I would be glad if you would clarify your statement on STV this evening that, I quote, “‘The actions of the Government and Local Government along with the new deal with teachers will ensure there are more jobs next year.”
I ask as your own figures state that there will be a drop of 1057 jobs this year. Far be it from from me, as a Computing teacher, to tread on the toes of the Maths or English departments to argue numbers or semantics, but I usually associate a “drop” with a lessening, i.e. resulting in a lower number. Not an increase, as the word “more” implies.
Or, dare I say it, are you just lying to the public in a bid to gain support while you destroy our education system?
Many thanks, (etc.)
If you want to ask him yourself, he’s available at Michael.Russell.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Or more specifically, making it harder to find teaching jobs.
I’m coming to the end of my probationary year through in Edinburgh and intend to move through to Glasgow in the summer to be with Gillian and the kids. Therefore I’ve been looking for a job in the area. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naive, I know teaching jobs aren’t that easy to find at the moment. However, it seems that Glasgow Council are making it more difficult – and their methods seem purposeless.
Only one job for a Computing teacher has come up in Glasgow and I didn’t get an interview. Given the number of candidates (and I’m sure many were far more experienced than me) this isn’t a huge surprise and I’m not that downhearted about it.
What’s really getting my goat is that I inquired about being put onto the supply list for occasional work up until I can find a permanent position. “Sorry,” I was told, “Glasgow are only putting their own probationers onto their supply list”.
So, basically, to get a job in Glasgow you have to be working in Glasgow already. Let’s not take into account the fact that some of those probationers might be moving elsewhere and that some who studied in Glasgow (like me) took advantage of the “go anywhere” scheme promoted by the GTCS to fill vacancies elsewhere on the understanding we could head “home” afterwards.
The plot thickens, though, when I heard that only the best graded probationers in Glasgow would go onto their supply list. Now I’ve only heard this from one person, but it is a probationer who is within the system so I’ve no reason to doubt what they’re saying. I wasn’t aware that probationers were graded beyond “suitable”, “suitable with some extra time required” and “for the love of all that’s holy, don’t let them in a classroom again”.
So it seems that Glasgow have decided – somehow – to grade all their probationers. This applies to Primary, secondary and all subject specialities therein. It’s unrelated to any other council so there’s nothing for them to regulate against. Hence their “grading” must be completely arbitrary. Given that it’s the first time they’ve done it, it’s also unproven.
Right, so they grade all their teachers. They only allow the “top” ones onto the supply list. This assumes the aforementioned top ones don’t get permanent employment in Glasgow or elsewhere. Or that they’re not moving out of the area, perhaps as they themselves were on the “go anywhere” scheme.
Throwing in some random figures, let’s say there are 100 teachers. The top 20 get permanent posts, so you’re left with 80 who are OK ro good (or crap). 15 of these go elsewhere or drop out of teaching. Glasgow needs 100 new entries on the supply register so where does it get the space-fillers? The first 35 to apply from elsewhere, or from further down their graded list. Not the best, the first. Which means they’re not necessarily going to fill the register with anyone decent.
In addition, when a school seeks a supply teacher the local authority don’t say “here – you’re having this person”. They send out a list of potentials. The department head will then put out the feelers and seek references, official or otherwise. What “grade” they got is irrelevant.
In fact, I would expect that grading teachers would cause them to be more likely to end up skipping the supply list because – assuming a probationer is told how they’re doing grade-wise – it could be used as a “selling point” in interviews.
From what I’ve been able to find out, it’s only Glasgow that are doing this. None of the surrounding councils are bothering. Why? I have no idea. But I simply cannot figure out any actual reason for doing so that doesn’t revolve around generating paperwork and giving some council monkeys a job.
If the GTCS – the governing body for teachers in Scotland – doesn’t see fit to grade new teachers, why on earth do Glasgow Council think that they have the needs, or indeed the skills, to do so themselves?
For those who don’t know, Scratch is a programming language geared primarily at younger children. We use it with our S2 classes (around 12-13 years old) although I am aware of many primary schools who also introduce it to children at a younger age.
Frankly, after a bit of struggling to begin with, I’ve found it to be a great language. Sure it doesn’t have a solution to every problem and yes, you often have to fiddle around a lot to get it to do precisely what you want but for the level it’s aimed it, it’s a fantastic tool.
The best thing is the layout. It’s bright, clear and gives very fast results. The colour-coding of different data types makes it easy for children to spot how the programs are put together. There’s no typing necessary (other than the occasional number) as the programs are built using jigsaw pieces with code on. The pieces change shape dynamically as code is formed into loops and the like. All very pretty.
Over the holidays I spent an hour or two with Little Miss (aged 10) who was very impressed with the simplicity. She managed to create a couple of short animations on her netbook. I went into full-on geek mode and created the attached Ghostbusters game (no copyright theft intended – it just seemed like a nice name).
Use the mouse to point your gun in the right direction and the space bar to fire. There are seven levels, on each of which you have ten bullets and have to hit the ghost five times. Clear a level using exactly five bullets and you get a bonus.
You can download Scratch from http://scratch.mit.edu/ for free. There are versions for Windows, Mac and more penguin-oriented operating systems.
