The public examinations are now in full flow and couples of pupils are being taken for the oral part of the certificate that they are trying to get. This means that classes have been collapsed and the whole class is sitting a further examination by use of so-called Progress Papers – which take me back to the end of Junior School when we had them to give us practice for the 11+! Ah happy days.
The weather remains muggy – it has been a long time since we have had an unequivocally fine day. I have found that the micro-climate in Castelldefels seems to be better than the rarefied air in the expensive part of Barcelona where the school is situated!
The cloud of final exams hangs over all of us casting a very real pall on everything that is going on. People are already marking; or having meetings about papers; or are typing and checking; or doing whatever people do when exam papers have to be manufactured on such a regular and soul destroying basis!
The meeting arranged for this afternoon has been postponed until a week this Friday, which makes the timing about getting back into Barcelona much more problematical. Still, it will be another aspect of life to experience even if the eventual ‘conversation classes’ come to nothing. There is always another bottle of dry white wine to drink anyway!
I had a talk with my first year sixth class about cheating, as they had asked me about what I found different in teaching in Spain. I told them, truthfully, that I had never taught in a school where teaching was so endemic with all pupils, whatever their ability engaging in it. They found it difficult to believe and regarded cheating as “only a game” and it was “right to help your friends” and they couldn’t or wouldn’t see the pernicious effect of cheating.
In Spain the school produces marks which will determine your entry to university, so the way that the internal examinations are taken has a direct result on the future prospects for education and employment. If those marks are not accurate then who and what exactly are you getting in higher education and then, if the cheating continues, in the professions themselves?
Pause for thought.
The weather remains muggy – it has been a long time since we have had an unequivocally fine day. I have found that the micro-climate in Castelldefels seems to be better than the rarefied air in the expensive part of Barcelona where the school is situated!
The cloud of final exams hangs over all of us casting a very real pall on everything that is going on. People are already marking; or having meetings about papers; or are typing and checking; or doing whatever people do when exam papers have to be manufactured on such a regular and soul destroying basis!
The meeting arranged for this afternoon has been postponed until a week this Friday, which makes the timing about getting back into Barcelona much more problematical. Still, it will be another aspect of life to experience even if the eventual ‘conversation classes’ come to nothing. There is always another bottle of dry white wine to drink anyway!
I had a talk with my first year sixth class about cheating, as they had asked me about what I found different in teaching in Spain. I told them, truthfully, that I had never taught in a school where teaching was so endemic with all pupils, whatever their ability engaging in it. They found it difficult to believe and regarded cheating as “only a game” and it was “right to help your friends” and they couldn’t or wouldn’t see the pernicious effect of cheating.
In Spain the school produces marks which will determine your entry to university, so the way that the internal examinations are taken has a direct result on the future prospects for education and employment. If those marks are not accurate then who and what exactly are you getting in higher education and then, if the cheating continues, in the professions themselves?
Pause for thought.
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