Applause

Saying that this consultation process wasn’t adequate doesn’t actually make it so. You seem to be embarrassingly short on actual local opposition to this school you know.

Pope found to be Catholic shock!

Bears shit in woods sensation!

Local Councils make decisions without adequate consultation surprise!

It seems I need to revise my earlier comment. It would clearly be cruel and inhuman to subject someone who has led such a sheltered life like d2 to the jungle of the school playground.

Social Services should be contacted immediatly to obtain an emergency protection order for d2’s own physical, emotional and mental safety before he comes into contact with the real world.

Oh. And someone should nip down to the local chemists to get d2 a tube of gorm as he’s clearly lacking in it.

I just can’t resist referring to Douglas Adams here. Was it, in fact, located behind the traditional “beware of the tiger” sign?

There isn’t one. It’s from the French “forte”, pronounced “fort”, and means the strong part of the sword blade – i.e. the bit you want to parry a blow with. It’s pronounced “for-tay” by most people because they confuse it with the (Italian) musical term, spelt the same but pronounced differently.

It’s not? It’s just a little newsletter telling people what’s going on with the Academy project. It’s not wonderfully well written but how many newsletters are? I have to say that the “managerialism” concept rather jumped the shark for me when it was applied in the same week to a) Adam Smith’s example of the pin factory and b) the secret ballot.

Do you mean something like Summerhill? Or do you have something else in mind?

The issue of unsupervised breaks is different, but here I think that there is very good ground to believe that we have not got anything like a full picture of what they are actually planning to do.

I do think that the seeming absence of a local campaign against this school is interesting; it suggests to me that the most recent media reports about it have got the wrong end of the stick.

I wasn’t aware the planning process was meant to be the appropriate forum for the governance of education.

Given the embarassingly abysmal level of argument provided perhaps a more useful experiment would be to send d2 back to school at say Year 7 level.

He could then spend the wasted time outside the classroom regaling the kids playing 32 a side football and British Bulldog with playground level speeches on how the activities they are engaging in are as a result of a false consciousness brought about by non-adherence to Stalinist facts and pointing out to them that the 18 year olds up the road at the University College don’t need a playground.