My ghost-busting title is available as a single file here:Â Ghostbusters (ZIP file, 2.8Mb)
I’ve just been going through the “in progress” work that the wonderful Kristian (of Loondesign) is doing for Blue Dragon‘s website. The new “Kid’s stories” page details three tales of children who have found themselves fortunate enough to receive help from the crew at BDCF. Courtesy of a discussion I was having with someone on facebook recently, the third one made me wonder – why are people in different countries, yet in similar situations, so different.
I can’t link to the story directly as the site won’t be uploaded in its new form for a week or so, so I’ve pinched the relevant section:
Hanh’s story
Hanh grew up in Bac Ninh province with her mother, Khanh. Hanh’s father walked out on her even before she was born, so that mother and daughter were homeless and had to live in abandoned houses.
When Blue Dragon met Hanh, she was 12 years old and living in a decrepit old house with no electricity or water supply. The roof had caved in and snakes infested the toilet area.
Hanh was still going to school, but her mother could not afford to pay the fees much longer. This was a family in crisis.
Blue Dragon immediately offered Hanh support to go to school, and then we set about securing land for the family and building a house that they could be proud of.
Today, Hanh is in the final years of High School and looking forward to university. Their new house is kept immaculately clean, and Hanh displays her certificates of achievement from school on the wall for all to see.
Let’s get this down to the simple facts. A family of two living in horrid conditions as a result of being left with no money manage their best for 12 years. Someone offers them help. They get a new house, the child goes to school and does well. The house is cleaned and maintained – by them – and kept as good as new.
Compare this to the UK where we have a benefits system to help people who find themselves in such a situation. Before I begin, I know that not everyone is the kind of person who will do what I’m about to rant about, but a ridiculously large number of people are.
First of all, there wouldn’t be a the 12 year wait before someone “found” them. Shortly after financial problems started, they would be able to apply for assistance. A house would be forthcoming, or at the least a flat. Their rent would be covered and assistance given to find work. Schooling is, of course, free in the UK. As a nation, we are incredibly fortunate.
Given where I lived for 13 years (Bradford) and specifically the area within it, I saw far too many examples of people who took the free house and turned it into a complete dilapidated  pit. Lawns turned to jungles, rubbish left lying, windows broken. Absolutely filthy. The simple thought being that it cost them nothing and if it got bad enough they’d just be moved somewhere else – again, for free.
Children would refuse to attend school, assuming their parents bothered to try to get them to go. Instead, they’d spend their time loitering, committing crimes and ending up as the type of people who would be demanding another house of their own as soon as they were legally able.
The only major difference is that the Vietnamese family realised exactly how lucky they were to be given a fresh start. The appreciated it and showed their gratitude in taking this gift and showing how proud they were of the house and fresh start they had been given. A home to be proud of, academic achievements to boast about and a future they could never have dreamed of beforehand.
Here in the UK, we’re so used to getting something for nothing that we take our good fortune at being born in a comparatively wealthy country for granted. We’re like spoiled children – we want everything with no explanation as to why we’re getting it. To some extent it’s human nature to take the easiest route to solving a problem but some people, unfortunately, take this to extremes. Why put effort in when you can get something for nothing?
I think this is one of the reasons I enjoyed working in Vietnam so much, and especially with the children at the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. Everyone there appreciated what was being done for them. The vast majority took this piece of good fortune and turned it very much to their own advantage through hard work and with a great spirit. They knew they wouldn’t have another chance, and that they would have led a significantly worse life if they hadn’t.
If only we could make our own citizens realise how fortunate they are in comparison.
We just “upgraded” to a BT Home Hub 3.0 after having some problems with the old version 2 which kept losing settings (including the password). It looks nice, but don’t believe the press that it’s the “most sought after router on the market” or however they worded the hyperbole. If I was shopping for a router off my own back, this is not one I’d buy.
Don’t get me wrong. Setup is simple, but it’s still rather tied down as far as configuration goes despite the extra features available with the new firmware. A few points to ask include:
Why is there only one Gigabit Ethernet socket and three 100Mb/s ones?
Why do you claim it doesn’t get as hot as the v2 when the one we have would comfortably warm the tortoise’s run?
Why is there still no wireless bridging functionality?
Why is it still branded as a hub when it’s actually a router (OK, it just niggles)?
My main issue at present, though, is down to a series of dropped connections that we traced to a missing microfilter. Not, therefore, a connectivity problem related to the router but to an upshot of it – the redirection of failed connections to a “holding page” on the router which causes a ton of problems and solves none.
If the broadband connection drops and you try to access a web page, the browser redirects to “bthome.home”, an animated graphic of the front of the router which flashes to say that there’s no connection at present. All well and good – but what’s happened to the URL I was trying to get to?
The answer is that it’s now malformed, filled fill of “%” space-fillers, pre-pended by the aforementioned “.home” domain and with a SQL-style query suffix on the end.
In other words, if I was in the middle of some transaction when the connection dropped I’d not be able to get back to my intended target once it came back up. Prior to the v3, I’d simply wait and hit “refresh” a lot. Now hitting refresh just reloads the “your connection is down” page – even once the connection is once again live.
After all the lyrical waxing regarding automatic wireless channel-hopping and smaller footprint, it would have been nice if someone has actually got some users to check the flipping thing before they shipped it. Don’t get me wrong, it works well when the broadband’s ticking over, but when your connection goes down that’s a bad time to be further aggravated by poor software design.
