Bottom of the Class

The Tinkids go to a Secondary School called Coláiste Chraobh Abhann, a brand new school in Kilcoole and a real pronunciatorial challenge for my overseas readers. 

The school started just six years ago, and last year 82 students, including Tinson1, were its first class ever to face the state’s Leaving Certificate exam. They all seemed to do fine. Tinson1 is (I may have mentioned this) doing Science in Trinity, as is one of his classmates. Other friends are in UCG, UCD and NCI, and these are just the ones that I know about.

But last week the Irish Independent and the Irish Times published league tables regarding students going on to college from each school. And while I don’t read rubbish like that, apparently CCA sits at the bottom of County Wicklow’s list, with just 18% of its students listed as going on to third level education.

The school has sent a letter home to all the parents, pointing out that many colleges didn’t have the school’s name in their database, and simply put down ”unknown”. They also point out that many students, from all schools, enter pre-university courses or take a gap year before entering college. In an established school, the roll-over of such students from previous years would cancel out the ones taking time out this year, while our school didn’t have any past-year pupils. 

In conclusion, they tell us that 86.6% of of the 82 are in further education of some sort, and 11% are in full-time employment or apprenticeships.

Hopefully the letter will reassure the parents of pupils in the school. Now all they have to do is find some way of spreading the message to the rest of the county, to the parents of younger children, and even to those just at the child-planning stage.

There was a long and vigorous debate when the idea of school league tables, copied slavishly from the UK, was first promoted. Many of those who opposed them were dismissed as schools or teachers fearing that their inadequacies would be exposed. Others pointed out that schools in disadvantaged areas, many of which would have virtually no pupils going on to college, were in most cases excellent schools doing excellent work, and that a simple league table would not recognise this. These concerns were ignored.

When you see the kind of statistical failings upon which the table is based you see that it’s about as useful as the website ratemyteacher as a basis for selecting a school for your child. But the flaws in the data just mask the real problem, which is that a league table for schools based purely on college placement is as meaningful as a list of top films based purely on the number of people who’ve seen them (for example, do you know anyone who hasn’t seen Sister Act? See?).

A couple of moments’ reflection tells you that the fact that School X has Y% of its pupils going on the college (look, I remember algebra, and my own school probably isn’t very high up the list) is meaningless. How many of them got into the course they had their heart set on? How many will send their own children to the same school? How many, in short, enjoyed their school life?

There is so much more to a school than the number of points that its cleverer students get. CCA (have a quick look at the website, Tinson1 is in one of the pictures) is a great school with remarkable facilities, young and enthusiastic teachers, terrific extra-curricular activities and a real sense of pride in itself.

Our children are happy there, and there is no table for that.

Wheat, Maize and Grain

When I was at school Geography was the educational equivalent of the Big Mac gherkin, unloved and discarded by virtually everyone.

This was because it was unrelentingly dull. We were a given a light snowfall of information about a number of countries, none of it deep enough to actually stick. Generally speaking we were taught the name of the capital city and the chief exports. As far as I can remember the exports always included wheat, maize and grain, and these three words featured in the first sentence of every exam answer I ever gave (“the chief exports of Ireland are wheat, maize and grain”…. “the chief exports of Antartica are wheat, maize and grain”… “the chief exports of the Sahara…” etc, etc).

Doing “projects” meant being a handed a map of Ireland stripped of all characteristics other than an outline of the counties, and being asked to fill in the names. This was as exciting as Geography got.

And because it was so dull, we all ended up forgetting about half of what we learned. I presume that’s why, although I can tell you where the North and South Poles are, I haven’t a clue about the whereabouts of the East and West ones.

When people slag Americans for how little they know about Europe, they assume it’s because they never learned about it. In fact, they were taught about it, but just couldn’t be arsed remembering. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, the same goes for us in reverse. One night in my local we managed to name 48 of the 50 US States. I was told to find out which two we were missing and returned the following night to report that we were actually missing five, since one of the ones we had listed was actually in Canada and two others weren’t States at all.

But somewhere along the way Geography upped its game. I think it began when the six-nation Common Market evolved via a series of leaps and bounds into the 27-nation EU (well, to be strictly accurate, 26 and Britain, who were given Free Trial Membership back in 1973 and still haven’t fully decided whether they like it or not). Suddenly Geography was no longer a dead, fixed subject, like Latin, it was changing all the time.

