After a 10-day midterm, isn't it great to be back? The way things are going, with long holidays, the millennium and six days of in-service, we could still be at school in mid-July of next year. Nevertheless, on Friday next, we will close for another half-day staff meeting. In our school, we must be close to holding the national record for the number of early closures we take each year. From now to Christmas, we will probably manage at least another four. Strangely enough, because enrolment in our school is almost as elusive as a Lotto win, we get very few complaints from parents. We just decide on our quota, inform the mums and dads by diktat, and Bob's your uncle. Only last term, we effected an early closure in honour of a few European heads who were over to view our stall. Horror of horrors, one parent had the downright gall to phone us to ask why we were closing . . . again. She rattled on a bit about the Time in School circular (she must have been a teacher!) but our secretary shirtily told her that the pan-European dimension was important to us, and that was that.
IT IS really amazing what you can get away with when the law of supply and demand works in a school's favour. While some small schools in rural Ireland are dying on their feet for want of pupils, we have to turn away dozens each year. Locally, they say, when a child is born down here, the obstetrician cuts the umbilical cord and the parents immediately complete and post off the enrolment form for our place. This situation, as it obtains, gives us a latitude of Mussolini-like proportions. For example, we have a rule which states that pupils must not run in the playground. Forget about the fact that running around at play is pretty natural for nippers - that's our rule, so people just put up and shut up.
Our rationale is simple - pupil safety. The playground is just too small to accommodate the little perishers . We have, of course, about two hectares of green area that we could readily pave but that would bring its own problems, viz more supervision duties and longer queues for the staffroom sandwichmaker. Not for us . . . no, sirree. No, it's much more teacher-friendly to have them stalk sullenly around the yard, like inmates of Wormwood Scrubs plotting who next is to be sprung. Any complaints and they are told they can transfer to Broadmoor!
