Wizard Education Specialist Tuition

Sometimes I imagine a world where we were honest with parents and children about the function of school. We’d say, your children have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to enrol in a 12-year competition. At the end, 30% of them will be deemed as failures, 30% successes, and the rest somewhere in the middle. These percentages are fixed, so no matter how hard you and your children work, some of them will fail.

We’ll ease them into the competition informally, with play and things they like to do. Even then, we’ll be looking out to see how they are likely to perform in the future, and we’ll tell you that some of them are behind already and you and they had better try harder. We will call this early intervention.

The competition doesn’t start from an even playing field. Many will be disadvantaged from the start by factors beyond their control, such as being born in the summer, poverty, learning disabilities or developing at a very different rate to the average. No matter, we will tell them that the differences are due to hard work and doing what they’re told, and that if they aren’t on the fast track, that’s their (or your) fault. We will call this high expectations.

By the time they are six, we will have started mini-competitions. These will be more formal and although we will pretend that children aren’t aware of them, many will be and they will know if they are a winner or a loser. If they fail, we’ll make them do the same again next year. We will call this accountability.

In order to keep you all with it, we will tell you often how very important this competition is and how if your child turn out to be one of the losers, it will be with them for life. We’ll tell you that continuing to turn up for the competition, day after day, is essential to maximise your child’s chances of being one of the successes rather than the failures. This will ensure that if your child is doing badly, you will assume it is your or their fault rather than challenging the system.

Some of your children will be clear-sighted and will say they want no part of this. They will give their feedback verbally and behaviourally, and we will tell you that this is because they are deficient or you are an inadequate parent. We will send them off to be tested to identify exactly what it is which leads to them not complying, and we will write long reports about them and all the ways in which they should be coached to get them back in the competition.

One of the mini-competitions will be about behaviour. Those who comply the best with our instructions and requirements will get certificates and approval, whilst those who do not comply will be given sanctions and detentions. This, like all the competitions, will be in public, with those who are failing having their names written on the board so everyone can see. The successes will be clear to all, even the five-year-olds, who will be able to tell you who the bad and good ones in the class are before they’ve even started Year 1. We will call this taking responsibility and setting boundaries.

When they are teenagers, the end of the competition will loom and so the pressure will increase. By this point, many will already have a pretty good idea that they are heading to be one of the failures, and keeping them in the competition will be hard. We’ll use intensive control to do this, in some cases dictating how they should move their eyes and refusing to help them out if they forget their pen. We’ll tell them that this is their last chance to do well and whilst it might feel punitive, it’s all for their own good. We’ll tell them they absolutely must continue to attend the competition, or their chances of winning will plummet.

At 16, the competition is at its height. We will take young people with vastly different levels of maturity, neurological development and life experience, give them all the same tests and then divide them up on that basis. The tests will be used to determine their future life chances

Throughout it all, you will find that this competition is about far more than the tests. You’ll find that it about whether your child sees themselves as a worthwhile person, and whether they have earned the right to be treated with respect. It’s about the way they learn to feel about themselves, and where they think their place is in the world. They will learn to compete with others and to rank themselves against them. They will learn that the way to feel good about themselves is to do better than the others. However, if they do this too openly we will tell them to keep quiet. One of the rules of the competition is to keep it mostly under-cover.

Many of you were the winners in this competition, and so you never really saw what it’s like to be on the other side. You learnt to think of those who lose as less worthy, you think they just can’t be bothered or don’t put in the work. You learnt to judge their parents as uncaring or feckless. If your children are also marked as winners, there might be no reason to question it at all. The winners get to decide the terms for the next generation. But if we were open from the start that what we call education is a competition, with high stakes consequences which will last a lifetime, might more of us call for change?

Words: Dr Naomi Fisher
Image: Eliza Fricker Missing The Mark

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We are looking for part-time staff to support the learning of pupils with social, emotional and mental health difficulties. Good literacy and maths skills are required but the most important trait is a relaxed nonjudgmental attitude. A good sense of humour would also help. The position is term times only and hours may vary. An enhanced DBS check will be required. Send a CV with a covering letter saying why you think you’d be a good fit for the job.

“My Autistic Christmas”

Download this and keep it on your phone as a reminder!

Golf today

Today we made fajitas for lunch.

This is heartbreaking 💔

This is just how my tommy is he couldn’t go to his school today due to his anxiety’s and challenges he as to take on at school. Please read and see what it’s like for an autistic person. I’m sure you will learn something from this as I did.

*Imagine you are Max*

Meet Max. He's a y5 pupil in primary school.

This morning, Max had to come a different way to school because they were digging up the road.
Because the road was closed, by the time they'd gone round the diversion, Max was late for school.

Max hates being late. He hates to walk into class when all the other children are milling about. So he waits in the cloakroom until they've all gone in. Mrs White said it's ok for him to do that.