The collapse of communism halved the number of Germanies, while the number of Balkan countries exploded, often explosively. The roll-call of world nations changes with a rapidity that keeps atlas publishers in Ferraris and World Cup organisers in therapy. And climate change and global warming means that the very shape of countries and continents is changing.

The Burren

Tingirl is doing Geography and has three projects to hand in by Christmas. These are on the Burren, earthquakes and tornadoes. The Burren is a wild and lovely part of County Clare, earthquakes are strictly speaking Geology and tornadoes are just weather, but all three are more exciting than drawing the path of a river or a relief map of a fjord, which is the kind of crap homework we used to get. As a result kids these days love Geography.

Everyone has a Trivial Pursuit achilles heel. I’m sure you’ve guessed mine. I’d slide my wedge-filled pie-dish into the very centre, my fellow players would say “geography” in unison, I’d be asked some baffling question containing the word “scree” or “delta” and I’d retreat in humble embarrassment.

Hopefully the kids of today will be spared that humiliation.

About A Boy

Yesterday was Leaving Cert results day, so my post should have been about Tinson1 and how he got on, but hey, I had mental issues to write about, and I don’t have a whole category called “It’s All About Me” for nothing.

Anyway, he did fine, he got 470 points. I got 26, which gives the impression that he’s 18 times cleverer than I was, but of course the system has changed.  Back when I did it (in quill and ink, on parchment) there were simple A’s, B’s and C’s, and you got 5 points for an A, 4 for a B, etc. Now there is A1, A2, A3, etc, and the whole thing is much more complicated. Funnily, if you use the simplified version then he got exactly the same number of each grade as I did all those years ago, though in very different subjects.

Anyway, he has enough points for Trinity (just down the road from my office. “Hey, we’ll be able to do lunch”, I said yesterday, just to see his attempts at hiding the flash of horror that shot across his face), though not for the Theoretical Physics course he was thinking of. This means that my recurring nightmare, where the world explodes in a fiery molten ball while he stands in his lab going “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!” (he’s not laughing specifically at you there, Mwa), will not now take place.

He is planning now on taking General Science. As a scientist there are many directions in which his career might go – he might invent a small device which will make cars run on baby-sick (a never-dwindling resource), or he might become one of those No-Shit-Sherlock scientists who, after two years of research, produce a report stating that men spend more time than women thinking about boobs.

Either way, that’s all in the future. As for today, he’s delighted with himself, and we’re as proud of him as usual.

Put Away Childish Things

School’s Out… forever. Tingirl had her last day in the Bray School Project today (the picture above is from one of her first), and we now have no children left in primary school.

Tinson1 had his first day there on September 1st, 1996 when Tingirl was only six-ninths er, cooked, so the Tinfamily have had a connection with the BSP for her entire life. As indeed has she, as she was accompanying Mrs Tin on school runs and sitting quietly at school meetings long before she ever became a pupil there.

If leaving there is upsetting her, though, she’s hiding it very well (though not as well as Tinson1 did. In the car on the way home from his last day there, in a conversation with Tinson2 he referred to the BSP as “your school”). She is eager and excited about the prospect of secondary school, and keen to get on with what young people regard as the terribly urgent process of racing through their lives as quickly as possible.

Mrs Tin is similarly unfazed by the thoughts of leaving a school where she has been on so many boards and committees for so many years. She received many plaudits I think she will miss it more than she thinks she will, but only time will tell.

The school itself is wonderful, run by a bunch of really terrific teachers backed by ranks of dedicated and hard-working parents. It will still feature on the Blogiverse, as both Jo and Ciara still have kids there, and I’m looking forward to being able to keep up with events through them.

In earlier years I did a lot of the driving to school, so got to know the BSP quite well, but latterly have rarely been inside the door (today was only the third time in Tingirl’s final year) so I should miss it less than any of them, and I suppose I do. But I do feel that today is a significant one. Our youngest child has finished at primary school, and is growing up. She’ll be a teenager later this year, joining her brothers on the ever-shortening road to young adulthood. I’m happy for her, and proud of her, but I do feel a little bit sad.

We still have kids, but as of today we no longer have children.

Life’s Simple, in Theory

So Tinson 1 has finished school.

