Contemporary issues | Bryan Rollo's eportfolio

An article published by the BBC caught my attention today, concerning pupils absences from school and the approach undertaken by one council to tackle it.

The “Get a grip” campaign was launched by East Sussex County Council which recently has faced significant backlash, and I can understand why.

The nature of the campaign can be encapsulated with one sentence “Good reasons for missing school – there are none”. This is alongside advice on “being more organised” the night before school.

In my opinion this alienates parents makes them feel like and come across as sub standard parents. The use of derogatory language will not motivate those who are guilty of not managing their child’s attendance effectively. Additionally, it could make the school and it’s staff appear more hostile and unapproachable.

It will also make parents who have always followed the rules and guidelines that the schools and local authorities set feel patronised, as if they are not being a proper parent who is not the one in control.

An overlooked issue by this campaign is those with dealing with serious and ongoing illnesses. Some children are unfortunate to have a long term health condition that makes everyday activities such as getting up and going to school considerably more difficult. This can be distressing enough for parents, and to then have a flyer sent through their door from the council telling them to “get a grip” on their child’s school attendance is far from helpful or constructive. Not the positive, friendly, approachable message we as future teachers are encouraged to promote.

One of the main issues I have with the council’s introduction of this campaign is that it contradicts one of their other guidelines; that parents should keep a child off school for 48 hours after a viral sickness bug. Parents are having to make a choice between the two guidelines. Which one are they going to break?

Don’t get me wrong I understand the reasoning behind the council’s campaign. Attendance within schools is carefully monitored and there are going to inevitably be some children in every school that have irregular and unexplained absences over the school year. However, to tarnish all parents with the same brush is not an appropriate way to deal with the issue.

In essence while this campaign is well principled and would work in theory practically this it is isolating to the child and parent and overall regressive for the future of teaching

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-41883622

in the room there were 5 groups of students, each group was issued a large envelope with unknown materials. The brief given was to create a help guide pack for students next year who have just begun university, based on any facts or helpful information that we felt would have been helpful to us when starting university that we weren’t aware of.

Each group proceeded to open their envelope and discuss what materials were available and what possible items we could create to meet the criteria of the brief. My group had a wide range of materials that allowed for various items to be created; making it relatively easy for us to meet the task criteria.

We all started to work on our items in pairs. Whilst doing this Derek walked around the room observing what each group was doing. My group were praised for the way we all worked together and the ideas we had come up with. He did this with some other groups and whilst he did comment on some of the other groups work the levels of praise were not as high as we had recieved, and one group were nearly forgotten about altogether one more than one occasion. At the time our group didn’t think much of this and continued to work on our ideas.

Half way through the exercise, Derek approached our group with a tin of biscuits and offered them to everyone in the group. I didn’t notice that he never offered any to the rest of the groups and don’t think the rest of the group did either.

As all the groups finished and begun to present their work, it slowly became clear that the two first groups had been very creative and had plenty of materials whilst the final groups were very restricted with what they were able to do by the materials that were made available to them.

Once everyone had presented their ideas Derek revealed that there was a hidden agenda behind the task; that we had all been given different materials therefore the task would be easier for some and more difficult for others. Some other groups had clearly picked up on this as their materials were considerably more basic than others and began to discuss their thoughts as the task had progressed.

Within my group there was a degree of egocentrism, as we didn’t notice the obstacles that the other groups had in achieving the task criteria as we had more core resources and more options available to us.

This exercise was relevant to us as prospective teachers, as this is something that we are likely to come across in our future careers. It enacted circumstances that are likely to occur in the classroom; that not everyone has the same opportunities, resources, and obstacles to pass. Not everyone is in the same situation, comes from the same background, or has the same prospects, It’s important for teachers to consider this and implement this in the classroom. We are going to have a room full of children from all walks of life. Whilst some may have a very stable home life with plenty of support outside the classroom others might not be so fortunate. Therefore supporting them and making them feel valued and equal to others is part of the duty of care that they aim to provide.