Sarah Evans: Fete accompli
Jul 30 2010 By Sarah Evans
The end of the summer term often makes up for the trials and tribulations of examinations.
The scripts have been marked or at least sent off. Revision is over. Teachers feel they can move away from specifications and schemes of work and remember why they came into teaching in the first place. Children can – well, have fun.
Lots of schools including my own, have summer fetes. As I walked around the stalls, paid my money for a ball to hit the coconut (I missed as usual), listened to the various bands, took my turn at selling homemade cakes, ate a cream tea, did the lucky dip – along with families, friends, colleagues, girls having a break from supervising their stall. I thought what an amazing event such an occasion is and how if I were a Department of Education employee, I could write endless extravagant guides about all the skills and learning experiences such events offer.
What the department has produced is a glossy, running to 42 pages, entitled A Guide to Enterprise Education: For Enterprise Co-ordinators, Teacher and Leaders at School. It has the usual cajoling tone, jauntily set out case-studies and underlying message that schools can’t be trusted but must turn to those running our highly successful economy (I don’t think) for support. The reality is that if the country’s business community learnt from the average school fete, we might not be in the dire situation we now are.
Everyone enjoys working to make fetes a success. Every creative idea for magic-ing money out of people is explored. Everyone’s talents are needed and used. Pupils discuss, imagine, improvise, plan, budget, advertise, organise, execute and even tidy up afterwards. Everyone in the school community works side-by-side. There is no complicated hierarchy or strategy. Schools have been doing this for as long as anyone can remember without fuss. If only politicians could look at what is going on around them rather than assuming it is only ‘new’ ideas generated in Whitehall that count, they might find answers are staring them in the face.
* Sarah Evans, principal, King Edward VI High School for Girls
