18 May 2016

Education. Not employment.

When I was a child, my dad was obliged to work for most of August, which meant our family holidays generally took place in May or June. We were pulled out of school en masse (there's seven of us), and returned, slightly sunburnt, a week later. The school probably complained a bit to my parents, but gave us consent to go and we didn't suffer for it. Quite the opposite, in fact. My childhood holidays are some of my happiest and most vivid memories, moreso against the backdrop of my primary school experiences.

Now, of course, this is forbidden BY LAW and also THE COUNCIL. If you take your children out of school in term time, you and their other parent can be expected to be fined £60 each per child. In my family's case, that would have meant a £840 fine, doubling to £1680 if my parents hadn't paid within three weeks. Most people don't have seven children, so for an average family with two children in school, that's a £240 fine.

Compare that to the cost of a holiday in term time vs a holiday in August. Here's a handy price comparison for a week's holiday, for a family of four. The first price is the second week of June. The second price is the second week of August. 

CENTREPARCS ELVEDEN:  £1138 vs £1878

STATIC CARAVAN IN YARMOUTH:  £173 vs £599

BUTLINS SKEGNESS: £382 vs £1234

PRIVATE COTTAGE IN ST IVES, CORNWALL: £464 vs £769

CARAVAN IN SOUTH OF FRANCE: £190 vs £1081

MAJORCA WITH THOMAS COOK INC FLIGHTS: £1506 vs £3142

LEGOLAND RESORT (two nights, midweek) : £889 vs £1121

DISNEYWORLD FLORIDA INC FLIGHTS: £2550 vs £4114 

(Prices correct on 18th May 2016, identical accommodation compared)

Suddenly, that £240 fine seems a fair price to pay for an affordable holiday. Or a tax on parenthood. Whichever.

The government have become obsessed with attendance in schools. My eldest son got sent home from school yesterday and isn't allowed to go back in until Friday because he had a small episode of diarrhoea and is now absolutely fine (and driving me mad). But every week, the newsletter tells us to send our kids to school even when they're ill, because apparently teachers will send them home if they're not well. It shouldn't be a teachers' responsibility to either judge the severity of a child's illness or to have to shepherd a load of unwell children through the day. More to the point, it should be a parent's prerogative to decide when their child is too poorly for school.

Primary schools do not employ children, yet the rules of employment seem to apply more and more to kids. Too much sickness: BAD. Too much holiday: BAD. They can't SACK the children for persistent absence, but they can persecute the parents, fine the parents, make the parents harass doctors, and take the parents to court. 

The jargon of the board room is even filtering down to the taught content. I flicked through the sample KS2 English SATs paper earlier. What is the relative clause of a sentence? What is a prepositional phrase? I don't know and I studied English Language at A Level. Do 11 year olds need to know what an antonym is? What's wrong with saying opposite? What's the active voice? What's a determiner? 
I was stunned last year when my six year old told me about split digraphs. He meant 'magic E' as taught by Wordy and Look and Read. I suppose Magic E is too rave culture for the modern Department of Education. 
Jargon is most commonly used as a signifier of special knowledge, to exclude others and exalt the group who understand it above others. A good example is medical jargon, frequently used to talk about patients without them understanding it, as well as to give status to the medical profession. After all, a fracture of the 5th metatarsal sounds a lot more interesting than a broken little toe. Jargon is frequently used in office conversation to try and improve the status of relentless administrative meetings. "Let's touch base, yeah, before the close of play" sounds like something interesting, something...productive, unlike "we need a meeting before you go home". Jargon is endemic in academia, which is perhaps part of the problem.
English is now taught to little kids in linguistic jargon. Now, there's some stuff like synonyms that don't really have a simpler form. Verbs and nouns are just that. But the present perfect tense? When parents - well educated parents with relevant qualifications - don't have a fucking clue what children are being taught anymore, then perhaps it's time to have a rethink and stop treating children like they're in higher education, or work, already.  

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