I could understand this for activities such as music or dance where you can have fun without any competitive element. With sports like football, though, there’s not much point in doing them unless there is a winner.

I’m glad the parents managed to get the competition reinstated in the end and I hope whichever team loses this year won’t end up too traumatised.

Hopefully with all this drama cleared up, the local council will be able to get schools to focus on areas where it’s really important to remove the competitive element – like Chess Club.

Well, it’s not – it’s actually ‘Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’. The student directed me to this article via. the Macmillan Dictionary Blog as proof. I felt a bit silly about being wrong (even though I’m not an English teacher) but was happy to find out the correct answer to amaze my friends with at the next pub quiz I visit.

Knowing my luck, by the time I am asked this question again, someone will have already invented an even longer word!

Today’s image is by Dora Pete.

This has been annoying because, even though I like puns, hearing the same one in every class (sometimes more than once) is just too much. It’s also irritating because by the time I finally worked how to actually answer the question, it was all over and we ended up with a coalition.

As we saw last week, most of the parties had fairly similar plans regarding education but the thing the Conservatives and Lib Dems seem to have reached an instant agreement on is Pupil Premiums and how to fund them.

Although it looks like the money will be coming from child trust funds, I’ll be interested to see how they actually implement the cuts and whether they are across the board or they keep the trust funds for low-income family.

It’ll be a shame to lose child trust funds but I don’t think they would have ever lived up to the expectations some journalists laid out of these funds helping to encourage and glamorise saving money. As a teacher (although certainly not a particularly financially-savvy one) I cant help but think that actually teaching personal financial management in school would me more effective.

Now that almost all university students in the country will end up in debt, preparing them for it while they are still at school and teaching them how to manage it could be a far more valuable investment than a child trust fund.

I’ve been so distracted, in fact, that I almost missed out on the interest that Nick Clegg’s performance on the recent TV debates has stimulated in the Lib Dems. Now, it’s looking like their policies may have some relevance though, so I decided to have an ash-free weekend and do some catching up.

My starting point was Dan’s excellent overview of the manifestos and how similar they are. After reading that, I felt inspired to do a little further reading online and came across this really easy-to-read table comparing the offerings from the various parties on the Keystone education blog.

The most interesting part of the Lib Dem manifesto for me was the proposed end of KS2 tests and the introduction of ‘Teacher Assessment’ instead. I’ll be interested to read more about this over the next week and especially to see exactly how this would be implemented.

I was also interested to be reminded of the Tory proposal to only fund graduates with a 2:2 or above for teacher training. I know it caused a lot of fuss when they announced it but when you put it in context, it’s not such a big deal. Can you imagine any other course or graduate scheme giving funding to people with less than a 2:2? I certainly can’t.

The part of the Labour manifesto that caught my eye was the £10k ‘golden handcuffs’ for the best teachers. The idea of ‘golden handcuffs’ intrigues me for two reasons. Firstly, I wonder about the criteria for choosing the ‘best teachers’. Will heads have the power to nominate their ‘best teachers’ or is it just going to be based on statistics?

The second reason it attracted my attention was that sounded like some kind of unwritten James Bond novel: ‘The Teacher with the Golden Handcuffs’. Maybe he could charge £10,000 a class.

Since everyone from Sebastian Faulks to Charlie Higson seems to be writing new James Bond novels at the moment, maybe that’s what I should do to fill my free time once the elections are over…

I’m sure the Geography teachers out there had a great time explaining the real-life application of their subject. After a few days of vulcanology (as in volcanoes, not Star Trek) lectures, though, I’m sure even they would run out of things to say.

An article in the Guardian mentioned some interesting solutions including assemblies via webcam, e-mailing lessons to the students or even online tutorials. I think it’s great that teachers and schools have come up with such creative solutions. and maybe in the future these ideas could be developed into a support network for students who have to miss a large chunk of school for another reason, such as hospitalisation.

I hope everyone affected by this will be able to get back to normal as soon as possible. If you were stuck waiting in an airport (or are still there), please share your story with us by leaving a comment.

Now, I don’t actually run the chess club at school but the teacher who does was sick so I stepped in to fill his shoes. When I was a student, the kids in the chess club were fairly quiet types so I assumed that sitting watching over a group of students playing chess would be a fairly easy thing to do at lunchtime.

The problem is, I forgot the 8th rule of Chess Club – If this is your first time at Chess Club, you have to play! I am a terrible chess player but lunchbreak is quite short so I figured if I could just not lose and hold out until the bell, I’d be able to walk away with my dignity intact.

No such luck! I lost, twice. Unfortunately, I had already broken the first rule of Chess Club before I even got there and told my colleagues what I was doing at lunch. When they asked me how it went later in the day, I had to admit to getting trounced twice.

Motto of the story? Chess Club has rules for a reason. Don’t break them!

Today’s image is by Fabibel.

The article isn’t actually about light bulbs, though. It’s about a group of 14 leading education academics who – presumably after extensive research, pondering, and tea-drinking – came up with the revolutionary idea that political intervention in schools is ‘counterproductive and damaging’.

Now, education academics don’t change light bulbs themselves. They prefer telling other people how to do it then analysing the results from the safety of their university campuses. Sometimes, this results in great teaching advice. A lot of the time, though, it just results in fads that aren’t practical in a real classroom situation.

This time, however, I think they have done themselves proud and come up with a very sensible solution. Placing emphasis on the actual lightbulb-changers and letting them use their lightbulb-changing experience to change light bulbs effectively, without being micro-managed by a bunch of politicians who’ve never felt the hot glass of a freshly burnt-out bulb on their own fingers, is a great idea.

