Gordon Jeyes, head of children’s services in Stirling, showed that jet lag need not dull a sense of humour. Within hours of stepping off the plane from San Francisco where he had attended a conference of educational administrators (somebody’s got to do it), Jeyes was giving a sparkling performance at a conference on new community schools.
Gill Robinson, one of the HMI chiefs, used text-message shorthand to make her point about the importance of a multi-agency approach to the new concept - NMP equals “not my problem” whereas the message should be IEP, or “it’s everybody’s problem”.
Jeyes was quick to recall a favoured acronym from the far-off days when he taught in Smithycroft Secondary in Glasgow - IWM, “it wisnae me”.
To the suggestion that teachers had “a bad press”, he surmised that they were not the only ones, and if there was an Olympic event for social workers it would undoubtedly be “catching the javelin”.
