Dept of Cushions enters the world of experimentation

06/05/2008 by April First.

Tuesday

Back after the Bank Hol and a notice appeared on the Synchronised Cost Cutting section of the staff room notice board suggesting that the first thing to be cut should be the pond. Immediately a new section on the board appeared calling for the raising of funds to save Bertram. All departments that have found ways of cutting costs in a synchronised manner are asked to donate those funds to the Bertram appeal.

Someone sent out a text message to parents using the system that is supposed to be reserved for checking where the pupils who are not in school actually are, informing them that there was a crisis relating to the school pond – but not explaining why, how, what or anything else.

The talk at lunchtime was all about the Dept of Cushions and Soft Furnishings suggesting the school system as being responsible for the demise of enterprise and experimentation.

We decided to respond by making our office a hotbed of enterprise and experimentation.  Janice changed the light bulb and I cut out an article about Blake’s 7 coming back on Sky and put it on the noticeboard.

By mid-afternoon I had taken 138 calls about the pond from parents. I told them we were trying to raise money to protect the pond and its frog from savage attacks by “certain unscrupulous departments and cushions.”

Two rather disagreeable young men arrived offering to take the pond “off our hands” and confessing after much hearty banter that it was quite possibly a site with development potential.   We told them it was rather like the head – a site of historic interest, and that anyway, all issues of this nature were handled by our agents, Quickbuild and Getout.

It is now quite clear to me that the official school secrecy policy is wrong.  The Softorque program made life infinitely easier for everyone in the school during the Ofsted inspection and allowed us to go up to the top position on most counts.   Deliberately not to tell other schools so that we get all the good pupils and our neighbours get the riff-raff is not right.   Education and is about sharing information and about co-operation. 

I sent a note to all the neighbouring schools telling that that our Ofsted triumph was down to one particular piece of software, and that for a suitable “research fee” I would be happy to pass the details on to other schools that are interested.

April First. 

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