By this time HT had his laptop out and was logging on to the schools new learning platform. If I could have emailed homework when I was that age I would have been absolutely chuffed with it. Virgin have such a magnificent range of excuses. Instead of resenting them I would have been able to use each one consecutively to the powers that were. "Sorry Miss, my USB router had a modem fault on node 124".
Governors posse consisted of public spirited chairlady, long suffering chocolate worshipping school sec, HT and deputy HT, local rev, finance guru and two other parents (both very quiet and slightly overawed dads) plus me. There are more but I guess you never get a full house (who ever won in school but complete knobs? That's a rhetorical question. Nothing is wasted). A quorum has to suffice. We don't vote on anything. I get the feeling it is unwise to volunteer. Most people, in any kind of public need that doesn't require meths, tend to light up like Blackpool if I tell them what I do for work. Just the health and safety on its own is catnip. Funny that some of the same people will privately read a Daily Mail article about Kesteven flagpole nazi's and denounce my whole profession as a bunch of worthless lackeys of the nanny eurostate (no offence) might be quite happy to cradle me in their bosom if a risk assessment for a trip to Alton Towers needs the once over. We are Persephone supervising Sisyphus in his pointless labours.
Seems the modern HT job consists of trying to supplement the school income by ingratiating oneself with various quangoes keen to give cash to schools... if they can get back muchos kudos in return. They create the nefarious criteria for this and schools simply need to decide just how desperately needy they are. Proviso's (there are many, but this is the doozy one) include the fact that said NGO, sponsor, vested interest or charity decide for themselves what you can spend it on (like the dog trainer at crufts who not only makes you jump through a hoop but wants you to decorate a dog biscuit with fondant icing before you eat it). So you can be making redundancies at the same time as getting a new pottery wheel for reception class. Perverse. Why not just fund schools as much as they need. The more needy the area the more the funding. Simple, elegant and impossible.
Much of school business is taken up, like any other committee, with the important task of stating that everything is fundamentally OK. All the people who should be doing something are doing something and they are all doing what they should be doing and all that should be being done is being done. Hurray. All the big scary stuff is clearly a long way off . That suits me. In the meantime I need to go on various training courses, suss out the lie of the land, meet the remaining governors etc. And I need to figure out how to suss out those who think the same as me (that every child should be adequately funded and sympathetically supported to their needs, taught creatively, constantly encouraged and praised, and protected and served by adults who nurture their potential as the most precious posesion the world has) and those who don't. So far I think I'm on very good turf. But there will be some who don't agree; or rather some who have wider objectives. I only want to know why they are a governor if they don't ultimately have only the pupils best interests at heart. If they have a decent explanation for why anything else is important, that may provide me with a much needed insight into the very point of politics; something that I obviously lack.
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