PowerPoint to Podcast

How to Podcast your PowerPoint

There are whole cohorts of people out there that are better than I am at IT. I struggle on in my own little world of wannadu for not very much money. I work in education, where there is limited money for training, not much for software and even less for hardware. Added to that, there is substantial resistance to the use of IT in the classroom.  Staff feel embattled by the constant insistence that they must make everything electronic. They rarely have the time to learn new skills, and what they do learn, often has to be applied to administrative and tracking procedures, which of course really make them feel inclined to experiment with a little forum or Hot Potatoes quiz.

All that being true, it is part of my job, apart from having to teach, mark, console and track, to try and find ways for the staff in my institution to use IT in their lessons. I also wanted to find a way of doing it that would use what staff know already, without having to learn too much that’s new. Unfortunately that is almost impossible, but I thought I would give it a shot with PowerPoint. Yes, I know, the dreaded PowerPoint. “Should we?” I hear you cry, “Should we really encourage staff to continue producing PowerPoints that are little better than chalk and talk and often a lot worse?” Agreed, but then chalk and talk has done its job for decades, and its successor is probably not going to go away for a bit. Hence, since most staff seem to have the hang of PowerPoint, how about a little sound or even a way to podcast it, a little ppt movie maybe?

I must admit when I started on this project, I thought this would be easy, and maybe the IT mega-wizards out there will give me a much better way to do this. I do know about some of the methods, things like slide share, options on the web, or options like GarageBand, that require a little knowledge of the basics.  But I also know that staff don’t download, don’t understand new software, don’t want to use IT, and don’t enjoy learning more packages, even when it is straightforward. Maybe they should, but that’s another story.

Anyway podcasting ppt is not that easy, and I still ended up having to import it into Keynote (the old Mac avenger) to export it with sound files. Ppt made silent movies. Keynote did necessitate a bit of fiddling with the timings. I must say it does bother me that the powers that be who invent this stuff, have not addressed, in a simple and effective fashion, the ability to export ppt to Quicktime. I suspect the geeks regard the ppt as women’s work and therefore not worth  the bother, or is it really that hard to do? Even then to get the thing to play from Youtube I had to import the Quicktime into Garage Band and export as m4v sooo…. uploaded here is a vodcast on how to podcast a ppt. I bet I’ve missed something, I bet it is not as easy as I think, but it might work for some who want to have a go. There’s the podcast and a pdf of slides and notes. Give it a go.

pptpodcast

To Media or not to Media?

Split Perspectives on Media Studies

I have long since given up on the idea that I will ever fit in – travel, a big mouth and a tendency to voice my own opinion has made me, at best, an interesting non-conformist – at worst – well go figure!  Moreover, taking up a career teaching Media Studies wasn’t going to provide me with an acceptable niche in the academic world either. But hey, why let that bother me? I work in FE, where my job is ensured by the number of students I have, and my main complaint is that there are too many of them.

It does seem to me though, that there is an element of schizophrenia in the media studies debate, one that doesn’t entirely reflect the evidence (a bit like the UK government’s approach to science advisory committees). Whilst employers and academics bewail the lack of rigour that media students are exposed to, those same students go and get jobs at a higher rate than almost any other set of graduates. Sally Feldman, Dean of the School of Media, Art and Design at the University of Westminster, received a comment on her article Unfair, misplaced vitriol that while Cambridge does not run undergraduate programs in media studies, you can take a PhD there in related subjects.

A couple years ago, I wrote to Geoff Parks, Admissions Tutor for Cambridge University, asking him if he really meant to exclude the brightest and the best from examining and studying the most overwhelming, and possibly powerful, element in our culture (that summer he and the LSE were cited as casting doubt on the subject). He emailed back straight away that he would not exclude those who had Media Studies A Levels, from being accepted on relevant courses, but they should apply for complementary subjects. I stuck his quote up on the wall during our college open evening. Admittedly there are some subjects that might be a bit of a reach for a media student, but that is true of any choice.

Just recently, I had cause to email another admissions tutor, this time in a US university, to ask if the AS and A Levels we teach in the UK have any credit with American universities, apparently they do (a bit) but not, she said Media Studies (at least not at her institution and probably many others). Even so, at Harvard, study of the acclaimed series The Wire (http://tinyurl.com/mediawire) gains credits, and quite right too, but how is that not media studies?

