At the museum we give out evaluation sheets to every school party which comes in for a workshop or to which we go as an outreach. I'm not convinced that they ask the right questions, but that's another story.

Sometimes I think that it would be a good thing if we could do an evaluation of the schools. If we did this week's would have run thus:

Were the children well prepared? Yes
Were the children polite and helpful? Yes
Were the teachers properly organised? Yes
Had they made sure that all the adult helpers were properly briefed? Yes
Did they arrive on time? Nearly
Did they clear up after lunch? Yes, beautifully - not so much as a scrap of rubbish left
Have you any other comments?
Yes. one little girl called Bethany had the best manners of any child I have ever encountered. In coming forward to take her turn she said 'excuse me' to every child she had to squeeze past, and 'thank you' to each as s/he moved aside. At the end of her turn she thanked me for letting her help, and at the end of the workshop she came up to say thank you yet again.
I would also like to mention that. although the children were only five and six years old, not one of them had to be taken out of the workshop to visit the loo.

And do these wonderful children come from a 'good' school in a superior area? No, they come from a shabby old school in a relatively poor area of Grimsby.

I wrote recently about the sort of teacher who uses the fact that the school is in a poor area as an excuse for expecting nothing from the children, and therefore doing nothing himself. Suffice to say that nothing could be further from the truth in the case of this school, or - indeed - of the other Grimsby school I visited earlier in the week.