213 Degree, or not Degree, that is the question:

In my last post, I mentioned the owner of a car body repair shop.  In that piece, I implied that I had met him when we talked whereas, in fact, our conversation was only on the telephone.  His name given on the account details was so unusual and yet, to me, so memorable that I realised that he must be a man whom I had taught when he was aged 16, more than forty years ago.

As he is a real person I will not name him but will call him Peter Parchment.  I remember him as a very lively, small black boy who occasionally truanted and was often in trouble for minor misdemeanours. 

I rang him the next day partly to make sure that the money had gone through but mainly to confirm that he is who I thought he is.

“Do you come from Muswell Hill, Mr Parchment?

“No, Wood Green.”

“Did you go to Fortismere School or Creighton, as it was called earlier?”

“Yes, I did,” he exclaimed.  “Who are you?”

When I told him my name, he remembered me instantly.

“You were my Head of Year,” he said and we agreed that it certainly was a very small world.

He told me that he had been at Creighton and had left aged 16 at the end of Year 11.  He was so switched off from school that he hadn’t ever found out his exam results.  To this day he has no idea how he did.

A week before term ended, he went to a garage in East Finchley and asked if they could give him a job working with cars.  Three years later, he was working for Ford in Dagenham and from there he went to Munich and spent five years working for BMW.

When he returned to England, fluent in German, he was married and able to buy his first house and set up his own business.  He lives in Woodford now, has three sons and commutes to Woburn Sands three or four days a week.

I asked if his sons had gone to Fortismere.  They hadn’t and I got the impression that he was slightly embarrassed to tell me that they had all been privately educated.  Two of them work in the city and the other is a solicitor.

Peter has has been more successful than any of his teachers ever expected and in purely materialistic terms, has probably done better than any of them.

All that and no formal qualification of any kind from school, college or university.

I know one other person who has become materially very successful after choosing to opt out of further education.  Unlike Peter Parchment, he was academically able but after A’ levels, turned down university offers and went instead to work for BP.  In the three years his contemporaries were studying, he was progressing through the ranks of the company.

At the age of 21, he left BP and set himself up as an independent oil broker.  An oil broker is an intermediary who arranges and facilitates the buying and selling of physical oil cargos and oil derivatives.

He was so successful that when he bought his first Aston Martin, he avoided the three year waiting list by ordering it in Australia, then paying to ship it from Australia back to the UK.

In 1965, when I started at Durham University, only 5% of school leavers in the United Kingdom went to university.  In 2025, that figure is 33%.  In 1965, only about 6% of UK university graduates received a first class degree.  The percentage of firsts awarded now has risen to over 30%.  

Are  graduates brighter and working harder now than they were, or has the quality of teaching improved by a remarkable extent?  Neither of those scenarios is true as the cause of the apparent improvement is money and nothing else.

When my generation went to university, we received a means tested maintenance grant of £340 a year.  That was it.  The government paid the tuition fees.  The £340 was for food, lodging and spending money.  As it was means tested, I received £130 and my parents gave me £70 a term.  

Every Christmas, I worked for the Post Office delivering cards and mail.  Every summer, I worked at Birds Eye freezing peas but that work wasn’t strictly necessary or vital for me.  If I had been determinedly frugal (drank less beer), I could have managed on my annual grant without the need to work.

How different my experience was from that of today’s students.  Many of them find it essential to find work during term time as well as during the holidays.  The son of a friend of mine worked four evenings a week in a pub throughout his 3-year course but still managed to graduate with a first class degree.

The financial burden associated with university education in England starts at around £9,535 per year in tuition fees and that figure is now set to rise every year in line with inflation.  £9,535 is the annual fee whether the student is studying Contemporary Circus Performance at Bath Spa University or maths at Cambridge.

Added to tuition fees are housing, textbooks, and daily living costs.  This leads to student debts of a new graduate in England of £48,000 to £55,000.  Over 150,000 UK graduates currently have student debts exceeding £100,000.

Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland have lower average graduate debt, with Welsh graduates owing about £39,470; Northern Irish graduates about £28,000, and Scottish graduates typically owing around £17,000.  The figure for Scotland is low because the Scottish government pays the tuition fees for Scottish students. 

It has been estimated that half of graduates will never fully repay their student debt within 30 years.  For 30 years, most of those graduates make repayments of at least £50 a month.  

