There’s a report in the Telegraph this morning under the heading ‘School reports: the 15 best school reports submitted to the Telegraph letters page’.
As with many of these amusing scraps of reportage, I think we need to exercise a degree of scepticism, as many such stories are likely to be apocryphal.
Never mind, the one that caught my eye read: ‘The improvement in his handwriting has revealed his inability to spell’. Delightful!
This takes me back to my own school days when, at a parents evening, my French master informed my father: ‘By the time your son learns French, he will be too old to cross the Channel!’
On a more serious note, alongside the above item, sits a piece on Northgate High School in Ipswich, which is seeking to employ someone to correct ‘spelling mistakes, poor or missing punctuation, incorrect capitalisation [as well as] ‘improving poor grammar’, in the school’s reports written by members of staff.
According to the Ipswich Star, the head David Hutton insists that the school employs ‘high calibre teaching staff’. I can understand a school wishing to ensure the formal acceptability of outgoing reports but, if the staff are so ‘high calibre’, why the need to employ a scrutineer?
Thanks to Webweaver for the image: http://www.webweaver.nu/clipart/education-books.shtml
If you haven't already done so, be sure to add two of Stigler's books to your professional library: The Teaching Gap:Best Ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom and and earlier one, The Learning Gap:Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education , both of which are available used at low cost from Amazon and are highly readable and thought-provoking.
Thanks for this, Susan.
It will have to be one or the other. I've got a level 3 Spanish course to do in February and the reading is piling up! Nice of you to keep me on my toes!
Best,
John