1.
Report: Order and Disorder
McFarlane, 5A
After a visit to the school, I was disappointed in what I saw. Firstly, the imposing, forbidding buildings
reminded me more of an abbey than a school. The extensive corridors are poorly lit and poorly
decorated, giving a feeling of intimidation. Such a feeling is not suitable for a school, which ought to be
inspirational for the children’s learning, not scary. On top of this, the poorly disciplined children threw
soil and sand in each other’s eyes – an unacceptable health risk.
The teaching philosophy on the school that all children should be able to choose exactly what they want
to do is also misguided. Firstly, this means that all the children have large gaps in some subjects essential
to the children’s knowledge. Secondly, the children are disorderly and badly behaved in class. This also
means that the children who have not made up their minds about what to do are left behind and poorly
motivated. This is an essential problem of the school which must be addressed.
Discipline is the third major problem with the school. Walking through the corridors, one can hear
children shouting inside the classrooms, unable to be disciplined by their teacher, according to the
principle’s philosophy. Also, the children throw soil at each other between lessons when they have
access to it.
The detrimental effects of these problems are obvious. Due to the uninspiring and foreboding buildings
in which the school is held, during lessons there is a clear lifelessness and lack of energy from both the
teachers and the students, meaning a huge presence of boredom and a lack of effective learning. The
children are very poorly behaved, due to the lack of discipline allowed to be enforced upon the students
from the teachers. The lack of discipline from the teachers and the amount of freedom given to the
students also means that nothing is achieved during lessons, and the children have severe gaps in their
general knowledge due to the fact they do not need to learn any particular subjects. Ultimately, this
means that the school is not educating its students, the job of a school, and its students are as a result
scoring much more poorly in external examinations and tests than the students at other schools.
My recommendations are that firstly the appearance of the school is addressed: it must become more
welcoming and supportive of learning which must happen within it. Secondly, a stricter curriculum is put
in place for the students to learn, with several compulsory subjects, such as the curriculum in most
other schools. Measures need to be taken so that the students learn what they are supposed to in class.
Finally, more discipline needs to be able to be practised against the students to make the school a
suitable place for learning and to ensure it is not difficult for other students to do so, due to the soil
thrown and other bullying present in the school. Because these two latter recommendations contradict
the principles of the head teacher, eventually it may be necessary to vacate his position for a more
motivated and knowledgeable educator to administrate the school.