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Tuesday 8 April 2014

Blog 78 Free Schools? Come to my FREE HOSPITAL!

What - I repeat - WHAT is all the fuss about?

Some folk just cannot be positive about anything. Snipe snipe snipe about how Free Schools and academies are just Westminster’s way of by-passing problems of neglect and underfunding in the state education system. Moan moan moan about the money being leeched from local authorities to fund the amateur education have-a-goes. People have even complained about corruption where school inspectors with links to Free Schools or academies have (apparently) connived to downgrade local state schools in order to discredit them and get a foothold.
I, on the other hand, think Free Schools are such a monumentally fantastically marvellous concept, I have decided to open a Free Hospital.
My Free Hospital will specialise in Maternity (on the basis that I have had three children) and gynaecology (on the basis that I have a fanny). What other qualifications does a person need? I’ll apply to the government for some of the funding they currently give to my local health authority and convert my leaky garden shed in to a birthing pool for those who think delivering a baby into a vat of floating body effluent is a great idea. I will have a couple of mattresses in my living room for women who want soap opera type births (you know the ones where the women sweat a little, groan quietly while the attractive hubby mops their brow and looks attractively anxious). There will be no mention of episiotomies or haemorrhages or retained placentas.
The idea that people have to be properly trained to do a job and maybe work with other people who are not only trained but experienced is the last word in archaic thinking. And they are only children for heaven’s sake. Pissing around with their future every time a new education minister wants to make his mark is bound to work. It’s particularly gratifying to know that children at many state schools are in overcrowded classrooms while funding is lavished on Free Schools and while the people making the policies either have their children at state schools in areas that aren’t struggling or at private schools.
A young friend of mine is doing her teacher training in a school where all the teachers wander round with little toolkits of equipment from scissors to colouring pens because the school can’t afford to provide them.  The teachers – who can’t deliver the curriculum without the basic equipment – have to provide their own. I worked in a school last year where there was a near Spanish Inquisition because I asked for the children I was working with to be provided with WRITING PAPER. A child was dispatched and the exact number of sheets I had requested was counted out of a cupboard while the secretary looked at me as if I had asked for the blood of a unicorn. In both cases I suspect the school budget had been squandered on non-essentials such as crumbling buildings and wages.
My new Free Hospital will be entrepreneurial, probably offering cards and flowers for sale in the hallway as a sideline and there will be a few benches by the clematis in the front for a waiting area.
OBVIOUYSLY I won’t undertake this venture on my own. I’ll employ a woman down the road on minimum wage. She’s had four kids so she’ll know a thing or two.
Once things are up and running I will branch out and maybe do something with bones because my middle daughter has broken a few.
I won’t bother with dentistry because I don’t like drills.
So – if you are not happy with your local hospital – don’t bother lobbying your local MP to bloody well do something about it – come to my house and be the first to experience my Free Hospital.
Or
I may set up a Free Air Travel company on the basis that I caught a plane to Bristol about ten years ago...
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By popular demand (about 6 people asked) I will back-reference archived blogs from now on. I haven’t room to lay out an index as requested, but each week I will recommend an older blog either as a contrast to the current posting or because there is an interesting link.
This week – I’ve chosen a blog with a link so why not check out,
Blog 10.My One Night Stand with the Ghost of Bill Farrell