I love how the Labour party are suggesting the retention of schools in the rock solid Labour wards.....apparently they've all made massive improvements in performance..... ..they also suggest the closuire of Hart and Elwick schools...what would they do with the land....?

exactly. hart and elwick have never had a labour councillor. surely that can't be the basis for shutting the school (and selling the land off)

but how good schools are isn't going to stop them being closed, that's the feckin point

The only thing the schools of Hartlepool are, is fewer. When Brierton closes this will be the second comprehensive closed since i left school.

SNAP

& Couldn't agree more

they would have to try very hard to justify closing two village schools, where the nearest school HAS to involve a car/bus journey to get there - and you can't exactly go sticking young infants/nursery school pupils on public transport on their own (not that there would be a direct bus link to the school in any case).
If I was a parent of a child at those village schools I would fight any closures tooth and nail. It's potentially hundreds of £'s extra travelling per year (I thought the idea was to reduce car travel in this day and age of global warming), and who's to say it won't throw the family's whole timetable out of kilter. It's not as if not sending your kids to school is an option, unless you want to pay extortionate private tuition fees.
Adjacent schools in town is one thing, but Hart and Elwick is quite another. They are exceptional cases and the education authority has no right to close them. Those folk chose village life and they should be entitled to village life in its entirety.

The only justification to close them would be if there were only something like five kids at the school - and I'm willing to bet there's not.

and before anyone says "senior schools are in the town..." the kids are old enough to get on buses by themsens then.

See what hedgeamacayshun did for me.

If the education system is so marvellous nowadays, how come the level of English I read on simple documents filled in by people who have degrees is so appalling...?
Education is sold by the education profession in a sugar coated pill form... a shiney new school and top facilities mean nothing if children in Africa taught in Corrugated shed for classrooms have a higher level of literacy in the basics like maths and English than children over here .... ?

Snowy - the simple answer is Microsoft Word / Office. Handwriting, spelling etc for most people (me included) these days is terrible because people don't write or have to think about spelling any more because all that is done for you when typing up an assignment.

of course it fookin matters. there is no struggle at either elwick or hart either to attract staff or sufficient pupils. neither are the schools needing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of repairs like jesmond road, which is also underperforming and has nearly 150 spare places

yet its only hart and elwick that are mooted for closure

break off ffrom your hovis ad reminiscing for one second and explain how that can be a good thing

So how do you know Microsoft is right...because it tells you? ... It's a bit liking announcing you're flying a Jumbo Jet to New York and you've never flown a plane before, but you can refer to the internet so there isn't a problem, if you can't master writing and spelling unaided you have a problem. How can you 'question' anything, if you let some other factor tell you you don't need to know because it has all the 'knowledge ' and will act as gatekeeper to it .... giving you what it needs to give you and becoming your memory in proxy.
p.s ...When you're 'writing' up an incident form on site as opposed to typing it up, the 'writing' needs to be legible...... you tend to find Microsoft is useless when you only have a pen and notebook, we don't all take laptops to the bog.
p.p.s.... am I talking to you or Microsoft by the way?

I was giving you the answer to your question not saying whether I thought it was right or not. i do think it is generational thing to get pissed off with the way people spell though. Does it really matter?




I cdnuolt blveiee taht I aulaclty cluod uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid -- aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are pelacd, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be in the rghit pclaes. The rset can be a taotl mses and you sitll can raed it wouthit a porbelm.



Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas thohugt slpeling was imtorpant. Just geos to sohw

Yes, it is important. and spare me the examples of some hippy educational theorists addled 'mind'.....and if you're so convinced, do all your posts in that style, but 'compose' them yourself and see how it goes, after all, it's not important....

You are also allowed marks for any trauma that happens at the time of your GCSE's i.e Death or illness... going by the ridiculous pass rates, some of them must have ethnically cleansed their family tree and the roots as well

sadly, it's probably true in big inner cities these days - they're all getting shot to death!!

The point about Catholics though, is the parents CHOOSE to send their kids to Catholic school!!!! That's their prerogative, and if they want that then they'll have to expect to travel!!!

PS if the local authority puts on special buses for the schools then they have a starting point for the argument to begin closures - but at such a young age for those pupils I would want the kids close by in case they're ill/need picking up from school quickly - and what if the bus services are axed five years down the line due to cost-cutting? By that time, the authorities can pull that one because the school they closed in the first place has long since stopped being a point of debate for the parents!! Cynical authoritarian bastards they are and no mistake - they've got it all worked out in their budgets!!