The debate rumbles on,  media hacks often claim that students of media enter the profession with unrealistic expectations – since when was that new? In my time I met many an ambitious researcher with an English degree, where are they now? Besides, as a media teacher, I spend a lot of time giving my students a reality check on how difficult it is to succeed, not least by patiently answering the question “So how come you’re teaching now Judith?” – sub-text –  “What kind of failure are you?”

The issue will not go away, at least not yet, but as time goes by (spot the inter-textual reference) the problem may solve itself. The students themselves will answer the question “Is it worth it?” by what they do, and I for one, have every confidence in them.

Creative Constraints

So on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme Robert Peston, the Jeremiah of business, interviewed to Brain Science guys at Davos (no not Davros – although I admit the words brain science and Davos do conjure up images of Dr Who). These guys have been looking at how the brain makes decisions, why is there a herd instinct in so many of us and what role does individuality have to play in our society and in the way we make decisions? They said what we already know of course. (“You need £100,000 to do that?”). They said that in times of stress some people will speak up and that the others will look to them for ideas and guidance. However their decisions will also be governed by fear and those who speak up are unusual but – and here’s the clincher – necessary. It is clear in nature that too much of a good thing leads to gloom. If we all thought the same way, like lemmings, we would be doomed. We need our creatives, our independent speakers and non-conformists. They save us from the virus of sameness that can allow us to be wiped out by the same disaster. This is the third time in as many weeks that I have heard this sentiment or something like it expressed. Recently Professor Simon Baron Cohen wrote a paper stating that the “difference” that people with syndromes such as Asperger’s Syndrome, is necessary to the function of society.  In the meantime Sir Ken Robinson has given a speech at TED that is doing the rounds of the educational universe about how schools are damaging creativity. Who knows what the future will bring, what will our students have to face in 2030 or beyond (asteroids allowing)? Whilst the bright and the original are stating very clearly that we need difference and originality, our education system, tied down by successive governments and other similar regimes across the world, are creating dependent herd-like creatures, who want to be told what to say in their essays by the nice teacher with the Powerpoint. If you suggest to groups of 16 years olds (as I do now) that they should discuss a topic, if you take a moment to refer to current events in a tangential way that is relevant to your studies, they accuse you of not teaching them properly. They want to be told the answer that will lead them to the result, they are not interested in learning for learning’s sake, they do not want to take a risk that might damage their results, and neither does government. Teachers and students are locked into a system that must hit targets and pass exams, we are locked into conformity, into churning out industry ready lemmings – who when one person shouts “panic” they all panic, and as for the individual thinker, if they’re a teacher, well obviously they’re a bad teacher, because that’s the trap that teachers are in. If you complain that you don’t like working the system, it is because you are failing the system. The only way to do it, is to sneak in a bit of originality and get the kids the results as well, but that’s a tall order and nobody thanks you for it – especially not in FE – but then let’s not get vulgar.

Dangerous Darwin

I have had the peculiar privilege, recently, of seeing two films that are about either a person I knew or a place I lived. Perhaps it’s not so unusual to see a film about somewhere you have lived, but in this case the place was Darwin, in the Northern Territory, the film Australia, but of that more later. The person I knew was Stuart Browne, who wrote a novel called Dangerous Parking, made into a film by Peter Howitt (Sliding Doors), who wrote, directed and starred in the film, I think the last role was a bit accidental, and the project was, it seems a labour of love. The film was financed by individual investors and I had been just a little richer, I would have taken a punt, because there is no doubt that it freed Howitt from the constraints of sentimentality that are often demanded of a film with such difficult subject matter, and by that I don’t mean Stuart. His novel was based on his struggle with cancer and the on the content of his life, which for much of the time, was a struggle with addiction. What makes the novel compelling is Stuart’s sense of tumour, sorry sense of humour. It is a richly funny, demanding, sharply paced novel and Peter Howitt does it serious justice. Stuart and I were friends, all too briefly, we chatted over the heads of our toddler children as we helped run a little creche that put us all on a rota. In my time off, I headed straight for the World Cafe in trendy Crouch End and read my way through the Booker list that year. When I was on duty, it was often with Stuart and we talked children, toddlers, the north Californian coast and writing. His novel was published two weeks after he died of the bladder cancer he contracted while I knew him. It would be easy to talk about Stuart, but the film says a great deal as does the book, Noah Awkright, Stuart’s character in the novel, is played with verve and committment by Peter Howitt, who does not try to be him, but somehow gets the essence of the book and thus I see the hints of Stuart. The film honours the humour, with action cut with some animation, the pace is great, the content explicit but never gross, the pain … ah the pain. It is easy to block out the idea that there is pain with cancer, when you only see the public face of the man, but the great device of the film and the novel is that it takes you beyond that, if you can stand it, and that’s probably where the freedom from the money helped. They did a great job which could allow me to segway into – not so the depiction of Darwin in Australia, but that would be a cheap shot. It’s not that bad.

