Oh to be a fly on the staffroom wall at the independent Hutchesons’ Grammar (you won’t find the usual adjective “leading” in these columns; the media don’t seem to know any private schools that are not “leading” or “prestigious”).
Satisfaction at the best Higher results for seven years must have been tempered by the continuing and increasingly acerbic comments listed on the parentsforhutchie.com website set up recently and reported in The TES Scotland last week, some of which were not exactly flattering about named staff.
Most of the listings on the site were written in a manner and style that would have been a credit to the school’s English department - although one former pupil displayed a more basic literary approach by describing an article on the school’s travails as “pish” and “crap” before urging readers to “ignore any of the ran-tings on this website”.
Quite.
On the same day that the school reopened, one of Hutchie’s rivals in the fee-paying sector, Glasgow Academy, inserted a newspaper plug congratulating teachers and fifth-year pupils for achieving the best ever Higher results and wishing them “every success as they respond to new opportunities in the Academy’s sixth year”.
Perish the thought that this was an attempt to influence potentially dispirited Hutchie parents.
