Monday At 8:30am I attend a site meeting with builders, consultants, site managers, heating engineers, et al. They assure me our new building will be finished for September 2, but they’re constructing four English rooms, a drama studio, a music room, practice rooms, staff offices and an extension to the science lab, so I’m sceptical. I look at the boggy mess with cement mixers and dinosaur-like JCBs and wonder if it will ever materialise into the “Spanish courtyard” the architect is waxing so lyrically about. Thoughts of the Ground Force team moving in to develop the Spanish effect make me giggle to myself.
Tuesday I get a phone call from the head of art. He thinks two Year 11s are mooning on the staircase opposite the builders. I’m fuming. “Who are they?”
He coughs. “It’s a bit difficult to tell.” I send a familiar SAS-type message to the assistant head to employ our “pincer manoeuvre for the bottom of the staircase”. We meet at our rendezvous just in time to see two giggling and dishevelled Year 11s scampering along the corridor.
Wednesday The year head questions the pair. They had been taking their coursework to the science department and shared a rare aberration that resulted in their mooning. They’re given a detention so they can write letters of apology to the site manager - and their parents are told. Year 11s assemble in the hall for their leavers’ photograph. I send for the bursar while I graciously accept the proffered front-row seat. The bursar scans the pupils until the photograph has been taken. We remember the cost of airbrushing out the Churchillian gesture from last year.
Thursday The builders want the carpets chosen, and recommend hard-wearing blues. I find some Year 7s and ask their opinion. Jodie suggests “a pink one”.
Friday A police car screeches down the drive. The police dash off to the site, where a bricklayer is waving a spanner at the manager. At 3pm, the governors arrive for a meeting with the consultant and LEA officer about the next phase of the programme. Can I take any more?
Gill Pyatt is head of Barnwood Park school, Gloucester
