4th December 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
I noticed in an article last week that a school in Norfolk is employing proof-readers to correct grammar on school reports. I had to chuckle at the headmaster’s claim that, rather than suggesting a problem with the written skills of his teachers, it actually shows a “high level of professionalism”. Now, I don’t take issue with a science teacher splitting an infinitive, or ending a sentence with a preposition, but one would think that parents and students aren’t particularly bothered about that sort of thing either. Presumably the crimes against English language that the teachers are committing are far worse, which is fairly worrying.
I spent a whole day last week changing one tiny thing on the website. Basically it meant renaming a column in our database, which took 5 seconds, but that column was referred to more than 2000 times in the website code, and had to be changed manually. I had to keep in my mind that, in the long run, it was saving time, even though it really doesn’t feel that way when you’re 5 hours into a 10 hour shift of selecting and deleting something over and over again. Oh, and I should apologise to any tutors who tried to log in last week while I was making that update. It did only take about an hour, and I did it late at night, but sorry if you were frustrated at not having access.