It’s easy to believe, when you live in a place like Darwin, that nothing can happen there. That you have escaped, and a small not particularly pretty place can remain unnoticed by international events. It felt like that when I was there a few years ago, even though it’s prettier now, and larger, and it definitely felt like that when I was there from 1969 to 1972, at the tale end of the stolen generations, some of whom, I think, were at school with me. But in 1942, Darwin became the front line of Australia’s WW2 and for just over a year it and the Northern Territory endured bombing raids from Japanese. Even so, despite it’s role as defender of the outback, despite the loss of life, Darwin’s still seemed insignificant, until, that is Baz Lurhmann came along. Described by the Northern Territory News (Ben Langford) as a director who could “out camp a drag-queen wrapped in a tent” Baz Lurhmann applies, colour, CGI and Judy Garland to Darwin – I, with Ben Langford, say “weird”.

It’s an epic love story, set against the background of the Northern Territory, the small town power politics of “independent” men and the history that Darwin suddenly found thrust upon it. As an “English Rose” once challenged to meet the demands of the outback myself, I found Nicole Kidman’s cliched Pomey at the beginning irritating. However, in the second hour, she settled down and Hugh Jackman, worked hard on screen to make the Drover who indulged in the forbidden love of an aboriginal woman, and fought for the Brits in the First World War, believable and yes – very sexy.

Me on the cover of the Northern Territory News circa 1970

If you accept that you are seeing a love story, that uses the land and history, then the Rhett Butler, Scarlet O’Hara stuff works. If you allow yourself the naive view of the aboriginal community (and let’s face it they deserve a bit of romance) then – well then – I still have mixed feelings. It is camp, and the irony of that combined with the Darwin I knew – well that’s a laugh! It’s easy to romanticise independent men, tough policeman and power hungry station bosses, but when you live with the violence that comes with them, and Darwin in the 40s didn’t just keep the “abo’s” out of the pub, there were rumours even when I was there, of their pursuit to the death, at least during the war, and whilst no one wanted to drink with them, they sure as hell didn’t mind selling them the grog to take away with them to drink themselves to death. Even the sacred David Gulpilil is not immune. He wears well though, and whilst his role hasn’t changed much since Walkabout, one of my favourite moments in the film (yes I have a few) is when he stands in the bombing chaos while the camera circles round him at a low angle, juxtaposing the dignity of his ancient civilisation with the raw savagery of technological war.

The travelogue aspect of the film is also a bit strange, the use of CGI appears to have been applied to the territory, the

Arnhem Lnd from Ubirr

stampede scene places the cattle against the edge of a cliff that I’m not sure exists. Katherine Gorge is stunning and there are waterfalls, rivers, crocs and the never-never, but somehow it doesn’t come over as authentic through the CGI. Tourists wishing to visit, as a result of the film, should also remember that that little swim they did in the sea at the height of the wet – “bloody dangerous but” – speaking as someone who was stung by a seawasp. Now, you can’t swim off Darwin at all because of the crocs, which were almost extinct when I was there. They stopped shooting them in 1970 – I gather that not long after that one of my teacher’s was eaten – ho hum – and that I think – sums up the film!

Australia – The Movie

The Mary River Gums 1970

It was known as Australia’s Pearl Harbor, a place bombed by the Japanese leaving the Aussies with an abiding fear of its South Asian neighbours – and now, of course, there’s a film. Australia – the movie set in the long neglected outback of the Northern Territory.