I'd like to see some of the older generation on here do the degree I've just finished and very nearly managed to gain a 1st on and then come and tell me that education is being dumbed down. As MadJohn says, some younger people's spelling or grammar isn't up to scratch as is the spelling and grammar of older people. In no way is it a generational thing.

Education is being dumbed down....there!

its not a couple of labour councillors. its in the labour group's vision for the future document that they favour closing hart and elwick schools. they have a majority on the council and a majority on the education committee. what do you think will happen when it gets put to a vote ?

I went to English Martyrs from 73 - 78 and it was pretty much a war zone. Teachers were too busy dealing with the fall out from chucking five schools into one without it seemed any planning or preparation, to do any actual teaching. Pupil support was non existent, bullying was endemic and the whole experience was pretty awful. We had a headmaster who was a complete pisshead (Father Bell) a year head who was a child abuser (Sister Gertrude) and an assemblage of teachers who were refugees from the hippies culture.

Today the same school has exceptional results and people WANT their kids to go there. People actually move house so that their kids can attend. I left school without a hint of a qualification. Why? because I hated the place that much I hardly bothered attending in the last year. I wasn't alone in that.

Now without wanting to blow my own trumpet, I consider myself reasonably intelligent. I'm able to hold a sensible conversation and contribute to debates of varying complexity. My point is that I believe that I had the raw intelligence to gain GCE's / A levels or even go on to University. The reason I didn't is that I went to a very poor and deprived school that had nothing in the way of infrastructure or student support.

For the younger readers Hartlepool in the seventies was very very deprived by the way. Come to think of it, even withstanding that, nobody ran around stabbing each other.

It took me all of 3 years to finish my degree, yet it only took you 14 minutes! Jesus, you're quick.

Hartlepool was very depressing in the 80's. I was very lucky to get a job at ICI - I was the only one from Hartlepool in the group of 20 who started together. There had been over 500 applicants from Hartlepool school leavers. One edge I had against Hartlepool pupils was I went to Durham Johnston school for my last 2 years (due to parents having pub in Durham). If I had stayed at Henry Smith's I would not have gained many qualifications as there wasn't the same determination amongst teaching staff to ensure pupil success, as there was at the Johnston. That school was driven by academic success - it was the be all and end all, and all the pupils were made to feel the same. It was a culture shock to me compared to the holiday camp that was Henry Smith's, but it served me well in the long run. Being taken out of your comfort zone and having to re-adjust your standards and expectations is no bad thing, if it improves your outlook on life and raises your ambitions.

Plus it was the first time in my life I got to fully appreciate what it meant to be a Pooly!!!! Living amongst Yakkers and posh kids from way out in the wilds of County Durham!!!
I was the only Pooly at the school!!!!
Nobody could understand why I supported Pools!!!

I got into trouble with some of the Durham kids watching the rugger once, Johnston vs Henry's when I first went there - for supporting Henry's!!!
'Cos I 'd been to school with the Henry's team and I didn't know anyone at Johnston properly!!!
They didn't like it either when I supported Rovers against Durham City!!!

I don't know if it is just an age thing on my behalf. But the teachers at the secondary school our lads have been through, St Michaels in Billingham (a Catholic school by the way), are young and keen, a large percentage of them anyway. When I was at Henry Smiths in the 60's all the teachers seemed to be old fogies, mostly waiting out for their pensions, and only some of them were really interested in our education.

In fact just thinking about it now, the Teachers I remember as being any good were for the 3 subjects I passed 'O' Levels in. Miss Ransom for Maths, Mr Grand for Geography and 'Nodder' Wilson for History. I don't remember my English Teacher, which explains why I failed (using my logic ), and only passed with a decent teacher a couple of years later while I was in the RAF.

a good teacher makes all the difference. They have all passed teaching exams and may be experts in their subjects, but if they can't put their point across very well, or give the pupils the impression that they are enthusiastic about their work and the subject matter (i.e. show an interest in both the material and the pupils, and make them believe that it's important to learn something from the experience) then the chances are the pupils won't attach any importance to either the teacher or the information he/she's trying to give them.
The best teachers aren't necessarily the ones with the most impressive qualifications - it's those who know how to make the subject matter interesting and easy to understand.

I'd agree that schools in general are better now. I left Dyke House in 1989 and at the time it was described as one of the top 20 worst schools in Britain. It was like the wild west and from my year alone there was 40+ pupils expelled. Most people just did want they wanted - fighting, stealing, graffiti, knocking off, filling teachers in, drinking in school time, smoking in class. You name it and it happened there.

