Easy as ABC...

...or should that be 'ah-bu-ku'? Interesting debate going on this morning about how our children should be taught to read at school. Apparently something called 'synthetic phonics' is the way to go - I'm sure Lily's school uses something called 'funky phonics', so I guess she's half way there and might develop a bit of rhythm while she's at it.

It's odd, isn't it? On the one hand I know schools all around us are 'failing' - we hear it every day on the news. But on the other hand I'm also convinced that they are ultimately doing their best for our kids. I know when I was at school we still had the odd teacher who was in it purely for the kicks he or she could get out of bullying the weaker amongst us on the sports fields, but PE is being fairly effectively removed from the curriculum, so I guess that breed of teacher should be dying out? The teachers I know are stressed-out, over-worked, fed up, exhausted, buried under piles of paper work and unable to breath in their small class rooms due to unmanageable class sizes - but they love the kids and they honestly go all out to do what they believe is best for them.

Increasingly it seems we're being told as parents that it is our fault if the schools are failing our kids. Take school dinners. Bill showed me something in the paper last night that was blaming parents for the poor state that school dinners have ended up in. Not only was a government spokesperson saying any improvements made in recent months had nothing to do with Jamie Oliver (a likely story), but that the whole thing was our fault in the first place for not walking hand-in-hand into the canteen with our children and demanding a decent dinner. Is it our job? Am I a lax mother because I assume that there should be the system in place for the institution that acts 'in loco parentis' (or whatever the phrase is) for our children, should also be able to get some decent grub into them while they're under their roof?

Anyway, enough for today...and that's even before I get on to Tom Cruise. You'll have to wait for another day, Tom, but don't think you're off the hook with what you've been saying... oh no!

Dx