As their salary increases, the monthly sum does too.  Those who earn less than £25,000 a year, will never pay anything back but as the average national salary is now £29,600, that number is very small indeed.

Is  a degree worth it?

Attending university delays entry into the workforce and this results in lost potential income over at least three years. Those who start work, obtain apprenticeships, or join a business earlier, can gain experience and savings while their peers are still studying.

Just having a degree no longer guarantees employment or a well-paying job.  A third of UK graduates are overqualified for their roles.  In many industries, practical experience and skills are valued more highly than academic credentials.

There are jobs that demand a post graduate qualification in maths or physics.  Successful candidates will, in all likelihood, never apply the learning they have acquired over five years.  It’s the fact that they are intelligent enough to achieve a PhD in that subject, that shows they have the brain power and aptitude required for the position.

If I were recruiting for these posts, I would drop the PhD criterion and instead give candidates the “Blundeston Knot” test at the age of 18.  The Blundeston Knot is a knot joining two pieces of string that requires an extremely high IQ to begin to unravel it.

Successful candidates could avoid at least five years of study and save tens of thousands of pounds if they untie the knot.

Students often face stress from academic demands, financial worry, and expectation to succeed which can lead to mental health issues or burnout. Many also report struggling with motivation if they feel their course lacks direct relevance to their career goals and sadly, this is the case with many degree courses today.

Degree apprenticeships are becoming very popular and highly sought after.  The attraction is that some companies pay a salary while studying and upon graduation, a job is guaranteed.  I have read that an accountancy apprenticeship with KPMG, is tougher to obtain than a place at Cambridge.

If I were 18 now, I doubt that I would apply to university and if I did, it would certainly not be to read geography or any other humanities subject.  According to 2025 data from the Complete University Guide, the students with the weakest graduate job outcomes in the UK are largely those on arts and humanities courses.

People will argue that the experience of university life and the very act of learning is reward enough for the costs involved.   I accept that my three years at Durham were very enjoyable and rewarding and I made friends with whom I am still in close contact today.   Although I understand the causes of today’s more intense tropical storms, oxbow lakes, slickensides and roche moutonnées, is my quality of life better for having that knowledge?  No!

I have no idea what I would do instead.  I never had any kind of career guidance while I was at school.  I hope that is not the case today.

It is no wonder that degree grade-inflation has soared the way it has.  Universities have a duty to provide their customers - and that is what students are nowadays - with something that will, in all probability, cost them more than anything else they will ever buy - other than a house.

By the way, the Blundeston Knot doesn’t exist.  I imagined it but it would probably be good if it did though, wouldn’t it?

187 It Was Fifty Years Ago Today

Tuesday, April 12th this year was a significant date for me.  It was fifty years ago on April 12th, 1972, that I began teaching at Creighton School, a comprehensive school in Muswell Hill, North London.  For the two and a half years before then, I had taught in a secondary modern school in Lowestoft.  The students in the two schools were quite different.

I like to think that although I may have changed physically only slightly over those fifty years, I am still pretty much the same person that I was then.  Sadly, something happened today that proves I am not.

After a shower this morning, I ironed the collar of the clean shirt I intended to wear - a good thing about winter and early spring is that when wearing a pullover, it is only the collar of a shirt that needs ironing.

Then, I took the three pills I must have every morning and that was followed by a fiddly five minutes, popping pills from their sachets to refill the empty, partitioned pill container with another week’s supply.  Whatever happened to pills in bottles?

I realised that today is Tuesday and that means that the rubbish must be got ready for the refuse collectors tomorrow.  I went back to the bathroom to collect the bag from the small bin there.

The doorbell rang.  I heard Caroline unlock the door and then the voice of a neighbour greeting her.  I couldn’t hear the conversation, but I was aware that Caroline had invited her into the house.

I put the contents of the two-bedroom waste bins as well as the bathroom bag into a larger bag. Then, I set off downstairs carrying all the rubbish and an empty cup with the sound of a conversation becoming clearer with every step. 

I was about to go into the living room to say hello to our neighbour when I realised that I had forgotten something:

I wasn't dressed.  I was stark naked!

