that I bought to teaching has been drained out of me, the risks I take when teaching whilst once applauded, are now challenged because they don 't conform to prescriptive nonsense that fits in with people who wouldn't know a good teacher if it landed on them riding a brontasaurus. I wonder if I should open my own free school, move abroad, become a writer of second rate plays or do a Stephen Fry and disappear. Life and many aspects of it have long been controlled by a style of governance that tells us what to think, when to think it and how to think it. For the masses of tabloid, non feeling, non thinking individuals (what a term, 'individual')this is fine. But I must think there is more to life than this. I may live 90 years and be dead 96 trillion years and counting. What might I say before the day of my lowering into the abyss? I finished my APP? I got the floor targets for SATS? Good lord it makes me want to run for the hills. There is more to life, it is for living, I have to work but alongside that I have to live. I will do just that and find the life that is worth living. It is out there somewhere, a suit of life armour that is a perfect fit for John Bell.

John

The end of the World tomorrow, will the last one to leave turn out the lights.

Allegedly Armageddon is due on May 21 (I hope not because the thought of missing half term really irritates me as I have had no holiday in 4 weeks) 200 million people are going to be scooped up to heaven and this scares me a little as it appears to be the opposite of a Bungee jump, more of a Bungee lift. In reality I feel sorry for Jesus as most of the 200 million will be religous zealots, weirdos and cult members. Now I don't know about you but I find it hard to believe that Jesus thinks 5.8 billion people on this planet are not worth saving, I can understand Wayne Rooney and Gary Nevile not being saved, but Bucks Fizz, Jeremy Beadle and Aneka Rice must be worth saving. If I had to let someone take my place (and it will not be my Jess as she has a gold plated front row seat) I'd choose my neighbours who have the loud tv (see how long Jesus feels like saving them) The logistics of lifting 200 million people to heaven has not been thought through. You can't ask National Express because they couldn't even get 70 people out of London in under 9 hours. Will people have to queue? What about Obese people, they might be dropped and land on some one waiting to be raptured and instead end up being ruptured. Will the believers be saved? If this is the case and it is not just for the religous, then a lot more than 200 million need saving. What about the good dead? Are they included? If they can't be lifted as they are not here I presume, will they too be dropped? The Evil dead I suppose will carry on burning, but with the destruction down here the person running Hell can have a well deserved break and the damned can burn down here just as easily. I suppose the Hell manager will get his break during my half term which is a sight more than I will get. Anyway I am afraid of heights and equally afraid of organised religion so I guess my experience will repeat the pattern of the last 6 months..........Left alone...........Again


John Bell

I can't put any weight on.

Well prior to being the unworkable telemac model I weighed in at around 15 stone. Even at 6 foot 2 I'd say that is too heavy. Well the end of any relationship makes people look inwardly and I simply decided that enough was enough and I decided to divorce my second chin from my first one. I was sick of being next to people in a room no matter where I sat. People looked at my stomach and you could see there first desire was to throw a baby shower for me. Well how was I going to lose it? Well the divorce diet is always good for half a stone but I needed to lose more. So I attended the gym 3 times a day from Jan-March (The lady at reception noticed my obsession and asked if I was training for the marathon, I was a bit embarrassed so I meekly said yes) Rowing, running and cycling for 2 and a bit hours each day saw 15.2 become 11.12 in three months. I was pleased with my efforts and glad to know that now when I tell a joke people don't think it is an impression of the late Bernard Manning. Anyway I decided after going below 12 stone I would concentrate on weights and stomach exercises. This is going well but I am trying to add just a few pounds to my weight to help the bulking up process. Now Pre telemac days I could look at a twix and get 7 pounds weight no problems. Now I can eat 6 of them and lose 3 pounds. Instead of weight watchers, maybe I could go to weight ignorers and simply high five all the other skinnies when we manage to put on five ounces. I am now too scared to run outside as I feel I might fall down a drain or simply disappear if the run is too long. So if you have a bit of excess going spare please give it to me a deserving cause. I know if I get a serious date she might want something to grab hold of and at the moment it would be like a leg of chicken rejected by Nandos. I even have fat dreams. Oh how my life has changed ;-)


