A bit of a rant about education.

Our daughter is taking her children on holiday tomorrow. They will miss four days of school. Normally she would not do such a thing but her almost-mother-in-law wants to celebrate her 60th birthday by taking the family away. As it turns out, they will be back just before her birthday but the celebration will have taken place. As her birthday comes at the start of the half term holiday it would presumably have cost a lot more to take everyone away during that week. We hope our daughter doesn't incur a fine for the sake of a birthday celebration.

Apparently the numbers of parents taking children away in term time has gone up again since a few high profile cases of parents challenging the fines hit the news. Other countries have much stricter rules than ours about taking holidays and missing school. When I was organising exchange visits for Modern students we had the devil's own job finding dates when the Spanish, for example, could come over here because they were not allowed to come during term time. I had to plead the case for taking ours away in term time; naturally enough teachers of other subjects objected to their students being absent from their lessons. Usually though we managed to snatch a couple of days just before an official holiday and work round it that way. And that was for an educational visit, not just a week on the beach at off peak rates!

In the end, of course, the problem is not simple the child who goes away on holiday having to catch up with work missed; even a beach holiday teaches them something and most children can quickly make up the work missed. No, the problem is really the disruption for the rest of the class as groups for teamwork are messed about and the teacher has to give extra attention to the bronzed returnees.

In the countries where they are much stricter about attendance, especially refusing absence for holidays, there is usually a different attitude generally to holidays as well. The British go abroad for holidays much more frequently than other Europeans and many European countries have a tradition of almost the whole nation taking their major holiday in August. Add to that the fact that they are more likely to have a fine, sunny August than we are and the whole thing becomes easier. 

Statistics tell us this:

"Overall absence rates remain low, although overall absences at state primary and secondary schools increased from 4.1% in autumn 2015 to 4.3% last year. A small number of pupils account for a high proportion of absences: 11.4% were classified as persistently absent, meaning they missed 10% or more school sessions."

Think about it: if they miss 10% of lessons, that's one whole week in ten. A lot to catch up with. 

While I'm on about education, Michael Rosen has been writing about grammar schools again. Some people say he has no right to oppose grammar schools because he himself benefited from going to one. On that basis, neither do I have a right to criticise the selective system. And yet it was the fact that I almost didn't get selected that convinced me that comprehensive education was what was needed. I thoroughly enjoyed my grammar school and felt that everyone should have that experience: all schools for all pupils should be offering that quality of education.

Here's a bit from Mr Rosen: 

"There’s a further puzzle. We have an almost complete comprehensive primary school system in England. Surely, if grammar schools are some kind of answer to making education better for children over the age of 11, it would be the answer for children under the age of 11. Yet I’ve hardly ever seen anyone making that claim. What whim determines the age of 11 as the key moment when we should segregate children according to a set of exams? Rather, shouldn’t we say that if comprehensive education works for children aged four to 11, why shouldn’t it work for 11 to 18-year-olds? Is there some crucial bit of human biology I’ve overlooked here?"

I find myself agreeing with just about everything he says, especially about the divisive nature of selection. Within our local community there was a strong sense of difference between the grammar school kids and the secondary modern kids. Even within my own family there were problems; one of my sisters went to the local secondary modern and among her friends I was known as her "snobby sister who goes to the grammar school". It didn't worry me too much but it didn't make us the best of friends either.

One thing always strikes me when this selective debate comes up. Nobody talks about the size of schools. When Michael Rosen refers to primary schools as already being comprehensive, he fails to comment that most of them have a maximum of 200 - 300 pupils. The grammar school I went to had just over 600 girls. The head teacher knew us all. Most comprehensives these days are huge education factories with around 2000 pupils. That's one of the major difficulties facing year seven kids; they have gone from being top dogs in a small school where just about everyone knows everyone to being the smallest and possibly most insignificant in a huge anonymous mass.

It's a lot easier for the quiet, reserved, even shy pupil to get lost there and for nobody to be aware of his/her problem until it is too late. It is a lot harder to clamp down on bullying, vandalism and general bad behaviour in these huge places.

Yes, I am aware of the arguments about the range of subject specialists needed in secondary schools and the economic difficulties that entails. But surely it is not beyond the wit of organisers/managers to arrange for subject specialists to be shared by a couple of establishments, or more in the case of some minority subjects. After all it already happens with peripatetic music teachers and sports coaches.

Surely it's worth a little thought and investment! That's all for now from this idealist!