He sat his final exam, Chemistry, on Tuesday and left his schooldays behind him. He got home, gave us a carefully analytic summary of the exam (“piece of piss”) and invertebrated down in front of the telly, as if already settling into his future role as one of the unemployed.

After a while he admitted that he felt a bit strange, watching TV without a hearing a nagging voice inside his head telling him he should be studying (he usually had a nagging voice outside his head telling him the same thing, and I think Mrs Tin is now as at a loss as he is).

Anyway, when some friends rang to say they were going to play football down in the leisure centre he jumped at the chance. He played the game, went back to someone’s house and then walked home, getting in at about 4 a.m.

During the football apparently he got some sand or dirt into his sock, but instead of stopping and removing it he played on, so now most of the skin has come off the sole of his foot. Therefore he spent his first day as a grown-up lying on his bed with his foot in a bandage.

As his father, it is my job to worry about him when he does silly things, and I have to thank him for giving me so much practice.  But remember, this guy has applied to college to do Theoretical Physics, so now I’m starting to worry, not just for him, but for all of us, for our planet and indeed for the populations of distant worlds in galaxies far, far away.

The Principle of Cause and Effect seems to have passed him merrily by, and the thought of him in a very few short years spilling coffee into a worm hole, getting sand in the Large Hadron Collider or sneezing violently into a bowl of Dark Matter (it comes in bowls, doesn’t it?) should strike fear throughout the entire universe.

Was Einstein that scatty? Actually, looking at his hairstyle (a generous use of the word “style” there) he was possibly worse. The Principle of Cause (using a comb) and Effect (neat hair) seems to have escaped him too.

At least Tinson1 always knows where his hair-gel is.

Into The West

Tingirl’s class left for their trip to the Aran Islands this morning.

The Aran trip is a rite of passage each year for the class who are about to leave Bray School Project. It’s a three day trip with just three teachers and no parents. This is its 18th year, and it’s something the kids look forward to from the minute they start their final year (please note the use of both “its” and “it’s” in that sentence, Jo).

The journey, after the first car trip to the school, features a coach to Heuston Station in Dublin, a train to Galway, another coach to some pier somewhere and finally a boat to Aran, arriving just in time to get ready to start the return trip home. That’s why the phrase “this morning” in the opening sentence was used in its most broad sense, meaning “well, really still last night, but the date is different so I suppose we’ll have to call it this morning”. In other words we got up at 4.30, and arrived at the school at half past five.

But the bus didn’t arrive till 6.15, as a badly parked Eircom truck at its garage had partially blocked it in. This left less than an hour for the journey to Dublin, though the scarily young-looking driver assured everyone that he would easily make it.

“He’s a bit young, isn’t he,”  muttered some parents, ” I hope he doesn’t go too fast”.

Personally I just hoped the journey wouldn’t involve him trying to turn right onto a road that had a car waiting where the STOP marking as in the attached diagram. Because I had just realised that I’ve met this driver before, about a year ago, when I was the driver at the stop sign, and it was only by reversing violently backwards as he turned that I managed to keep his impact with the Tincar down to a brief juddering. In fairness, he’s a lovely guy, was very apologetic, and fixed the tiny amount of damage that was done to the Tinbumper.

Anyway, watching the expert and effortless way he reversed the huge coach into the schoolyard this morning it’s clear that he has improved since my encounter with him, so I kept this information to myself.

So off they went, jabbering excitedly, ready for their first big trip away from home.

Its the Taking Part That Counts

Tingirl is in her final year at primary school, so last Thursday took part in the Tinfamily’s last Sports Day.

Three kids spending eight years in a school means 24 chances to run while looking down at an egg on a spoon, to hop along in a scratchy, itchy sack or try to run while tied to someone else (we really do give kids a hard time, don’t we)?

In those 24 events the Tinkids have got soaked, sunburnt, knee grazes and fits of the giggles.

What they haven’t got is medals.

So when Tingirl arrived home on Tuesday her brothers were anxiously waiting for her (Tinson2 is finished for the summer, while Tinson1 had an unexpected day off due to the Great Exam Leak scandal). “Did you win anything?” they asked her.

“Nope,” she replied.

Cue high-fives all around. Their perfect record was safe.

You can’t accuse them of being over-ambitious.

One Small Step

This is Tinson1, though admittedly not the most up-to-date photo of him.

