In defence of the Headteacher

The decision to close schools isn’t an easy one, and Headteachers seem to take the rap no matter what they do. If you close, the commeteriate launch at you on BBC News24, and if you don’t then parents will queue up to attack you if things go wrong for their children. Snow Days are a no-win for any head. But this year, with prolonged bad weather, it seems that much of society is taking it out on schools, and if doing this will make the weather better!

Now Tory blogger Iain Dale has waded in and asked why if some schools can open, others cannot. It’s dangerous to disagree with Iain, but I’m afraid he is totally wrong about this.

In direct answer to his question, some schools open and some close because they are all different depending on size, location of pupils, location of teaching staff, structure of the site and support of grounds staff. But I don’t think Iain understands the ways that schools work and blaming the legal side of things is only half the problem.

Schools are not businesses – you cannot operate on a skeleton staff and everything begins and ends with the bell, not when the boss chooses it.

Some teachers will find it harder to get into school. I work 15 minutes walk away from my school, but my colleagues come in from Diss, Thetford, Lowestoft and – sometimes worse in terms of travel – small Norfolk villages. If you are late, who registers your class? Or teaches period one until you arrive? Let’s double up classes I hear you cry! Great plan – so how many rooms can cope with 60+ kids at a time? In my school we have around 6 rooms that could cope with those numbers. If you cannot make it in at all you have 5 periods of cover to arrange. Every class needs a teacher in front of it and I bet you nobody could find a supply teacher for love nor money in the last week. So the moment 6 staff are away the school is in trouble, even for the biggest High School you only need to be missing double figures are pupils will either be unsupervised or badly supervised.

So let’s assume we have all the staff in school that day. What about the pupils? If you work in a small village school – as my wife does – the majority of pupils are probably walked in by their parents. But larger primaries (like my daughter's) and all High Schools (like mine) take their pupils from a large catchment area. To give Iain some idea, my school has pupils from Yarmouth, Diss, Cromer and Swaffham. You don’t get much more travel than that. So the kids struggle in, the snow falls and come 3.30pm they can’t get home again. Trust me, on Wednesday as the snow started to fall parents were turning up to collect pupils and others were requesting they leave school early. A few years back I can remember standing on the playground at gone 5pm still waiting for parents to collect all because we opened in the snow. No teacher pushes the kids out of the door at 3.30pm and doesn’t care what happens to them then. A 2-3hr bus journey home is unacceptable for 11 year olds.

So now let’s assume we get all the teachers in, plus the kids and that they can get home okay. What kind of learning do you think is going on? A simple rule of teaching is that it is impossible to get anything done when it is snowing outside. On Wednesday my double History lesson 9.05-10.30 was going great guns; the snow started and the kids ground to a halt. Even closing the blinds didn’t work! What should we do with them? Teach or babysit?

So now let’s assume we get all the teachers in, plus the kids and that they can get home okay, and that they are learning ok. What about the times when they go outside? We can’t trap 1400 High School kids inside during break and lunch; the playgrounds are almost un-patrolable. This is your chance, as a pupil, to pelt your least favourite teacher with snow – dangerously and yes, it can hurt – and get away with it because the chance of seeing who threw a snowball at the back of your head is nil. No wonder extra staff don’t want to go outside when some petty adolescents want to get their revenge on you with no chance of being sanctioned. I have know circumstances where teachers have been hurt (snow, ice, stones inside them etc) and yet nothing can be done to redress this.

So now let’s assume we get all the teachers in, plus the kids and that they can get home okay, and that they are learning ok and that teachers are willing to do duty. Now what about the school site? My school is based around several buildings and the pupils have to move between sites. Our site team are excellent and are out from 5.30 and yet you still cannot guarantee that things are safe. Yes, I’ve known pupils falling and the parental complaints that follow. Yes, I’ve known teachers falling and all of the fall out that follows. There have been legal issues, of course, but what about the genuine health & safety issue here?

And finally there is the argument that snow falling is one of the events that kids always remember, and the chance to tabogan or sledge is one of life’s great moments. Let’s give it to them.

Iain, it isn’t as easy to say “open” or “close”; it is a myriad of factors. Every school, every Head and every teacher is aware of the knock-on impact we have. It is the toughest decision anyone can make at 6am to decide to open or close.

This is an issue nobody will ever get right all of the time, but we have to trust the professionalism of our Headteachers rather than carping on when things don’t go the way we want them. Schools are odd because although nearly all of us have been through them, very few really understand how they work. Or to put in another way,

For every parents who complains that a school is shut, there is one who is concerned that their kids are not properly supervised on a site still covered in ice.

Are web stats linked to the paper campaign?

The patron saint of blogging, Iain Dale, is often bemoaning politicans who don't take advantage of e-campaigning either to keep in touch with constituents or to get elected in the first place. With a blog (this one), a website, a regular e-newsletter and more to come I'd like to consider myself somewhere in the top half of candidates when it comes to using the net. But one moan of MPs and the like about online campaigning is there is little evidence about the actual impact it has; and a recent statistic I have come across may help to flesh this out a little.