I lived there between 1969 and 1972, in fact I still own a medal that celebrates the first complete 100 years of the existence of Darwin – the bombing didn’t count as it did not destroy the city. Darwin was destroyed though, in 1974, by Cyclone Tracy - but that’s another story.  At the moment the Australians, Baz Lurhmann, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and others, including David Gulpilil are turning Darwin and its flirtation with history into an epic to match Gone with the Wind right down to the semiotics of the publicity. I have not yet had the opportunity to see the film, but what I do know is that it adopts the romanticism of the outback and applies it to the whole of Australia. Which has always amused me, when in fact most of the population live in the suburbs of the South and are as wedded to their washing machines and televisions as is the rest of the materialistic world. Darwin pre-Tracy had a population, I think of approximately 30,000 people, it is 2,000 miles from Sydney and its nearest neighbour is Timor. As for that population, it was widely rumoured that Darwin was a place to run, somewhere you went to hide, to get away from the past, from a crime, or from your parents, in some cases it was to get away from arthritis. Its relationship with the weather was fraught, its relationship with the sea – worse, its relationship with its indigenous peoples – shameful, as would be true of most of institutional racism in Australia, but in Darwin it was, and to some extent still is – in your face. Whether the film will go any way to redeeming that, or romanticising it, I don’t yet know – watch this space. In reality Darwin was an interesting, if difficult place for a Pomey like me to live. It has changed since 1974, Tracy took it all, so most of the film seems to have been filmed in Bowen, a place I remember for a plague of toads,  maybe cane toads. Untouched by cyclones, Bowen must be still much the same to provide the set for pre-cyclone Darwin. The post-cyclone Darwin runs trips to Kakadu,

Sunset from Darwin Yacht Club

tours and there is no swimming in the beautiful blue sea, at least when I lived there you could swim from May to September when the seawasps retreated, now the saltwater crocs inhabit, not just waterways but the harbour – the sea taunts the unwary swimmer. Inland, the waterfalls and lagoons are now also infested, when I swam in the Mary River, only freshwater crocs eyed our canoes and kayaks, now tourists ride the rivers eying the salties from a safe distance – usually. It seems the Australian tourist board want some of the secrets of the Northern Territory revealed, in an attempt to convince a wider audience that Australia fought its own battles, the film’s publicity hints at travelogue – waterfalls and horses, tough men but delightful men and innocent but determined women, destined to fall in love not just with each other but with the place – easily done. I have yet to find out whether the film is any good, but I will go and see it – after all I have been a Darwinite!

Mary River Gums 2005

Anger Management

I’ve just watched the fourth series of The Wire, yes I know, I’m a little behind the times, but after a marathon summer I’m catching up. I was warned that it would be depressing and hey, yeah they weren’t wrong. Thus far there is no sign of a redemption narrative, Hollywood sentiment or the controlling ideology dominating the concept of the American family. Instead just a set of realistic characters living day-to-day life in Baltimore and, whilst there are some obvious differences between their life and mine, we do have a lot in common. Let me put it in a little Wire vernacular (censored of course) “How it be that those who don’t do the business get to tell those that do how it done?” Through the fourth series characters like Colvin (in the third series he played a “police” who tried to legalise drugs) and Presbo (a little trigger happy earlier, now a teacher) battling with the dead hand of buraucrats and policy-makers (those who don’t do the job) in an attempt to provide an education for disenfranchised kids. Presbo abandons the curriculum to teach maths through stsreet calcualtions, odds on the dice, buying and selling even using the odd computer and he cares for them and where “they from”. Colvin and an academic try to separate the truly awkward ones and get to the bottom of their anger by providing attention, argument and socialisation – but then they won’t pass the tests (I refer you to my first blog Testing Testing Testing). In America their slogan “No Child Left Behind” has become a code for “Every Child Should Pass the Tests”. In this country our same slogan with the same effect is “Every Child Matters”. In America they fear what they call “tracking” (streaming)The fear is thattaking a child out of the normal classroom for “special” education means they don’t take the tests and are therefore left behind. No matter that they may learn how to behave, no matter that they may gain self confidence, no matter that they may receive respect and thereby offer it -none of that (after all) can be measured – so dump education and spoon feed them the tests – then the bureaucrats and the policy-makers can go home by 5pm leaving the streets to the corner boys and the kids whose parents have long since opted out of life. Meanwhile back at The Wire the large homicide sargent grows desperate at the idea of the good policeman Freaman, uncovering dozens of bodies, thereby raising the unsolved murder rate and making the Department look bad. No matter again that two, soon to be three, gangster assassins stalk the streets offing any they are ordered to,in the name of protection. Again no matter the relatives, no matter the harm – hide the statistics – don’t do the job or you will piss off the statisticians and they write the cheques. As the series closes McNulty, well known for his desperation to do the job right and thereby annoy everyone around him, thinks that in the new Baltimore, run by a new mayor things may be different and he may be able to deal with the anger he suffers, the same anger that gnaws at the heart of every competent public servant. An anger born of a frustration of having to educate to exams and tests, to work to politics and statistics rather than doing something truly useeful. McNultry thinks he can handle it, good luck to him – I’m not sure I can!

