Q As a head I would welcome advice on Christmas presents to give to my governors. Any ideas?
A Here are some suggestions:
1 A small dictionary of educational abbreviations.
2 A guillotine for their meetings.
3 A larger table to hold tabled papers. (Alternatively, a written promise that papers will be sent by post seven days in advance where possible.)
4 A home filing cabinet.
5 A cushion. For the chair, maybe a sleeping bag.
6 A hip flask or, for any known teetotallers, a foot muff.
7 Worry beads.
8 Cocoa and herbal sleeping tablets.
9 A jigsaw puzzle representing the timetable or national curriculum.
10 A Kelly doll. Always comes up smiling and the right way up, even on impact with a hard surface.
11 A calendar marking in red the evenings they are allowed to remain at home.
12 A long-range programmer to video favourite TV programmes.
13 A voucher for a school girl or boy for a day to watch these videos for them.
14 A copy of your new book (publisher Mills and Boon) Our Dark Secret: a marriage in name only.
15 Tickets to accompany 20 pupils (chosen by the staff) on a trip to a
safari park.
16 Large handkerchiefs for nativity plays, harvest festivals, etc.
17 And finally, have you thought of designing your own Christmas cards?It might for instance, show an undernourished, ill-clad child in the snow outside the school with the caption “When did you last see your mother?”
