AS BOXING buffs reeled from the injustice of a draw for Lennox Lewis and Europe smarted from wholesale resignations at the Commission, Britain’s teachers emerged as the unhappiest group of workers in the public sector.
A report by economists at Warwick University confirmed that job satisfaction in the classroom fell sharply during the 1990s, with the squeeze on pay having a less significant effect than constant assessment and a tougher working environment. But it also suggested that the more highly-qualified people are, the less satisfied they are with their work, perhaps because of the gap between aspirations and outcomes - so perhaps teachers are miserable because they’re too highly qualifiedI Members of the European Commission on Human Rights said that Jamie Bulger’s killers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, had been denied a fair trial because at the age of 11 they were tried in an adult court in the full glare of publicity. The ruling, if backed by the European Court of Human Rights, could force a change in the way Britain tries juveniles accused of serious crime, perhaps to the system of family courts used in other European countries.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children launched a series of shocking television advertisements, the first taste of an ambitious 20-year campaign to stop abuse of children, estimated to cause at least one death a week in the UK.
Is the Church of England going soft? It was revealed that its new Remembrance Day service had changed the words of Onward, Christian Soldiers to “Onward Christian Pilgrims, Up the Rocky Way.”
No sign of softness from the British bobby who, while on holiday, fearlessly tackled an armed robber in Central Park and was hailed as “one of New York’s finest” by the mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.
A call for American-style security guards in inner city schools was made in a new book by Martin Johnson, next year’s president of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers. Teachers should be spared the job of patrolling the corridors to concentrate on their lessons, he said.
As the National Union of Students was thought likely to lurch to the Left at this week’s annual conference, former NUS president Trevor Phillips put us all out of our misery by saying he would, after all, be standing for Mayor of London. The black television producer and TES columnist has leaned to New Labour since his student days; he even has two children at independent school.
The Prince of Wales, having caused dismay in Argentina by asking its people to live “amicably” with their offshore neighbours, decided to avoid further controversy when he visited the Falkland Islands. He was last seen, leaning on his crook, communing with the penguins.