The first class I taught at Creighton was a fifth-year (Year 11 in today’s parlance) geography class.  In 1972, children could leave school at the end of the school year after they had become 15.  Consequently, in theory, those who stayed on to the fifth year were keen to study for either a CSE or an ‘O’ level exam.  I quickly discovered that some were less keen than others.

The lesson was going entirely as it should until after about 15 minutes, the classroom door burst open and a really scruffy youth holding a guitar stood in the doorway facing me.  With a theatrical flourish, he struck a loud chord and roared,

“Hi…I’m Steve.”

Things were calm after that but with about 10 minutes of the lesson left, I noticed that a girl sitting at the back of the room was engaged in something that was nothing to do with agriculture in East Anglia.  

She was sitting with her neck resting on the back of her chair, staring at the ceiling.  While sitting like that, she appeared to be gently massaging her scalp.  As I approached, I could see an empty paper packet that had been torn open and traces of white powder on the desk. 

“What are you doing?” I asked.  She ignored me.

“Sit up please and tell me what you’re doing.”

Eventually, and with a huge sigh, she dropped her hands, lifted her head, and scowled at me.

“What d’yer think I’m doing with dry shampoo?  I’m washing me bleedin ’air.”  *

At lunchtime, I went into the staffroom intending to ask someone the whereabouts of the canteen.  Keith, a young science teacher, realising that I was somewhat uncertain, asked if I’d brought any lunch.  I told him I hadn’t.

“Let’s go to the pub?” he suggested.

We walked the short distance to The Alexandra on Fortis Green where I had shepherd’s pie costing 27½p.  It was just a year after decimalisation, and it must have previously been five and six.

A couple of months ago I rang Keith, whom I still see fairly often and asked him if he knew of the significance of April 12th.  Of course, he didn’t.  After I had reminded him, he agreed it was worth a celebration.  Unfortunately, The Alex was knocked down some years ago and so it (and the blue plaque marking its place in the history of Muswell Hill), has gone.

Instead, we went to Searcy’s at the top of the Gherkin building in London.  I had shepherd’s pie again, but it was £30 this time and nothing like as nice as the Alex’s.  Much too salty.

This is Keith and me in a staff photo in September 1972:

And this in 2022:

The bugger’s hardly changed!

*****

* Washing hair during a lesson is pretty bad but something much worse happened in the classroom adjacent to mine two or three years later.  It’s a difficult thing to write about.

The bell had rung for lunch and as I walked past that room, the teacher saw me and beckoned me in.  He asked me about something or other, but my attention was fixed on a girl who was still there at the back of the room.  She appeared to be fast asleep with her head on the desk.

“She’s been like that for 20 minutes,” he told me.  “It’s been great.  No interruptions.  I suppose I’d better wake her up now.”

He called her name and shook her by the shoulder but there was no response.  Then, we saw several opened packets strewn around the floor under her desk.  

She was unconscious, not asleep.  

The teacher rushed down six flights of stairs to the general office to telephone for an ambulance.

Twenty minutes later, she was driven away to hospital where she was treated and survived.  For years I resisted the temptation to inform the teacher that I had taught some pretty poor lessons too but never one that drove someone to attempt suicide.

We never were told what had driven her to such an awful act and as far as I remember, she never returned to school but three or four years later I was told that she appeared as the centrespread of Mayfair magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

116. Sex - Elucidation and Education

As part of his personal and social education course at school, my 10 year-old nephew has recently filled out a questionnaire that was compiled for his school by the Freedom Institute.

His school, the United Nations International School in New York, informed the students’ parents that the survey was part of their ongoing partnership with the students aimed to, “foster protective and resiliency factors in their education” - whatever the hell that means!  It caused disquiet and considerable unease among some of the parents because of the nature of some of the questions/statements.

The statement that seemed to cause the most concern was, “It is important for me not to have sex at my age.”  The students who are all aged ten or eleven had to mark it on a scale of 1 – 10, where 1 is “not true” and 10 is “very true”. 

The parents’ concerns were not with the clumsy and inelegant grammar of the statement but with the content.  They didn’t think that their children should be thinking deeply about their sexuality at the age of ten.

Sex education in schools is a topic fraught with difficulties.  Parents have the choice to withdraw their children from sex education lessons.  When I was a teacher and had to educate a class of children in matters sexual, none was withdrawn from the course of lessons and so, one morning in January 1974, I stood in front of a group of 11 year-olds who had no idea what that day’s lesson was to be about and certainly had no idea how apprehensive their teacher was feeling.

