Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 36 Comments

Mobile

There is so much wrong with my countries education system. Teachers aren’t allowed to freely teach as they are told what and how to teach by the Government. Headteachers have to follow instructions from above. Parents are threatened with fines by the Government. Government policy discriminates against those fantastic kids who don’t fit the mould set by the Government. Most school classrooms are overcrowded set in ancient buildings that are not fit for purpose and have next to no ventilation. The country has the highest class sizes in Western Europe. Historically our schools have been a haven for spreading bugs rather than spreading hope. Covid cases are rising rapidly in school age children, up by 80% in one week. Over 10% of children with Covid end up in hospital or develop long Covid. That is at a time when Covid safety rules on things like masks have been removed in schools. It’s as if the Government are intentionally trying to infect as many children as possible. There is a massive mental health crisis amongst our young at a time when cuts have left services at breaking point. Thousands of children are going hungry, living in poverty.

So much for the Government to act on. So what is the priority. What is the one thing the Secretary of State for Education wants to focus on…

Stopping pupils using mobile phones in school. Apparently they think there is a behaviour problem. Yes there is. NOT in schools, it is in the Government. It starts with the Prime Minister and infects those at the top.

Talk about skewed priorities. But what do we expect from this Government led by Boris Johnson. What do we expect from a Secretary of State for Education who proudly has a horse whip on his desk.

Our children deserve better than this.

The sooner we get rid of the cesspit in charge of our country the sooner we can start to build the future that our children deserve.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 35 Comments

Jim

On the 3rd July 1971 we lost Jim Morrison. The Doors frontman died 50 years ago in Paris. Such a talent taken way too soon.

Fast forward a few years and I’m sat in an A Level exam. Facing a dreaded French comprehension question. The exam wasn’t going well. I was failing. I was tempted to put my pen down and walk. But a quick glance at the French text changed my mind. The text was a French newspaper report. All about Jim Morrison, The Doors and the circumstances surrounding his death. Unbelievably I didn’t need to read the French text to answer the questions. Just a few minutes later the questions were answered perfectly. Unbelievably I passed. Passed because of Jim Morrison.

So today I’m going to listen to my L. A. Woman LP. Listening to Jim Morrison.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 55 Comments

Not sure

A return to school for Hawklad in September will have to be so carefully managed. To be fair to school they are happy to do what they can. Phased start. Days to suit Hawklad. Prepared to make adjustments where they can.

But here’s the problem.

The set teaching material.

Some topics will open old wounds, reignite anxieties. This could derail everything

Let’s take this weeks lessons.

Science exam questions on Cancer,

Science lessons on diseases,

History lesson researching the murders and causes of death of the victims of Jack the Ripper. The details are graphic,

A lesson on food poisoning,

A lesson on mental health and suicide.

That’s one week. I can manage this at home but how do you address this at school. I’m not sure at all.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 60 Comments

Some people

An unexpected trip to the Vets this time with the big boy cat. So I was stood outside the car waiting patiently my turn to enter. The handful of pet owners kept looking at the traffic light entry system now in place. Waiting with a wide arrange of pets with owners who knew how this worked. The Vets are running late but they will get to us as soon as possible. The Receptionist keeping us informed of progress. All very polite, civilised and good natured.

Then it all changed. A car drove up with two dogs in the back. I must admit two very happy and well behaved dogs. If only the owner was….

First the owner ignored the one empty car parking spot and decided to squeeze between two already parked cars. This must have been about being closer to the entrance by all of 10 yards. Anyway it was an impressive parking achievement as there wasn’t really space for a third car. The owner squeezed out banging the unlucky adjacent car. She then ignored a returning driver politely asking if she could reverse out so the unfortunate driver could open the drivers side door more than 6 inches. The polite request was brushed off with a curt ‘I’ve got to get my dogs out’ comment. Eventually the poor driver was curved to climb in through the passenger side.

Then it was time to have a go at the nice receptionist. It was disgraceful that she had to wait and it didn’t matter that there were appointments before hers that were still waiting, she should be next and seen NOW.

Thankfully she was made to wait her turn. As my cat was seen I looked out of the window and gave reports back to the receptionist on the increasingly purple coloured and and clearly fuming person in the car park. Apparently this lady is always like this and according to the receptionist she isn’t the only customer sadly with this frame of mind.

Why

Is it so hard to be nice and polite to people. I really don’t understand some people.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 40 Comments

Anxieties

Is traditional school based education possible for every child.

I’m thinking more and more about that.

Trying not to go over too much old ground but Hawklad has been off from school since March 2020. A combination of school lockdowns and extreme anxieties. Anxieties about health, about viruses, about people, about crowds.

He is really fortunate to have a Child Psychologist working with him. The Psychologist is clear that one of the biggest tasks Hawklad is facing is to start to unpick all these anxieties. See which ones can be addressed in the short term and those that are deeper engrained or are a part of his personality. This is a difficult at the best of times but trying to do this during a pandemic is a nightmare. And most certainly real progress on some of his health and virus anxieties will not happen while people need to wear masks, while their is still so much uncertainty and while people are catching the virus in their thousands each day. Yesterday here it was 27000 new cases and still 1800 in hospital. Sadly 22 deaths yesterday.

