I’m sure my relative quietness on education and schools recently has been a blessed relief – although for those around me it’s probably been replaced by excess chatter about Groupon deals. Anyway, for one night only I’m afraid you’ll have to endure yet more, because today was Retro Comprehensive Evangelism Day!
Having taken the morning off work, Hannah (in the @HforHannah sense) were welcomed into Latymer Upper School – as ambassadors from state school world – to talk with, and be questioned by, a group of Year 10 students. (In this we were merely following in the footsteps of other QPCSers who have done the same thing in previous years, like Marion and Miles.)
I wasn’t going to blog about the students too much, but suffice to say they were all engaged and open to discussing the whole state/private divide. Which is actually pretty brave of them, given that my aim is always to plant the idea that it doesn’t have to stay that way. You don’t have to send your own children to the same kind of institutions you were sent to – it didn’t happen to me, for a start. But it can’t be a ‘sacrifice’. We have to prove that comprehensives really can do education better, and that starts by standing up and putting a human face on a system which will never compete in power and prestige. So, yes, it was really good to speak to them – and kudos to Latymer for allowing the whole exercise in the first place.
There was a slight weird coda to the day, too. Through an unexpected work connection I ended up seeing Andy Burnham speak in Tower Hamlets tonight, and after asking my obligatory question about schools he gave a long answer which effectively summed up School Wars! Nice to know these things are all a little bit circular 
Blurry photos from the pub will recommence next post. Which may or may not be written entirely on the Tube home…