It feels as though that picture was taken yesterday. Yet since then he’ s been to playschool, then real school, then secondary. He’s tried his hand at soccer, hockey, basketball and athletics, been on school trips from the Aran Islands to Barcelona, and had a go at the tin whistle, the violin and the guitar. Actually, come to think of it, he’s cost us a fortune.

And this morning he starts his Leaving Cert exams and, unless he finds a job dancing in Britney Spears videos, he’ll never wear a school uniform again.

He has applied to Trinity to do a course called (I’m not making this up) “Physics and Space Science”. I really hope he gets in. He’s loved science all the way through school and, since I once scored 26% in a Science Exam, I’ve always been baffled by his talent for it.

His class had their Graduation Ceremony last week (God, we get more American by the day, they even had a yearbook) and it was wonderful to watch this collection of 96 confident and good-natured young adults, and see the respect and affection that they obviously had for their teachers and for their school.

My generation worked our arses off so that these kids would have a better economic outlook than we had when we were leaving school. It seemed to be working. Just a couple of years ago our biggest concern was that none of the Tinkids might ever be able to afford their own house. Then a small group of selfish, stupid gobshites managed to blow the whole thing, and again we are looking at the prospect of a generation facing unemployment or emigration.

I hope things get better quickly. Because these kids deserve more. Tinson1 has worked very hard, as have a niece and nephew of mine who also face the Leaving today.

I’ve just texted him that we’re proud of him, and got the reply “thanks, dad, means a lot”, which made me well up in a most unmanly way.

And we are proud of him. So very proud.

All the best today, my son.

Tour de France

I did watch the Italy-Ireland match last night, but by the time the players left the field at the final whistle I was already in bed. This was because I’ d to get up at 1.45 this morning to drive Tinson2 to his school, so he could go on his school tour to Paris.

I should point out here the meeting time was 3 a.m, and that his school is ten minutes drive away, so with either of the other two I could have had an extra half-hour’s sleep, but we allowed the additional 30 minutes to get Tinson2 awake.

Years ago Tinson1 described him as “the Indestructible Sleeper”. On numerous Christmas mornings Tinson1 and Tingirl have stood patiently waiting to go and see what bounty Santa might have left while we tried to wake their brother.  Often we would think we’d succeeded, in that his eyes would open & he’d reply, but as soon as we’d turn he’d flop back onto his pillow, and would later have no recollection of the event.

Anyway, early this morning we listened while his alarm went on and on, then went and got him up ourselves. We got him sorted, Mrs Tin said tearful goodbyes, and I drove to him meet the rest of his class, then stood in the dark watching as the two coaches headed off towards the airport.

As they left I was reminded of my own big school tour, to the Lake District in England. The year was, staggeringly, 1971 (not only did we not have the Euro, we didn’t even have the Decimal Currency that preceeded it. We used LSD, though not in the same way that Jimi Hendrix and Van Morrison were doing at the time).

It shows what a tremendous impact a school tour has on a young mind that I still have distinct memories of the trip. I remember, and this is not nostalgia talking, that the weather was fabulous. I remember that the old wooden Menai Bridge that connected Anglesey Island to mainland Wales had burned down, so we’d to sail not to Holyhead but to the cargo port of Heysham, and I was astonished at its size and the size of the ships it contained.

I also, rather embarrassingly, remember that we stopped off in cafe somewhere, and someone pointed out that the toilet door said “Men and Women”. Immediately the whole horde of us, from our boys-only school, rushed through the door. To our disappointment, one we got inside there were two further doors, marked “Men” and “Women”, though God knows what exactly we’d been hoping for. The Tinkids have always gone to co-ed school, and it now seems so natural and right.

And, most of all, I remember that several of the class bought water-pistols and had a running battle along the main street of one of the little villages, and that a guy called McGonigle (another legacy of boys-only schools, we were all referred to by our surnames, and I actually never knew the first names of some members of the class) turned while running, fired over his shoulder, then ran straight into a pole, breaking his nose.

Sadly this is not available on U-Tube, because (a) the video camera was unheard of and (b) none of guys who set up U-Tube had yet been born. I still remember it, however, and still giggle, if only at the memory of the look of absolute astonishment on his face as he toppled backwards.

I hope Tinson2 and his lot have a great time. Their teachers have organised a terrific itinerary for them. They’ll remember the next four days forever.