The Finale and Curtain Call were so perfect, so full of warmth and so glorious, Mr Ray and the Tarleton family will forever treasure the memories.
It was done in such style, South Dartmoor style, with genuine fun, affection and the attention to detail that makes the College such a special place to work. From the assembly through to the Marquee Celebration, everything was in the true spirit of our (now your) wonderful school. In part it was like being an award winner at the Oscars for a film that's taken twenty-one years to make; and in part it resembled an out-of-body experience at my own funeral!
The staff gift, a painting by the local artist and former South Dartmoor teacher, Sarah Bell, is a delight. It's called The Journey Home... and those of you who travel the A38 Exeter-bound, will recognise the view from the top of the Haldon Hill. When my children were at the school, as we drove back from Ashburton at the end of the day, I used to tell them to look down on the sprawling lights of the city, aware that one of those twinkles of illumination was home, where their mother would be waiting for us. Sarah's painting, your gift, captures that memory from a daily journey over the years that adds up to thousands of miles- perhaps as far as the moon.
I was especially grateful to Steve for compèring the final section of the assembly- the next Jonathan Ross? And to everyone who contributed to the hilarious DVD- some X-Factor talent there to watch out for, especially the PE Swingers and Pete's new solo bid for fame- KENatra? The students' response was overwhelming- what a wonderful group of young people. No wonder none of us ever wants to leave.
The Recipe Book is an inspired idea: I loved reading it and will truly enjoy trying out every recipe in it- even TAP's Tea. The concept is a winner- congratulations for devising it, Jane; the design is so professional- thanks to Bea and also John, Katie, Adam and Lin, to all of you for creating it. A special thanks to Nick Stimson for his magical opening tribute which reminded me of the start of a novel; and to Paul McCormick for capturing the memory so well of a meal not eaten! The recipeists all bring their personalities to their food choices. With quality photographs, highly original lay-out and easy-wipe pages, it's set to become this summer's sure-fire Amazon best seller.
The staff comments in the tribute book were overwhelmingly powerful and a joy to read. If I ever feel low, that's the book I'll take out to inspire me again. Thank you all: you never really know what people think until they have an opportunity like this. You were all so generous.
The amazing photo montage includes many memorable events and sights from the South Dartmoor past South Dartmoor. Thank you, Governors, for this imaginative gift, and John Bradford and team for shooting and compiling.
I'm unsure who to thank for the Marquee Celebration because of the secrecy surrounding it, but nothing could have been more fitting: delicious canapés from Scoffers washed down with Pimms and bathed in that fine jazz playing. Thanks to the musicians - Rachel, Jonathan, Jo and the students and to Lin who looked to me to have the air of someone in charge.....
I really appreciated everyone’s attendance. How lovely to welcome former Leadership Team colleagues who did so much with me to make the school the place it now is: Andy Hamlyn, Heather Stimson, Rachel Hutchinson, Martin Burt, Graham Allen and Dave Mardall; and former colleague, Paul Cornish. To complement the current Governors, I was also delighted to see former governors James Long, Veronica Groom and Helen Cock.
Phil Norrey, Chief Executive of Devon County Council, paid me a great compliment in attending. It was so kind of him to stay to the end to show his appreciation, a mark of his quality as a leader.
Finally to great teams and what a Team Leadership are. If only England could have played as well they spoke! But I'm not going to continue this sporting analogy- and you all know why. Let me just say that every one of them made me so proud - all those years of coaching them for Presentation Evening finally paid off! Kate led the event with such sparkle and poise, striking just the right tone and remembering everything and everyone.
Many of you told me how much you appreciated what the school did for your children. Me too! I was touched to find mine there, both home from London where they work, Alice at Channel Four News and Ed at Imperial College. They had been smuggled in by my wife, another surprise guest, in on the conspiracy from the start. We left for the final ‘Journey Home ...’ with the car boot bursting with your gifts and cards.
Prospero, the ruler of an imaginary island in Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest, relinquishes his authority by throwing down his staff. At just the moment a prop was needed, Allan brought forth his majestic, decorated pole and allowed me to make the comparison between an island built on dreams (‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on...’) and a school built on dreams that are now real. My thanks to everyone who made the celebration of that realised dream one of the memorable moments of my life. Now let the curtain fall.
Ray Tarleton
Principal (September 1989-August 2010)
Monday, 12 July 2010
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
In Praise of OfSTED
Bus duty on day one of the new Inspection regime and the pupils are chatting about how it’s been. “What’s all this OFSTED stuff about?” asks one. “Oh I can tell you,” says another who has clearly already been through the process; “It’s dead simple. If you see a bloke wearing a smart suit and carrying a clipboard sitting at the back of your class, you are going to get a bloody good lesson!”
Eighteen years after Ken Clarke set up the system, OFSTED is still the most powerful force in education. What else will bring 120 teachers into work, at least for two days, before 6.00 am? The displays, even with only two days notice made me think I had walked into the wrong school, while lesson plans and my SEF were longer than a Victorian novel.
Whatever your role, if you know that OFSTED are going to measure it, you make sure it’s done. The Government wants to encourage diversity so the specialisms in secondary schools get plenty of attention. They want the public to believe in the re-branded comprehensive so the OFSTED agenda is to comment on how much the specialism has done to raise standards, support the community … fill in your own blanks. Schools have had both safety and health scares recently, so plenty of references to diet, lifestyle and safety conscious staff and pupils go down well.
Racist incidents? Show me your log. Bullying in the playground? Give me the records. If the Government decided it wanted all schools to serve unsalted pistachio nuts on Parents’ Evenings, test basket weaving skills and dress lollypop ladies in Union Jacks, it would only have to make these things inspection tick boxes and we’d obey.
I experienced my first OFSTED – “a training” inspection in 1992 before the full scale assault the following year. I am now through number five (just). So what’s changed on this latest, tougher framework and over the years? Short notice has been with us for some time but I can still remember a ruined Christmas holiday for the Leadership Team who were sworn to secrecy when we did hear weeks before. We broke the news to staff with a happy New Year greeting – and they still had four weeks’ notice.
The pre-inspection briefing has become as forensic as a murder investigation. Hypotheses are laid out with the misdirected fervour that comes of an ill spent career salivating over data charts. Crime suspects from the Leadership Team are wheeled in. “You wilfully, during the months of 2009-10, allowed attendance to drop.” My defence: “Actually, you’ve got the wrong bloke. Isn’t it the parents’ responsibility to get their offspring to school?”
The really big change is that the inspection is now done with you rather than to you. The Leadership Team double observed many of the lessons the inspectors went to. We were asked for our grades first to check our judgements. 'What did you think of the transitions? What was missing in the questioning? What's did your view about the pace?' These were the kind of questions posed to me by the HMI lead as we raced from class to class. This is a great way to influence classroom practice and probably the best professional development anyone could have.
Instead of us whispering in separate rooms, their meetings included me and some of the team so the judgements were transparent too. We were invited to comment but never to canvass: the criteria held firm. The student, parental and staff questionnaires were processed on the day and each section was checked against this data. One interesting student criticism was about the quality of supply. It's never cropped up before but I put it down to 'rarely cover' preventing us from using our own experienced and familiar teachers.
The Leadership Team emailed through the night and from dawn, sharing insights and heading off trouble. 'Will we ever sleep again?' mused my deputy at 5.00 am on day two. The final two hour discussion was all facts rather than opinions, each section scored as if filling up a Bingo card. We followed with absolutely no idea until the end whether we would have that winning 'full house'. But it was professional development of the best kind. Even if the number of areas inspected is reduced, as planned, this is a valuable process. Despite popular opinion, I come to praise of OFSTED and hope it won’t be buried.
The morning after the judgement I held up the TES in the staffroom to huge applause because the headline was that outstanding schools no longer faced inspection. I'm not convinced- there is always much to learn and the inspectors surely need to have the widest picture. Still- I’m off to consider academy status now.
Monday, 24 May 2010
Bonhomie is me
The police don’t do it but headteachers and politicians do. Whilst we all pound the beat on our respective patches, the real law enforcers discreetly keep their distance, striding purposefully on with an expression that conveys decisiveness. You never catch them asking everyone what their state of health is as they walk by.
Aloofness might be a characteristic to get some training on. Does it come only with helmet wearing and a chunky mobile or can anyone do it? In contrast, I go around enquiring how it’s going of everyone I meet. I’m programmed, like soap powder in a washing machine, to inject brightness. Even on the most miserable of days, bonhomie is me.
‘All well?’ I cheerily ask a senior colleague at the end of a particularly difficult week. I soon realise it was a mistake. For there are times when optimism, that essential characteristic in school leaders, can look like naivety, lack of awareness or even folly.
He’s thinking: ‘What’s the head got to be so cheerful about? He can’t know the half of what’s going on or he’d be having a nervous breakdown in his office.’ And I’m thinking: ‘The leadership manual tells me I must be relentlessly positive in the face of all adversity.’ So the smile stays fixed. The Captain of the Titanic would have been proud of me.
The teacher had just finished bus duty and all was far from well. A day of truanting and possible substance abuse from a couple of boys had led to unavoidable confrontation. It may have been the mood-enhancing quality of the substance, the start of the weekend, or perhaps the ‘broken society’ but the response from the students to a polite request was loud, personal and laced with sexual innuendo of an exotic variety. The other youngsters and some parents listening must have thought they were at the premiere of an adults only film.
I sigh in sympathy, switch off the smile and replace it with a determined expression that’s supposed to convey weighty assurance of firm action. I’m signalling that they won’t get away with it. Consequences will follow as surely as the school bells ring on the hour. Fixed term exclusion is my conclusion. But with it comes the time-consuming, energy-sapping paraphernalia of phone calls, letters, meetings and support plans. And any thought of a quick after-school getaway vanishes as the process has to be started straightaway.
Who’s being punished here, I wonder, as we wait for the first parent to answer. Will it be an abusive complaint that it’s our fault for letting him leave the site or an understanding apology? Once, on such an occasion, a parent told me he was on his way to sort me out, casually adding that he was bringing his gun. Fortunately, by the time I’d been coaxed out of the locked store cupboard where I’d taken up residence, my deputy had got through to the police to be told the gunman had handed himself in.
Calls made, I feel in control again. There may be horror stories now on the street of indiscipline and extraordinary rudeness at the secondary school, but I’m sticking with unremitting optimism. It’s a mantra to memorise, like those lines teachers used to set their pupils as punishment. And it’s Friday night, after all. So you won’t catch me kicking the wall or screaming in protest, though I might give the Jacuzzi at my local health club some stick later. And I may just practise an aloof smile, ready for the next crisis.