Of course I was worried and concerned.  When I realised the previous September that I would have to teach sex education, I accepted an opportunity to go on a course to learn how it should be done.  I had been taught how to teach geography so why not be taught how to teach sex?

One morning in November I walked into the meeting hall at Haringey Civic Centre where a woman was sitting at a desk on a platform facing several rows of chairs.  That was satisfying.  With something like 100 people in the room, it would be be possible to be completely anonymous.  I would be able to just sit there, take a few notes and then slip away.  With any luck I would be able to go through the entire day without saying a word.

Two people had arrived before me and they were both sitting near the front.  Both were women and one of them was a nun.  For some time the four of us sat in an uncomfortable silence.  Then, the woman on the platform looked at her watch, cleared her throat and spoke:

“We may as well make a start.  It doesn’t look as though anyone else is coming.  Would you all like to move to the front and introduce yourselves?”

I let out a deep sigh, rose grudgingly from my seat on the very back row and shuffled slowly and reluctantly past row after row of empty seats to the front.  I sat down next to the nun.

“Terry Wilton, Creighton School, Muswell Hill.”

I learnt that the nun was from a Convent school in Enfield and the other woman was the Head of a school in Haringey.  The course leader was a Haringey health advisor.  I never got to find out who had been responsible for publicising the course but whoever it was had failed miserably.

Exercise 1

The first activity we did was to list all the words that children might use to describe those parts of the body concerned with sex and all the words that are used to describe the sex act.  I was still sulking and as far as I can remember my only contribution was “nob”. 

The nun, who was acting as scribe, asked if “nob” was spelt with a ‘k’.  I said it didn’t matter but no, it wasn’t.  The course leader said it certainly was spelt with a ‘k’.  I asked her if it really mattered.  She said it that it did matter and went off to find a dictionary.  Ten minutes later she returned triumphant and announced it was spelt, K N O B.  I asked again if it really mattered but she ignored me.

I was really grumpy now and I asked what was the purpose of this exercise.  We were told that it was so that we wouldn’t feel any sort of embarrassment when saying or hearing a word like “fuck” later in the day or in our school lesson.  I was 26 at the time and had been a member of cricket and rugby clubs since I was 12.  I think that I had heard them all by then but maybe the nun hadn’t.

The lesson I taught that was based on Exercise 1

The class was put into groups of four.  At the top of sheets of sugar paper was written one word that had come out of class discussion, such as “penis” and below that word, the group had to write all the synonyms they could think of.  I told them not to bother about spelling.

This was a teaching strategy to get all the rude, slang words out in the open at the start so that we could then ignore them or use them without sniggering.  They agreed though that in discussion they would try to use the correct word every time. 

Twenty sheets with twenty words did the rounds.  The groups were given a minute or two per word and then the sheet was passed on.  Twenty minutes into the lesson I heard one of the children shout out, “Anyone not had oral sex yet?”

At the end of the lesson, the only word to have an empty sheet was, “clitoris”.  There are two reasons for that.  Firstly, there aren’t any short slang terms for it (at least none that I know) and secondly, for all of the boys and almost all the girls, it was a word that they had never come across before.

Exercise 2

This involved rôle play.  The headteacher paired up with the course leader and I worked with the nun.  One of the pair had to play the part of the teacher while the other was an inquisitive pupil.  I was the pupil.

Cards were provided with the sort of question that might be asked in class.  The nun playing the rôle of ‘teacher’ was to answer my questions in an honest, open and matter of fact way.

“What’s a dildo?” I asked her.

“I haven’t the faintest idea.  Never heard of it,” she said.  “Do you know?”

There are probably very few people in the world who have ever found themselves in the position that I was in: telling a nun what a dildo was and how it was used.

The lesson I taught that was based on Exercise 2

Every student was given small sheets of paper.  They wrote any questions they had on the paper and nothing was off limits.  They folded the paper over and then put all the anonymous questions into a bowl.  I took out a question at random, read it out aloud and then answered it as best I could.

The questions were anonymous and on cards in a bowl because it meant that anything could be asked without embarrassment but more importantly, if I picked out any question I didn’t know the answer to, I could ignore it.

