Oh My God....

I've just re-read my recent posts and OH MY GOD, how boring are they? Very, very, would be my response.

Sorry.

The holiday seems such a long time ago that I can't remember any of the little things that made it so enjoyable and I still haven't been able to afford to get my proper photos developed (next payday, I promise). I will have a look back through my posts, I'm sure I left some notes for myself somewhere and then I'll make it all lively and smashing (or stop writing about the holiday all together).

We're back into boletines here! So, for the second time this year I have to fill in non-sensical pieces of paper and cardboard to tell my students (and/or their parents) how wonderful/awful/in-between they are. When I asked why we had to do this three times a year even though we only have two terms, I was told 'because the schools do it and the parents expect it'. Biggest load of nonsense I've ever heard. I'm damn sure that if the school told the parents that they would get two reports, one at the end of each term, they (the parents) would accept it. Additionally, the teachers would much happier, it would cost the school less and there would be less paper floating around. I'm not sure what the rationale is for how our systems work but I've got the feeling that they've just evolved that way and no-one has thought to put a stop to the proliferating paperwork. It's not even that there's so much information, it's just that we seem to have to repeat things two or three times in different places - thank god the school provides pens.

It reminds me of when I was working for the NSPCC and I had to produce weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual statitical reports. I soon realised that no-one was even looking at them (in fact when I accidently forgot to send a batch out - back in the days when everything went by post - nobody noticed). Over the next few months and years I slowly eased out the weekly, then monthly reports. Next I reduced the information in the quarterly reports and more finely targetted it to the audience. Finally I was left producing an annual report (by then computers were much more common place) which was basically written by the people who dealt with the team activities. In the end I reorganised myself out of a job - although I continued to work for the NSPCC in various capacities for many years after. Anyway the point is, most paperwork is done because someone at sometime thought it was a good idea and it hasn't been reviewed since.

Of course, I could be totally wrong about this and the system could have been overhauled recently but, somehow, I doubt it.