IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND THE ONE EYED MAN IS KING!

There was an article in last week’s Metro regarding a High School in Ipswich, that had employed a  group of part-time ‘proof-readers’ costing over £14.00 per hour. The people who took on these positions are now responsible for correcting “typographical errors, which include spelling mistakes, poor or missing punctuation, incorrect capitalization and word spacing,” ensuring “that the reports are grammatically correct,” and improving “poor grammar”.

But the work being corrected is not the work of pupils. Oh no, the work under examination are the various reports and letters written by the teachers, who frequently need to correspond with parents!

The school's head teacher, defended the need for a proof reading facility, said: “Our examination results year on year demonstrate that the school employs very high calibre teaching staff, and making a final quality check prior to the publication of reports and issuing of letters, merely indicates the high level of professionalism we strive to achieve.”

Personally, I think his explanation was a load of crap!

What it tells me is that this school's students are being taught by teachers who are obviously having problems stringing complete sentences together! It also begs the question, regarding the calibre of the teachers who taught the teachers and who are now teaching today’s students to teach English? This downward spiral merely indicates the low level of professionalism we have come to expect from some of our teachers.

I mean, come on. What chance have the school’s students got to be adept in English if, by the admission of the head teacher, the teachers cannot be trusted to write grammatically correct sentences and spell correctly? Talk about papering over the cracks.

The real problem here; and I suspect, widespread in many secondary schools across the country, which evidently is not being addressed, is that the school have employed unsuitable teachers in the first place.

It certainly goes some way to explain why the exam pass rate gets higher every year, it's simply because the standards are dropping.

I will now reach for my flak-jacket and wait for the verbal salvo.