Some of them showed incredible innocence.  “Can a baby be born without a man?” was one of those.  Others were more difficult to answer like, “How many times can you have sex in a night?”

There was one question that I recall vividly.  When I answered it, the response I got from one of the girls sitting near the front was so comical that I remember it very clearly today, forty years later.  I can even recollect the girl’s name.  She is over fifty now and may be a grandmother and so I won’t divulge it.

“How big is a penis?” was the question I solemnly read out to the class.

“Well,” I said, taking a deep breath, “it varies.  They vary in size like an arm or a leg.”

“As big as that?” the girl shrieked, while the boys all shuffled in their seats looking sheepish.

In the bowl there were more than 100 questions and some were asked more than once.  One question was asked more than any other and it makes me feel as good to remember it today as it did when I kept coming across it during that lesson:

“How do you know when you are in love?”

About two years later, I saw a job advertised at the school run by the headteacher who had been with me on the course.  One of the reasons I didn’t apply for that job was that I didn’t want her to meet me in an interview and for her to remember that the last time we had met, reading from a card, I had asked her if she ever masturbated.

43. Dialogue and Interrogation

On Tuesday, Caroline had an interview.  Actually, it was more of a meeting than an interview but at the end of it she has at last (and about time too), got a job. Caroline has had quite a few interviews during her career and she has never been unsuccessful.  I, on the other hand, had several during my working life and was only successful at three.

I was an appalling interviewee. I have absolutely no idea why. The last one was nearly twenty years ago when feedback afterwards was never given and so I never found out. I have some ideas though.

The first interview I ever had was when I was seventeen. It wasn’t for a job but for a scholarship. The Birds Eye frozen foods factory was one of the largest employers in Lowestoft when I was at school. Every year they granted an award of £120. This went to a male student in his final year in the sixth form at Lowestoft Grammar School. Very 1960s that wasn’t it? No girls were expected to follow a career in industry. That person would be looked on favourably if he were ever to pursue a career after university with Unilever, the parent company.

I applied but all I wanted was the cash. I didn’t want to work in a factory and I’m afraid that this became all too clear at the interview. The only question I can remember being asked was, “On a wet Friday afternoon would you rather be in a classroom studying history, or out on the sports field playing rugby?”

What an absolutely stupid question - and I told him that it was too. That was my first failed interview.

I acquired my first ever teaching position without having an interview. In the summer of 1969 after completing a teaching qualification course at the Institute of Education in London, I was working on Quality Control at Birds Eye. I had no intention of ever becoming a teacher.

I had applied for a place on the teaching course in order to have a year in London at the taxpayers’ expense – no student loans in those days!  The plan after that was: work at Birds Eye throughout June, July, August and September; pay off my £125 overdraft; save as much money as I could; go to New Zealand for the winter and play cricket; come back to the UK in the spring of 1970 and then think about getting a job.

But my plans were thwarted. The sequence of produce to be harvested and then frozen at Birds Eye during the summer was:

1 - Peas (June/July).

2 - Runner Beans (July/August).

3 - Strawberries (August/September).

At the beginning of September, tragedy struck.  The strawberry harvest failed and I was laid off.  There I was on Thursday September 4th with no job and no prospects.

“You could teach,” my dad said, clearly alarmed at the prospect of having to support his unemployed son. “Go down to the Education Office. They’re always desperate for qualified teachers.”

So that’s what I did. “Be at Roman Hill Secondary Modern School on Monday morning,” I was told.

Just think! If late summer 1969 had been a little warmer or maybe cooler, wetter or drier, windier or calmer, my whole life would have turned out differently.

Eighteen months later, I applied for a job at Creighton School in Muswell Hill, North London.  Also there for interview was a young Scottish woman.  We sat together in a small room chatting awkwardly, waiting to be called and I suddenly realised that she had absolutely no idea where she was.  She knew that she was in London but when she told me that if she got the job, she intended to rent a room from her sister in Reigate, which is a town nearly 30 miles and more than two hours away and on the other side of London, I knew that for a potential geography teacher, geography was not her strong point.

I had one tricky moment during my interview.

“Tell us about the pastoral system you have at your present school,” I was asked.

“Just because we’re in Suffolk doesn’t mean we all keep sheep!” I retorted indignantly but the Scottish girl must have been even more stupid than me.

