Tom Bennett's School Report

'Thank you for your hard work; you're always such a pleasure to teach.' Mr King
This week the spotlight fell on Mollie in year 10, and her startlingly similar-looking older sister Charlotte. In some ways we were looking through the microscope at the same thing we always do: pupils who could do well, but for one reason or another, aren't. T'was ever thus. We focussed on Mollie though, the- apparently- very bright pupil who was on a collision course with..well, with anyone within kicking distance. As ever, I need to give some context to this blog: the real Millie and Charlotte, I don't know. All I can comment upon is the edit we're allowed to see. Still, it was revealing; in fact, this week was a particularly masterful creation from the producers, who gave us a three-act melodrama, with set-up, complication, crises, resolution, and some full-throated character arcs. And in the end, everyone learned something, and we got to see Mr Drew's socks, which HAS T…

'The Ice Cream Industry- worth a cool £1 billion a year.' Did you see what the voice over did there. DID YOU SEE WHAT HE DID?
The Apprentice has rolled back into town in its early-years incarnation. I confess to my dependence on this series. As Nick Hewer, Surallun’s Deputy Dawg mused in a recent interview, ‘We have twenty weeks of Apprentice every year- but is it enough?’ NO, Nick, IT IS NOT THANK YOU FOR ASKING, SO SORT THAT SH*T OUT PLEASE. He fancies a geriatric version, where third-agers vie against each other to build up riches on Earth, possibly at a time when they should be building up riches in Heaven. Hope springs eternal. I’d love to see a contestant (sorry, aspiring apprentice) say to Surallun, ‘Shush your mouth, sonny, I knew your father.'
Until then, the Young Apprentice. In many ways, preferable to the 18 certificate version, if only because you don’t look at them with the same mixture of despair and weltschmertz as their older counterparts. On some level you…

Off to speak at an education conference in Spain about Cyberbullying for a few days, so the Educating Essex blog will drop sometime on Monday. Unless they get 4OD in Leon in which case I am ON THAT THING. Incidentally, Vic Goddard kindly let me know that the Film Club were watching... Lord of the Rings. Of course.

Clear off, scumbags.

'Lord make me chaste...but not yet.'
St Augustine

'Sex without love is an empty experience...but as empty experiences go, it's a pretty good one.'
Woody Allen
This was the week in which a poll (ultimate truth alert!) revealed that 72% of children didn't have the chance to influence their sex education lessons at school, and 78% of them thought they should. The message is clear- let the children speak; let their views echo through every valley and over every mountain top, yea, unto the lands of Cameron and the lands of Gove. Let every classroom ring with their voices, etc etc. It's student voice again.  Save me.

"We are calling on young people to seize the opportunity to make their voices heard by telling us what they think 21st Century SRE should cover, to better meet their needs."
Jules Hillier, Brook [teen sex health charity] deputy chief executive
21st century sex and relationships? I'd love to see how that differs from the boring old 20th ce…