Dream Schools.

Jamie Oliver's series Dream School was something that I avoided watching. Its premise, taking twenty pupils excluded from mainstream education and teaming them up with leading field experts as teachers annoyed me from the off-set. None of the celebrities were trained teachers, and I felt as if the whole thing was belittling the teaching profession, how difficult it is to become a teacher, how hard teachers work to reach every child in their classroom in conditions which make it a near impossible task. If most of us had a class of twenty, I imagine planning and teaching lessons would not be the same challenge it often is.
   But I did watch the last episode of the series which aired last night. By the end of the process, over half of the pupils involved in the experiment had returned to mainstream education, many of the rest to apprenticeships or training schemes. What I enjoyed more, though, was the admission of Alistair Campbell that what they were doing, and the results they were attaining, were only possible in that 'unreal situation'. Jamie Oliver added that teachers needed 'more freedom to explore what works in their classrooms'. He also summed up that what the programme had achieved, and what education should be about, was 'finding individual passions and unlocking creativity'.
   In that, I think he was right. When I signed up to teacher training, I had visions of inspiring classes, finding the most creative, fun, imaginative ways to teach languages. And I hope that, in some measure, I've achieved that. But amongst targets, observations, planning and inspections it can be very difficult to find each pupil's individual passions and unlock their creativity. And that's very sad.
    Although I disagreed with this programme, and although I still think that what it achieved is unrealistic to expect from the average oversubscribed, underfunded comprehensive, it made me think. And it made me remember what education is really about, what I want my classes to be about. It's the end of the half term break here, and I hope I'll be back at work next week. And, if I am, I'll be back there with a new determination to value each and every pupil I come in to contact with.