ASSESSMENT. Bastards. I don’t usually subscribe to conspiracy theories, but someone’s clearly got it in for us. A torrent of extremely negative feedback about the Futures Delivery Taskforce has swept through ratemythinktank.co.uk. Our chart position has plummeted from 17 to 95. The only people below us are the Home Office Strategy Insight and Imagineering Workshop. And Rethinkability! - an outsourced overview consultancy that, despite the upbeat name and exclamation mark, was actually disbanded a year ago. Am I alone in wanting ratemythinktank shut down? Is there some sinister link between our poor showing and the meteoric rise of Blue Sky Nemesis? The smug, glamorous Tory think tank that, inexplicably, has gone from nowhere to Number One on the site? I am not alone, all five of us think the same. We’ve been nobbled by Team Gove. Well, revenge will be sweet in a fortnight’s time, when both teams compete in a special Think Tank mini-contest on BBC2‘s Eggheads. “Yeah, come on!” we all growl, making Tim Henman fists but avoiding eye contact.
TWEAKS. The Department has issued emergency guidelines for what it’s calling The Duration. Everyone is to remain calm and to pretend we’re not heading for oblivion next spring. Morale, that’s the priority. That’s why we keep tweaking the Departmental Purpose Statement. The latest fret is that the corporate pledge to “make this the best place in the world for children and young people to grow up” is too heightist. We think about this all the way to lunch, amending it to read “make this the place 2 B 4 peeps 2 chillax”. 10-4, daddio!
HAPPINESS. Should happiness, like education, be compulsory? The Department’s Purpose Statement says we want to MAKE children and young people happy. Er, hello? Human Rights Act, anyone? Plus we can’t enforce “health”, can we? That’s NHS outcome delivery. As for “keeping them safe and sound”, the lawyers would have a field day. Teachers can’t be expected to monitor soundness, can they? “Jake, it’s unacceptable. Three times in a row you’ve failed to complete the assignment.” “Sorry, Miss. I’ve been a bit unsound lately. It might be my diet.” “You’re telling me that you’re ... not sound?” “Yeah. Soz. OK, that’s your two pints of Kronenbourg. Anything else I can get you, Miss?”
CLASS. After lunch we remove the class from “give them a top class education” to make it more MSI, the new Departmental acronym for More Street Innit.
SPOTIFY. As for “help them stay on track”. Who are we - Dixon of Dock Green? Gandalf? Miss Hoolie off Balamory? No. Instead, we suggest distributing Spotify playlists e.g Banging Summer Sounds for Year 8. Sorted. Inchworm.