Aloofness might be a characteristic to get some training on. Does it come only with helmet wearing and a chunky mobile or can anyone do it? In contrast, I go around enquiring how it’s going of everyone I meet. I’m programmed, like soap powder in a washing machine, to inject brightness. Even on the most miserable of days, bonhomie is me.
‘All well?’ I cheerily ask a senior colleague at the end of a particularly difficult week. I soon realise it was a mistake. For there are times when optimism, that essential characteristic in school leaders, can look like naivety, lack of awareness or even folly.
He’s thinking: ‘What’s the head got to be so cheerful about? He can’t know the half of what’s going on or he’d be having a nervous breakdown in his office.’ And I’m thinking: ‘The leadership manual tells me I must be relentlessly positive in the face of all adversity.’ So the smile stays fixed. The Captain of the Titanic would have been proud of me.
The teacher had just finished bus duty and all was far from well. A day of truanting and possible substance abuse from a couple of boys had led to unavoidable confrontation. It may have been the mood-enhancing quality of the substance, the start of the weekend, or perhaps the ‘broken society’ but the response from the students to a polite request was loud, personal and laced with sexual innuendo of an exotic variety. The other youngsters and some parents listening must have thought they were at the premiere of an adults only film.
I sigh in sympathy, switch off the smile and replace it with a determined expression that’s supposed to convey weighty assurance of firm action. I’m signalling that they won’t get away with it. Consequences will follow as surely as the school bells ring on the hour. Fixed term exclusion is my conclusion. But with it comes the time-consuming, energy-sapping paraphernalia of phone calls, letters, meetings and support plans. And any thought of a quick after-school getaway vanishes as the process has to be started straightaway.
Who’s being punished here, I wonder, as we wait for the first parent to answer. Will it be an abusive complaint that it’s our fault for letting him leave the site or an understanding apology? Once, on such an occasion, a parent told me he was on his way to sort me out, casually adding that he was bringing his gun. Fortunately, by the time I’d been coaxed out of the locked store cupboard where I’d taken up residence, my deputy had got through to the police to be told the gunman had handed himself in.
Calls made, I feel in control again. There may be horror stories now on the street of indiscipline and extraordinary rudeness at the secondary school, but I’m sticking with unremitting optimism. It’s a mantra to memorise, like those lines teachers used to set their pupils as punishment. And it’s Friday night, after all. So you won’t catch me kicking the wall or screaming in protest, though I might give the Jacuzzi at my local health club some stick later. And I may just practise an aloof smile, ready for the next crisis.
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
Humpty Dumpty
According to the psychologist, Dorothy Rowe, we’re now in a period when children are being listened to and their views taken into account. Apparently, it’s a by-product of the women’s movement. But, although society is changing, in schools pupil voice may struggle to drown out the discordant noises-off from teacher unions who want to press the mute button.
Pupils are accused of over-stepping the mark, sitting on selection panels, daring to express their views during appointments, and also commenting on what goes on in lessons. Pupil voice, we’re told, means young upstarts can even ask candidates what font they think they most resemble. Well, I’d pick forte. Some apparently even rejected a teacher for a post because they claimed he was like Humpy Dumpty.
This isn’t just an infringement of union rights: it’s an assault on the teacher-pupil relationship in which the adult knows better than the child and is always right. But wait. Substitute ‘men’ for ‘adult’ and ‘women’ for ‘child’ and you can see the tectonic plates shifting as Rowe suggests, leaving the Band of Brothers on the wrong side of the debate.
I first explored student voice when I asked my classes to try out experiments with language, recording and transcribing their responses. With the tape recorder to control them, they followed the protocols of speaking in turn and commenting on the text. Once the writing barrier was removed and techniques learned for spoken contributions, classes which I had imagined to be low in ability gained the capacity to surprise each other as well as me.
At South Dartmoor, we now have an expert Student Learning Forum, volunteers selected by interview, who are trained in classroom observational techniques, using Guy Claxton’s Building Learning Power methodology to analyse and report, subject by subject. For example, they look at the learning environment. ‘Why no number lines in Maths rooms?’ they asked last year. Well, there are now and you can see the impact today as children look across the walls, counting from negative to positive numbers.
‘Who can enjoy hockey when the bibs we have to wear are dirty and smelly?’ they quizzed us. We’d never noticed but now the washing machines whir away to make sure it’s no longer an issue. ‘Can we have more student work on the walls, please?’ they request, making it clear to us that the environment really does matter to them. It’s an easy fix.
Our own push now is on assessment for learning. The principles have been explained to the Learning Forum and their latest comments are illuminating: ‘In subject X, we saw 60% of the students offering to answer questions. We think the proportion should be over 80%.’
There are comments about levels of engagement and responses by students to teacher strategies of pausing to allow reflection before requesting answers. The mysteries of how teaching works have been revealed like a David Blaine magic trick and the students marvel at how easy the skilled teacher makes their craft look.
It’s all voluntary, of course. Departments request these student-led observations because they help them to improve the learning. They commission reports for their subject SEFs- student views without the effort of processing questionnaires. And there is strictly no comment on the teaching- it’s all student-centred. Even so, I can hear the agonised cries of union dinosaurs, snarling in the swamp.
As for appointments, it was a no-brainer to use the Student Council and Sixth Form Councils as interview panels in their own right when my successor was appointed. It means he has widespread and popular endorsement. One candidate unwisely remarked that teaching would not be part of the head’s role if appointed. ‘Why not?’ asked the students. ‘It’s not important enough,’ came the reply. The candidate may not have been called Humpty Dumpty but certainly couldn’t be put back together again after a fall like that, even if forte had been the chosen font.
Ray Tarleton
Pupils are accused of over-stepping the mark, sitting on selection panels, daring to express their views during appointments, and also commenting on what goes on in lessons. Pupil voice, we’re told, means young upstarts can even ask candidates what font they think they most resemble. Well, I’d pick forte. Some apparently even rejected a teacher for a post because they claimed he was like Humpy Dumpty.
This isn’t just an infringement of union rights: it’s an assault on the teacher-pupil relationship in which the adult knows better than the child and is always right. But wait. Substitute ‘men’ for ‘adult’ and ‘women’ for ‘child’ and you can see the tectonic plates shifting as Rowe suggests, leaving the Band of Brothers on the wrong side of the debate.
I first explored student voice when I asked my classes to try out experiments with language, recording and transcribing their responses. With the tape recorder to control them, they followed the protocols of speaking in turn and commenting on the text. Once the writing barrier was removed and techniques learned for spoken contributions, classes which I had imagined to be low in ability gained the capacity to surprise each other as well as me.
At South Dartmoor, we now have an expert Student Learning Forum, volunteers selected by interview, who are trained in classroom observational techniques, using Guy Claxton’s Building Learning Power methodology to analyse and report, subject by subject. For example, they look at the learning environment. ‘Why no number lines in Maths rooms?’ they asked last year. Well, there are now and you can see the impact today as children look across the walls, counting from negative to positive numbers.
‘Who can enjoy hockey when the bibs we have to wear are dirty and smelly?’ they quizzed us. We’d never noticed but now the washing machines whir away to make sure it’s no longer an issue. ‘Can we have more student work on the walls, please?’ they request, making it clear to us that the environment really does matter to them. It’s an easy fix.
Our own push now is on assessment for learning. The principles have been explained to the Learning Forum and their latest comments are illuminating: ‘In subject X, we saw 60% of the students offering to answer questions. We think the proportion should be over 80%.’
There are comments about levels of engagement and responses by students to teacher strategies of pausing to allow reflection before requesting answers. The mysteries of how teaching works have been revealed like a David Blaine magic trick and the students marvel at how easy the skilled teacher makes their craft look.
It’s all voluntary, of course. Departments request these student-led observations because they help them to improve the learning. They commission reports for their subject SEFs- student views without the effort of processing questionnaires. And there is strictly no comment on the teaching- it’s all student-centred. Even so, I can hear the agonised cries of union dinosaurs, snarling in the swamp.
As for appointments, it was a no-brainer to use the Student Council and Sixth Form Councils as interview panels in their own right when my successor was appointed. It means he has widespread and popular endorsement. One candidate unwisely remarked that teaching would not be part of the head’s role if appointed. ‘Why not?’ asked the students. ‘It’s not important enough,’ came the reply. The candidate may not have been called Humpty Dumpty but certainly couldn’t be put back together again after a fall like that, even if forte had been the chosen font.
Ray Tarleton
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Election Editorial
So, an invitation at last to join the Government of Great Britain. I thought they’d never ask. But this tricksy Tory attempt to get my vote reminds me of my feeble attempts in assembly to persuade the school that the Student Council are now part of the Leadership Team and have shares in the Governing Body.
‘You are the young leaders of the school and your voice will be heard in decisions we make,’ I proclaim in the Sports Hall, half believing my own rhetoric. It could be an election rally. Well, I know that it will look good in the SEF and be an OFSTED crowd pleaser. But, of course, the reality is that schools these days are so complex, even the heads barely understand them, never mind the governors. What chance does a bunch of well-meaning students, even if they are democratically elected, have to get their heads around curriculum, finance and buildings?
So the great Cameron Con (and that’s con as in ‘con’, not in ‘Conservative’) is to pretend that we can be partners in the Government of the Big Society. Their radical educational idea is an import, something from the European Union they can agree to. The Swedish model has been chosen because, we must assume, it’s the most successful educational system on the planet. Well, this is the country that gave us the music of the pop group, Abba, so perhaps the Tory theme tune should be: ‘Take a Chance on Me.’
The three parties are promising much that is similar in education. Test yourself. Who is offering pupil premiums to direct funding to the most disadvantaged schools? Definitely the Lib Dems who thought of it but now also Labour and probably the Tories as well. Who wants to create a form of national service for young people? It’s a great idea and hopefully will become a compulsory part of the curriculum but it’s Labour and Conservatives with likely Lib Dem support. Who is promising one- to-one tuition? Wasn’t that a Labour policy before the Lib Dems snatched it? Feel a coalition government coming on?
My SEF is as long as War and Peace. So the Conservative policy of reducing OFSTED’s brief from seventeen areas to four will appeal to every school, especially after the Alice in Wonderland adventures attempting to monitor safeguarding, happiness and even health.
