New houseparents' accommodation on the back avenue

[onewestguncopse]

My comments seem to have provoked a strong reaction. Let me be clear. I am a member of staff but I am not a House Master. My comments are based on personal friendships with House Masters who live in the Houses now. All of them work very hard - all of them work longer hours than most employees in the UK - all of the them are 'de facto' on duty 24 hours a day. If a child is ill at 3am and needs to go to hospital then the House Master is roused. The idea that them or I ought to leave to work at Eton instead of CH because we crave some privacy with our OWN children strikes me as amusing and offensive. Old Blues do sometimes expose how out of touch they are with the reality of the school as it is today. Modern parents expect far more than they used to. So do social serivces and OFFSTED. So in fact do modern employees. CH teachers are committed, dedicated but still employed people. We do expect certain standards and if CH wants to retain and recruit excellent staff then CH needs to offer terms and conditions that are attractive.

So far as the Back Ash is concerned, what I find odd is that people who do not live here care such a great deal about a patch of tarmac. The behaviour of the pupils on this tarmac (which is not always good), the noise from this tarmac and the often unrepeatable language from this tarmac has no impact on your current life, peace of mind or that of your own family. This is pure nostalgia - which is harmless and normal. However, if the tarmac is moved 500 yards away and as a result we have happier staff, happier staff families AND new facilities for the children, then what on earth is there to fuss about!

I am sure that the comments were meant tongue in cheek. However, there is a fine line between what staff and their families need and the needs of the children. After all - what is more important, the recruitment and retention of high quality house staff or a piece of tarmac. This is what it amounts to in the end!!

Rant over!

[Mrs C.]

After all - what is more important, the recruitment and retention of high quality house staff or a piece of tarmac. This is what it amounts to in the end!!

Rant over!

Absolutely, owgc !!

[nastymum]

I think you are talking to me onewstguncopse as I made the comments about the more celubrious accommodation available at other schools. I am an OB , a parent of two pupils at the school(and one hopefully to go) and I am a teacher. You don't need to tell me how hard the staff at the school work but I have several concerns about what you say.
If pupils are using the area behind the houses inappropriately then whoever is meant be supervising them should go out and tell them off.With regard to supervision -it is sometimes woefully inadequate.For example-on St Matthews's Day a senior pupil stood outside the side door of the church and smoked a cigarette in full view of the public who were quit agog as you can imagine. My son regularly sits next to pupils in class who smell of cigarettes and drinking alcahol at the junior disco is common place. The staff themslves need some supervision as I have twice been to a parents evening where a member of staff was close to drunk. The staff may well be working hard but not always at the right things.
If you take away an area where the pupils can be seen and heard you will drive them into areas where they are not so easliy supervised and their behaviour will deteriorate even further. The fact that they do, as you say , behave so badly in the areas behind the houses is because they can. As a parent I expect you to stop them from doing this not build on the area and move them on to somewhere less over looked.
I am well aware of the problems of recruitment and retention of staff in schools but building accomodation that does not take into account the nature of the children you are looking after will not help. '..may they prosper who love her' is the mantra of then school and if you work there you do need to love this school more than any other school as so many of the children are so needy. It takes a special kind of teacher to work there and I have met many when I have been into the school but I still think that because of the nature of the intake the children's needs must come first. They need a place to meet their friends which is easily supervised or you are storing up trouble for yourselves.

[cstegerlewis]

Just to lighten the tone and get it back on topic......

When reading the Old Blue, the proposal caught my eye for several reasons:

1. What about the back ash, social hub of the school when I was there? Well last year when I visited on a Sunday they were empty, all the children were hanging aorund the sports centre, Little Side, and the remains of the Grecians Club where security is now - therefore it could be redundant.

2. I always thought the flats (when made into duplex places) were very nice, although I understood from Mike William's wife that you could sometimes hear the conversations from the showers underneath in Mid A (senior boys, probably rather caolourful, especially after the girls arrived). John Shippen's in Lamb B was a very pleasant place, certainly much bigger than all but my current house.

3. Gardens, well I don't much care for them so I cannot comment, but in Mid the Courtyard was OOB as it was Mike William's Family area

4. Most importantly - where have all the changing rooms and toilets gone from downstairs, and the Quiet Room/House Libraries upstairs. Please don't tell me generations of teenage boys keep rugby kit in their study bedrooms now - I cannot think of anything more likley to promote unpleasant smells than that !!!!!

[nastymum]

No .it doesn't Mrs C. The staff are sometimes talking out of their collective podex.It is not just a piece of tarmac. That is like saying the chapel is a pile of bricks or any other part of the school is just grass or concrete or whatever . The pupils think it is a place where they can easily meet each other . That ought to count for something.

[Wuppertal]

Please don't tell me generations of teenage boys keep rugby kit in their study bedrooms now - I cannot think of anything more likley to promote unpleasant smells than that !!!!!

