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How would you like to see school education changed?

The short breaks currently favoured everywhere are disgusting. It was an hour when I was at school (in fact I believe it was 70 minutes for my last two years at school). I don't know what the fuck a kid's meant to do with thirty minutes. A lot of places seem to have worked out that because they get the kids through the canteen quicker in COVID bubbles if they stagger the breaks they can make more time for classes.

My daughter at primary now gets a strict fifteen minutes to eat her packed lunch and then fifteen minutes in the playground. Particularly at primary I think it's a bit arrogant to presume kids are learning more in the classroom than they are in the playground.


Yep. I totally agree.
We had an hour when I was at school. And it was great. Time to make pals and read in the library or just daydream.

Lunch breaks were vital for keeping us all sane.
 
I can’t believe lunch is just 30 mins. I’m fairly sure our lunch was 1:20.

But then I have no real idea of what schools are like these days, I think my school was probably quite unusual compared to others, so my only experience is likely both severely dated and non typical.
 
We don't do first aid but in science we do teach kids how their organs work alongside public health stuff that is also dealt with in PSHE. The content is a bit outdated in places (eg protein only comes from meat) but the intention is there. For older kids these kinds of lessons are more discussion-based and there's less shut-up-and-write-the-answers-down than you get elsewhere in secondary school. This is important because some things the kids will already know and some things they'll have no clue about, and you can't just guess which is which. Talking about contraception with one class (year 11s) that a vasectomy did not involve removing the testes altogether :facepalm:
It’s astonishing to me that all Year 11s are not taught basic CPR. It’s literally just airway management (head tilt chin lift) and chest compressions.

S- Safety- check it’s safe to approach
S- Stimulate- shout and shake for response
S- Summon help

A- Airway- open with head tilt chin lift (in a child the nose points up in a ‘sniff the air’ position)
B- Breathing- Do rescue breaths if you’re trained otherwise don’t.
C- Chest compression
  • Start chest compressions as soon as possible.
  • Deliver compressions on the lower half of the sternum (‘in the centre of the chest’).
  • Compress to a depth of at least 5 cm but not more than 6 cm.
  • Compress the chest at a rate of 100–120 min−1 with as few interruptions as possible. (Tip: sing Staying alive in your head and compress in time. I use Nelly the Elephant in my head).
  • Allow the chest to recoil completely after each compression; do not lean on the chest.
Keep doing continuous chest compressions until help arrives. It’s exhausting. If possible swop with another person every two minutes because however fit you are evidence shows efficacy reduces quickly.

The reason they got rid out out of hospital rescue breaths is that people got hung up on not remembering the ratio (30:2 compressions: breaths) they wouldn’t attempt compressions. Good quality chest compressions save lives.

If there’s an Automatic Electric Defibrillator (AED) open the lid and it will speak to you and give you loud and clear instructions inc where to place pads, analyse the heart rhythm and tell you to administer a shock if indicated. Say loudly ‘stand clear, shocking’ if you’re leading the arrest. Only in 1 in 4 adults is a shock indicated (the other heart rhythms you don’t shock and just continue CPR), less in children who tend to go into non shockable rhythms. Get the pads on, listen, follow the voice.

(That said, for an adult out of hospital cardiac arrest survival to discharge rates are less than 1 in ten, so yunno, do your best).

This is more a public service announcement than aimed at you :D
 
Our lunch break went up to 50 minutes this year - it is bliss.

The kids were furious, though - because we now finish at 3:10 rather than 2:50pm. Of the various consultations, teachers were more than 90% in favour, parents were 60-something-percent (though very low numbers engaged), but a majority of kids objected.
 
How much do the parents know about this kind of stuff? If I had a child who was being treated like that, while having their teachers distracted by being unable to fulfil their basic bodily functions, I would be furious and making a nuisance of myself at the school, even if that meant taking a holiday in order to do it.

Parents know about it. And it's teachers who didn't come up with these idiot policies who have to field phone calls from justifiably angry parents. Normally I've just ignored the official policy and let a kid leave class to go to the toilet if they asked.