A Mr Jordan took over in 1991 with the school very close to being closed down for good. It took him a few years but it ended up the second best school in the town behind Martyrs for exam pass rates. Some achievement considering the state it was in, in the 80's.

The trouble started in the 70's when well intentioned, but gullible liberals thought if you let kids have an input and 'guide' them we'll all be in in educational nirvana........... ..Kids are like dogs if you are firm but fair with them they respond, if you leave them to their own devices, it's like herding cats. Every walk of life has to have rules and rules have to be enforced as our french teacher used to say before he strapped you..... "this is .... pour encourager les autres" I never forgot that phrase and what it meant.

...and your degree is in.....?

Politics, Political Philosophy and History at Newcastle Uni.

I'd say that the trouble really started when corporal punishment was abolished in 1987. I had 2 years of school left at the time and the change in the pupils attitude was unbelievable. They knew that the teachers couldn't do a thing to them. If the teacher told them they were in detention, which was the harshest punishment at hand, they got told to fook right off. What could the teachers do?

Before that i'd had the cane once in 2 years. That was enough.

Thank f**k it wasn't one of the social sciences.... history? which period?

History wise I did modules on subjects like the IRA, the American Civil War and Anglo-Saxon England, along with a few others. I did quite a few political history modules looking at Britain, the US and Italy as well. History was my favourite of the 3, and is the reason I'm going into history teaching in September!

My favourite subject too, although the repeal of the Corn Laws in my A level history GCE paper for some reason, even to this day, does my head in.

Good point that, the ultimate sanction when I went to school was Ernie 'throat slasher' Wilcox. A man who could do with a cane what the Americans needed Enola Gay to achieve.

I concur too.

Fully.

I was at Tunstall 1985-90. Corporal punishment was made illegal at the end of my first year (summer 1986) and discipline visibly deteriorated overnight.

I'd bring it back without hesitation.

So thats it them, we really are the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade. Not that there's anything wrong with that mind you.

I'd say that the trouble really started when corporal punishment was abolished in 1987. I had 2 years of school left at the time and the change in the pupils attitude was unbelievable. They knew that the teachers couldn't do a thing to them. If the teacher told them they were in detention, which was the harshest punishment at hand, they got told to fook right off. What could the teachers do?

Before that i'd had the cane once in 2 years. That was enough.[/quote]

I agree with that!!!!

But I'm sure the cane got banned at Martyrs earlier than 1987....I'm sure I was in 2nd year so it would have been about 1984!!!! [/quote]

I concur too.

Fully.

I was at Tunstall 1985-90. Corporal punishment was made illegal at the end of my first year (summer 1986) and discipline visibly deteriorated overnight.

I'd bring it back without hesitation.[/quote]
but be honest ripper mike maxwell was deputy head then, he could scare you without corporal punishment

You'd have thought so, but he wasn't as remotely scary without the threat of leathering you with a gym shoe.

As an ex-Brierton pupil I don't think closing it is a bad thing at all. I was there from 87-92, and it sounds very similar to the older members' experiences of Martyrs/Dykey etc.

Very few teachers who were interested, drug-taking was rife, fights were an everyday occurence, and the truancy rates must have been extremely high. We were not given anything to aspire to, any worthwhile careers advice, and very few people from my year went on to do A levels and go to university. Most people went on to YTS schemes (only to be sacked off after their 2 years), a lucky handful got apprenticeships, and a fair number were already career criminals.

And at the time Brierton was not seen as the worst shcool in town. Manor, Dykey and Henrys all had a terrible reputation, whereas Martyrs and Tunny were seen as the best. The heads who took over Manor/Dykey/Henrys all show what good leadership can do in turning things round in a short time frame. I don't think anything could really have saved Brierton. if you look at the sheer physical size of the site and numbers of pupils, it was impossible to police.

My mates in the town who have kids are generally all very positive about schools - shiny new facilities or not. I would say the prospects for young Hartlepudlians are miles better than what my generation had, and aspirations are certainly much higher if nowt else.

Dibble the liberal leftie.

All I can say is I probably got the stick more than most yet never resented it. I had it coming.
Weird maybe but that's the way it was.

Same here.

Going to Manor in the early 80's, the years above us were terrible with the cane still widely used.

Most of the time I deserved it, but not every time. This was the reason I threw several chairs at Ernie Wilcox during my escape.