When Max steps into class, Mrs White isn't there.
There's a stranger standing at the front with the Head teacher. Mrs White has gone on a course today and they have a substitute teacher Mrs Grey. But Max doesn't know this because he came in late. He sits down when the Head teacher tells him to, and wonders when Mrs White will be in.

Mrs Grey announces that the class spelling test will be first. Max has been trying really hard with his spellings. He has practised them at home. Mrs Grey starts to read them out, but they're not in the right order. Max can feel a knot in his stomach and writes out the spelling test he has learnt in the right order. Two out of ten and told he will have to try harder. He didn't even get a smiley face and Max likes stickers.

At break time, Max goes out into the playground. He's got an apple for snack, but as he is eating it, a girl playing chase bumps into him and it drops on the floor. One of the boys shouts "football" and kicks it across the playground... It ends up in a puddle and Max goes to get it and gets his feet wet. He hates being wet, so he goes back into class and takes his shoes and socks off.

Mrs Grey almost trips over Max, who is sitting right in the doorway of the classroom. She tells Max to either put his wet things back on or to put his pumps on. He tells Mrs Grey that it is not P.E yet it's literacy next.

Mrs Grey glares at Max and suggests that perhaps Max would prefer to sit outside the Head's office. Max is quite relieved about this; it's nice and quiet in the corridor. He puts his pumps on but they don't feel right without socks, and all he can think about is how scratchy they are on his feet.

On the way out of the classroom, he sees the girl that bumped into him in the playground. He pushes her back and she tells the teacher that he pushed her for no reason. Mrs Grey walks over to Max. She's wearing really strong perfume and he wants to wretch. When she asks him why he is pulling faces, he says it's because she smells.

Mrs Grey marches Max down the corridor and tells the Head that Max is being naughty and very rude. Max tells her she is lying. The Head tells Max to sit there until he feels he can behave.

After half an hour outside the Head's office, Max is feeling much calmer so he decides to go back to his classroom. Still no Mrs White. He looks round to see what he is supposed to do and sees some boys spinning their pens so he goes and watches them cause it looks interesting.

When the bell goes for lunch, Max puts his hands over his ears and runs to the classroom door to be first. Mrs Grey tells him off for pushing and makes him wait at the end of the queue. When he goes to get his lunchbox he can't find it, it's not with his coat where he left it.

When the Mid-day Assistant manages to calm him down, she arranges for him to have a school dinner instead. He has to sit on a different table in the hall and the smell of other peoples dinners makes him feel ill. He looks down and notices that the beans are touching the potatoes so he can't eat that now. Dry food shouldn't touch wet foods. Everyone is talking and the noise of cutlery and scraping of chairs is overwhelming even the playground is better than this.

Max goes back to the cloak room and lies on the floor with his coat over his head. The floor is nice and cool and he starts to feel calmer. He makes the Mid-day Assistant jump when she walks past him, and she chastises him saying " you scared me to death Max!"

Max is really worried about this because he really likes her and doesn't want her to die, but she carries on walking as though she was ok. He follows her round the playground just to make sure.

After lunch Mrs Grey tells the class to get into pairs. Max sits on a table with two other children, and they've already paired up. He doesn't know what to do... Mrs Grey asks for anyone who's not sitting with someone to put up their hand. Max doesn't realise she's talking to him - he's sitting with two people, so he doesn't put his hand up... When Mrs Grey raises her voice and asks why he wasn't paying attention, it all becomes a bit of a blur...and Max has no idea why he is being told off again. He wonders if it is because he made the Mid-day Assistant die. He really can't remember what happens after that.....

The bell goes at the end of the day, and Max goes out to find his Mum.

" Did you have a good day at school Max?" asks his Mum.

*********
Max has spent all day masking and 'holding it all in'. Think of Max child as a bottle of pop. As he goes through the day the bottle gets shaken each time there is a trigger, with the pressure building up as their stress and anxiety increase.

Max managed to hold it all together whilst at school but when Mum picked him up, he had a meltdown - the pop was released from the bottle in one go.

Many parents will be familiar with the Pop Bottle effect - the delayed meltdown which follows a day of triggers and masking.

Having opened in Wigton two years ago, our business of the week Wizard Education Specialist Tuition is expanding its portfolio to offer the LighterLife weight loss programme.

Owner Susan Anderson is a trained LighterLife mentor with accreditation in various forms of weight counselling. She said: “On top of what other diet solutions offer, LighterLife includes cognitive behavioural therapy which helps people to identify the reasons they gained weight.”

A key feature of the programme is the weekly group Zoom meeting in which participants tackle a ‘hot topic’ (such as a reason for weight gain) set by LighterLife HQ. Susan has also started to offer one-to-one sessions in the Wizard Education shop.

Susan is holding an open day on October 2 (11am-1pm) for those interested to learn more about the LighterLife programme.

She added: “It’s all about helping people to change their behaviour. I have a passion for helping people sort out their issues."

Susan can be contacted on 074493 95767 or [email protected]