Curriculum for Excellence clearly has the capacity to enlarge playground vocabulary, if the experience of a trainee teacher in the west of Scotland is anything to go by.
During his placement, he had been approached by a pupil after break time, looking rather upset. He said he had been bullied by some of the boys in his class. Donning his child-protectionresponsible adult hat, the student teacher asked him what made him so unhappy. “They called me an ineffective learner and a useless contributor”, the youngster replied.
He was in P6, aged 10. But we are sure there are probably some teachers who range equally creatively over the four capacities.
Foresight
Labour must believe it is already home and dry, well before the May election. What else could explain its press release towards the end of the year, hammering the Nats yet again on university funding, which read: “Labour’s Education Secretary Des McNulty said.”
Perhaps appropriately, it began: “The SNP’s credibility on education is shot to pieces.”
What’s in an initial?
In an effort to ensure good communication with staff during the snowy season, the management at Ashcraig special school in Glasgow embraced the full might of technology to keep them up-to-date with which schools were closedopenfalling down.
Using the text service within Click and Go, one message began: “Latest from council website - all Glasgow ASL schools will be.”
This was not a problem for staff whose contact was a mobile number. For those with a landline, however, it was translated by technical wizardry into an electronic voice, with the text then read back to the recipient. One member of staff was understandably bewildered to be told by her Virgin Media phone service, which uses a predictive text for initials, that “all Glasgow Ancient Sex Location schools will be.”
Getting serious
Two broadcast journalists were discussing the Big Freeze and its effects on schools. “Now,” said one, “as soon as I heard that East Renfrewshire had actually closed its schools, I knew the emergency was serious.”
Taking the Michael
These funsters who scale the creative heights to bring us the very best in merry jokes for Christmas crackers have turned topical of late.
At that splendid occasion, the EIS festive lunch for the media, one of those went like this:
Q: What do you call a man with a paper bag over his head?
A: Russell.
