You may have noticed posts have been short an infrequent recently.

This is due to the DfES deciding they want to do a monitoring visit to look at the young offender and pre-offending project that they have given us a grant for. The funding means we can do exciting things with Reflex and Energize.

In essence this is very similar to an OFSTED visit that a school would get. The main differences are we receive one inspector that myself and a friend will spend 2 or 3 hours with looking at progress and how we monitor and assess what is happening, with the ultimate sanction being a withdrawal of funding for next year. That won’t happen – but I have found it quite an interestingly stressful exercise. I have spent most of this week collating information and writing reports in the format that they want to receive it in. All other work, and study, has had to be put on hold to enable this to be done. Bizarrely we make a quarterly report – so packing information out has been weird as we have submitted vary detailed reports.

After 3 full days last week I think I now have everything I need to send to the DfES before they visit in January. If it takes that long for one project, no wonder head teachers get stressed when they get the phonecall!

I had planned this term well – I had intended to have all work and essays done by Dec 18th so I could enjoy the holiday with the family as I have not been around much this term. I had quite a strict timetable to help this happen.

Sometimes, though, plans have to be laid aside for the sake of the immediate. Often this has happened because people need support, but I find myself unusually stressed by this because paperwork has had to be put on hold for more paperwork as we live in a world now with little trust, and a world that depends not only on targets being met, but a world where we need evidence of the meeting too.

A bit more trust and belief in the truth of our quarterly reports wold men we could do a lot more work!

Thankfully this tarhet culture has not hit churches yet – but beware … I reckon it’s coming!