Three years after that, married and with a baby daughter, I had an interview for the Head of Department job at a school in Harlesden. There was a shortlist of six and after a tour of the school, the interviews were held in the education offices of the borough council.  Of course, being a ‘W’, I was the last to be seen.  

The six of us sat in a small, bare office and left one by one to be interviewed by a panel made up of governors, education officers and senior teachers, in a large room at the end of the corridor next to the toilet.

After the second person had been interviewed and returned to the room, someone said that they’d both been gone for exactly 5 minutes and thirty seconds. When the third person also returned in five and a half minutes, we all sniggered a little. Eventually it was my turn.

I sat through and responded to some mind boggling, unimaginative, dull questions. I noticed that one of the seven interviewers had not only failed to acknowledge me when I introduced myself but that he spent the entire time with his back to me, gazing out of the window watching the traffic and pedestrians outside.  When I stood up to leave, thinking that I had acquitted myself very well, he continued to ignore me, staring out of the window.

Once in the corridor, I looked at my watch. 5 minutes 20 seconds. That was amazing. I would be gone for exactly five and a half minutes too.  Then I had a brainwave. In those days it was the custom for the candidates to wait while the panel discussed things and came to a decision.  Sometimes you could sit and wait for an hour or more waiting for a resolution.  My ruse wouldn’t improve my chances of getting the job but it would give the competition something to think about. I went to the toilet.

I sat in a cubicle looking at the second hand of my watch moving slowly around the face. After five minutes I was bored and decided that I had delayed things long enough to earn some respect.

As I turned the handle of the waiting room door I couldn’t help grinning. Eleven minutes since I’d left. Tee hee! But the room was empty!

I was confused. It was now about six fifteen on a dark November evening and as I walked out, I could see that the offices I passed were empty but then, through the big window of one of them, I saw a face I recognised from the interviewing panel.

“Oh, there you are,” he said as I walked in. “We thought that you’d gone home.”

“So, I didn’t get the job then?” I said.

“No, but it was close,” he lied. “It wasn’t easy.”

“Wasn’t easy?” I asked incredulously. “You came to a decision in less than five minutes. It must have been the easiest decision you’ve ever had to make – or a complete stitch up,” I added darkly.

“Now, now,” he said. Things are always fair and above board here.”

“Come off it,” I said. “It takes about five minutes to say the internal candidate’s name and I suppose that she got the job?”

“Mrs Azikiwie Gbadamosi-Olanrewaju was appointed, yes. But I assure you that no decision had been made in advance. We are very strong on equal opportunities here in Brent.”

“Yes, obviously,” I muttered.

For the next few years, I didn’t apply for any promotions. I was never ambitious. Then one day I was asked to see the Headteacher in her office.

“Oh God! What have you done now?” one of my colleagues asked.

“Nothing that I can think of,” I said but that was hardly reassuring. The last time I had been summoned to see the Head, I could tell as soon as I walked in that she was furious.

On that occasion, “I will not have racists on my staff,” were her first words.

“Good,” I responded, thinking that was the right thing to say.

“I’ve received a report from a parent that yesterday you made a racist comment to his daughter in the new first year class.”

“Did I? I don’t think so.”

“You referred to her racial origin.”

“Oh no,” I thought, “She could be right.” It was early September and I’d spent all summer playing cricket with and against loads of Australians. I call Australians, ‘Aussies’. Did I call a Pakistani girl a ‘Paki’?

“What did I say?” I asked with some trepidation.

“You called her a Jew.”

Suddenly I felt relieved and a lot happier. “I certainly did not,” I said emphatically. “I wouldn’t know if a kid is Jewish. I can’t recognise Jews and even if I did, I would never refer to it.”

“She says that you did. Her friends say you did, and her parents are making a complaint.”

I felt dreadful again. How can you prove that you didn’t say anything? And there were witnesses too. I seemed to be in big trouble.

“What shall I do?” I asked.

“Well, you could start by apologising and see what happens then. The girl’s outside.  Would you like to speak to her?”

Into the office came an eleven-year-old girl who sat down and gave me the sort of look of utter contempt that only Muswell Hill kids can produce.

“What did I say?” I asked her.

“You called me a Jew,” she said.