John Bell

I did it and it makes me proud

It was a warm summers evening and the dimming rays of a mid evening sun was protruding through my window, my view of the world outside. I sat alone knowing what needed to be done, yet dreading the task in a way a mother craves for a baby but tries to shield her thoughts from the pain that often goes with it. However this was the evening of all evenings that I would face my fear and complete the task that I hoped would indeed make me whole again. I battled the legs of the monster, tackling it with a relish that even surprised me, in all of my testosterone filled dreams could I have believed I would have got the beast in an upright position ready for the kill. Next was to fight the creased sight of it's body, each time I brought it to heal it creased itself up again in arrogance, laughing at me, daring me to bring it to straightened obedience. Its arms were waving at the sides trying to move away from me at every opportunity, the creasing and pushing movements increased, but the more it struggled, the harder I pushed my command over it. It became a fight against 2 wills, mine the patriarch, the person who could not lose this fight, lose it and every other fight would be lost to. It, trying hard to wriggle free, telling me that it would not except its subservient position that I had forced upon it. The struggle was no longer than 7 minutes, eventually quiet fell, I had won, its subservience was now total, not a word was uttered, not a sound made. I had triumphed and yet I enjoyed the moment as if I had been given God like powers. It was crushed, nowhere to hide, and sadly it's arrogance had been blown away like the tiniest sand particle in an Arabian desert storm. I feel no sympathy, I feel no regret, I won because I had to and I believe you would have done the same in my position. Do not judge me, judge the situation and you too would have displayed the reckless abandon that I too displayed. Yes...........I finally managed to iron my shirt (Can go to work now)


John

How often do you cry and does it help?

I have to say that I do not cry that often although I have done more over the last year than over the other 44. The reason I find tears difficult is probably linked to childhood. Being part of a large group of kids (there were 6 children all together) we were simply told to stop whinging or grow up, so I have always thought of crying as being linked to immaturity or moaning. I never saw my dad cry apart from when his Sister died and I have to say it freaked me out as I thought only women cried up until that point. Of course crying can often be a tactic to get what you want. Around all the women I have known I always give in when the first few gushes of the salt lake appear and I remain convinced that women know this. Many a time a good argument for a man is ruined by sudden and unexpected tears, it interrupts your flow and then you have to engage sympathy mode which is at odds with argumentative mode. Of course there are gender stereotypes at play. You say I made my wife cry and the response is 'you big bully, how could you etc etc etc. You say my wife made me cry today and people say' ooh you big Wuss man up for goodness sake. This results in men not revealing their true feelings which ends up with accusations that we men are lacking in feelings, no it has been expected and we then live up to the stereotype created by others for us. So from now on I will cry at the opening of an onion, Armageddon and Jessica's latest piano report. So next time you visit me bring a box of tissues it could get quite wet.

John

I'm drinking a drink it's called loneliness, well it's better than drinking alone

I have now been in my new place for about 2 months and on the face of it it is very nice, good walks and the scenery is appealing. However when you move to a new place you simply don't know anyone. The neighbours to my right must be Trappist Monks as their next conversation will be their first believe me. The other neighbours are about 200 years old and whilst I have never heard them speak I hear their television at about 5 million decibels every night. It has got so bad that I now feel like I know the characters from Eastenders personally. (Eastenders being watched in Wymondham disappoints me as I just feel Wymondhamites are so much better than that) So in the first couple of months I can go days without seeing anyone, this outcome does not distress me as at times I like the solitude as it allows me to reflect on many areas of my life. However if I was to drop dead over the weekend or over a holiday I am sure I would have decayed worse than Esther Rantzen's teeth when somebody eventually raises the alarm. However I don't just want friends for the sake of it, indeed I have found my new situation has made me more picky on friendships and not in the least bit desperate. I often wonder how many friends we really have? I know on Facebook people claim 20 million friends but my definition of a friend has little to do with the social networking definition. So maybe I have 10 at best, with a few hundred acquaintances (that spelling is terrible even by my standards) and it is those 10 that one day might have to retrieve me from my toilet or bath when I have breathed my last. Anyway it is better having quality than quantity and you cannot even imagine in what other areas of my life that has rung true.