But the free schools concept will have unexpected consequences. Parents and charitable groups have a strong record of establishing their own schools in this country. It’s not a new idea. It’s just that these schools have, until now, been outside the state system and funded privately. If they can be established through the state and without regulation, checks and controls, why would any parent continue to pay, for example, to send their child to a prep school? Why not start an alternative, using existing resources and get the state to pay for it? And the biggest irony is that the Tories, the Party of the free market, could be responsible for the decline of private education in this country. Now that’s something to cheer about.
The Labour Government has a proud record in education - as long as you’re not a graduate with a £20k debt to start your career. Results have improved dramatically, with practically half of all Year 11 students achieving the Government’s GCSE benchmark - a remarkable achievement and a tribute to teachers.
There is now an educational community of schools sharing ideas, curriculum practice and even leadership. Academies, Trusts and Federations have blossomed, based on British educational research and rooted in what works rather than what has been stolen from the shelf in a Swedish store. And the budgets for bowls to catch water from leaky roofs- high spending areas during the last Conservative Government- now register zero.
In a three party race, this time it looks as if Abba’s other hit lyric, ‘The Winner Takes it All’, might be a thing of the past where politics is concerned. We may find ourselves, after a long night on May 6, with both a parliament hung over and a personal hangover. That would get my vote.
Ray Tarleton - this editorial also appeared on page 6 of the May 6th edition of SecEd digital: http://bit.ly/9Cks8W
‘You are the young leaders of the school and your voice will be heard in decisions we make,’ I proclaim in the Sports Hall, half believing my own rhetoric. It could be an election rally. Well, I know that it will look good in the SEF and be an OFSTED crowd pleaser. But, of course, the reality is that schools these days are so complex, even the heads barely understand them, never mind the governors. What chance does a bunch of well-meaning students, even if they are democratically elected, have to get their heads around curriculum, finance and buildings?
So the great Cameron Con (and that’s con as in ‘con’, not in ‘Conservative’) is to pretend that we can be partners in the Government of the Big Society. Their radical educational idea is an import, something from the European Union they can agree to. The Swedish model has been chosen because, we must assume, it’s the most successful educational system on the planet. Well, this is the country that gave us the music of the pop group, Abba, so perhaps the Tory theme tune should be: ‘Take a Chance on Me.’
The three parties are promising much that is similar in education. Test yourself. Who is offering pupil premiums to direct funding to the most disadvantaged schools? Definitely the Lib Dems who thought of it but now also Labour and probably the Tories as well. Who wants to create a form of national service for young people? It’s a great idea and hopefully will become a compulsory part of the curriculum but it’s Labour and Conservatives with likely Lib Dem support. Who is promising one- to-one tuition? Wasn’t that a Labour policy before the Lib Dems snatched it? Feel a coalition government coming on?
My SEF is as long as War and Peace. So the Conservative policy of reducing OFSTED’s brief from seventeen areas to four will appeal to every school, especially after the Alice in Wonderland adventures attempting to monitor safeguarding, happiness and even health.
But the free schools concept will have unexpected consequences. Parents and charitable groups have a strong record of establishing their own schools in this country. It’s not a new idea. It’s just that these schools have, until now, been outside the state system and funded privately. If they can be established through the state and without regulation, checks and controls, why would any parent continue to pay, for example, to send their child to a prep school? Why not start an alternative, using existing resources and get the state to pay for it? And the biggest irony is that the Tories, the Party of the free market, could be responsible for the decline of private education in this country. Now that’s something to cheer about.
The Labour Government has a proud record in education - as long as you’re not a graduate with a £20k debt to start your career. Results have improved dramatically, with practically half of all Year 11 students achieving the Government’s GCSE benchmark - a remarkable achievement and a tribute to teachers.
There is now an educational community of schools sharing ideas, curriculum practice and even leadership. Academies, Trusts and Federations have blossomed, based on British educational research and rooted in what works rather than what has been stolen from the shelf in a Swedish store. And the budgets for bowls to catch water from leaky roofs- high spending areas during the last Conservative Government- now register zero.
In a three party race, this time it looks as if Abba’s other hit lyric, ‘The Winner Takes it All’, might be a thing of the past where politics is concerned. We may find ourselves, after a long night on May 6, with both a parliament hung over and a personal hangover. That would get my vote.
Ray Tarleton - this editorial also appeared on page 6 of the May 6th edition of SecEd digital: http://bit.ly/9Cks8W
Thursday, 1 April 2010
The Curious Incident of the Blog in the Night
I’m amazed to see that these regular columns have been running for nearly three years. The first blog I ever wrote was in June 07. It must have been three years ago because it was poking fun at OFSTED who had just been here on inspection. And now we’re waiting from them to return. I hope they don’t read my earlier jibes. That might be one entry to delete right now.
Since then there’s been a pretty constant stream of blogs, though for the last year or so I’ve been in TV review mode. For the statisticians out there, the total comes to 172, made up of 116 genuine blogs and 56 TES television columns that were blog-lite but badged up as the real thing. Each had to be 500 words in length which means I’ve devoted 28,000 words to the small screen- a sad indictment of my free time.
When asked to write blogs, I confess that I didn’t have a clue what they were. And the hawk-eyed amongst you will have realised that I still don’t, though there must be a definition somewhere. But I think we got there first and remain one of the few ‘blog-standard’ comprehensives around.
A blog is forever, not just for Christmas: looking back on the archives in their handy digital filing cabinet in the ether, the entries remind me of past highlights and the daily surprises that make running a school such a fascinating job. So I’m sure I’ll return to them in the future but as reader rather than writer. That’s unless I decide to use them as material and the starting point for some other writing. Perhaps not.
Now, as well as doing all the things that I hope help to make South Dartmoor successful, I’m also working closely with my successor, Hugh Bellamy. He and I were both at a Specialist Schools and Academies Celebration Dinner recently for schools achieving an increase in GCSE results since 2006 (pre-blog) of more than 15 percentage points. Both schools received certificates but Hugh’s school gained the Oscar of the evening for largest one year improvement in results- 57%. Wow.
And for me retirement appears to be a mirage as I prepare for a new role in September as Regional Director (SW) for the National College for Schools and Children’s Services. The College has a remit to provide leadership training for leaders and aspirant leaders in education and also now in children’s services and the role is one of three being trialled. Yes, I’ll be on trial- and may find myself returned to sender.
So the future should blog-free. And will anyone notice? In the Sherlock Holmes’s story, Silver Blaze, Holmes is mystified as to why the dog doesn’t bark in the night when you’d expect it to. Well blogs are an unexpected form of writing as well as allowing you to capture the unexpected. And that’s just what schools and the future are full of. Who would have imagined, for example, that we’d be embarking on an exciting new collaboration with Ilsington Primary School from next term? Or that our students would run a public Question Time debate, as they did last week that was so dynamic and interactive.
The curious incident of this set of blogs is that they ever came to be written and that they’ve survived so long. But now it’s time to put the night blogs to bed.
Since then there’s been a pretty constant stream of blogs, though for the last year or so I’ve been in TV review mode. For the statisticians out there, the total comes to 172, made up of 116 genuine blogs and 56 TES television columns that were blog-lite but badged up as the real thing. Each had to be 500 words in length which means I’ve devoted 28,000 words to the small screen- a sad indictment of my free time.
When asked to write blogs, I confess that I didn’t have a clue what they were. And the hawk-eyed amongst you will have realised that I still don’t, though there must be a definition somewhere. But I think we got there first and remain one of the few ‘blog-standard’ comprehensives around.
A blog is forever, not just for Christmas: looking back on the archives in their handy digital filing cabinet in the ether, the entries remind me of past highlights and the daily surprises that make running a school such a fascinating job. So I’m sure I’ll return to them in the future but as reader rather than writer. That’s unless I decide to use them as material and the starting point for some other writing. Perhaps not.
Now, as well as doing all the things that I hope help to make South Dartmoor successful, I’m also working closely with my successor, Hugh Bellamy. He and I were both at a Specialist Schools and Academies Celebration Dinner recently for schools achieving an increase in GCSE results since 2006 (pre-blog) of more than 15 percentage points. Both schools received certificates but Hugh’s school gained the Oscar of the evening for largest one year improvement in results- 57%. Wow.
And for me retirement appears to be a mirage as I prepare for a new role in September as Regional Director (SW) for the National College for Schools and Children’s Services. The College has a remit to provide leadership training for leaders and aspirant leaders in education and also now in children’s services and the role is one of three being trialled. Yes, I’ll be on trial- and may find myself returned to sender.
So the future should blog-free. And will anyone notice? In the Sherlock Holmes’s story, Silver Blaze, Holmes is mystified as to why the dog doesn’t bark in the night when you’d expect it to. Well blogs are an unexpected form of writing as well as allowing you to capture the unexpected. And that’s just what schools and the future are full of. Who would have imagined, for example, that we’d be embarking on an exciting new collaboration with Ilsington Primary School from next term? Or that our students would run a public Question Time debate, as they did last week that was so dynamic and interactive.
The curious incident of this set of blogs is that they ever came to be written and that they’ve survived so long. But now it’s time to put the night blogs to bed.
Monday, 8 March 2010
Tune in, switch off - Faith, hope and clarity
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, once regarded as so dangerous that even his voice on television was dubbed by an actor, played truth seeker in The Bible: A History (Channel 4). As they couldn't get King Herod to present, I suppose he was next best choice.
He talked to experts about Jesus' core teachings from the cradle to the cross, beginning with a Bible scholar's view that Jesus was probably not born in Bethlehem or even in a manger. "You're ruining Christmas," muttered Adams in one of the few light moments.
This was Adams working again on the Irish peace process - but peace for Gerry, wanting forgiveness. He read his Bible aloud, including the injunctions to love your neighbour and not to kill. Did he agree? Well, it would depend on the day of the week and the cause itself. We would have got more truth from a Robert Mugabe documentary on Gandhi.
Did he have blood on his hands? Adams claimed to be just the leader of a struggle that had caused hurt to others. So it was all the fault of the movement. That is the kind of politician's dodge that gives the term dodgy a bad name (besides, we heard that at the Chilcot inquiry).
Some, whose relatives were murdered by the IRA, told Adams that the cause was not worth more than 3,000 lives lost. What about their forgiveness? They eloquently disappointed an unrepentant Adams: their suffering would never end.
New quiz show The Bubble (BBC Two), meanwhile, saw truth seeking of a lighter kind. Frank Skinner and Victoria Coren lived in a media-free vacuum for four days without even a mobile phone, so they wouldn't know if an election had been called or whether it was snowing. The aim? To sort real news from spoofs.
David Mitchell, the tweedy-twee quiz master, much mocked by third bubble member, louder-than-life Reginald D. Jones, sported his "women don't fancy me" persona, looking as if his hair had been parted by his mother, her lipstick hastily wiped from his cheek.
