You're not wrong, Max...
The 'Attitude to Learning' scheme, at Dorothy Stringer School in Brighton, awards pupils scores based on criteria including respect, creativity and resilience. Those given the best scores are promoted to the front of the queue at breaktime, while those with the worst scores must wait until others have finished.
Parents have said the system 'unfairly discriminates' against children and uses access to food as a punishment to 'shame' less able pupils.
A father said: 'Restricting access to food or using it as a reward is totally wrong. This is 2024, not the Victorian era.'
Oh noes! The poor starving kiddiewinks! How awful!
One girl attending the East Sussex school – deemed a 'good' pupil but with poor scores – said there is often little food left by the time she gets into the canteen. The year 11 pupil claimed she ate just a small fruit jelly one day this week.
When will this insanity st...
Oh, wait.
The policy at Dorothy Stringer was piloted in year 11 last year by headmaster Matt Hillier, it was then rolled out across the school. Mr Hillier said: 'The new system was introduced to improve queuing and ensure that students can access the canteen safely. It only applies at breaktimes, when approximately 1,600 children go through the canteen in 25 minutes, and not at lunchtimes.
Lunchtime and free school meal provision is unchanged.
Well, well, well...that's not the impression one gets from the headline and the quotes from the outraged parents, is it?
'Students are not separated from their friends – they can choose to wait and go in together. This system does not prevent anyone from accessing food and food does not run out. It rewards students who demonstrate a positive ATL.
'It is not linked to attainment and lots of students with SEN [special educational needs] have excellent scores. A small number of students with a specific need linked to canteen entry already have passes that allow them to bypass the queue.'
Storm in a teacup again?
It's not enough for many to jump on a passing bandwagon. They choose to chuck their baggage on, decorate the sides with '-ism' decals, and eject any fellow passengers that are not incensed or offended enough.
ReplyDeleteThe bandwagon that arrives is not the bandwagon that sets off.
Is this the method that the Victorians used to control pupil's behaviour then?
ReplyDeleteBlimey, surely there are other important issues that need to be addressed rather than reporting the mundane and trivial. When my old Secondary Modern burnt down, under suspicious circumstances, 52 years ago, it merited just a couple of paragraphs in the local rag. https://flaxensaxon.blogspot.com/search?q=Tipton+Secondary+Modern++c1972
ReplyDelete"The bandwagon that arrives is not the bandwagon that sets off."
ReplyDeleteA similar process to that tried and tested on all major charities, it seems.
"Is this the method that the Victorians used to control pupil's behaviour then?"
No, those worked!
"Blimey, surely there are other important issues that need to be addressed rather than reporting the mundane and trivial. "
You'd think so, but, well, modern journalism seems to consist of 50% uncritically regurgitating press releases and 50% browsing local Facebook.