The holidays continued to exciting destinations Cruising Alaska from Vancouver, cruising the Hawaiian Islands walking on the Great Wall of China and visiting Xian and all of the other wonders that exist.Some with my friend and some alone.
During this time work became more stressful and the goal posts kept changing.Demands on children and staff became intolerable and pressures were building up . I campaigned with the Union to abolish SAT’s and league tables. They were demoralising for everyone !
This led to me going to London and sitting on the early morning sofa with Phillip and Fearne urging teachers to boycott SAT’s . That year there were pages missing from the Maths test and I lost my cool , tore up papers and swore my school would never do them again ! That got my face on the front page of the local newspaper and a reputation !
It also led to an invitation to swap places with the Headteacher of a school at the top of the league we were being a good foundation near the bottom to hold everyone else up!! The CEO of the time gave me his blessing to do the exchange and make the programme to highlight the inequalities that exist in educational settings. The programme was the flagship start of a series called Trading Places. What happened there will follow shortly.
Carols Blog 