John Bell

My most unusual story in my teaching profession

My early teaching career was in the United Arab Emirates. My first classroom was a bathroom that had been converted into a classroom. There was a screen down the middle of the class and the boys were on one side and the girls were on the other. So when teaching maths I had to pop my head across like a jack in the box to make sure both sides of the class were listening and learning. Anyway one year we were doing a topic on houses and we were discussing how many rooms were in our houses. The answers varied from 5 to about 2o for the more wealthy members of our class. Well there was one boy called Mohammed(PBh) and he was not the cleverest child I have ever met but he said he wasn't sure but it was about 400. Well the whole class laughed and as a good professional I told them that it was cruel to laugh at our friends and that Mohammed(PBH) has probably miscounted. Well a little while later Mohammed's(PBH) dad called me and asked me if I would tutor him before the exams. As this is totally wrong to tutor someone you are teaching because it can cause a conflict of interest I accepted right away, 30 quid an hour will always be ahead of any educational principal I hold. A few hours later a driver picked me up and I was driven to a secluded area, within minutes I was confronted by armed men and I was sure I was about to be abducted and be a star of a you tube video begging Tony Blair to help me. But no these were the most polite armed militants I had ever met. They took me to Mohammed's(PBH) house and then I realised why he had said 400 rooms in our discussion, this place was in fact a Palace and his dad was the Ruler of Umm Al Quwain and when I got in there I thought 400 was a conservative estimate. Well I tutored my pupil whilst sitting in a gold chair and I truly felt like King Midas for an hour. I did 3 hours in total and looked forward to getting my 90 quid. Well payment never turned up and the armed presence at the door convinced me that this was a transaction that did not need to be pursued. Of course I did not know the Arabic way and payment is always made last moment or 'inshallah' (never). On my last day in the UAE I had long forgotten my 3 hours work and my 90 quid fee, when I was confronted by the ruler's representative who handed me 1500 quid in cash and a watch that was later valued at 500 quid. This was a lot more than the 90 quid I was expecting at the time. Nowadays I work 10 times harder for a 100 times less appreciation. There is only one word you can utter when you get 2 grand for 3 hours work off a Sheikh........Chokran


John Bell

Oh well Bin Laden has gone, yet somehow I feel even less safe.

I think it was Bin Laden's wife (or one of them) who was trying on a new dress and asked her husband 'does my bomb look big in this'? Well of course Bin Laden has lots of wives and lots of followers who will only be too keen to transport his brand of terror to the UK and America that he can no longer achieve. The problem with the west is that we are consumed by hunting the big bad wolves (Gadaffi, Saddam, Bin Laden) but not too keen on solving the reasons for fundamentalism that brings death and destruction to so many innocent people (and remember the George Bushes, Tony Blairs and Barack Obamas are well protected so it won't happen to them) One cannot forgive or forget what Bin Laden was responsible for, but to suggest that his death is a victory is naieve at best and reckless at worst) The fact that this man was able to live almost next door to a Pakistani Military base with impunity tells you that any victory the Americans are enjoying is hollow at best. Bin Laden died as he would have chose, as a martyr in a hail of 'crusaders bullets' He could not have written a better ending in all of his Jihadist fantasies. By the time of his death it is widely accepted he was no longer the main player for the Jihadists and more of a symbolic figure. However when the next suicide bomber blows themselves up in a mall, or at a sporting event or somewhere around the world, the victory that was celebrated today will have a very hollow ring to it and when a Mother is told she has lost a child the death today of Bin Laden will not offer one crumb of comfort.

John Bell