But the "true" stories he presented were so obscure that the panel could have skipped the bubble. Try this one: "What was found inside a tin this week? A cat's head, an image of the Virgin Mary or a chicken tikka masala?" Why go into hiding to miss that?
Well, it was a tin that got stuck on a cat's head. Proof was a photo from some obscure parish magazine. But before you ring the RSPCA, it was not so much Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as Cat in a Spot The Tin Spoof (I made that punch-line up).
A year of Tune In: Switch Off has allowed me to watch TV in my own bubble while pretending I'm working. Now all that is left is to wipe the hard-drive of all those unviewed, unreviewed programmes. I'm pressing the delete button. Now.
Ray Tarleton
He talked to experts about Jesus' core teachings from the cradle to the cross, beginning with a Bible scholar's view that Jesus was probably not born in Bethlehem or even in a manger. "You're ruining Christmas," muttered Adams in one of the few light moments.
This was Adams working again on the Irish peace process - but peace for Gerry, wanting forgiveness. He read his Bible aloud, including the injunctions to love your neighbour and not to kill. Did he agree? Well, it would depend on the day of the week and the cause itself. We would have got more truth from a Robert Mugabe documentary on Gandhi.
Did he have blood on his hands? Adams claimed to be just the leader of a struggle that had caused hurt to others. So it was all the fault of the movement. That is the kind of politician's dodge that gives the term dodgy a bad name (besides, we heard that at the Chilcot inquiry).
Some, whose relatives were murdered by the IRA, told Adams that the cause was not worth more than 3,000 lives lost. What about their forgiveness? They eloquently disappointed an unrepentant Adams: their suffering would never end.
New quiz show The Bubble (BBC Two), meanwhile, saw truth seeking of a lighter kind. Frank Skinner and Victoria Coren lived in a media-free vacuum for four days without even a mobile phone, so they wouldn't know if an election had been called or whether it was snowing. The aim? To sort real news from spoofs.
David Mitchell, the tweedy-twee quiz master, much mocked by third bubble member, louder-than-life Reginald D. Jones, sported his "women don't fancy me" persona, looking as if his hair had been parted by his mother, her lipstick hastily wiped from his cheek.
But the "true" stories he presented were so obscure that the panel could have skipped the bubble. Try this one: "What was found inside a tin this week? A cat's head, an image of the Virgin Mary or a chicken tikka masala?" Why go into hiding to miss that?
Well, it was a tin that got stuck on a cat's head. Proof was a photo from some obscure parish magazine. But before you ring the RSPCA, it was not so much Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as Cat in a Spot The Tin Spoof (I made that punch-line up).
A year of Tune In: Switch Off has allowed me to watch TV in my own bubble while pretending I'm working. Now all that is left is to wipe the hard-drive of all those unviewed, unreviewed programmes. I'm pressing the delete button. Now.
Ray Tarleton
Monday, 1 March 2010
Tune in, switch off - Tears and tugs to go
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. Unless you watched Leaving Home at 8 (Channel 4) and saw for yourself the folly of Forces parents on the move, trying to create some security for their daughters by placing them in a boarding school. Ironically, these were the very families that should bring up their own children, unlike Mr and Mrs Alcoholic Asbo on the housing estate nearby whose children's life chances could be transformed by a bit of boarding.
It wasn't Dotheboys Hall. The new eight-year-olds were well looked after, offered decent meals, stimulating teaching and activities galore at Highfield in Hampshire, a top prep. But it wasn't home. Summoned to ease the pain, nurse told the little people there was no medicine for homesickness, advising them to keep busy and get really tired. My wife gives me the same advice.
Yet no amount of galloping about the stately grounds could compensate these tiny exiles who were grieving for their mothers. We used to threaten our kids with boarding school when they were particularly badly behaved. Nowadays we would be up before child protection for such cruelty.
Oddly, fathers were not mentioned in this mummy-centric yet mother-free universe. Back at home, meanwhile, the mothers moaned with that Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal look - pools of sorrow in limpid eyes. They had lost their offspring after only eight years. It's bad enough 10 years later when they clear off to university. Eight is a childhood gone.
Keeping busy, one mother briskly walked her dog. No threat of kennels: we are always kinder to animals. Brief reunions revealed mothers' hugs and fears; children's tugs and tears. And if the parents suffered more than their kids, we felt it served them right.
There were more tears on Piers Morgan's Life Stories: Gordon Brown (ITV1). Alastair Campbell was close to tears on the Andrew Marr Show because the playground bullies keep teasing his mate, Tony, about Iraq. So would old Growly Jowly copy the spin supremo's mix of sneers, tears and smears?
For this was I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Back in Here - here being Number 10. Every insult made about him was re-heated and served up by Morgan. "I've gotta get better," joked the Prime Minister as his mistakes and social ineptness were paraded like a game of pinning the tail on the donkey at a children's party. The audience laughed and the opinion polls remained obstinately static.
Time to show emotion; on cue, the Prime Minister revealed his agonies as a parent facing the death of his baby daughter, perhaps copying David Cameron who does the same routine about his son.
The camera repeatedly panned to Sarah Brown in the audience. Why was she not by his side? I may have forgotten how to teach drama, but I can remember this cheap trick heightens the focus.
If the Prime Minister was completing his self-evaluation form for Ofsted on his performance and his government's, too, I wonder what grades he would give. Now shed those tears.
Ray Tarleton
It wasn't Dotheboys Hall. The new eight-year-olds were well looked after, offered decent meals, stimulating teaching and activities galore at Highfield in Hampshire, a top prep. But it wasn't home. Summoned to ease the pain, nurse told the little people there was no medicine for homesickness, advising them to keep busy and get really tired. My wife gives me the same advice.
Yet no amount of galloping about the stately grounds could compensate these tiny exiles who were grieving for their mothers. We used to threaten our kids with boarding school when they were particularly badly behaved. Nowadays we would be up before child protection for such cruelty.
Oddly, fathers were not mentioned in this mummy-centric yet mother-free universe. Back at home, meanwhile, the mothers moaned with that Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal look - pools of sorrow in limpid eyes. They had lost their offspring after only eight years. It's bad enough 10 years later when they clear off to university. Eight is a childhood gone.
Keeping busy, one mother briskly walked her dog. No threat of kennels: we are always kinder to animals. Brief reunions revealed mothers' hugs and fears; children's tugs and tears. And if the parents suffered more than their kids, we felt it served them right.
There were more tears on Piers Morgan's Life Stories: Gordon Brown (ITV1). Alastair Campbell was close to tears on the Andrew Marr Show because the playground bullies keep teasing his mate, Tony, about Iraq. So would old Growly Jowly copy the spin supremo's mix of sneers, tears and smears?
For this was I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Back in Here - here being Number 10. Every insult made about him was re-heated and served up by Morgan. "I've gotta get better," joked the Prime Minister as his mistakes and social ineptness were paraded like a game of pinning the tail on the donkey at a children's party. The audience laughed and the opinion polls remained obstinately static.
Time to show emotion; on cue, the Prime Minister revealed his agonies as a parent facing the death of his baby daughter, perhaps copying David Cameron who does the same routine about his son.
The camera repeatedly panned to Sarah Brown in the audience. Why was she not by his side? I may have forgotten how to teach drama, but I can remember this cheap trick heightens the focus.
If the Prime Minister was completing his self-evaluation form for Ofsted on his performance and his government's, too, I wonder what grades he would give. Now shed those tears.
Ray Tarleton
Monday, 22 February 2010
Tune in, switch off - An age old battle
I thought old age was the price paid for a long life. But longevity on the cheap was the pursuit in Horizon: Don't Grow Old (BBC Two). Apparently, the study of ageing is a young field and preventing it is probably the modern equivalent of alchemy. One scientist described growing old as like having multiple sticks of dynamite inside our bodies, all on different-length fuses. I have laid off the firey foods just in case.
Another scientist, determined to stick around for a century or two, discussed "telomere shortening". I couldn't tell my telomeres from my tonsils, but I just grasped the fact that you need long telomeres for longevity. If you need long hair as well, I'm done for.
Calorie reduction is supposed to keep mice young, so a couple of Peter Pan wannabes in their sixties, determined to clock up 120 years on earth, had been starving themselves for years. They weighed their portions and weighed in their torsos with the fierce attention to detail you usually only see at an airport check-in desk. They definitely had nothing to declare.
Their secret was a large breakfast and small lunch. Dinner was just a walk in the park. They could simply have chained themselves in a dungeon to make the torture authentic. I would rather desert the planet before dessert arrives than miss out on life's main course - a decent meal.
David Sinclair, with $270 million to invest in the search for eternal youth after selling his company, cunningly bypassed starvation pains by finding a drug to mimic the effects of not eating while still stuffing himself normally. He was taking something untested called resveratrol. I would volunteer to spread it on my fish and chips, too, if it meant avoiding radishes.
Anorexia was followed by tanorexia in The Truth about Tanning (BBC Three). If you want to forget youth and go straight for ageing, a daily sunbed will bring wrinkles and crinkles galore. Girls Aloud star Nicola Roberts, formerly tanned but now a whiter shade of pale, shone light on the pitfalls of sun exposure, urging addicts to break free.
We saw girls in Liverpool, the UK tanning capital, burning malignant melanomas into their skin in the many unregulated salons that promise beauty but deliver death. With 2,000 fatalities a year, melanomas are the fastest growing form of skin cancer. Nicola's alabaster hue was proof that, for the naturally light, white is right.
Hardcore tanner Tom dreamed of being olive skinned. Months of ultraviolet rays - 15 times stronger than the midday sun - had given him the complexion of a radioactive goldfish. Tom used injections to stay the colour of an amber traffic light. These had the side effect of causing erections. So it wasn't all pointless.
His challenge from Nicola, a sunbed-free month, sent him swigging the bottle in depression. His skin may have been in for repair but his liver was now in a toxic stew. As for his telomeres, it's probably better not to know.
Ray Tarleton
Another scientist, determined to stick around for a century or two, discussed "telomere shortening". I couldn't tell my telomeres from my tonsils, but I just grasped the fact that you need long telomeres for longevity. If you need long hair as well, I'm done for.
Calorie reduction is supposed to keep mice young, so a couple of Peter Pan wannabes in their sixties, determined to clock up 120 years on earth, had been starving themselves for years. They weighed their portions and weighed in their torsos with the fierce attention to detail you usually only see at an airport check-in desk. They definitely had nothing to declare.
