Britain’s state school system is a conspiracy against the public

The other day Girl’s class found themselves with time to spare in the vast play area behind the Imperial War Museum.

The other day Girl’s class found themselves with time to spare in the vast play area behind the Imperial War Museum. The children looked wistfully at the swings, roundabouts and climbing frames. ‘I’m not sure we can go there,’ said the teacher. ‘I haven’t filled in a risk assessment form.’

Stories like this explain why I almost never go into Girl’s primary school these days. I can just about do those gourmet PTA fundraiser evenings where you stand around eating high-grade sausages and drinking chilled Czech beer, congratulating yourself on how aspirational and nicely spoken your fellow parents are. What I can’t bear, though, is anything that gives me the slightest inkling of what really goes on in the course of Girl’s school day. The truth just makes me want to go postal.

Sometimes, because she knows how to gladden Daddy’s heart, Girl will tell me anyway. ‘Guess what we did in PE today, Dad? We did recycling.’ I don’t believe her. No school could be that PC. But then Girl demonstrates how she was taught to bend first her neck, then fold in her arms, then bend at the waist, in imitation of a cardboard box being prepared for dispatch in a recycling bin.

On another day, she came back rejoicing over the ‘best news ever’. She had been about to have a half-hour health-and-safety lesson on the correct use of craft-making materials when, miraculously, she’d been rescued by a recorder lesson. ‘It would only have been crap like: “Don’t hold the glue gun at the hot end”, and “Don’t poke your eye out”,’ said Girl.

It is customary at this point to say that none of this is the fault of the teachers, who are ferociously dedicated to giving our kids the best education imaginable but are hamstrung by The System.