by Sandra Stallyon
I am refreshed, revitalised and invigorated from a short holiday with an old staff member and friend.
I visited eastern England’s premier coastal village, Tepid-next-the-Sea, to spend some quality time with Elspeth Grinder who is now head mistress of the local school there.
Ms Grinder came to me as a recently qualified Mathematics teacher in her early 20s and over the course of her first year under my head mistressship, all the liberal ideas, enthusiasm for teaching and empathy with pupils had been well and truly beaten out of her.
By the time her second year at my girls’ school came around she had been moulded into the perfect teacher – one part tyrant, one part prison guard, several parts bigot and the rest of the parts deeply anti-social.
She rose to the lofty heights of deputy head mistress under me.
Many thought her a shoe-in for my position when I retired. But Ms Grinder decided she could no longer stay at the school without my formidable and inspiring presence and took up the opportunity to move to Tepid-next-the-Sea and become head mistress at the Robert Maxwell Memorial School.
It is quite timely that I should return from Ms Grinder’s warming hospitality and villagist teaching methods to news that some schools in the brightly-lit city of Birmingham are preparing to abandon A-Level examinations.
Once again they have got it all wrong – they should not abandon exams, they should abandon the pupils.
A lesson could be learned from Ms Grinder. She announced that the main summer examinations would be taken on July 15 and arranged for all the pupils to be gathered together in the main gymnasium.
Here they were, back then, having been assembled with Ms Grinder looking suitably self-satisfied:
Having ensured all windows were blocked, the doors were bolted and the walls sound-proofed, Ms Grinder locked the pupils inside the gymnasium.
They are still abandoned inside and will remain so for the duration of the summer and will only be released in September when it is time for them to return to their studies.
Ms Grinder has arranged for the school’s caretaker – Alf Plopp – to provide rations of water and basic foodstuffs twice a day through a security hatch (apart from the fortnight he’s away on holiday himself, kite-surfing in the Ascension Islands).
This seems one of the most imaginative, progressive, intelligent and inspiring pieces of educationalism I’ve seen since I retired.
I believe it would also bring an end to the endless debate about the quality and standards of testing and examinations such as SATs, GCSEs and A-Levels.
Simply abandon the children to fend for themselves.
What greater test could they have?
Only the strong-willed will pass and by the time they emerge blinking into the real world at 18 (or 21 if I had my way), they will be prepared for whatever life might throw at them.
Congratulations Elspeth Grinder. I taught you well.