Their secret was a large breakfast and small lunch. Dinner was just a walk in the park. They could simply have chained themselves in a dungeon to make the torture authentic. I would rather desert the planet before dessert arrives than miss out on life's main course - a decent meal.
David Sinclair, with $270 million to invest in the search for eternal youth after selling his company, cunningly bypassed starvation pains by finding a drug to mimic the effects of not eating while still stuffing himself normally. He was taking something untested called resveratrol. I would volunteer to spread it on my fish and chips, too, if it meant avoiding radishes.
Anorexia was followed by tanorexia in The Truth about Tanning (BBC Three). If you want to forget youth and go straight for ageing, a daily sunbed will bring wrinkles and crinkles galore. Girls Aloud star Nicola Roberts, formerly tanned but now a whiter shade of pale, shone light on the pitfalls of sun exposure, urging addicts to break free.
We saw girls in Liverpool, the UK tanning capital, burning malignant melanomas into their skin in the many unregulated salons that promise beauty but deliver death. With 2,000 fatalities a year, melanomas are the fastest growing form of skin cancer. Nicola's alabaster hue was proof that, for the naturally light, white is right.
Hardcore tanner Tom dreamed of being olive skinned. Months of ultraviolet rays - 15 times stronger than the midday sun - had given him the complexion of a radioactive goldfish. Tom used injections to stay the colour of an amber traffic light. These had the side effect of causing erections. So it wasn't all pointless.
His challenge from Nicola, a sunbed-free month, sent him swigging the bottle in depression. His skin may have been in for repair but his liver was now in a toxic stew. As for his telomeres, it's probably better not to know.
Ray Tarleton
Friday, 12 February 2010
Tune in, Switch off - Mandela and Mo make us take notice
As a teacher in Zambia in the 1970s, I came to love Africa and its people, despite occasionally experiencing the discomforting hostility a few understandably felt for their "former colonial masters", as a message on the staffroom board once described us. South Africa remained out of bounds because of its racist regime, but the landscapes were memorably captured in the location shots in Mrs Mandela (BBC Two).
A lorry chugging along a dirt road, taking Winnie (Sophie Okonedo) from her home to a grim shanty town, reminded me of the dust, distances and danger. I once took the cast of a school play by truck on such roads to perform in a village miles away. I was into community cohesion even before it was invented.
Told in flashbacks from the magic moment of her husband's release after 27 years' imprisonment, Okonedo's compellingly physical performance took us inside the painful heart of Winnie's tortured life.
During visits to Nelson's Robben Island prison, she endured de-humanising conversations with him behind a glass screen. No wonder the marriage was doomed: she would have had more chance of a relationship with cashier number three in the Post Office. And the house search harassments by the petty police were more regular than trains on the Northern Line.
David Morrissey's Major Swanepoel, a spit-spraying torturer with turbo-charged saliva glands and face like a puff adder, was only just on the right side of deranged as he tried to break her indomitable spirit during her own 18 months in prison.
He taught her hatred; she believed it liberated her. In fact, it made her the monster - abused turned abuser - who later sanctioned the murder of Stompie Seipei.
There were symbolic victories such as a Rosa Parks moment when she insisted on buying and wearing a dress from a whites-only store. It was bright yellow - the colour of the African National Congress - and you could feel power shifting through the force of her personality. "When she walks into a room the sun comes with her," said Nelson Mandela. But years clouded by brutality led to her eclipse.
Like Winnie, Mo Mowlam also brought sun and fun into any room she entered, using her personality to change history. Julie Walters' triumphant portrayal in Mo (Channel 4), screened just as Northern Ireland politicians were again locked in negotiations, reminded us how Mowlam's fearless, no-nonsense passion helped secure the Good Friday Agreement while coping with a malignant brain tumour.
Alcohol, cigarettes, swearing and sex kept her going. "Disinhibition", a symptom of the illness, meant she just got stuck in, showing Lord Trimble her suitably coloured orange knickers and telling negotiators: "No cocks on the table."
To us, Tony Blair may have been Prime Minister, but to her he was "babe". Although as she was demoted he became an expletive-blasted bastard.
Julia Langdon, Mowlam's biographer, claims that Mo was part of the Durham University drug-taking and drinking scene in the late 1960s. As her contemporary at Durham, I'm disappointed I wasn't invited.
Ray Tarleton
A lorry chugging along a dirt road, taking Winnie (Sophie Okonedo) from her home to a grim shanty town, reminded me of the dust, distances and danger. I once took the cast of a school play by truck on such roads to perform in a village miles away. I was into community cohesion even before it was invented.
Told in flashbacks from the magic moment of her husband's release after 27 years' imprisonment, Okonedo's compellingly physical performance took us inside the painful heart of Winnie's tortured life.
During visits to Nelson's Robben Island prison, she endured de-humanising conversations with him behind a glass screen. No wonder the marriage was doomed: she would have had more chance of a relationship with cashier number three in the Post Office. And the house search harassments by the petty police were more regular than trains on the Northern Line.
David Morrissey's Major Swanepoel, a spit-spraying torturer with turbo-charged saliva glands and face like a puff adder, was only just on the right side of deranged as he tried to break her indomitable spirit during her own 18 months in prison.
He taught her hatred; she believed it liberated her. In fact, it made her the monster - abused turned abuser - who later sanctioned the murder of Stompie Seipei.
There were symbolic victories such as a Rosa Parks moment when she insisted on buying and wearing a dress from a whites-only store. It was bright yellow - the colour of the African National Congress - and you could feel power shifting through the force of her personality. "When she walks into a room the sun comes with her," said Nelson Mandela. But years clouded by brutality led to her eclipse.
Like Winnie, Mo Mowlam also brought sun and fun into any room she entered, using her personality to change history. Julie Walters' triumphant portrayal in Mo (Channel 4), screened just as Northern Ireland politicians were again locked in negotiations, reminded us how Mowlam's fearless, no-nonsense passion helped secure the Good Friday Agreement while coping with a malignant brain tumour.
Alcohol, cigarettes, swearing and sex kept her going. "Disinhibition", a symptom of the illness, meant she just got stuck in, showing Lord Trimble her suitably coloured orange knickers and telling negotiators: "No cocks on the table."
To us, Tony Blair may have been Prime Minister, but to her he was "babe". Although as she was demoted he became an expletive-blasted bastard.
Julia Langdon, Mowlam's biographer, claims that Mo was part of the Durham University drug-taking and drinking scene in the late 1960s. As her contemporary at Durham, I'm disappointed I wasn't invited.
Ray Tarleton
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Classy birds and culture to boot
Since the demise of the South Bank Show, viewers with a taste for the arts may have struggled to find something in the schedules to whet their appetite
But new series The Review Show (BBC Two), promised "cultural comment of the highest order". It was so high, in fact, that I had to turn down the volume. Guests gathered to talk about Obama's first year in office and the Oscar-tipped film Precious. As American politics fascinate me, and I had already watched and marvelled at this must-see movie, I was raring to go.
Kirsty Wark had only four in her group, but it sounded like 40. Viewpoints by the volume and comments by the crate load were poured out in simultaneous transmission. I was worried the neighbours would complain about the noise. It was like one of those "rounds" in music where each singer comes in a few bars after the previous one and then sings on, ignoring everyone else.
The clips, though, would be great for teacher training. Kirsty displayed classic "how not to do it" classroom control and talked over everyone. She would have struggled to collect dinner money from them.
The panel analysed Obama as if he were a work of art. A grey-garbed Bonnie Greer sighed, almost cried over the "pointy-headed intellectual", the "first viral president" who was now "breaking people's hearts". Apparently he was never real - just "a construct". Well, he has had me fooled all along.
Novelist Harry Kunzu described the President as "a nerd" who only became human when he announced the troop surge in Afghanistan. Apparently this meant he was no longer in charge of his own destiny. The most powerful person on the planet barely human and not in control? Where does that leave the rest of us, just struggling to get through to half-term?
In between trying to keep order, Kirsty even offered her own commentary. To her, Obama was a "global counter-cultural icon". I'm waiting for the A-level sociologists to explain that to me.
Paddy McGuinness displayed marginally better classroom management in the new Saturday night "pre-pub" offering, Take Me Out (ITV1). He lined up 30 love-shorn ladies, searching for a fella in a cross between Blind Date and Fifteen to One. Lights on screens indicated female acceptance. Tom from Surrey pranced around scratching his crotch like a peacock on heat to the screams of the teams. One rejected him because his skin was too tight - a "wind tunnel" look. But his fiery saxophone performance enabled Paddy to use an extinguisher and a double entendre at the same time. Then, roles reversed, Tom turned off the lights of the girls he had just turned on. I think the show is a cultural phenomenon, too, or should that be counter-cultural? I had better check with Kirsty.
Ray Tarleton
But new series The Review Show (BBC Two), promised "cultural comment of the highest order". It was so high, in fact, that I had to turn down the volume. Guests gathered to talk about Obama's first year in office and the Oscar-tipped film Precious. As American politics fascinate me, and I had already watched and marvelled at this must-see movie, I was raring to go.
Kirsty Wark had only four in her group, but it sounded like 40. Viewpoints by the volume and comments by the crate load were poured out in simultaneous transmission. I was worried the neighbours would complain about the noise. It was like one of those "rounds" in music where each singer comes in a few bars after the previous one and then sings on, ignoring everyone else.
The clips, though, would be great for teacher training. Kirsty displayed classic "how not to do it" classroom control and talked over everyone. She would have struggled to collect dinner money from them.
The panel analysed Obama as if he were a work of art. A grey-garbed Bonnie Greer sighed, almost cried over the "pointy-headed intellectual", the "first viral president" who was now "breaking people's hearts". Apparently he was never real - just "a construct". Well, he has had me fooled all along.
Novelist Harry Kunzu described the President as "a nerd" who only became human when he announced the troop surge in Afghanistan. Apparently this meant he was no longer in charge of his own destiny. The most powerful person on the planet barely human and not in control? Where does that leave the rest of us, just struggling to get through to half-term?
In between trying to keep order, Kirsty even offered her own commentary. To her, Obama was a "global counter-cultural icon". I'm waiting for the A-level sociologists to explain that to me.
Paddy McGuinness displayed marginally better classroom management in the new Saturday night "pre-pub" offering, Take Me Out (ITV1). He lined up 30 love-shorn ladies, searching for a fella in a cross between Blind Date and Fifteen to One. Lights on screens indicated female acceptance. Tom from Surrey pranced around scratching his crotch like a peacock on heat to the screams of the teams. One rejected him because his skin was too tight - a "wind tunnel" look. But his fiery saxophone performance enabled Paddy to use an extinguisher and a double entendre at the same time. Then, roles reversed, Tom turned off the lights of the girls he had just turned on. I think the show is a cultural phenomenon, too, or should that be counter-cultural? I had better check with Kirsty.
