Converse

On Sunday after the geology tour N and I stopped for a brew in the café. We chatted and the topic of conversation turned to teaching. 
N had been Head of a Primary School and was granted early retirement (ill health). I was reminded me of similarities between her experience and my late friend Michael.

• Head teacher of a Primary School
• Long, arduous hours often thankless.
• Governors with a political agenda
• Parents of the pushy/interfering/blame school staff type
• Parents of the totally ineffectual he/she can/does what they like and it's okay type
• Political interference by the 'powers that be' meddlesome at best and at worst? Look at the Lib/Lab, Lab, Con and Con/Dem fiasco(s) since the 1980s.

I for one am thoroughly annoyed by the on-going trend to view education as

Input -- through-put -- output

Child into the 'system' -- Child-teen through the system...

Leaves the system and continues as a statistic from Cradle to Grave.

Yes, there are islands of where the lucky few, staff and pupils live an education idyll.

But, some schools aren't so lucky...their alumni include:

• Murderers - same tutor group throughout schooldays...but within a year of leaving X murdered Y
• Children of murderer - a brother and two sisters - returned home from school to find that their father had murdered their mother
• Muederee - someone taunted a disabled man so much and for so long that eventually the man snapped and stabbed his tormentor
• Shop-lifters
• Pyromaniacs - reported recently in local press
• Thieves
• Burglars
• Drug dealers - a particular road on an estate well-known locally

Anthony Walker 

July 2012

"THE mum of murdered Merseyside teen Anthony Walker today spoke of her pride after thousands of people attended a festival dedicated to her late son.

Gee Walker opened the seventh Anthony Walker Foundation (AWF) Festival on Saturday with retired TV news presenter Gordon Burns and said it was “lovely to see so many people come together to celebrate his life”.

Previously, another murderer and victim attended that same school. Victim born 1968 murdered 1988.

To end on some good news from the Liverpool Echo - Dominique sister of Anthony Walker...

Merseyside Police

Dominique Walker knew his killers, Paul Taylor and Michael Barton, who remain in prison for the racist murder. "I grew up with Paul," she says. "I knew him since I was three, a small child,