The only reason I can approach my keyboard with anything other than despair is that I am on schedule!
With an effortless approach to chaos our school has decided that the entire week of examinations ends on Friday when all the results have to be tabulated on various computers and a comment on each child has to be added to the database.
On Thursday we have our annual Literary Prize evening and also on Thursday we have examinations. Which have to be marked and commented on by Friday. The panic on the faces of my colleagues – a sight to which I am well used by now – is beginning to grow.
What, you may ask, is the mystical significance of this Friday? What is it about this day which makes it essential that all the papers have to be marked and results posted? The answer, of course, is it has no significance whatsoever, apart from the significance given to it by the school. It is yet another example of self imposed panic which keeps us all going!
I have learnt that the only way that I can survive is to mark the bloody papers almost as soon as they have been sat. I mark like a thing possessed in a desperate attempt to keep abreast of the ever moving goalposts.
I have marked the first set of papers during which I totally lost the will to live and also lost the ability to spell the word “height” – which even now looks wrong to me. On the first dozen papers that I marked the word was spelt differently and wrongly on each one and, rather like with the word “because” on a set of papers in Cardiff, for a short period of time I lost the ability to spell the word with confidence!
Not only have I marked the papers but I have also entered them on my computer. They are all now nestled on the hard disc in Excel. I have, at long last, mastered the gnomic combinations of letters and numbers that transform a raw score in a square on Excel into a mark out of ten. Everything in this part of the word is expressed as a mark out of ten and, as far as the kids are concerned if it doesn’t have a mark out of ten then it is not worth bothering with.
So, it may be late at night, but I have got one set out of the way to allow space for the two sets that will drift into my frenzied fingers tomorrow. One set at least and both sets at best will have to be marked tomorrow so there is not the panic which can be expected when the next set on Thursday appears which will have to be marked on the same day because the scores have to be entered by Friday.
I pray to god that these examinations do not mean that we will have to have yet another of the interminable and incomprehensible meetings which drag their weary length along the best part of an evening after school.
That horror can creep into a forgotten corner of my brain and lurk quietly there until the end of the weekend when it can worry me to sleep on Sunday evening!
I have not had a single opportunity even to open the book which I am reading at present. Given the proclivities of our kids there is absolutely no opportunity to read or mark during an examination – all eyes have to be permanently skinned to limit the cheating which is endemic to an acceptable level.
Even when the kids look like little angels I am sure that there is a higher form of dissimulation that they are practicing to ensure that they can say that (as the immortal Tom Lehrer puts it) “no one’s work evades your eyes” in their attempts to get nearer to that elusive and magic “10”!
Meanwhile the forthcoming Barça game seems to take up the majority of broadcast time on the television we watch in this household. Barça have an uphill task to claw back the two oals that they need merely to draw level. If they just draw level then they will be able to rely on the "away goal" rule to let them progress, but that does depend on their not letting Inter score at all in Barcelona.
Perhaps I should stop now before those who know me voice their disbelief at my taking any interest at all in football - though I have to say that I have my own views about who Pep should be playing on Wednesday! Who would ever have thought it!
It should be an interesting game, though that doesn't even come close to expressing what the atmosphere is going to be like on the day.
God help!
With an effortless approach to chaos our school has decided that the entire week of examinations ends on Friday when all the results have to be tabulated on various computers and a comment on each child has to be added to the database.
On Thursday we have our annual Literary Prize evening and also on Thursday we have examinations. Which have to be marked and commented on by Friday. The panic on the faces of my colleagues – a sight to which I am well used by now – is beginning to grow.
What, you may ask, is the mystical significance of this Friday? What is it about this day which makes it essential that all the papers have to be marked and results posted? The answer, of course, is it has no significance whatsoever, apart from the significance given to it by the school. It is yet another example of self imposed panic which keeps us all going!
I have learnt that the only way that I can survive is to mark the bloody papers almost as soon as they have been sat. I mark like a thing possessed in a desperate attempt to keep abreast of the ever moving goalposts.
I have marked the first set of papers during which I totally lost the will to live and also lost the ability to spell the word “height” – which even now looks wrong to me. On the first dozen papers that I marked the word was spelt differently and wrongly on each one and, rather like with the word “because” on a set of papers in Cardiff, for a short period of time I lost the ability to spell the word with confidence!
Not only have I marked the papers but I have also entered them on my computer. They are all now nestled on the hard disc in Excel. I have, at long last, mastered the gnomic combinations of letters and numbers that transform a raw score in a square on Excel into a mark out of ten. Everything in this part of the word is expressed as a mark out of ten and, as far as the kids are concerned if it doesn’t have a mark out of ten then it is not worth bothering with.
So, it may be late at night, but I have got one set out of the way to allow space for the two sets that will drift into my frenzied fingers tomorrow. One set at least and both sets at best will have to be marked tomorrow so there is not the panic which can be expected when the next set on Thursday appears which will have to be marked on the same day because the scores have to be entered by Friday.
I pray to god that these examinations do not mean that we will have to have yet another of the interminable and incomprehensible meetings which drag their weary length along the best part of an evening after school.
That horror can creep into a forgotten corner of my brain and lurk quietly there until the end of the weekend when it can worry me to sleep on Sunday evening!
I have not had a single opportunity even to open the book which I am reading at present. Given the proclivities of our kids there is absolutely no opportunity to read or mark during an examination – all eyes have to be permanently skinned to limit the cheating which is endemic to an acceptable level.
Even when the kids look like little angels I am sure that there is a higher form of dissimulation that they are practicing to ensure that they can say that (as the immortal Tom Lehrer puts it) “no one’s work evades your eyes” in their attempts to get nearer to that elusive and magic “10”!
Meanwhile the forthcoming Barça game seems to take up the majority of broadcast time on the television we watch in this household. Barça have an uphill task to claw back the two oals that they need merely to draw level. If they just draw level then they will be able to rely on the "away goal" rule to let them progress, but that does depend on their not letting Inter score at all in Barcelona.
Perhaps I should stop now before those who know me voice their disbelief at my taking any interest at all in football - though I have to say that I have my own views about who Pep should be playing on Wednesday! Who would ever have thought it!
It should be an interesting game, though that doesn't even come close to expressing what the atmosphere is going to be like on the day.
God help!
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