Early Adopter

So anyway I’m sure if I’m not a particularly early adopter, but here I am sitting on my sofa watching old Sex And The City (the one where she has to give up smoking) and I am typing this on my new Acer Aspire One Netbook. I feel like Carrie typing my column to my eager readers – ho – ho – no it’s okay I know there’s no one out there, but like I say this is therapy. The keyboard is 89% the size of an ordinary keyboard and it does say in the guide to spend too long using it on the sofa – dream on- it’s perfect for wallpaper TV and blogging by the fire. It’s possible I will need glasses by the end of the year. The screen is small, but not too small, it doesn’t have a case but it looks sleek and I have the Linux version – I know something about all this but not much and I am now being distracted by the handsome men on the TV … okay I’m back. I’m sure in the land of computer geeks I am not an early adopter, but then there are some drawbacks to being an early adopter. The other day we were describing the efforts of the great Robert Falcon Scott, one of the grandest British failures around. The runner up in the rush to the South Pole, lost to Amundsen and his dogs. Scott and his team died 15 miles from base camp on the return journey – bummer (the one where Titus Oates says ‘I’m going out – I may be some time’- this statement is known in the land of English teaching as “litotes” the art of understatement – he died that night – they all died very soon after that. If Scott had lived now, no doubt he would have been a serious blogger, he kept a detailed diary – right up to the end. No regrets, apparently, not even the early adoption of those motorised sledges instead of the traditional dogs. It was those sledges and their inflexibility, plus taking the occasional wrong turn that doomed the trip. Whether his middle name ‘Falcon’ had anything to do with his son Peter becoming a great wildlife painter and founder of the bird sanctuary Slimbridge – is another blog.

Flight or Fright

“It’s one of those things you wait a long time to do and then you don’t want to do it.” Flying that is… or so said my husband as we sat on the tarmac at Barcelona after a two hour wait and a very long taxi to the runway. Take off came and went, as did the landing and the worst that happened was that one of our bags went missing (now retrieved and on its way back to us courtesy of Easyjet) – still I don’t seem to be able to leave Barcelona without leaving something there – last time it was my purse. I heard somewhere (definitely unverified but sounds good) that Bob Hope was very afraid of flying, but because he had been such a great entertainer (particularly of the troops) he had flown more than a million hours by the end of his long life – everyone of those hours an exercise in fear. My first flight was over forty years ago, then, in the mid 60s I flew in what I think was a VC10 from Lusaka to Victoria Falls. The worst that happened then was that I spent some time doubled up behind a tree due to stomach ache – however, I

Victoria Falls 1966

have not forgotten The Smoke That Thunders -nor the sight of my father leaning out in the mist.

Rainbow Victoria Falls 1966

All I got up to as a result of my most recent flight was to stand in the queue at the Barcelona Duty Free, determined to buy some make-up in an increasingly useless effort to stay young. In front of me in the queue was a Russian, a little younger maybe, buying what else but Davidoff? I don’t know about anybody else my age but I still can’t get used to the delights of travelling with Russians. I was born at the dawn of the Cold War and if I had been standing in a queue next a Russian then in an airport, chances are it would have been an athlete or an artist, keen to “defect”. I seemed then, and for a long time beyond, that nothing would ever change, but now the plane to Moscow from Barca was packed with young Russians clutching sombreros and a new taste for Sangria, as free to come and go as the rest of us are, money and work allowing. There was a time when it seemed that Apartheid in South Africa would never end, but, it seems, even “still President Bush” as Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) says is about to change. Not only that as we stood in 42 degree heat in Figueres waiting in an hour long queue for the Salvador Dali Museum (an experience that nearly got the better of the Russian lady in front of us who liked the heat less than the “General Winter”) as we stood there slowly crisping, no doubt as a result of those very flights I (and others) having taken over the years it seems that possible those very flights are about to suffer from the winds of change.

Dark Knight of the Soul

As The Dark Knight opens and I contemplate the prospect of seeing a great performance marred by the sadness that accompanies that age old saying “the darlings of the gods die young”. I look back to the performance that received the great praise, if not the Oscar, that everyone thought he would have time to win. When Brokeback Mountain came out a I wrote a review of it for my students to analyse and criticise, which they did. I quite liked it, so, since I don’t get to do early reviews any more – here’s a reminder of the maturity of a performance now only an echo of the life.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Dir. Ang Lee

“Oh surely that’s not an issue any more!” cry the ranks of middle class, reconstructed sophisticates who have long since decided that they lack prejudice, for them the issue of homophobia is done and dusted – problem solved. Or is it?

