Suffer little children

Sts Peter & Paul
St Aloysius
St Bedes
St Gregorys
St James
St Joseph's
St Mary's
St Matthews
St Oswalds
St Wilfrids

These are all schools in South Tyneside. These schools have a relationship with a corrupt foreign regime that meddles in the politics of states around the world. A regime with blood on it's hands. A regime that covers up child abuse in it's ranks.

Whilst we worry over the kids being sent off to Islamic madrassas in the Middle East and Pakistan, here at home we have schools aligned with a religion for which hate is hidden behind words like love and forgiveness and comforting phrases like 'gospel values'.

Hyberbolic? Perhaps. But this story of a 9 year-old Brazilian girl who became pregnant after being raped by her stepfather, and the response of the Roman Catholic Church is a sickening indictment of a religious authority which puts it's warped bronze age morality before humanity.

Punishing the people who saved this little girl's life with excommunication is pretty cold and heartless. To most of us, being excommunicated is no big deal. But if you believe in such shit, it's serious juju. Eternal torture in the fiery bowels of hell. How's that for a loving, forgiving deity?

The Roman Catholic Church defended it's inhumane decision as a 'doctrine of faith'. Well that's alright then.

Apart from allowing their children to be subject to the indoctrination of a hateful ideology, I wonder how many parents who send their children to these Roman Catholic schools know of this example of what the church which they trust to guide their childrens' religious schooling really thinks about children.

How many would really care?

How do they feel that a policy made by old men in dresses comes before the care of a child?


Word to The Well-Timed Period.

Bill Wilson Memorial Shield: Primary School Olympics

A worthy event to honour Bill Wilson's name - a man who gave so much to school athletics.

Aiming high

Ah, the art of spin. A super new school is ahead of schedule - despite the fact that the old school is still standing and the local residents who will be impacted by the works haven't been informed of the changed timetable.

But more worryingly, why will the new school have a frickin hair salon? Is this some new policy where students will be encouraged to keep their career expectations low? Will the economy need hairdressers and beauticians?

And I thought Mortimer's enforced dance curriculum was bloody stupid.

As long as our kids can do a jig and do their highlights then the future must be bright. I suppose we should all thank Labour and South Tyneside Council for the next generation of X Factor hopefuls.

Gone to pasture

That's the Dairy Farmers of Great Britain. That's the cooperative that is contracted to supply most of the North East's primary schools with milk.

Back in 2007 South Tyneside Green Party reported that the cooperative had stopped supplying school milk in the traditional 'third' glass bottles because its bottling machine was broken, instead supplying the milk in 'tetra' cartons. When the company decided not to repair the bottling machine, South Tyneside parents were handed an increase in the cost of milk as supplying the milk in cartons was more expensive. Essentially the council tax payer was subsidising the company's change to a less sustainable mode of milk distribution.

But this wasn't just a problem in South Tyneside - schools and parents all over the region were affected.

The loss of Dairy Farmers is seriously bad news for farmers. The loss of the cooperative will increase the power the large supermarkets can exercise over the farmers.

In hindsight, it seems like the cooperative's decision not to invest in repairing or replacing the machine may have been an indicator of much more serious financial problems within the cooperative.

Telling the truth is wrong

Fortunately, parents have subsequently managed to lie well enough to their children to convince them that Santa does exist.

That was close.

Sats static

After last week's announcement that the Key Stage 2 SATS results would be delayed due to poor management, parents all over the country have been waiting for their childrens' results. South Tyneside has been no different. However...

Some South Tyneside junior schools in the borough have used their initiative and introduced their own ways to tackle this, some having already released their Sats results. Others haven't.

For example, Boldon and Ridgeway junior schools already have passed the Sats results to parents, presumably by going through the returned papers and collating the information for themselves. But Harton junior school is holding off until they receive the electronic results and will be releasing them on Tuesday 15th July, a matter of just three days before the end of term. One day if the Unison strike goes ahead.

For children who are moving from schools like Harton Juniors to senior schools in the next term, this means that some parents will be attending parent's evenings next week without knowing what their child's results are.

Good on Ridgeway and Boldon, but it's unfortunate that this issue couldn't have been grasped at an executive level in the council to ensure a consistent approach. True, the Sats problem isn't the making of the schools or the council, but some schools have found a way round the difficulties.

The more I'm exposed to how South Tyneside administers it's education, the more convinced I become that the structure is riddled with incompetence and ambivalence.


Note: South Shields MP David Miliband's chum Scott 'Duffers' Duffy is at the helm of Harton Juniors governor's board.

Choices

I'm furious. In fact I'm livid - in disbelief at a council which studiously follows stupid and arbitrary bureaucratic rules. Logic and common sense have been abandoned.

I'm angry at a government to which 'parental choice' is fiction.

Bitter about a schools building programme which has caused a reduction in school places to a point where schools are so 'heavily oversubscribed' that people can't send their children to their school of choice.

Anyway, you get the message - I'm pissed off.

My son has been denied a place at our secondary school of choice - because we live outside the school's catchment area.

