The Diary of A Head


career in teaching certainly didn’t help. Here I am, sitting in a consultant’s offi ce at the local hospital with a tube


Ducks are hazards in the classroom I


After years at the chalkface, Stuart McLeod’s hearing is getting worse – a problem that has made the world of music, not to mention education, rather confusing


t all started, doctor, way back in 1968, when I bought Desmond Dekker’s number 1 hit single. I sincerely thought he was singing “Oooh me ears are alight!” From then on it was downhill and a


the texture of a Curly Wurly in my nasal passage, investigating my sinus ailments. Not only have I developed an unsightly rash but I have also become as deaf as a teenager when asked to pick up litter in the playground. The rash is explained by having allergy tests. I am told I am severely allergic to black mould. I am told to do everything in my power to avoid decay and deterioration at all costs; it is autumn! It was at my family’s instigation that I ended up in the consultant’s room.


They had tired of the questioning looks when in restaurants and my partner would say: “You only hear what you want to hear”. I’d reply with: “Yes, I’ll have a beer.” I have found, in my 17 years of headship, that it’s been quite advantageous


to have selective hearing, particularly when the telegraph wires of what has allegedly been uttered in the staffroom fi nd their way into my offi ce. “She said this and so I said that, to which she said this…” leaves me cold


and I have to confess sometimes, during this tittle-tattle, to recalling some of my other favourite misheard lyrics, like Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall. It’s “No dark sarcasm in the classroom” but all I heard was “The ducks are hazards in the classroom”. And as for Abba: “See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen.” Over the summer holidays the condition deteriorated. For one minute I


really thought I heard Michael Gove increase the key stage 2 fl oor targets by 10 per cent! While reaching for the saline nose wash, I calculated this would now mean trying to get 92 per cent of our precious fl ock to achieve two levels in English. So, if you are a headteacher in our rural seaside county, and


your class of year 6s amounts to, say 12, just imagine the chaos and havoc Johnny, the farmer’s son, can cause when he’s helping with the lambing and India Lavender-Febreze buggers off on holiday because her mum has a newspaper token. Down 17 per cent in one fell swoop without the slightest whiff of FFT.


You would already be heading for “satisfactory”. I’m sure I also misheard Sir Michael Wilshaw saying an Ofsted “satisfactory” is now termed “requires improvement”. In September we returned to work in the same buildings as before but


now we have said goodbye to our beloved primary school and amalgamated with other local establishments, voluntarily, to become an academy. I had given up my role as headteacher in July and I was now “TUPE-d” across an imaginary chasm and am being asked to be a “Head of Campers”. I couldn’t work out if I was a pouting Gladys Pugh greeting my little holidaymakers with a glockenspiel in assembly. We had truly entered a brave new world and life away from the local


authority would become very different. This became apparent only one week into term when I attended a Headteachers’ Briefi ng and was certain I heard that because we had become part of the authority’s Self Evaluation Partner scheme we were entitled to attend a free two-day SEF writing course, only to fi nd out that because we are an academy, “free” now meant £166. Our mission now as an academy is to raise expectation and challenge old


concepts, such as the historical high teenage pregnancy rates. What better than Madonna blasting out on the tannoy of Radio Academy “Like a virgin, touched for the thirty-fi rst time”? So, it’s all steam ahead, sinuses all rodded and avoiding all decaying leaf litter as I now prepare the academy choir for the Christmas concert in church. How about “Now bring us some friggin’ pudding!”


sbmcleod@sky.com


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