School : BBC2 series

[fiza]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0brj5df

 

Any Edugeekers from this MAT?

[elsiegee40]

I am kind of guessing they won't want to identify their posting names. School staff, governors and trustees all over the country will have recognised the struggles

[TechMonkey]

Was it any good?

[elsiegee40]

It demonstrated the struggles with underfunding in schools well.

 

I have concerns about some things in the programme, eg following a bullied child’s story.

 

There was a comment from a teacher at the end along the lines of “I have only hit my targets once on 5 years” that bothered me a lot. Either the targets are unrealistic or the teacher should have been receiving support long ago. Either way, my governor self wouldn’t be happy with that.

[Katy]

Interesting to watch coming from an Independent background (I was in state education up until Y6, then Independent, and I've only ever worked in Independent schools), while we don't have anywhere near the pastoral issues the school in this program has (we don't have any pastoral non-teaching staff really besides a full time nurse), there's definitely a parallel on funding albeit driven by fee income rather than what appears to be a randomly changing government funding formula.

 

Eye opener really is what they said about this "extra funding for schools" only going to small primaries, with large secondaries still receiving cuts in real terms funding.

[AlanPartridgeAhaa]

Thought it was the most accurate account of life in a state secondary that I've seen on TV. Much more realistic than the Educating... series. The harsh realities of underfunding hitting home with the middle leaders was really strong. Next week's looks interesting, beleaguered Head trying to control behaviour in a more deprived area.

[mikeprice]

I used to work in a secondary school in a VERY deprived area (the worst in the EU at the time - yes the EU - not just the UK) but it was a while ago

 

the staff issues struck home to me - at my school we didn't have things like counsellors or that many TAs - and the Deputy Year Heads did very little outside normal teaching stuff (they had only 1 or 2 extra 'free periods) but we managed to still help out a lot of kids that only had the school they could rely on.

this sort of programme really makes me emotional as I can see how we were then and how the kids were and the ones we managed to help

and the ones that we basically just passed onto the police:(

 

we had naff all in terms of money - ended up in special measure - but the kids always came first and we helped the ones we could

 

after a while a new head came (who was a d*** - quote from all other members of SMT - yes I know) and then another Head came who was amazingly brilliant and turned the whole school round for naff all money ( the d*** had spent enough for the next several years) and we found that we could suddenly help the kids even more - no extra staff - no extra time

 

amazing time - lots of stories - can't tell any of them!!

 

 

errr

 

this was supposed to be about IT funding but I got distracted - thanks for listening - need to talk about that stuff sometimes