However, we live less than 400m from the school. That's about a 6-8 minute walk. That's also despite the fact that my son is leaving a primary school that is further away than our secondary school of choice and the primary school is a feeder to that secondary school. My son's best friend manages to be in the catchment area despite living over a kilometre away from the school.

The school he has been allocated, the second 'choice' on the application, is three times the distance and requires the crossing of a dual carriageway. So much for the safe routes to school concept.

It's concerning that dogmatic adherence to policy comes before an objective risk assessment of child safety.

The almost religious devotion to arbitrary lines on a map is council bureaucracy at it's most Kafkaesque. What is the point of making choices on an application form if they are just going to be ignored anyway?

Choice? Don't make me laugh.

How independent is independent?

A great post from punkscience, discussing the sinister use of allegedly 'independent' organisations to propagate the opinions of whoever is paying the cheque. This technique isn't limited to corporate 'think-tanks' or 'independent analysts' - the state isn't afraid to use a bit of the old 'independent' subterfuge to mislead the public too.

It reminded me of how our local education bodies on Tyneside were marshalled to produce a teaching resource website called 'xingthetyne' to promote the second Tyne Tunnel project. The creators of the website, South Tyneside and North Tyneside Education Business Partnerships, (along with the education departments of North and South Tyneside prostituting themselves to the cause) claimed it was to encourage student participation in democracy and citizenship. But all of the information on the website came exclusively from the tunnel sponsors, and naturally represented their views. Despite the objections to the tunnel, none of the opposition viewpoints were represented in the material.

One question was 'Why do we need a second tunnel?', instead of analysing if there was a 'need' for a new tunnel. A clear case of teaching children what to think instead of how to think. I wonder if the genius who wrote this beauty is now spending their time compiling consultation questionnaires for South Tyneside Council.

What was meant to be an independent educational resource was little more than a marketing tool to sell roads to kids and perpetuate the 'car is king' culture, and received some enthusiastic support from Labour leader Councillor Paul Waggott.

The 'xingthetyne' site now seems to have disappeared into the internet ether, apparently no longer needed now the mission to get permission to build the tunnel has been successful.

I'm now expecting the local waste partnership to sponsor a new educational resource "How incinerators are great and getting cancer from the shit they spew out isn't too bad actually."

Suffer little children

So faith schools are not only religiously divisive and teach mumbo-jumbo as science, it also looks like they are doing their best to reinforce class barriers.

It's a funny old game (1)

Today's performance on The Politics Show by South Tyneside councillor David Potts marks another entry on the ambitious Tory's media CV. Potts was on the show to condemn the planned closure of Boldon C of E Primary school. The fault was clear: "Labour's consultations [over the school closure] have been a sham" he accused, adding that "Labour's view is extremely short-sighted", and the drive to close schools came from national and "from local Labour-led authorities." Take that pesky Labour-led authorities!

Impressive stuff, and truly the voice of a strident opponent of Labour.

Well, perhaps not. Anyone watching today's Politics Show will have thought that this Councillor David Potts, hammer of Labour-led authorities, is a different Councillor David Potts to the one who prostrated himself before South Tyneside's Labour-led council to kiss the boots of Labour council leader Councillor Paul Waggott.

In the council meeting on 1st February, "Coun Potts was first to stand, and praised Coun Waggott's leadership and skill", according to the Gazette. So not only did the Tory publicly massage the Labour leader's ego, Potts was also given the dubious honour of being the first to get some serious brown nose.

To be fair, Potts wasn't alone amongst 'opposition' councillors bigging it up for Waggott: Lib-Dem Joe Abbott and 'independent' councillor George Elsom also piped up in his defence.

But let's not forget that Councillor Potts is a man of honour. "I refuse to be dragged into Punch and Judy politics", he promised, apparently completely unaware that his showpiece support of Coun Waggot is more of an Orwellian affair.

Believe what you are told

The state-appointed guardian of happy thoughts, Trevor Phillips, has issued a diktat from inside the walls of his Ministry of Harmony, which says that the Nativity should performed in schools.

Phillips accused schools not putting on nativity plays of "robbing their children of really being part of what it is to be British". Utter codswallop, and an arrogant presumption that he can dictate what he thinks are British values. Normally, as a Nu-Lab creature, Phillips is nailed to the right-wing cross of politically correctness for his views, but since this is traditional Telegraph reader territory he will be praised by the the Tory religious fundies (and probably the BNP too, 'cos he used the word 'British').

For most people, Christmas has become divorced from religion and has become a cultural rather than religious event. There's no harm in society or in education in recognising the origin of Christmas, and believe it or not, we can all enjoy Christmas without being forced to prostrate ourselves before the Christmas Taliban.

Nativity plays themselves have little moral meaning other than 'believe in this fairy tale' and most parents only enjoy them just because their own little cherub is playing a shepherd or an angel. Personally, I don't think the Nativity is very entertaining either (unless they make a version with Samuel L Jackson and a cool soundtrack).

Religion shouldn't be shoved down children's throats, particularly by state decree, and especially not at the expense of the taxpayer. If parents specifically want their children to participate in the Nativity, then church, not school, should be the place to do it.

God knows the church could do with the bums on seats.