At my previous school this was what all the teachers did, so the management came up with some new racket which was that if someone needed to go to the toilet you had to phone for a senior leadership person to come and check that the kid actually needed to go for a piss. And of course being 'senior leadership' doesn't actually give you a magic ability to tell which kid needs a piss or has their period and which just wants to skive of for five minutes (which is in any case less time than is wasted arguing with kids about whether or not they can go for a piss) so they turn up and do exactly what I've already done, namely ask the kid if they really need to go for a piss, then say 'OK then'. If you didn't go through this pantomime the kid would get sent back to your class by someone whose entire job was to lurk in the corridors intercepting kids trying to go to the toilet.

That school was particularly bad, but there is similar nonsense everywhere. It's not just the basic human rights angle, it's that everything else you're trying to do as a school; safeguarding, actual education; is damaged by stuff that undermines trust that kids have in adults.
 
I have never, ever had any of my bosses tell me to take my work home with me and do it during my precious home-time. Not once. No pedagogical or socialisation-type justification whatsoever. So get rid.
When I was a union rep for Prospect, I represented other Civil Servants several times where bosses made explicit demands for people to take work home & bring it back completed the next day. My line was always the same: "Show me the requirement in the terms & conditions, & my member will do it. If you can't, shall we talk about you enabling them to bring a successful constructive dismissal case?" They never liked that, because most of them were bullies who knew fuck all about employment law. The icing on the cake is that a majority of senior Civil Servants were (and are) still public school-educated, so getting told what's what by a working class oik rankled them. :)
 
What was my point? Oh yeah, 'mainstream' schools have been taken over by a weird cult. All the sane and reasonable teachers in the land can't push back against it. At least some nutter doing home schooling is only fucking up one kid at a time, and most of them probably allow their kids to at least go to the fucking toilet.
My Hungarian friend was furious back in September. "What's wrong?" said I, innocently & foolishly! Turns out her daughter's school (daughter has just started 6th form) has decided on locked toilets during lesson time.
As I have stage 4 Chronic Kidney Disease, I'm fairly well-acquainted with what putting a strain on the urinary system through holding in, can result in, so I did a bit of research on juvenile renal & urinary problems, & it turns out there was quite a bit of literature out there. I wrote my friend a letter, complete with citations & footnotes, to send to the head teacher. 2 weeks later, a "pause" was announced, & last week every teacher was issued with keys to be handed over on request. We're writing another letter to reinstate original practice - ask to go, get allowed to go.
 
I see Labour are trying to start a conversation about the school curriculum.
Good idea, but a difficult enterprise.


Not sure if its a conversation as much as Blunkett has been drafted in to produce a "review"

The article summarises main points.

Trouble for me whilst its all couched in middle of the road language Im not clear how its different from what the Tories have been doing.

Taking party politics out of "reshaping" the curriculum. I dont know what that means. Ive been reading about British Empire and there are several different ways to look at it. Based on ones political views. I dont understand what in practise taking party politics out of it means in say putting the history of the British Empire on the curriculum.

Secondly Blunkett. I thought he had gone away to retirement and wouldnt be bothering Joe public.I remember him from his days as Blairite. Unpleasant and right wing on say "citizenship" Which I notice hes promoting in his review. He was socially authoritarian. Its easy to forget that New Labour in Blairs days revelled in winding up Guardian reading liberals. ID Cards for example. Which Blunkett was well into.

Ive no idea what he means by citizenship education that is deviod of party politics.
 
Given that New Labour did put a lot of resources into younger children. Sure Stsrt/ Play areas.

Which was of course cut by Tories.
 
In relation to schooling has anybody ever read Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn?
My recollection is that they would rather miss school and sit by the Mississippi dangling their feet in the water enjoying each other’s company.
We pay schoolteachers (and other staff) to use their time and seeming expertise to hang out with (mainly) groups of younger people and intervene in their lives for specified periods of time in specified places.
What is impressive is how many of the younger people go along with this, that signals to me that Teachers are very capable in what they do.
However is the system ‘educational’?
I was once told by a teenager talking about one of their subjects ‘you don’t learn anything in Drama, but you get better at it’. Quite an interesting statement.
 
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