But I Smile Anyway…

Yesterday, I was invited to speak to a group of actors and directors from the Royal Shakespeare Company about the crisis in our school system. We discussed in detail the narrowing of the curriculum through the government’s testing agenda, the asset-stripping of the public realm through the academies programme and the “culture of fear” that has taken hold in so many of our schools as a consequence of flawed accountability measures, leaving teachers and young people alike anxious and uninspired.

Many of the questions I was asked were, quite rightly, about what we can do about all of this. One member of the group expressed his frustration that a mood of “exhausted resignation” has settled over those who want to protect our public services. During the last parliament we held strikes, we went on marches and we signed petitions; at every step we fought the government and at every step…

This is it. These are your Bloggers Bash Awards.  BIG thank you to everyone who made suggestions. The committee spent an entire evening discussing all of them. Lots of them were similar or connected to each other, so rather than take each one specifically we have tried to incorporate as many as possible under the awards we have chosen.

We have a number of new awards this year, and some changes to the old ones.

For those new to these awards, they are part of the Annual Bloggers Bash. A physical get together in London, England, every summer. This year’s is on June 11^th, if you’re interesting in attending then drop us a line on:

Annualbloggersbash(AT)yahoo(DOT)co(DOT)uk

You can find more information here, information about the venue here. If you can’t make it but want to follow electronically, you can join…