Leader Comment: End of a Year, End of an Era

Wow, we really haven't had one of these in ages.

With the end of term been and gone, like the musical worth of whoever-that-guy-from-The-Script-is, many students had already either buggared off on their holidays, or to the nearest tanning salon to do a fairly unconvincing imitation. However, for those who were still at school on Friday, that was the last day before summer. When we come back in September, work on the New Building will be in full swing, despite complaints from local residents saying, rightly so, that it will be 'visually intrusive' (i.e that it looks like it was made of Lego).

In response to the construction, the school in their infinite wisdom have decided that as of next term lunch will be reduced to 30 minutes, making it only ten minutes longer than break. Whilst this does mean school will finish at 14:50, it does seem to be another show of the school fixing the issue in the most haphazard way imaginable. The problem arises from there being 1,300 kids in September, and not enough recreational space for them to be in. The way the school think they can solve this is by keeping the lack of space, just putting the students in it for less time, I assume under the impression that with fifteen minutes less lunch there is less time for things to go wrong. I dunno...

Again, the school have been tight-fisted in the least useful moment, and have opted for the cheapest, least helpful idea. They could have tried sourcing alternate recreational space; perhaps hiring land back off UCS and using some of the playing fields behind the school. Or - and this may be a bit out there - going back to letting lower years out at lunch, like we had before (which would, by the way, cost the school nothing).

And what's the best bit? This construction won't be finished for two academic years, which means students as far down as Year 10 will never see the benefits, only the sacrifices. Happy holidays!


We will be taking a break over the summer, but we will be back to report on the goings-on of the results week. Then, we'll take another break, and will be back in September.