Ray Tarleton
Monday, 1 February 2010
Cameron's daft education speech is a bedtime story
Let me check I've got this right. Her Majesty's Opposition says that when in power they would boost the status of teachers, squeeze waste out of the system and free schools from government interference. But testing these three policy positions against the statements in the Conservative Party's draft education manifesto, unveiled last week, I wondered if David Cameron had been handed the wrong speech.
Teacher status should have been an easy one for him, but his vision of a "new, noble profession" battling a "broken society" was more Harry Potter than Harry at Agincourt. Has he been reading too many fairytales to his children? Doesn't he know that the present generation of teachers is the best trained and most skilled we've ever had?
When observing lessons, I'm frequently inspired by the preparation, shared assessment with students, innovative use of technology and engagement in learning. The buzz lifts me for days. It's happening like this in schools around the country and it wasn't like this when I started teaching. I'd struggle now as a newly qualified teacher.
Like a playground bully, Cameron took a cheap shot at those with third-class degrees, promising to be "brazenly elitist" and stop our taxes from funding their training. While degree classification might influence the selection of candidates at appointment, I'm more likely to be swayed by A-level grades and the university they attended. But I know, to my shame, that this kind of elitism is deeply flawed: one of the finest teachers I ever appointed, who went on to transform the standards in the subject as head of department, had weak A-levels and a degree from the equivalent of Grimsby Polytechnic.
In any case, in 2006/07, 92.6 per cent of first-year trainee teachers had a 2:2 or above, so why the fuss? The best graduates have been coming into teaching for years, succeeding in the classroom and gaining leadership positions. Enhanced training in schools in partnership with universities, and entitlement to study for higher degrees, with opportunities for development and research, are the best guarantees of quality.
By highlighting future applicants, Cameron also ignored all current teachers and the thousands of valuable support staff. He couldn't bring himself to acknowledge their achievements. His view that "half of pupils do not get five good GCSEs including English and maths", while technically accurate - the figure is 49.7 per cent - was a miserly critique from Mr Sunshine. Moreover, the figure was 35.6 per cent when his party left office - a dramatic 14 per cent lower. We've had over a decade of remarkable progress, so why not tell the true story?
The second big policy, cutting waste, was a detail-free zone. The bold warrior chose not to say where his axe would fall. Instead of reducing waste, the Tory policy of creating a massive number of surplus places to meet parental choice would increase it. I challenge him to spice up his dull story by naming the cuts.
To be helpful, here's a proposal for him to reduce waste. Time is always a limiting factor, so why not double the number of training days each year? The savings to the supply budgets would be enormous as schools wouldn't pay twice, once for teachers and again for their cover. The cost to the Exchequer would be zero. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne could put that in his waste pipe and smoke it.
Freeing schools from Whitehall interference, the third policy, was reflected in his plan to give headteachers the "power to use their budgets to pay bonuses to the best teachers". Sound familiar? That's because we already have those powers: they're called recruitment and retention points. If teachers don't see them used very often, it's because of budgetary constraints. It's not the power heads lack; it's the funding. As for "Obama-style" financial incentives to attract more science graduates into teaching, we got there before the Americans with our "golden hellos" and bursaries for shortage subjects. It's already happening, Sunshine.
There was nothing new in the proposal to make it easier for heads to "fire poorly performing teachers". Welcome to the new Tory fantasy land. Even Ryan Bingham, George Clooney's character in the film Up in the Air, whose job is to tell employees that their company is "letting them go", doesn't ever use the "f" word. No head would want to do a Bingham or behave like Alan Sugar on The Apprentice. We can move quickly to help an under-performing colleague improve their teaching or, with the support of their union, reach a compromise agreement. Even Sir Alan fires only when he's been properly briefed and can prove that an apprentice has failed.
Maddest of all was Cameron's freedom-loving commitment to introduce Swedish-style self-assembly schools by allowing "anyone with a passion for giving children the best to set up a new school". Now, I can predict that's a tale that won't have a happy ending.
You know, I really do think it's David's bedtime now, everybody. So let's thank him for a lovely story and hope he has a credible script next time he gives a speech.
Ray Tarleton
Teacher status should have been an easy one for him, but his vision of a "new, noble profession" battling a "broken society" was more Harry Potter than Harry at Agincourt. Has he been reading too many fairytales to his children? Doesn't he know that the present generation of teachers is the best trained and most skilled we've ever had?
When observing lessons, I'm frequently inspired by the preparation, shared assessment with students, innovative use of technology and engagement in learning. The buzz lifts me for days. It's happening like this in schools around the country and it wasn't like this when I started teaching. I'd struggle now as a newly qualified teacher.
Like a playground bully, Cameron took a cheap shot at those with third-class degrees, promising to be "brazenly elitist" and stop our taxes from funding their training. While degree classification might influence the selection of candidates at appointment, I'm more likely to be swayed by A-level grades and the university they attended. But I know, to my shame, that this kind of elitism is deeply flawed: one of the finest teachers I ever appointed, who went on to transform the standards in the subject as head of department, had weak A-levels and a degree from the equivalent of Grimsby Polytechnic.
In any case, in 2006/07, 92.6 per cent of first-year trainee teachers had a 2:2 or above, so why the fuss? The best graduates have been coming into teaching for years, succeeding in the classroom and gaining leadership positions. Enhanced training in schools in partnership with universities, and entitlement to study for higher degrees, with opportunities for development and research, are the best guarantees of quality.
By highlighting future applicants, Cameron also ignored all current teachers and the thousands of valuable support staff. He couldn't bring himself to acknowledge their achievements. His view that "half of pupils do not get five good GCSEs including English and maths", while technically accurate - the figure is 49.7 per cent - was a miserly critique from Mr Sunshine. Moreover, the figure was 35.6 per cent when his party left office - a dramatic 14 per cent lower. We've had over a decade of remarkable progress, so why not tell the true story?
The second big policy, cutting waste, was a detail-free zone. The bold warrior chose not to say where his axe would fall. Instead of reducing waste, the Tory policy of creating a massive number of surplus places to meet parental choice would increase it. I challenge him to spice up his dull story by naming the cuts.
To be helpful, here's a proposal for him to reduce waste. Time is always a limiting factor, so why not double the number of training days each year? The savings to the supply budgets would be enormous as schools wouldn't pay twice, once for teachers and again for their cover. The cost to the Exchequer would be zero. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne could put that in his waste pipe and smoke it.
Freeing schools from Whitehall interference, the third policy, was reflected in his plan to give headteachers the "power to use their budgets to pay bonuses to the best teachers". Sound familiar? That's because we already have those powers: they're called recruitment and retention points. If teachers don't see them used very often, it's because of budgetary constraints. It's not the power heads lack; it's the funding. As for "Obama-style" financial incentives to attract more science graduates into teaching, we got there before the Americans with our "golden hellos" and bursaries for shortage subjects. It's already happening, Sunshine.
There was nothing new in the proposal to make it easier for heads to "fire poorly performing teachers". Welcome to the new Tory fantasy land. Even Ryan Bingham, George Clooney's character in the film Up in the Air, whose job is to tell employees that their company is "letting them go", doesn't ever use the "f" word. No head would want to do a Bingham or behave like Alan Sugar on The Apprentice. We can move quickly to help an under-performing colleague improve their teaching or, with the support of their union, reach a compromise agreement. Even Sir Alan fires only when he's been properly briefed and can prove that an apprentice has failed.
Maddest of all was Cameron's freedom-loving commitment to introduce Swedish-style self-assembly schools by allowing "anyone with a passion for giving children the best to set up a new school". Now, I can predict that's a tale that won't have a happy ending.
You know, I really do think it's David's bedtime now, everybody. So let's thank him for a lovely story and hope he has a credible script next time he gives a speech.
Ray Tarleton
Tune in, switch off - Have a wail of a time
My subject is opera. I know, you are thinking dumpy divas, Wagnerian vibrato and staccato surtitles, or more probably by now, Match of the Day. But it may change your life: my wife was just like everyone else until she discovered opera.
So there was no fighting over the remote control when ITV1's new reality offering, Popstar to Operastar, an incestuous child of The X Factor, made its debut. And with mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins and tenor Rolando Villazon as mentors and judges, there seemed plenty to keep us both happy.
Eight chart-topping singers attempted to perform well-known operatic arias, accompanied by a live orchestra. The idea of extending people by developing new skills is admirable. It's called education and we do it every day.
Behind the scenes, we had glimpses of the coaching. "It's just like singing in a foreign language, really," observed one contestant, recognising an aria from the Stella advert. Even the presenters were out of their comfort zone. Alan Titchmarsh looked in need of his gardening gloves while Myleene Klass was squeezed into a dress so tight she gave the impression she'd had an out-of-body experience.
Blur's Alex James stuck the right note - his only one of the evening, though - when he described opera as the musical equivalent of the pyramids. Villazon, who at least knew what he was talking about, reminded us that opera is like being alive: "The souls of the performers touch the souls of the receivers." I sat back to wait for radio contact. Come in, Katherine Jenkins.
Jimmy Osmond's karaoke-kitsch performance was silk purse music turned into sow's ear singing. Vanessa White had potential but, despite Katherine's coaching, there was still plenty of woozy, whooshy breathing. She could have been performing in a force nine gale.
Meat Loaf, mercifully judging not singing, stood to offer corny comments, fuelled by his own pizzazz. He felt Bernie Nolan was singing to the sky, so he offered to be her sky. Marcella Detroit's song was a prayer so Mr Loaf was "gonna be there to answer it". He could write soundbites for politicians.
It was about as true to real opera as a cheap plastic cloth is to fine dining, as close to Covent Garden as table tennis is to Wimbledon. This was a party game with a studio audience, like a rowdy class without a teacher; opera as pop, rather than the other way round. Waiting for the winners to be announced had all the suspense of bingo and about as much logic. The loser was Alex, who had sung like a miscast lead in a school musical.
The next night I went to watch Carmen at the cinema, beamed live from the Met in New York, and finally I experienced what Villazon meant about souls touching. If you are still not convinced, perhaps you should go back to the football
Ray Tarleton
So there was no fighting over the remote control when ITV1's new reality offering, Popstar to Operastar, an incestuous child of The X Factor, made its debut. And with mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins and tenor Rolando Villazon as mentors and judges, there seemed plenty to keep us both happy.
