A weak week!

Yet again, as is so often the case in this place, I am stuck in front of a class watching the little heads of the pupils bent over yet another examination paper.  The only good thing about this is that I have completed my marking so I will have to keep out of the way of my colleagues who, from today are going to be involved in all the other papers.  I only hope that they do not expect any disinterested help from me because I will give them exactly the same amount of aid that I have been given on my lonely vigil ploughing through hundreds of scripts – none!

Admittedly my marking has not been much of an intellectual endeavour as I have been checking optical mark sheets so small pencil filled brackets are swimming cross my line of sight and I am sure that they will haunt nightmares for some time.  But my work is done.

Well, not quite.  I have all the results and they now have to be entered on mark sheets so that the overall mark for the mock examinations can be calculated.  That, in itself is not difficult, what is more taxing is trying to fill in the last few marks for which the examination papers will, inexplicably have gone missing.  Or it might be that some of the pupils had the poor form to be absent on the day the examination was set.  This means that over the next week or so I will be suddenly given odd examination papers for which I will have to find the mark scheme.

But I am too old a hand at this to let such concerns phase me.  Safe inside a specific folder are all three of the marking stencils (of my own design) which will ensure that any extraneous papers can be dealt with in a swift and satisfactory manner.

I am desperately trying to get everything tidied up and done before the original folders of my marked work are swamped in a deluge of folders for the other papers.  Getting the entire school through a mock examination at three different levels is a logistical exercise of frightening proportions and there will be administrative and examinational mishaps that will induce the fearful anarchy that sometimes seems to power this place!

My normal class marking can now be dealt with and I should be able to gasp a partial sigh of relief before the next internal examinations start – next week!  You couldn’t make it up!

At least we are over half way through the month and getting nearer to the “Trip Week” in early February.  I do not “do” trips so I will remaining firmly in Catalonia while my colleagues roam far and wide visiting places as far apart as The Isle of Wight and Cantabria.  Good luck to them.  At least in our school teachers who accompany trips are paid extra.  Not enough, but extra.

There are teachers other than myself who are left in school and we will be expected to come to school and do “work”.  As far as I can remember we are allowed to leave at lunchtime and we can all look forward to a “puente” as we have the Friday of that week as an Occasional Day so have a three-day weekend.  Thank god for small mercies!

After this small break, with only one day as a real holiday, we only have one other day off until the Easter holidays.  That is going to be a hard slog.

Day by day.