My campaign site - www.electantonylittle.com - is run using wordpress which has a much clearer and easier stat counter than most providers. You can see on a graph how many unique visitors you have and it is therefore easier to correlate this against other campaigning activity.

If the site it linked to by another big player - either Dale or ConHome - then you get a spike in visitors. Similarly if it gets a name check in the local press or even sometimes this blog can push visitors over to it.

I don't see e-campaigning and traditional campaigning (posters, leaflets et al) as mutually exclusive and thus we spend a lot of time in Norwich South out delivering and door knocking. The website has featured in the latest leaflet which is currently being delivered.

And with each big delivery session ... yes, you get "the peak" too; so last weekend we delivered thousands of leaflets in Thorpe Hamlet, Lakenham, Town Close, New Costessey, Bowthorpe and Earlham - and yes, the site got its biggest day of traffic. Yesterday we splurged in Eaton - another spike - and today in Town Close - and, yes, a smaller but very clear spike.

Because this happens everytime we do a major leaflet drop and there being no other explanation the web stas have to be linked to the paper campaign; if people like what they read or want to know more they can go online.

So yes I believe the future of politics is online and the visitors on sites like this are increasing all the time. But many candidates will wonder how to develop an audience; and here we come to a chicken and egg situation. You have to run a good paper campaign to establish your online presence - but when you have and people return time after time, then the internet comes into its own.

100th Best Right of Centre Blog

According to Iain Dale's voting results anyway ... thanks for everyone who voted, although I am pretty sure I got such a position with about 2 votes. A kind of Norway of Blogging. One thing though, I would have liked to have seen a Conservative Party blogs list as well - would be interesting! Anyway, thanks!

Dale's Tour

Before we went on holiday I did an interview for Telegraph TV, interview by Iain Dale - you can see the result below. A lot of the interview dwelled on my age, my profession and the rise of the Conservatives in Norwich. Being in my 20s and teaching at a state school have never really occurred to me as marking me out from other candidates, but this has made me think again. CCHQ are doing a lot to diversify according to sex and ethnic origin; but why aren't we doing more to bring in, for example, candidates with an experience of working in the public services such as teachers, doctors, nurses or ambulance drivers? Cameron says he wants a party that looks like modern Britain; so do I, but do we only judge ourselves by our sex, sexuality or colour of our skin? Diversity is - well - a bit more diverse than that.

Iain Dale is Human

The wonderful Iain Dale's Diary, probably the most readable and important Tory blog going, is fast becoming an all-in-one, one-stop-shop Iain Dale website; promoting the many facets of the talented Mr Dale, including his blogging, speeches, TV and radio work. In fact, it seems like Iain is beocming the media friendly Tory.

So it is fantastic that, on clicking to read about his writing, the first thing he does is make a spelling mistake! Thank God he's human too...

Iain is attracting a reputation as one of Britain’s most informed an incisive political writers.

Boys and Girls, Young and Old

Iain Dale has a deeply thought provoking piece in yesterday's EDP (sadly not on-line) about the trend in Norfolk Conservative PPCs. Newly selected Chloe Smith (Norwich North) got a splash in the paper mainly focused on being a young candidate - she's a tender 25 years old. But the fact is that the Conservatives are a younger party now (CF has more members than its Labour and LibDem equivalents put together) and Norwich / Norfolk have a strong youth wing of the party. Also the Norfolk Conservatives have strong trackrecord of trusting their younger members with standing for parliament - I was 26 on being selected for Norwich South in '04, whilst we also had 26 year old James Tumbridge (Norwich North) and 28 year old Trevor Ivory (North Norfolk). Chloe isn't remarkable beause of her age, but, as Iain points out, because of her sex. She's only the second female candidate in Norfolk for the Conservatives since Gillian Shepherd was chosen for South West Norfolk in 1983. Well done, Chloe - it doesn't matter if you are a boy, girl, young or old, Norwich North needs a Conservative.

A National Party

Thanks to Iain Dale for this important post ... the LibDems love to spread it around that the Conservatives are a southern and rural party whilst they represent the whole nation. These figures suggets otherwise, and most interesting is the results for the North of England - where there are more LibDem free zones than Tory ones! Another LibDem fib nailed there then!

Thanks Iain.

Can Iain Dale contain himself?

A sentence not often found on a blog (or anywhere else for that matter):

Good news about Hazel Blears - click here!

My top 7...

Iain Dale has tagged me to answer the blog poser - "7 best things I've done this year." I'm only allowed 7?!?! Here goes...

1. Created life - bringing Olivia into our world.
2. My first act as Councillor was to get a family in which the Mum was severely disabled re-housed from a totally unsuitable property in Clover Hill into a purpose built DDA access bungalow.
3. Proved that Conservatives can win in council estate areas ... if we campaign right, work hard enough and prove ourselves to local people.
4. Achieve the best value-added score in our department (again).
5. Change my first fuse on a plug (unbelievably so)
6. Buy a Family ticket to Wroxham Barns.
7. Set up and run the first Government & Politics course in Notre Dame.

I am now tagging Linden Parker, Iain Lindley, Antonia Bance, Gavin Ayling, Norfolk Blogger, James Cleverly and Ali Miraj.