Yep, that is exactly what they do! Either in their bedroom wardrobes or hanging on the rails in the bathrooms on the other side of the corridor. Where the old downstairs changing rooms and toilets were, it is now staff flats - pretty nice ones too.

[blondie95]

if the back ash gets moved to another location-i.e still providing the kids a place to gather and play football etc then fine. If it was not to be replaced then that would be bad.

[michael scuffil]

Oh dear. I get up early to do some work and find onewestguncopse telling me (among others) that I am out of touch with present-day CH reality (as if I didn't know!) So I'll use my coffee break to reply.
There has of course always been a conservative tendency among OBs and sometimes it has been destructive. Many didn't want to move from London, and I remember Seaman once saying that they had delayed the (then v. important) change to senior and junior houses by many years. The point I've been making about married housemasters/mistresses is quite different. I said the growth in their numbers is the direct cause of the problem under discussion, and that there is something to be said for not having too many married house-staff. Alternatively, house-staff might think that (compared with many teachers up and down the country) they have a fairly pleasant working environment, and should not appropriate "public" space for their private use. I don't think that is a reactionary standpoint.

The past is a foreign country, but we shouldn't be presentday-provincials. That's why we learn history. Fashions change. It is currently unfashionable to think that it is good for adolescents to be deprived of home comforts and privacy. I happen to think that, to some extent, it is good. That is one of the purposes of a boarding-school education. I can see that the establishment of Grecians' houses, quite understandable, meant the end of the monitorial system, and one might also think that employing boys as unpaid junior housemasters was a form of exploitation, but that too had a good educational side. Just because things are perceived as "old-fashioned" (like horsehair mattresses) doesn't mean we should dismiss them.

[Ajarn Philip]

Nice one, Michael. I don't necessarily agree with everything you've said, but it's a lovely piece of writing, if you don't mind my saying so.

In my humble opinion, of course.

[Mrs C.]

No .it doesn't Mrs C. The staff are sometimes talking out of their collective podex.It is not just a piece of tarmac. That is like saying the chapel is a pile of bricks or any other part of the school is just grass or concrete or whatever . The pupils think it is a place where they can easily meet each other . That ought to count for something.

Got it in one NM!! They THINK....
Maybe times are changing, particularly as there has been a move towards more "in-house" evenings?
Maybe it has been decided that supervision and safety of pupils is important, which I think you mentioned in a previous post, and that the tarmac is not the best place for them to be playing, when cars and school vehicles are moving along there too?

And if it`s not there they`ll find other places where they can meet each other .
Considering that areas of both ends of the back have had restricted use for some time, I`m sure they already have found other meeting places.
It`s not as if the school is cramped into a small built-up area, is it??

Original proposals were to make a hard surface area available to pupils anyway, I believe, because this very issue had been raised.
It will certainly reduce the cost of window repairs if pupils are not being able to play( ball games) there, saving school , and parents, a bit of cash!

[Mrs C.]

I`m beginning to think that some of you should come and do a housemaster`s job for a week or 2 - you might just change your ideas!!

[Great Plum]

Well, I have certainly stored up a hornet's nest here...

I certainly know what it is like to live with a housemaster, as many of you know, dad was a housemaster of MaB and then PeA for nearly 10 years - I am also aware that we lived in the large '1902' attached housemaster's houses so we never lived in a flat etc...

I think the point that I was trying to make is that change for change sake is not always good and that I wouldn't have any concerns with the new walled gardens if there was somewhere to be built for the pupils' 'exercise' and 'play time' - it wasn't that long ago I was a pupil, and I still speak to some of the kids now so I know that they still like to kick a ball around and meet their friends somewhere. If you put the play areas away from the houses, then the kids will sit inside and 'zob'...

[Great Plum]

I'm sure I would have done but then my arguement would be - is the school designed for the teachers or the pupils?

[Mrs C.]

Well, I have certainly stored up a hornet's nest here...

I certainly know what it is like to live with a housemaster, as many of you know, dad was a housemaster of MaB and then PeA for nearly 10 years - I am also aware that we lived in the large '1902' attached housemaster's houses so we never lived in a flat etc...

I think the point that I was trying to make is that change for change sake is not always good and that I wouldn't have any concerns with the new walled gardens if there was somewhere to be built for the pupils' 'exercise' and 'play time' - it wasn't that long ago I was a pupil, and I still speak to some of the kids now so I know that they still like to kick a ball around and meet their friends somewhere. If you put the play areas away from the houses, then the kids will sit inside and 'zob'...

so they can`t be too bothered then!!

( before Matt`s last post I`d posted " I think you`d think differently if you`d lived in the flats Matt" - then I deleted it because I wanted to add this! )

[Great Plum]

It's a nattural reaction - if something is close by, you will use it, if you have to travel (walk any distance) to get to that facility then it isn't used... this is why bus services don't win over car ownership...