UKC

So, how many lucky parents have been home schooling? How many have realised that it wasn’t the teacher that was the problem!!

Each year as a Head I'd have a couple of parents of kids who were coming to my attention who'd go all the way from "It must be the teacher, he's never any trouble at home" to "Oh, Mr Clarke, I just don't know what to do with him." On rare occasions though, it was the teacher, and that's when my problems really started!

In the day or 2 in March when it was becoming clear we were going to close we had a number of the usually unsupportive parents of difficult teenagers getting quite concerned about "how am I supposed to cope with having him home all the time?" 

I had a meeting with a member of my tutor group & his parents, after he’d been a persistent little herbert but didn’t like all of the sanctions he’d accrued as a result. His parents seemed to agree that it was the school’s fault that their little darling wasn’t behaving optimally, and that they were going to take him out to “home learn him”. Explained a lot...

Brilliant. Any idea of any outcomes so far from their “home learning” him? Also top marks for use of the term “little herbert”! Haven’t heard it in decades. It is strangely evocative and effective 

It didn’t last long, but fortunately he ended up going to another school shortly after returning to us. Woe is me. 

I suppose it doesn't help with all the inclusiveness these days, I was an absolute little Herbert at school to the point where they rounded up all the Herbert's and gave us special classes so we didn't disrupt the kids that wanted to learn. I doubt that would be allowed these day's so me and my mates could have carried on bringing everyone down to our level. 

Nope, that still happens.

We’ve got an especially bleak room for them & an utterly terrifying teacher who used to be a prison officer to run it. He seems to do a very good job of putting said herberts back onto the straight & narrow. 

Not a bad idea, they put us with a student teacher, she had no chance.