The long read: Over the past 20 years, the symbol of remembrance for the war dead has become increasingly ubiquitous – and a culture of poppy policing has grown with it
Worked in a school where the head refused to employ any of the candidates who turned up for interview because none of them wore a poppy (and one of them wore tan-coloured shoes that hadn’t been polished, too!) Some of the candidates were perfectly suitable and the school needed to fill the post to help reduce workload on the rest of us.
Regular state school. I worked in another where the executive head hired a private investigator to keep an eye on staff who were on longer-term illnesses and do “background checks”.
My girlfriend is a teacher and due to the stories that I’ve heard I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of teachers and particularly head teachers, are total lunatics.
My first two heads were both involved in fraud. This was in the early days of grant maintained schools. The first one set up a printing business within the school and staff could only do photocopying etc through the printers. He was taking home a nice cut of the “profits”. The second one defrauded the school for about a million pounds in a scam
where her husband sold the school computer equipment, got a stupid deputy to sign for empty boxes and then claimed that the computers had been supplied. That head went on the run to Spain. Eventully went to the High Court and she got away with it. We were told by local LEA that if we leaked anything to the press we would be prosecuted.
Also have to mention the heads who pretend you aren’t there when you try to talk to them in a corridor. I was once told never to approach one head because “Kings only talk to other kings!”
Worked in a school where the head refused to employ any of the candidates who turned up for interview because none of them wore a poppy (and one of them wore tan-coloured shoes that hadn’t been polished, too!) Some of the candidates were perfectly suitable and the school needed to fill the post to help reduce workload on the rest of us.
I hope this was a private school. The idea that the state system would be so insanely discriminatory is insane.
Regular state school. I worked in another where the executive head hired a private investigator to keep an eye on staff who were on longer-term illnesses and do “background checks”.
My girlfriend is a teacher and due to the stories that I’ve heard I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of teachers and particularly head teachers, are total lunatics.
My first two heads were both involved in fraud. This was in the early days of grant maintained schools. The first one set up a printing business within the school and staff could only do photocopying etc through the printers. He was taking home a nice cut of the “profits”. The second one defrauded the school for about a million pounds in a scam where her husband sold the school computer equipment, got a stupid deputy to sign for empty boxes and then claimed that the computers had been supplied. That head went on the run to Spain. Eventully went to the High Court and she got away with it. We were told by local LEA that if we leaked anything to the press we would be prosecuted.
Also have to mention the heads who pretend you aren’t there when you try to talk to them in a corridor. I was once told never to approach one head because “Kings only talk to other kings!”