Katie was going to Capital City Academy‘s Open Evening tonight and I tagged along – very curious as to what lay inside that lovely new building. A little background – when I was going to Secondary School, it was known as Willesden High. A failing school, put under special measures by Ofsted, it consisted of horrible grey 60s blocks and shadowy reports of the behaviour inside.
The transformation has been incredible. It’s an absolutely amazing school inside now, growing in confidence with talent shining from the walls. Now I have issues with the ways City Academies are funded – in case something awful like this happens – but at its heart is the comprehensive ideal of a non-selective (they do select 10% at Academies but hey), high quality, mixed ability school free for everyone.
And as I’ve been arguing in the comments here the investment is needed. That school has just turned around completely, and improved countless numbers of lives. How dare the right say that the money is wasted? Maybe if they got out of their pathetic private schools and took a look around they’d see the improvements being made by this government verses the utter contempt Thatcher\Major showed towards education.
Choice in which state school you go to, choice in the type of qualifications you do, choice in individual learning styles. Meanwhile the Tories push for private schools to divide those who can afford to ‘choose’ to pay and those who can’t. They love selection by a test at 11 years old. They’re the tightwads who don’t think investing in schools is worth it, and then they crow about standards of testing when results improve.
But now the joke’s on you lot. Hahaha.
Yeah, we had an ALIS test today. (Thanks a lot, University of Durham. Don’t you have better things to do?) It’s one of those annoying IQ-type tests where you’re not given enough time to answer the questions, and even if you did have time, you have to be one of those people with spatial awareness to fold the net of a cube in your head. I may have flopped the Maths section too. Not to worry, because it’s only useful for ‘predicting your A level grades.’
Of course, the prediction could be wrong, so the easiest thing to do is ignore any predictions and just get on with the work. Which is what I’m doing this evening – as all my homework somehow built up into a little cascade tonight.
I also felt vindicated at not going to the ‘photo reading’ taster session the school ran on Friday. I strongly suspected from the start it was all a con – and from what I hear I was proved right. Hooray for sceptical thinking! And let’s try and get the words ‘con’, ‘photo reading’ and ‘Marilyn Devonish‘ into Google shall we? All together now…
For Kate Moss at least, the penalty for allegedly snorting cocaine appears to be losing your modelling contracts, rather than any kind of legal process.
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First off – kudos to Pingu for his brilliant megamix tonight. Wonderful mixing and choice of tracks… lovely way to end an evening. Thanks!
I haven’t really been doing much this weekend… although I should be off buying new trainers. One of those things that I know I have to get but I find incredibly dull shopping for and, sadly, can’t really be purchased online.
My excuse is that my debit card was lost\stolen on Friday sometime so I can’t really buy anything anyway. I got home and realised it was missing from my wallet (nothing else was though) and figured it was safer to get it cancelled straight away rather than waste time looking for it and live to regret it. Hooray for internet banking as well – so I could see nothing had been taken from the account. It’s a minor inconvenience really, and highlights one benefit of the Chip and PIN system.
I also got paid on Friday to go through some IT questions (mostly relating to spyware\adware\malware) with someone. So when I get my card back, I’ll have more to spend! (H)
Finally, at type of writing there have been no deaths reported from Hurricane Rita. Always worth repeating good news with the word ‘hurricane’ in it.
Oh and yes, as noticed already, there are a few updated graphics on the site and a slightly revamped search feature. Enjoy… (“Is is worrying that I can’t get ‘You Broke My Heart’ by what is described as the girl-equivalent of McFly – Love Bites – out of my head? I think it is”)
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