Eight chart-topping singers attempted to perform well-known operatic arias, accompanied by a live orchestra. The idea of extending people by developing new skills is admirable. It's called education and we do it every day.
Behind the scenes, we had glimpses of the coaching. "It's just like singing in a foreign language, really," observed one contestant, recognising an aria from the Stella advert. Even the presenters were out of their comfort zone. Alan Titchmarsh looked in need of his gardening gloves while Myleene Klass was squeezed into a dress so tight she gave the impression she'd had an out-of-body experience.
Blur's Alex James stuck the right note - his only one of the evening, though - when he described opera as the musical equivalent of the pyramids. Villazon, who at least knew what he was talking about, reminded us that opera is like being alive: "The souls of the performers touch the souls of the receivers." I sat back to wait for radio contact. Come in, Katherine Jenkins.
Jimmy Osmond's karaoke-kitsch performance was silk purse music turned into sow's ear singing. Vanessa White had potential but, despite Katherine's coaching, there was still plenty of woozy, whooshy breathing. She could have been performing in a force nine gale.
Meat Loaf, mercifully judging not singing, stood to offer corny comments, fuelled by his own pizzazz. He felt Bernie Nolan was singing to the sky, so he offered to be her sky. Marcella Detroit's song was a prayer so Mr Loaf was "gonna be there to answer it". He could write soundbites for politicians.
It was about as true to real opera as a cheap plastic cloth is to fine dining, as close to Covent Garden as table tennis is to Wimbledon. This was a party game with a studio audience, like a rowdy class without a teacher; opera as pop, rather than the other way round. Waiting for the winners to be announced had all the suspense of bingo and about as much logic. The loser was Alex, who had sung like a miscast lead in a school musical.
The next night I went to watch Carmen at the cinema, beamed live from the Met in New York, and finally I experienced what Villazon meant about souls touching. If you are still not convinced, perhaps you should go back to the football
Ray Tarleton
Monday, 25 January 2010
Tune in, switch off - Blood, guts and bore
I would rather my ghosts were Victorian scary strangers than modern-day, cheery mates to hang around with at the pub. I like Turn of the Screw-type supernatural - dark and dangerous like that chocolate which is nearly all cocoa, as mysterious as a bat flit in a graveyard, with all the cunning of a dispatch of demons. Such spirits, out to destroy a world they can no longer inhabit, have me hiding behind the curtains, screaming for my garlic tablets.
But the ghost, werewolf and vampire trio of flatmates in the return of Being Human (BBC3), are twenty-somethings, trying to live normal lives, despite struggling with their unusual afflictions. Their worries are about the next full moon, walking in parks after dark and just being dead, especially as they appear larger than life. They could be three NQTs realising what schools are like, exchanging notes on difficult classes.
Yet even off-the-wall classes seem desirable when the alternative is waking up naked in the woods with a half-eaten stag for company. Werewolf George (Russell Tovey) had a stag night to remember and he wasn't even getting married. Dancing with deer spiced up his day job as a hospital porter and there was plenty to eat. He also got to have "weresex" with a ghost, giving new meaning to the term transsexual. In today's supernatural society, even the boundaries of acceptable inhuman behaviour are shifting.
The ghost mocked George for keeping his bits covered. But George had no such modesty about revealing a fine set of werewolf teeth. I reckon he would need to get those gnashers fixed on the NHS though, as it would cost a mint to go private.
George's girlfriend, Nina, blamed him for turning her into a werewolf, too. He scratched her. That's all it took. She didn't even believe in homeopathy before her transformation. Suddenly she is bursting, more hog than wolf-like from her clothes, ready to tear out someone's throat. And she no longer wants to have sex with him. That's why the lady is a vamp.
If these were the good guys, the baddies were evangelical Christians, those clean-shaven, Sunday-suited enthusiasts that normally do door-to-door spiritual sales. Professor Jaggat and his sidekick, the cold-hearted Kemp, were determined to destroy all supernatural creatures. They engaged in violent experiments, using something that looked like the Large Hadron Collider to squeeze the blood out of their victims. I prefer the garlic cure.
As all this sounds like pantomime, I was expecting a sprinkling of vampire jokes. You know the kind of thing: "Don't let your soup get cold or it will clot." It didn't sink so low, but I rather wish it had. Where were the poltergeist punch lines, quick quips, with the sharpness of a bat bite to surprise? Supposedly a comedy drama with lots of fans, this may be "cult occult", but I found it not so much panto as pants
Ray Tarleton
But the ghost, werewolf and vampire trio of flatmates in the return of Being Human (BBC3), are twenty-somethings, trying to live normal lives, despite struggling with their unusual afflictions. Their worries are about the next full moon, walking in parks after dark and just being dead, especially as they appear larger than life. They could be three NQTs realising what schools are like, exchanging notes on difficult classes.
Yet even off-the-wall classes seem desirable when the alternative is waking up naked in the woods with a half-eaten stag for company. Werewolf George (Russell Tovey) had a stag night to remember and he wasn't even getting married. Dancing with deer spiced up his day job as a hospital porter and there was plenty to eat. He also got to have "weresex" with a ghost, giving new meaning to the term transsexual. In today's supernatural society, even the boundaries of acceptable inhuman behaviour are shifting.
The ghost mocked George for keeping his bits covered. But George had no such modesty about revealing a fine set of werewolf teeth. I reckon he would need to get those gnashers fixed on the NHS though, as it would cost a mint to go private.
George's girlfriend, Nina, blamed him for turning her into a werewolf, too. He scratched her. That's all it took. She didn't even believe in homeopathy before her transformation. Suddenly she is bursting, more hog than wolf-like from her clothes, ready to tear out someone's throat. And she no longer wants to have sex with him. That's why the lady is a vamp.
If these were the good guys, the baddies were evangelical Christians, those clean-shaven, Sunday-suited enthusiasts that normally do door-to-door spiritual sales. Professor Jaggat and his sidekick, the cold-hearted Kemp, were determined to destroy all supernatural creatures. They engaged in violent experiments, using something that looked like the Large Hadron Collider to squeeze the blood out of their victims. I prefer the garlic cure.
As all this sounds like pantomime, I was expecting a sprinkling of vampire jokes. You know the kind of thing: "Don't let your soup get cold or it will clot." It didn't sink so low, but I rather wish it had. Where were the poltergeist punch lines, quick quips, with the sharpness of a bat bite to surprise? Supposedly a comedy drama with lots of fans, this may be "cult occult", but I found it not so much panto as pants
Ray Tarleton
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Tune in, switch off - Wrap up with Wallander
There is something rather appealing about watching others battling snowy wastes when you have just been scraping ice off the car. So, safely warmed by a log fire, I shut out the weather by watching Wallander (BBC One), a gripping adaptation of Henning Mankell's novels.
The crumpled detective, played by Kenneth Branagh, spends most of his time crossing the flat, seemingly endless, Swedish landscape as if in a Volvo advert. Shot on location in Ystad, this gloom-filled morass is miles of tarmac and acres of sky - like Norfolk and the Fens. All that snow and not even a decent ski resort in sight.
But in truth, this new series is set in what passes there for summer. So that sky came with corn-filled fields, a real but symbolically slaughtered white horse and a sense of evil that oozed out of the TV set, almost extinguishing my fire.
Branagh, stubble-chinned and double-chinned, admits to feeling and looking a changed man at the end of filming, as the ghosts of the country get into his blood. If Wallander was one of your pupils, you would whisk him off for counselling at first sight of those large pleading eyes and that furrowed, burrowed grimace.
But once fixed - fixated even - on a crime, Wallander stays with his prey. "This is mine. It started with me. This is where it will end," he declaimed, with a determination matched only by his inner doubt. There was plenty of anguished questioning and slow exploration as he moved at the speed of the Eurostar in the wrong kind of snow. But when the shots were called, he fired them.
Perhaps there is something in the furniture varnish in this land of self-assembly flatpacks; or maybe it's having to repeatedly rescue his delusional dad (David Warner), who was dancing around a bonfire in his pyjamas. I reckon Wallander's special subjects on Mastermind would be misery and beating yourself up.
The double murder he was investigating was no health cure either. An elderly couple were attacked in their own home in a scene that could have been a Crimewatch reconstruction. Wallander was there in time to catch the old woman's denunciation of the culprits as "fs". He wondered if she had said "foreigners". I would have guessed differently. It sounded like the kind of language I would exclude for.
Disapproving of his daughter dating a Syrian (another f), he inadvertently triggered a racist media story that had the right-wing xenophobes reaching for their guns. Several murders later, including a dramatic killing by Wallander himself, the criminals were revealed as both foreigners and fairground workers. Did that make Wallander a racist or just good at crosswords?
This is what we might have to get used to if there is a change of government, as shadow education secretary Michael Gove plans to introduce elements of the Swedish education system here. We would soon know how easy his Ikea, do-it-yourself version of schools would be to assemble. But given the quality of the writing in Wallander, I think I would just stick to putting a Mankell novel on the literature syllabus.
Ray Tarleton
The crumpled detective, played by Kenneth Branagh, spends most of his time crossing the flat, seemingly endless, Swedish landscape as if in a Volvo advert. Shot on location in Ystad, this gloom-filled morass is miles of tarmac and acres of sky - like Norfolk and the Fens. All that snow and not even a decent ski resort in sight.
But in truth, this new series is set in what passes there for summer. So that sky came with corn-filled fields, a real but symbolically slaughtered white horse and a sense of evil that oozed out of the TV set, almost extinguishing my fire.
Branagh, stubble-chinned and double-chinned, admits to feeling and looking a changed man at the end of filming, as the ghosts of the country get into his blood. If Wallander was one of your pupils, you would whisk him off for counselling at first sight of those large pleading eyes and that furrowed, burrowed grimace.
But once fixed - fixated even - on a crime, Wallander stays with his prey. "This is mine. It started with me. This is where it will end," he declaimed, with a determination matched only by his inner doubt. There was plenty of anguished questioning and slow exploration as he moved at the speed of the Eurostar in the wrong kind of snow. But when the shots were called, he fired them.
Perhaps there is something in the furniture varnish in this land of self-assembly flatpacks; or maybe it's having to repeatedly rescue his delusional dad (David Warner), who was dancing around a bonfire in his pyjamas. I reckon Wallander's special subjects on Mastermind would be misery and beating yourself up.