It’s such a great idea, in fact, that I’m surprised it hasn’t been thought of already. Hang on a minute… It has already been thought of – by just about every teacher in the country. When two people invent or discover the same thing in different places with no influence on each other, it might be considered independent invention.

However, when an entire profession comes up with the same idea, it’s just common sense. Why does this common sense have to reach the government in such a roundabout way? Why can’t they just go to a school and ask a teacher?

I’m not proposing that schools should be based entirely on suggestions from teachers, but when the feedback channels between teachers and those in charge become so convoluted and clogged up with paperwork that even simple, common sense needs to be delivered to them by education academics, it’s time for a change.

Maybe some of the changes suggested by these academics will be taken on board, maybe not. Either way, I applaud them for getting these ideas into the public eye. It’s just a shame that it needs to come from educational academics rather than directly from teachers in order to get any attention.

Today’s image is by Gabriel Del castillo.

I was intrigued by the list the Times has of some of the “thousands of pounds’ worth of gifts” gifts that teachers had been given, including “a Tiffany bracelet, Mulberry handbag and opera tickets”. Where on earth does this teacher work? The only gifts I’ve ever been given at school are a Snickers bar and half a bottle of Sprite that were left over after a class party.

I know some of the teachers mentioned in this article seem to feel that these gifts are some kind of bribe or put them under pressure to be particularly nice to one child above others. I feel the same way about this as I do about other ‘bonuses’ and ‘incentives’. If people were paid enough to their jobs as well as they could every day, ‘bonuses’, ‘incentives’, or gifts from parents wouldn’t make any difference. If you are already giving 100% every day, only taking a course in management jargon or motivational psuedo-babble will enable you to give any more.

Frank Chalk has a much healthier attitude to present giving. Encouraging competition with present-giving could result in parents feeling uncomfortable, though. I think the logical solution to this is to make end of term gifts compulsory but set a limit, maybe £1000 or so (just so that things don’t get out of hand).

Presents could be given anonymously, too. It would be the perfect solution. Teachers would get loads of nice gifts at the end of term but don’t know who they are from so they can’t be accused of favouritism. Parents would be able to donate generous gifts to teachers as a true expression of gratitude and without it being construed as some kind of bribe or display of socio-economic status.

I bet my Amazon wish list would look great displayed on the new interactive whiteboard in my classroom. I could even use it to show the students how to pre-order an iPad for me.

Today’s image is by Kym McLeod.

I can just imagine the scene in Cerne Secondary School a few hundred years ago:

“OK, everyone. The interactive whiteboard hasn’t arrived, yet. Actually, blackboards haven’t even been invented yet, so we’re going to carve today’s diagram into the side of that hill over there. Let’s work as a group on a big picture of a man then label all the body parts in French”.

Three weeks later:

“Well done, everyone. That looks great. Hang on a minute, who added the massive phallus?”.

Now, I’m not a maths teacher, but I’ve covered enough statistics classes for sick teachers to know that roughly 78.2 per cent of people are unable to tell the difference between real statistics and those made up on the spot.

Based on this expert knowledge, I can safely estimate that with ‘desk dongs’ being added to the world at a rate of one every minute and being cleaned up at a rate of one every three minutes (because of underfunding), were heading for a global glut of genital graffiti. So, what can we do about it?

I saw something on Angela Maiers’ blog the other day that might help. Idea Paint is a kind of paint that can turn anything into a whiteboard. I’m not going to suggest painting the whole class with it so the students can put wipe-off willies wherever they want, but having a large space where students could write on the walls (in boardmarker) could provide some scope for really interesting activities in class.

Letting students write on the walls, albeit under controlled circumstances might also reduce the ‘cool’ factor of graffiti. If it’s no longer an act of rebellion to write on the walls, maybe students wont feel the need to do it so much and can focus on really cool, ‘harmful’ activities, like learning languages.

Today’s image is by Induo.

While I was doing some background reading on Balls and Johnson, I was a little surprised (and disturbed) to find out that the ‘Balls Johnson’ dance is a kind of male genital gymnastics.

The thing I was most surprised about, though, was that the comments on all the blogs I’ve read about this debate seem to centre on who would win a fight between Ed and Boris rather than whether or not Latin is actually useful to learn at school.

The Guardian’s article, as well as the customary mention of Boris’ £250,000 salary for his column in the Telegraph, offered such gems as “Is he going to butt him in the Ed or the Balls?” from commenter ‘Spoonface’.

The fightin’ talk in the comments beneath the original article on the Telegraph’s website was a little more surreal with one commenter calling for “40 lashes with a wet noodle!”.

The best ‘Balls vs. Johnson’ article I’ve seen so far is over at adamsmith.org. It has a great picture of Ed Balls rocking out and looking a little like David Brent. It’s also well-balanced and contains a lot of common sense. The main reason I like it, though, is because mentions that Balls thinks Latin is ‘harmful’.

I can think of a lot of negative adjectives people use to describe Latin. ‘Boring’ or ‘irrelevant’ are the first two that spring to mind, but I don’t see how learning any language could be ‘harmful’.

Teenagers like ‘harmful’ things, though. ‘Harmful’ things are ‘cool’. Warnings on cigarette packs don’t put kids off smoking, they just make it more intriguing to them. Maybe language teachers could harness this reverse-psychology make language-learning ‘cool’. Are modern foreign languages as ‘harmful’ as Latin? I’m not sure, but if I can make them seem ‘harmful’ enough, maybe my students will concentrate as hard in class as they do on avoiding getting caught smoking.

Right, I’m off to stick “Warning! Language-learning is harmful and my cause cleverness” labels on all my textbooks.

Original photo by Jenny Rollo, edited by SimonSays.