Field Notes

I’ve been watching some of Black Doves on Netflix. I don’t watch much telly but this series has caught me. There’s murder, and death, guilt and conscience. And then there’s the wire brush of unease that’s been scraping its quiet, sinister tune since the assisted dying bill was passed.  ‘Don’t get sentimental,’ says a seasoned assassin to a novice spy, discouraging her from going ‘back in’ to retrieve a lighter that once belonged to her mother. She goes back anyway. She’s got a hard heart, but not that hard.  It has been clawing away at me, that line - ‘Don't get sentimental’ - because contract killing is in the news, isn’t it. Can we commission some adequately unsentimental people to do some killing? Apparently the answer is yes.  I have read the narratives, the intimate accounts of pain and anguish. I have read the personal tales seeking to persuade us that it is rational, in this day and age, for us to be able to make a choice for ourselves, about when we die. We have ...

Irene is derived from εἰρήνη,the Greek word for "peace". Come on Eileen is a song by Dexy's Midnight Runners, released in 1982. There's a smell of succession in the air. Our cool young uncle died last weekend. He played with Dexy's Midnight Runners in the 80s and taught us things like the twelve bar blues in the front bedroom of my grandparent's bungalow. When Andy's album was produced by George Martin , we had to wait, late for school, to catch a glimpse of him on the telly. Now his older brother, that dad of mine, who has been labouring through the slow decline of Alzheimer's, appears to be pondering whether it's nearly time. People have started to talk gently to us about end of life care. And Marina O'Connell, the pioneering permaculturist to whose farm I moved in 2017, left us in September as well. There seems to be a turning of the sod. It is heavy going but I'm comforting myself, knowing that there are dormant seeds at the ready, wai...

There is an argument in support of the current model of Ofsted that does the rounds. Round and round it goes. It's related to the cling-on obsession of one work judgements and it needs dismantling. Amanda Spielman used it on the Today Programme yesterday when she stated Ofsted was listening to concerns "without losing our clear focus on the needs of the children and the parents." Apparently, parents "like the clarity and simplicity". In the latest round of minor, superficial concessions, the one word judgements still remain. Otherwise what would parents do? I just don’t know what they are talking about. When you think about the publication of these one word judgements , in practical terms, it doesn’t make any sense.  One thing I do know about is the experience of communicating Ofsted inspection outcomes with families - families whose children are attending the school . It's not a pleasant activity. Dear parents, Whilst we are really proud of our school I am...

I went to see my dad last week. He was nested in like a tiny bird, surrounded by pillows. He has become like a baby chick, fed intermittently, drowsing most of the time. He sings nearly constantly, drifting. Sometimes, when I sing to him, you can catch snippets coming back in quiet, meandering lines. Although at other times he sounds more like a lawn mower. He was a nightmare, my dad. He didn't like us having opinions that were different to his. He would go catatonic when he didn't like what a cashier, or a waiter or a generally helpful person said.  He'd drill us on fractions and decimals on the school run; he thought that a fun day was walking up and down a hill in the rain. He didn't talk about love. He did talk about how we had to hoover the-hall-stairs-and-landing, and get up earlier, and how we were lazy. He was also a wonder. He made the entire cast of Morph out of plasticine and did tricks where they'd appear through the bottom of his desk. He completely ste...

You can't escape the flexible working advocacy that pulses through the education airwaves at the moment. Apparently presenteeism went out with the 90s and it would be 'nonsense!' to suggest that headteachers have to be on site all the time. 'Co-headships considered' is increasingly seen in job adverts and woe betide any school that doesn't allow their staff to take PPA at home. I've seen feelings run very high around this.  'We ALL know that hours in the building are not what counts.' I've become increasingly irritated by this rhapsody to flex. Not because I don't think that we should all be working less - it's high time we re-examined the straightjacket of the 9-5 day, which is more like 7.30am-6pm in education. What grates on me is the quiet asymmetry when it comes to our approach with children. It's everywhere and it is driving me mad.  In fact, I've developed a little game. If someone tweets about flexible working, I ask wheth...

I was brought up to have a superiority complex. My father had the fortune of being born to parents who were deeply committed to their children and who worked hard to provide opportunity. They valued education highly. The son of a window cleaner, he progressed through grammar school and onwards to medical school.  ‘Just imagine,’ Dr Leek would say, ‘that the average IQ is 100. Just think of that!’ It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the science of averages. His point was that we (ie he and his academic brood of four children) were not just above average but, by golly, how terrifying it was that so many humans festered below. How did society actually function!   So imagine my daily surprise as I progressed through my twenties to find that humans are so various in the gifts and the riches that they bring to the world around them. It became a voyage of discovery that academic intellect, for want of a better expression, was a very narrow measure. The many humans that I met who...