“No, I didn’t. Are you sure that you’ve got the right teacher? I don’t recognise you.  What did I say?”

“In geography yesterday you said, “Turn round Jew.”

Suddenly it made sense. “Yesterday was the first lesson you’ve had with me, wasn’t it?  And as we’d never met before, I didn’t know any names.  You misheard me. What I said was, “Turn round you.”

This time though, I wasn’t in trouble. I had been called in to be offered a job. I became Head of Careers at Creighton School by default. The post holder had resigned and nobody had applied for the vacancy. In desperation (as she told me later) the Head asked me if I’d take it on. I wasn’t at all interested but as it would mean an extra £2500 a year on my salary, I said yes.

When Creighton School closed a year later, amalgamating with another school to re-form as Fortismere, we all had to apply for our old jobs but neither I nor the Head of Careers at the other school, who was leaving the area, applied for that Careers position.

Four external candidates were interviewed and as I knew the layout of the school and the department, I was asked to show them around during the afternoon before the interview in the evening.

The next day I found that I was not very popular with the newly appointed Headteacher.

“What did you say?” he spluttered.

He told me that the interview panel hadn’t met as all four of the candidates had withdrawn within half an hour of the end of my tour. They had asked me a lot of questions and I must have been too honest in response I suppose.

There was one job that I expected to get but didn’t. In the first year of Fortismere School’s existence there were 190 teachers but only enough teaching for 155 of us. We all had a lot of non-contact time and I was sent on a one-day-a-week course on Pre Vocational Education at Roehampton College, twelve miles away in West London.  Every Monday morning for nine months, I would leave the house at 6:30 in the morning and crawl slowly around the packed and crowded North Circular Road.  I would get home at about seven o’clock in the evening.

It was tough and an intense course but I stuck it out because, as the Head had told me when he persuaded me to follow it, “You’ll be the school’s expert on the subject when you complete it.”

Consequently, I was a little surprised and more than a little pissed off to see a paragraph in the Staff Newsletter in May informing us all that someone else had been appointed to the post of Head of CPVE.

“Isn’t that the job you promised me?” I asked the Head. “Shouldn’t you at least have advertised it?”

He wasn’t even slightly embarrassed.

I was once offered a position after being successful at interview but declined it. I was interviewed for a senior position at a neighbouring school. After my interview - I was the fourth of four shortlisted - I sat and chatted with the other candidates while we waited for the decision. After about half an hour, I was called back in and offered the job.  I turned it down.

During the wait, I had found out that one of my competitors was applying for her own job. She had resigned two months earlier, intending to go with her partner to North Wales where he was relocating for a new position.  Then he had dumped her and as she no longer had any reason or desire to leave London, she had tried to withdraw her resignation. The Head, however, told her that she was too late and she would have to apply along with anyone else who was interested.

As soon as I informed the panel of my decision the Headteacher went into a mini tantrum and accused me of wasting everyone’s time.  I was immediately certain that I had done the right thing, as I would never have got on with her.

I was appointed to the very last post that I ever held at Fortismere after an interview but in reality, it was virtually by default.

The post of Co-Ordinator of Examinations and Assessments came up and the day before the deadline for the receipt of applications, I was told by a very senior member of staff that there was only one applicant and that I should, “Please, for God’s sake, apply for it. We can’t have him.”

I did apply, mumbled my way through the interview and that became my job for the last fifteen years that I worked.

Interviews are a load of bollocks anyway.  I was on the interviewing panel for jobs at Fortismere a couple of times. During one interview, assessing only internal candidates, we had to keep score surreptitiously on the responses.

After the last candidate had been seen we sat in an embarrassed, awkward silence. At the end of the procedure one candidate stood out way ahead of the others according to all our score sheets. “We can’t appoint her,” someone said. “Could you work with her, Terry?”

“No,” I said. 

The post was as my assistant and the person who had starred at the interview was a deeply unpleasant and universally unpopular woman both with the staff and the students. Some people excel at interviews and in the teaching profession at least, they use that ability to make rapid career advances and continue to do so until they reach their level of total incompetence.  Unfortunately, by the time they get to that level, some of them - but not all and Caroline is an obvious exception - have caused and continue to cause, huge damage.

Knowing that I will never experience that rejection dejection ever again, is deeply satisfying.