Interesting then, that the location for the much hyped movie Brokeback Mountain was not in fact Wyoming, but Alberta, local town, Calgary where (and I have this from a very reliable source) men drive three to a truck for fear of their relationship being misunderstood if they go in pairs, and that’s in 2006, problem not solved.

Whilst recent audiences might remember Ang Lee’s directorial prowess in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon those of us of a certain age remember The Ice Storm, the story of a dysfunctional middle class American family. Ang Lee can not only direct actors and CGI in the use of chi high up in the bamboo, but he is able to portray the infinitesimal nuances of the conflicted mind. Even so it’s still set against scenery of magnificent power and I don’t just mean Heath Ledger!

Brokeback Mountain is the story of doomed love. In another age it would have been the story of Jew and Gentile, Capulet and Montagu, of black and white. But now it is a story about love in the 60s, the time of free love, it is about homosexuality at a time when that was most definitely not free, it was illegal.

The writer E Annie Proulx presumably took the semiotics of Marlboro country, the ultimately macho cowboy smoking himself to death (which they both do in the film) and juxtaposed it with the idea of homosexual love, a concept that in the darkest corner of any outback has been covered with ideas of male bonding and needing to be close in order to combat and protect men from the vagaries of nature.

The film takes the semiotics of those cowboys and sets them against the cinematic scenery of mountains, dominated by unpredictable weather, populated by the occasional predator and the ubiquitous bear, and isolation. Ang Lee’s eye for nature is as keen as is his understanding of the human face and the two cowboys (actually they’re shepherds) Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are clearly guests on the mountain.

When they come down from the mountain and they have known each other (I use both terms Biblically). They are trapped by their love for each other and the dangers of a society that does not consent to it, into deceiving their wives, their friends and all who love them, by setting up assignations on the pretext of fishing trips.

Heath Ledger’s performance has been much praised and it is much merited. His monosyllabic performance typical of the outbacker, no doubt draws on his Aussie experience of the Australian equivalent, the outback stockman. And the rodeo riding Jake Gyllenhaal puts in a strong performance as someone who literally is a temptress. The men’s love scenes mix need and violence, desire and denial with huge authenticity. The women too, temper their performances between portrayals of prejudice and desperation, love and hate with skill and sympathy. The outback attitude reaches its, inevitable, tragic, climax effectively.

As for me, it took me back to the days of Circle T rodeo in Darwin, in the 1970s where men rode bulls, the women cooked them and being gay either meant being happy or being dead.

Problem solved?

Testing Testing Testing…

On the day that our children finally stop taking tests, exams and modules for a month or two. I would like to take a moment to bewail the fact the our young people are the most tested in Europe. I know this to my cost, we have teenage children, I teach teenagers. My life, in the past few years has been one long examination. I have taught well on 1000 teenagers to get their AS and A Levels, that means seven months of teaching, marking and mocking and then they are entered for the exam – what bright spark in our beloved government decided that we should run AS Levels before the A2 Levels beats me. The AS students have one more year in what used to be called sixth form. They could take their exams a month or so later and not get their results until September but no, they take their exams earlier and receive their results in August for the universities to do what with precisely? This leaves them at a loose end for the second half of the summer term. Teachers fill the time, with tasters, homework and enrichment – the students head for Newquay. I would object except that I know they’re knackered. The average pupil of 18 has done SATs at 7 (reading, writing and a little number stuff). The SATs at 11 along with a variety of surreptitious tests designed to identify their level of intelligence. Then again in Year 9, proper external tests – reading, writing, science and maths. From year 10 they will do coursework, individual modules, early GCSE’s which can lead to anything between 9 (or none) and 13 GCSEs, by the end of Year 11. Then 4 maybe 5 AS Levels and 3 A Levels and maybe one more AS Level That means that they are taking exams 7 years out of the 13 they at school if they stay for A Levels – although recently the SATs at 7 are being revised. This is just our experience – others do more, others do less and some give up. Even when they’ve done with the exams there’s the driving test – 50 questions, Hazard Perception and that’s before the test itself and still our insurance premiums are still as high. Our children work hard. This year those taking AS and A Levels will find the system changed again, teachers are re-writing the syllabus and once again we will race to get our students through their tests but as for educated – I don’t think so.