Happy New Year everybody!

I can happily blog again now as I am back to work and politics is back up to speed. I have enjoyed the Christmas break, although Louise was very ill over New Year, but feel that all of the Bank Holiday’s took me by surprise and I never want a finish that early again. When you finish the term in school you are really ready for Christmas, but to face a whole week of getting ready it really let me down. Ho-hum!

Back to work today, have been lesson planning for hours now. Such a rush around – I was at Earlham High School this morning at a cluster meeting for all the History Department’s in the area and saw some very impressive work being done with PowerPoint. Felt almost technologically ashamed. Then in the afternoon I attended a meeting at the Earlham Excellence Centre (what the government would like us to call a PRU) and saw how well it worked. Tim Collins, the Shadow Education Secretary, has pledge to massively expand these units and offer long-term placements for the most disruptive pupils. Everyone there agreed this was a fantastic idea, even the most socialist and liberal of teachers. We have pupils – as do all schools – who need a lot of work on their social skills and school isn’t always the best place to do that. However the EEC can only accommodate a pupil for a maximum of 3 days. At least the Conservatives are talking about 3 weeks and 3 months … we can’t change attitudes and behaviour like it were a paid of underpants, it doesn’t work like that. Meanwhile the government (now in the form of Ms Kelly) digs its head in the sand.

This evening we went to the first National Childbirth Trust meeting at the Christ Church Centre on Magdalen Road. Excellent even – a good group of 8 “parents-to-be” and we had a laugh! The men particularly enjoyed it, and there appears to be very little you can’t do with one of those plastic babies and a lot of jokes about breaking water…

However, now for me it’s back to the planning (sigh*). One last political add-on. I saw Labour’s rather feeble election posters up around Norwich tonight. We got stuck in traffic, right underneath one, and only recognised it when we came to pull off. Done in a sixties style groovy ad, it really didn’t catch either of our attentions. They’ll have to do a lot better than that come May!