So that was Brislington Enterprise College. BEC. BECause education matters. BECause Rome wasn't built in a day. BECause two heads are better than one. And other such assorted clichés, projected onto the massive screen behind the headmaster as he gave the introductory talk (which was just a tad too long, there were stirrings of unrest in the audience towards the end). A great deal of emphasis on the college as a community, on respect, on enabling learning, and on discipline. All good as far as it goes.
The school is 50 years old, and looks it in places, but there's a brand new school being built on the site - it'll be finished for September 2008 (I think that's what was said, you know what my memory is like for numbers. Building starts next year, and it's to be a £30 million centre of excellence for Briz - £28 million for the building itself, the rest for fitments. I remembered those figures OK...) So, bearing that in mind we took a wander around the current school.
Helpful and enthusiastic students (of course) and staff. It's a big site, with lots of different buildings - not easy to find your way around and as with everywhere we've been except for John Cabot and Broadlands there was a distinct lack of signposting.
Now, I don't know about you, but I'm something of a believer in the state of an establishment's toilets being a fair indication of the overall state (cleanliness/order/care taken) of everything else in the organisation. So I always check them out. And BEC's failed dismally - actually the only school of all those we've visited that did. Most of the boys' loos were locked with one of those keypad things, except for one (that we found) where the door was propped open: it was very smelly, and Kai tells me there was no loo paper or soap and a number of the taps were broken. And rather to my consternation all the girls' loos had no outer doors: they had been there, you could see the holes where the hinges had once been, but they'd all been removed. Have to wonder
why a school would need to provide locks on the boys' doors and no doors at all for the girls...
But most disappointing of all, the one place we wanted to see and which all the other staff members were so keen to talk about, the CLC (City Learning Centre with the ITC suites), had its door closed, and a member of staff inside who told us, and the other parents with us, in no uncertain terms that no-one could go in... None of us were impressed. It wasn't even that late!
Anyway, all that, combined with what we've heard from other people, plus a minor but irritating problem we've been having for a while with one of the students (a boy who used to give Kai a hard time at school and is still causing a nuisance to my family), has decided us against the school.
So we're left with our two choices. Please keep your fingers crossed all goes smoothly and I don't have to fight...
Tomorrow Kai takes his first packed lunch into school (well, with oven baked whiting or cheesy Scotch egg being the two school dinner choices I'm pretty certain he'd end up not eating anything), and I have to get up early to make it. Nothing complex this first time, and the weather's still mild, so a couple of my smoky BBQ-flavoured chicken tortillas - his favourite - with a little bag of tomato and cucumber, a small tub of halved strawberries, another of orange segments, a lemon Tracker bar, a bag of Quaker's Caribbean Chicken snacks and a carton of organic tropical fruit juice will fill him up quite nicely, I think.
He's going back to his friends' house for spagbol for tea, and to play with their Hornby trains - so with a bit of luck I can catch up on what I
didn't manage to get done today. In between cleaning the house, that is - it's a tip and Ruth, Jun and Yumi are coming over on Saturday. [sigh] I need to be more organised. Anyone got any haddock they can spare?
Don't faint, but I'm going to have an early night.
Just hope I can sleep.
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 1:49 am
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