The double murder he was investigating was no health cure either. An elderly couple were attacked in their own home in a scene that could have been a Crimewatch reconstruction. Wallander was there in time to catch the old woman's denunciation of the culprits as "fs". He wondered if she had said "foreigners". I would have guessed differently. It sounded like the kind of language I would exclude for.
Disapproving of his daughter dating a Syrian (another f), he inadvertently triggered a racist media story that had the right-wing xenophobes reaching for their guns. Several murders later, including a dramatic killing by Wallander himself, the criminals were revealed as both foreigners and fairground workers. Did that make Wallander a racist or just good at crosswords?
This is what we might have to get used to if there is a change of government, as shadow education secretary Michael Gove plans to introduce elements of the Swedish education system here. We would soon know how easy his Ikea, do-it-yourself version of schools would be to assemble. But given the quality of the writing in Wallander, I think I would just stick to putting a Mankell novel on the literature syllabus.
Ray Tarleton
Friday, 8 January 2010
Tune in, switch off - The doctor will see you
The nation was transfixed by the promise of a virgin birth this Christmas. How we rejoiced in wondrous anticipation of a defining moment in history. Then, on New Year's Day, it came to pass just as foretold in the Radio Times: a new Dr Who was born. And he was called Matt Smith.
If William Hartnell, the first Dr Who, had stuck around, he would be 102 by now. Though I reckon that's still far too young to play a 900-year-old time lord. Half a human century has passed which, in Tardis time, is 10 galaxy-gallivanting Doctors.
Some things don't change though and his old enemy, the Master, was regenerated specially for the holiday double bill, The End of Time (BBC One). Disguised as a hoody, he had a raging hunger, devouring chicken and burgers at a rate that made those of us in Christmas dinner recovery position feel nauseous. But he burned the calories leaping over buildings as an expert free runner.
The Master transformed himself into everyone on the planet. "I'm everyone and everyone is me," he cackled, sounding like Lord Mandelson during a Cabinet reshuffle. Cloned, he was inside everyone's head.
Ironically, David Tennant was equally ubiquitous. There was no escaping him: in programme trailers riding reindeers, Tardis in tow; playing Hamlet; revealing limited musical taste on Desert Island Discs; appearing on Alan Carr: Chatty Man (Channel 4) and then on the Big Fat Quiz of the Year. Was he battling Simon Cowell for world domination?
By the new year finale, as well as thrilling space chases, we had a Darker Who, a melancholy figure, feeling the creep of death. He railed against unfairness, confessing to companion, Wilf (Bernard Cribbins), that his regeneration would mean: "A new man will go sauntering away".
The regally robed, pedantically plodding time lords turned up, like characters from a Royal Shakespeare Company history play, complete with the feared drumbeat of time. But the White Point Star Diamond they threw to Earth looked like a bargain from the new year sales.
And the Doctor's moral dilemma: would he murder the Master and re-make time or shoot the president of the time lords? He couldn't kill either - a "geekbump" moment for true Who fans.
Old friends and monsters made guest appearances in a 20-minute epilogue where the Doctor greeted his old sidekick Rose (Billie Piper), for example, in January 2005. She didn't recognise him. Either he had not yet met her for real, or perhaps he was Christopher Eccleston then. Finally, in the Tardis, Tennant was vapourised in a burst of flames. A coolly crazy but promising new Doctor was born. It was poignant for me, as I'll get my Dr Who moment in the summer when I rip off the mask and a new master takes over my school. But no virgin re-birth for me: I plan to be the one who saunters away.
Ray Tarleton is principal of South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton, Devon.
If William Hartnell, the first Dr Who, had stuck around, he would be 102 by now. Though I reckon that's still far too young to play a 900-year-old time lord. Half a human century has passed which, in Tardis time, is 10 galaxy-gallivanting Doctors.
Some things don't change though and his old enemy, the Master, was regenerated specially for the holiday double bill, The End of Time (BBC One). Disguised as a hoody, he had a raging hunger, devouring chicken and burgers at a rate that made those of us in Christmas dinner recovery position feel nauseous. But he burned the calories leaping over buildings as an expert free runner.
The Master transformed himself into everyone on the planet. "I'm everyone and everyone is me," he cackled, sounding like Lord Mandelson during a Cabinet reshuffle. Cloned, he was inside everyone's head.
Ironically, David Tennant was equally ubiquitous. There was no escaping him: in programme trailers riding reindeers, Tardis in tow; playing Hamlet; revealing limited musical taste on Desert Island Discs; appearing on Alan Carr: Chatty Man (Channel 4) and then on the Big Fat Quiz of the Year. Was he battling Simon Cowell for world domination?
By the new year finale, as well as thrilling space chases, we had a Darker Who, a melancholy figure, feeling the creep of death. He railed against unfairness, confessing to companion, Wilf (Bernard Cribbins), that his regeneration would mean: "A new man will go sauntering away".
The regally robed, pedantically plodding time lords turned up, like characters from a Royal Shakespeare Company history play, complete with the feared drumbeat of time. But the White Point Star Diamond they threw to Earth looked like a bargain from the new year sales.
And the Doctor's moral dilemma: would he murder the Master and re-make time or shoot the president of the time lords? He couldn't kill either - a "geekbump" moment for true Who fans.
Old friends and monsters made guest appearances in a 20-minute epilogue where the Doctor greeted his old sidekick Rose (Billie Piper), for example, in January 2005. She didn't recognise him. Either he had not yet met her for real, or perhaps he was Christopher Eccleston then. Finally, in the Tardis, Tennant was vapourised in a burst of flames. A coolly crazy but promising new Doctor was born. It was poignant for me, as I'll get my Dr Who moment in the summer when I rip off the mask and a new master takes over my school. But no virgin re-birth for me: I plan to be the one who saunters away.
Ray Tarleton is principal of South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton, Devon.
Monday, 4 January 2010
Tune in, switch off - Shows are snow joke
During my end-of-term clear out, I skimmed through a year of "Tune in" columns to find my favourites.
My drama pick would be The Street (ITV 1). Jimmy McGovern's ground-breaking series about the social problems in a single postcode made me worry about the catchment school. If the adults had troubling coping with handicaps, disfigurement, alcoholism and poverty, what about the children? For, as we know, there are no problem pupils, only problem parents.
The solution for youngsters in postcodes such as this is not to change their school, but, sadly, to find new homes. There is even a science to prove it, though it's called sociology.
Occupation (BBC One) was another of my highlights, conveying the horrors of the Iraq invasion and its aftermath-wrecked lives and broken bodies. Damnation for the politicians responsible might be to spend eternity watching it. And weeping.
Rap ringing, a kind of verbal skateboarding, took off in our school last term, based on Smithy's affectionate messages to his bosom friend in Gavin and Stacey (BBC One, pictured), one of my comedy highlights. But if I had Smithy stalking me, I would change my phone. The programme came back for a final series with Wales playing Essex at home and that contradiction in fiction, the credible stereotype. The two leads in love may be as boring as a bridal boutique during the new year sales, but the other characters were foible-filled and fallible.
Another comedy masterpiece, The Thick of It (BBC Two) kept me howling at insults that always seemed to involve surgical amputation and the re-stitching of organs in unsuitable places. That's if they had not been turned into decorative objects. Tucker may have lost it advising a collapsing Government, but he might yet find a post turning around failing schools. Imagine the scene in the staffroom next week if he turned up. Actually, he would never pass a safeguarding test.
My comedy favourite of 2009 was The Big Bang Theory (Channel 4). Super-geek Sheldon made even the aliens from Dr Who seem normal. He is such a phenomenal physicist, he would scoop all the points on University Challenge. In one episode he provided the scientific explanation for my anxiety at Christmas, explaining that presents were just obligations to be re-paid. Well I'm doing mine tomorrow at the exchange counter in M&S.
The best information programme last year was The Sex Education Show vs Pornography (Channel 4). I watched it every night for a week to write about it and so could even pretend I was working. Seriously, we need more bold campaigns like this to help us with health drives.
The Apprentice (BBC One) gets my vote for best TV reality show. Sir Alan looks soft compared with Tucker, especially now he is in Government. Still, my new year prediction is that the elevation of TV hosts won't catch on so Ant and Dec, Simon Cowell and the rest needn't hold their breath. Happy new season's viewing
Ray Tarleton
My drama pick would be The Street (ITV 1). Jimmy McGovern's ground-breaking series about the social problems in a single postcode made me worry about the catchment school. If the adults had troubling coping with handicaps, disfigurement, alcoholism and poverty, what about the children? For, as we know, there are no problem pupils, only problem parents.
The solution for youngsters in postcodes such as this is not to change their school, but, sadly, to find new homes. There is even a science to prove it, though it's called sociology.
Occupation (BBC One) was another of my highlights, conveying the horrors of the Iraq invasion and its aftermath-wrecked lives and broken bodies. Damnation for the politicians responsible might be to spend eternity watching it. And weeping.
Rap ringing, a kind of verbal skateboarding, took off in our school last term, based on Smithy's affectionate messages to his bosom friend in Gavin and Stacey (BBC One, pictured), one of my comedy highlights. But if I had Smithy stalking me, I would change my phone. The programme came back for a final series with Wales playing Essex at home and that contradiction in fiction, the credible stereotype. The two leads in love may be as boring as a bridal boutique during the new year sales, but the other characters were foible-filled and fallible.
Another comedy masterpiece, The Thick of It (BBC Two) kept me howling at insults that always seemed to involve surgical amputation and the re-stitching of organs in unsuitable places. That's if they had not been turned into decorative objects. Tucker may have lost it advising a collapsing Government, but he might yet find a post turning around failing schools. Imagine the scene in the staffroom next week if he turned up. Actually, he would never pass a safeguarding test.
My comedy favourite of 2009 was The Big Bang Theory (Channel 4). Super-geek Sheldon made even the aliens from Dr Who seem normal. He is such a phenomenal physicist, he would scoop all the points on University Challenge. In one episode he provided the scientific explanation for my anxiety at Christmas, explaining that presents were just obligations to be re-paid. Well I'm doing mine tomorrow at the exchange counter in M&S.
The best information programme last year was The Sex Education Show vs Pornography (Channel 4). I watched it every night for a week to write about it and so could even pretend I was working. Seriously, we need more bold campaigns like this to help us with health drives.
The Apprentice (BBC One) gets my vote for best TV reality show. Sir Alan looks soft compared with Tucker, especially now he is in Government. Still, my new year prediction is that the elevation of TV hosts won't catch on so Ant and Dec, Simon Cowell and the rest needn't hold their breath. Happy new season's viewing
Ray Tarleton
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