The Government is clear. Children have to return to the classroom immediately. Schools should not encourage homeschooling. Schools are perfectly safe. School COVID-19 cases are rising rapidly. At present there are over 400 confirmed cases in the country with somewhere between 10 and 20% experiencing serious symptoms or encountering Long COVID implications.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of schools being open with no additional safeguards one fact is clear. There are children out there who have severe anxieties or have underlying health conditions who shouldn’t be in school right now. We are fortunate in that we have a medical note that rules out a return to school at present. Many are not so fortunate.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 24 Comments

Rocket

From certain angles it looks like a rocket launch. Rocket launch in North of England. We do have a well established space programme. Including a successful moon landing.

Yes the great Wallace and Gromit made it there.

So if you put your mind to it anything is possible. Or in the case of the Grand Day Out , if you run out of cheese, the sky is the limit. So when I have a day when I feel hemmed in. When life seems a little too constrained then it’s the perfect time to watch these 24 minutes of animation escapism. Just like today.

It’s a reminder that even I can still have A GRAND DAY OUT. Get round to doing some of that elusive living. That gives me hope.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 19 Comments

Tickets

Homeschooling and intermittent power cuts don’t really dovetail together, ever…. It’s always a good sign that you reach the official school closing time meanwhile in homeschooling land Hawklad has only just finished the first lesson.

So after well over two years an annual health and education review is being organised. An online review and actually a rather intimate review. I remember back to when Hawklad was 8. These reviews were ticket only events. Hawklad, The Head Teacher, his Teacher, a Teacher from his future school, a representative from the local education authority, the Lead Physio, a Speech Therapy expert, a Child Psychologist, an Opthalmologist, a Paediatrician, a Specialist from the local school outreach team and me…..

Fast forward to 2021. The review is pay at the gate. It’s the Head of Inclusion from the school, a representative from the local authority and me. Even Hawklad is refusing to attend 😂. His one support service left, his one last support person is on leave. All the other services have been cut although the need is still there. Yes changed but still there.

This sums up a lot of the support to children on the spectrum in this country. Children are lucky to get any support in the first place. If this eventually arrives then the support drifts away as the teenage years approach. Older teenagers and adults get NOWT.

It shouldn’t be like this.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 49 Comments

Standing alone

Suddenly school wakes.

After hardly any communication from school suddenly it’s almost communication overload. Almost.

Missing exams papers are starting to arrive. A push to squeeze an annual review meeting in before the end of term. Some class notes from a missing in action subject. Interestingly it looks like our best guesses at what this subject has been doing in class since the schools reopened again 4 months ago have been completely wrong. Hawklad is way off topic. But as we have had no class guidance then what can we expect..

Then more Art trauma. Why is it so often Art. Hawklad submitted his exam piece and was pleased with it. Clearly the teacher was less pleased. The feedback is that the teacher had not received a final submission and had only received a rough draft drawing… A rough draft….. That rough draft is Hawklad’s (who has dyspraxia) best effort.

Hawklad’s take on all this. A shrug of the shoulders. One of those looks. No he won’t be submitting a final piece as that would be a final final piece. He will happily take a poor mark and then even more happily drop the subject in just 4 sweet weeks.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 25 Comments

What could be

I walked past this tree and was thinking about what could be. What still could be.

I was listening to the self absorbed numpty who is frighteningly in charge of our countries schools. He was saying that children needed greater discipline and should work harder to catch up with the targets the Government had set for them. He had just announced that pupils would be banned from having mobile phones in school. They need discipline. Which is interesting as that doesn’t apply to members of the Government. For security and probity reasons Government Ministers are not supposed to use private mobiles and private emails for official business. Well guess what. Apparently they all are breaking the rules and they don’t care. They are above the rules.

Anyway this numpty was waffling on about how pupils should focus on the subjects the Government are pushing. They needed to learn the areas that are selected for them by those above them. Yes they can have options but carefully selected options. Options that are in the interests of economy. It was time focus on the important stuff.

So if Hawklad stays in school from next year he will have to study. English, Maths, Science, Religious Studies, Citizenship. From a really narrow option choice he will also study History, Geography, Design and Computing. Within those subjects the range of areas covered and the sources of learning materials are carefully controlled.

But here’s the thing. If it was Hawklad’s true choice then this is what he would study.

History and history and history and history. He would also study Maths, English Literature, Geography, Archeology, Geology, Animal Husbandry and Zoology. He is keen to pick up those computing skills he needs but on his own terms and at his own pace. Religious studies is something that he believes should be on his terms and not predetermined by someone else.

See there is a difference. An important difference and maybe that difference holds the key to why his country is in such a mess. Why his country is so inward looking and narrow minded. To me that says everything.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 41 Comments

Uranium jam

This morning I mentioned that school were kinda hoping that parents would help with a homework task of forage jam making. I was not hopeful as basically I am the culinary equivalent of an accident prone Lemming.

But I had missed the obvious. Much wiser friends than me came up with the idea of just substituting some shop bought Jam. That’s a plan we can sign up to. That’s a worry. A couple of years back Hawklad would have been mortified at the thought of breaking the rules. But now not he is not so principled. That is my influence.

So we ransacked the cupboard. Can you believe it. No Jam. Not even any deeply hidden years out of date jars. The nearest thing was jar of Mango Chutney. Needs must. We steamed the label off and we had forage jam…

But we had a problem, the first home label said ‘Mango Jam’. Ok Mango isn’t a fruit you often find foraged in Yorkshire 😂😂😂😂😂 So we now just have Fruit Foraged Jam. Hopefully the colour and the lumpiness of the Jam won’t be questioned.