Since my last post the campaign to persuade us all whether to remain in a 'reformed' EU or to withdraw from it altogether has officially got under way. The government say that Mr. Cameron has been to Europe, reformed it, and now we can stay in it. Hurrah. The opponents, many of whom seem to be part of the government as well, say Mr. Cameron has not reformed Europe at all, it is still weighing us down with unconscionable burdens and we have to send it packing. Yah boo. As well as this excitement, the government has casually announced that all schools in the country are to be made to become academies. Not just those that are 'failing', but all of them, even those (and they are many) that are 'good' or 'outstanding'. Oh, and parent governors are to be abolished. And teacher governors as well. Apparently these two groups know nothing about schools at all. The Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, who has the appearance of a not very well made 18th. century automaton whose mechanism needs urgent attention, avowed that "most parents don't even know whether their children's schools are academies or not", adding that these teachers and parents do not have the 'skill set' to fulfil their duties whereas local business people clearly do. This sits uneasily with the election manifesto statement of 2015 that "we believe that parents and teachers should be empowered to run their schools independently." But must not be allowed on their school's governing body. Ms. Morgan went on to say that schools were tired of being run by DfE and local authority diktat, and to solve this onerous situation she would issue a diktat - the wholesale seizure by the Secretary of State for Education - one Ms. Morgan - of all local authority schools and grounds which would  be handed to semi-private 'educational' companies. Even those safe, middle-class Tory counties with enviable school attainment levels like Hampshire and Oxfordshire whose schools are the pride of the local authorities. All would be taken by compulsion. 

It is a measure of this government's ill-founded confidence - or what some may call arrogance - that this clear manifesto statement : "We will turn every failing and coasting secondary school into an academy, and deliver free schools if parents in your area want them" has been transformed into every single school in the country - infant, primary and secondary - regardless of how well they are performing, to be forcibly taken from Local Authority control and handed over to a business sponsored academy chain answerable only to the DfE in Westminster. Parents and teachers are not fit to be governors of schools, but they can set up their own schools - free schools - and actually run them completely with DfE funding. This incoherent and contradictory nonsense could be seen, by someone more cynical than myself, as  the beginnings of the creeping privatisation of our education system. Michael Gove, when he was Secretary of state for Education, made it clear that he was in favour of 'for profit' schools. When you see the wholesale appropriation of publicly owned and funded assets by the government from the localities in which they have existed for over a hundred years - playing fields, buildings and grounds -  then to be leased to academy chains sponsored by business, many with a very chequered history of success and riven with financial scandals, it could be viewed as a long term plan to privatise the whole educational system. We have seen this many times before. Whole swathes of our economy and infrastructure, built up over decades and paid for with taxpayer's money, declared to be 'failing' and handed over wholesale (and often with further taxpayer subsidy) to private business to enrich corporate shareholders and directors. Witness the chaos and expense of our current public transport systems. 

Back in 1961, my move to secondary school pre-dated the 1964 Labour government's drive to encourage local authorities to introduce comprehensive education systems. Contrary to popular belief, LEA's were never made to go comprehensive, they were simply encouraged to by circular 10/65, which invited LEA's to submit any one of six proposed comprehensive schemes. This ambiguity is why Kent still has a selective system determined by an 11+ exam.
None of this impinged in any way on my feelings about the move from primary to secondary school. My main concern was revenge on Wendy Keiller and not going to a school where I would have my head shoved down a toilet, punched and Chinese burned. I continued on my aimless way, putting up with school as best I could (I've said in a previous post how much I always hated being at school - any school - and I still don't have a clear idea why. I just know that I often used to gaze out of the classroom window, aching for the freedom to be somewhere else, somewhere on my own where no-one would be telling me what to do). 
As I have said previously, the advantage of my broken arm was that I could leave school early on Tuesdays and get a bus to Bromley where I went to the cottage hospital for physiotherapy. The physio consisted of making a woollen scarf on a loom. This involved, of course, me having to move my arm backwards and forwards for an hour as I moved the wooden frame across the warp or the weft, whichever goes across rather than up and down.(This arcane knowledge came in handy much later when I did 'O' level history and learned about Richard Arkwright's spinning machines and Edmund Cartwright's weaving looms that kick-started the Industrial Revolution.) I enjoyed doing this, watching a kind of tartan pattern in blue yellow and white slowly emerge from under my fingertips. It became hypnotic and allowed me to drift off into reveries of release from my life, often taking the form of being alone in fields or woodlands with only the joy of exploring the landscape to impinge on my consciousness.

On the first hospital visit, my mother met me to take me to the first session so that I would know where to go on future sessions. After the loom work-out we went to a Lyons corner house for some food. Lyons cafes were a common chain at the time, now sadly long gone. Eating out was an extreme rarity for me - indeed nothing like as ubiquitous for most people as it is now. I can only remember three occasions when I ate in a cafe or restaurant when I was a child and this was one of them. We queued up at the self-service counter with our trays and I chose fish and chips and a trifle dessert. This was such an alien experience that I felt a bit unnerved and worried about whether we could afford it and still have the bus fare home. I can't remember what my mother had, but as she was a vegetarian it certainly wouldn't have been the same as mine. I certainly remember feeling anxious about the expense and whether we could really afford this extravagance. I began to eat voraciously, but I suddenly heard my mother give a strange sort of yelp and she held her hand to her mouth. Then she laughed and said "Oh no, I've just done a stupid thing". She had inadvertently picked up a sugar shaker instead of the salt and had liberally sprinkled her plate of food with sugar. I don't know why, but I was devastated. This rare treat was now ruined. It seemed to me that my mother's food was immediately rendered inedible and all that expense simply thrown away. The whole occasion turned into a disaster in my eyes. She would go hungry and I had piggishly wolfed down what I had. I have no idea why I reacted so strongly to this incident, since she seemed to think it rather funny. For me, the meal was ruined and I was crestfallen for the rest of the day.

Finally the result of my 11+ exam was delivered to our door. My mother opened the brown envelope and I could see that she received the news with - not dismay or joy - but a kind of resigned anger. It seemed that I had neither passed nor failed, but that I would be interviewed as to my appropriateness for a technical education at the Bromley Technical High School for Boys at a future date. Since I had never shown any interest in, or aptitude for, anything technical, this seemed a curious decision, but at least not as bad as the secondary modern. Head down toilet and other tortures began to recede - but there was that interview.
The next day at school, the head teacher - a short, bullying kind of man whose oratorical style was that of the Hitlerian rant - came into our class to shout at us about the 11+ results. I cannot remember anything that he said except that at the end he walked up to my desk and looked down at me. "You", he said, " you did exceptionally well in your English. One of the best, in fact. But your Maths was dreadful - awful. Personally, I prefer someone to be better in English than Maths " (he began to sound almost kind) - "but (sudden rant voice) "not one up here (raising his little arm as high as it would go - he suddenly looked like Hitler) and the other right down there" lowering his other little arm towards the floor, but unable to reach it. That was all he said. He left without another word.
My future would now be entirely determined by THE INTERVIEW - whatever that was. Wendy Keiller was the only girl to get a grammar school place.