I’ve spent a significant amount of time in the primary schools of Wakefield this week and will spend the next three weeks in a similar vein. It’s an interesting and revealing insight into the formative education of the young people of our city and its surrounding area (for those of you unfamiliar with the geography of this area of West Yorkshire, the district of Wakefield covers a significant distance encompassing the “5 Towns” of Normanton, Pontefract, Featherstone, Castleford and Knottingley and a number of other towns deemed not worthy of being counted for some unknown reason.)

What becomes overwhelmingly clear, as I and my colleagues visit the schools with our range of drama workshops and educational experiences, is the absence of any kind of consistency. From the minute you enter the buildings you are hit with the personality of the school…from classroom to staffroom from the way you are greeted in reception to the displays on the walls. The overriding inconsistency glaring at me this week however was the attitude of the teachers to what we were doing. I delivered the same workshop four times this week; teachers responses varied greatly…from utter disinterest in my work and more importantly the work of their pupils, to delight at the teaching skills a head of year 6 professed to having learnt through observation of my workshop.

Although I am an ardent advocate of variation, idiosyncrasy, freedom and expression there are some things I feel should be universal in education and this week some of the schools I visited were found wanting…if the professionals in charge of our children’s education aren’t inspired and motivated, for whatever reason, to revel in continual self development how can we expect our children to make the most out of school and its opportunities. Equally if teachers are not committed in their quest to understand their pupils and thereby create the optimum learning experience for them, a vital aspect of the educative experience is lost. Reassuringly however there are great schools and great teachers that do embrace all that is good in learning …an attitude reflected directly in the disposition of their pupils. The next bit of the puzzle is to find an effective way of disseminating these vital attributes as widely as possible…