Michael Gove wants performance related pay for teachers. Speaking on behalf of my fellow whinging, stress-obsessed freeloaders, I would humbly point out that this might prove tricky. It’s not that I think idlers who fail to deliver shouldn’t be roasted alive in the ninth circle of hell – I absolutely do – it’s just that Bromsgrove can’t operate like the trading floor. For example ..... let’s say that at some point during my annual fifty three weeks of holiday I prepare a half decent lesson. Unlikely, I know, but bear with me. Under current practice, assuming I haven’t gone on strike, I rock up to School in September and cascade my inspiration over all and sundry that they might secure top results for their pupils. But no longer. Not under Mr. Gove. Now my colleague is the enemy. And, like Dick Dastardly in the much missed Whacky Races, my job is to stop anybody else doing better than me. More anon.
**************
So they’ve found Richard III. I had a hunch they would. Sorry. He isn’t the first man to leave a Leicester pub car park with a reconstructed face, but this whole business has left me bereft for other reasons. You see, my historical knowledge is based entirely on the old Ladybird Books. And in one of those books (I’m talking the proper Ladybird books with the text on one side and a colour picture on the facing page) there is the terrifying image of a man in black skulking into the room where the two little princes are asleep. I don’t care if it’s not true: it’s scared me witless for years. Haven’t slept since. Leave it alone. History should be like a piece of music that takes on its own life after the artist has left us. William Tell becomes the Lone Ranger and Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto is about a grey railway station and English repression. I’ve no issues with this. Richard has actually done very well out of being misrepresented, so why should scholarship and truth wreck that now? I demand my stories back. Soon they’ll be telling me Vlad the Impaler worked for the Samaritans.
**************
Fewer goodies than usual were found in the General Knowledge entrance examination answers this year. Nonetheless, I was gratified to learn from the 11+ papers that the timpani are in the “concussion” section of an orchestra and that “Covent Garden” is “where nuns go to pick flowers.” James Bond works for King Arthur (somebody please make that movie) and Ireland is ruled from the Kremlin. Otherwise, there’s little to report from the impressive 2013 batch. Except perhaps the charming observations that among the ten largest economies of the world is that of the Hebrides and that the late Sir Patrick Moore presented The Sky At Noon, which sounds to me like a wonderfully evocative black and white western.
**************
Back to my performance related pay. It’s all relative, so if I get better results than the other bloke, I’m flush. Next day I burn my resources (once I’ve used them) and start tampering with X’s whiteboard notes when I’m covering his lesson. Tee hee. I disseminate lies and misinformation when I encounter any pupil not in my class. (“Richard III, Lisa? Did for ‘em both he did, and no mistake.”) I sabotage a top language teacher’s cassette player, replacing a French oral with a dodgy Serge Gainsbourg number, thus getting my unsuspecting rival struck off. In the car park, I slash the tyres on the away team’s coach, ensuring there’ll be no evening revision for Harrow. Finally, I offer private tutors a cut if they help get 3W’s grades up. Ming the Merciless would blush.
But in doing all of this, I’ve forgotten to coach my Hockey 3rd team, who’ve just lost to a local rival for the first time. Aaarrgghh. Pay docked. I can hear Mutley laughing.
