School summer holidays change the pattern of everyone’s life.  In big cities like Birmingham the rush hour will be ‘less rushed’, but paradoxically quicker as people cease to criss-cross the city in bewildering patterns of school choice spurred by images of greener grass in someone else’s neighbourhood.  Those fortunate to be in work find new care arrangements for their children if they can and take their annual leave either for house decoration or to garden.  For the relatively well off it’s the chance for a long-planned or spur of the moment holiday elsewhere, when snake-like we grow a new skin of resilience and camel-like stock up reserves of energy and optimism for the autumn and the long winter.  The summer break for some however is a period to be feared: for the poor a threat, not an opportunity.  Fragile family relationships creak and finally snap under the intensity of teenagers who are recruiting younger children into ‘mini-gangs’ wandering the local area in search of adventure, crime and worse.  So there are more family break-ups in the summer holidays than at any other time of the year.

Some teachers I came across the other day were doing their usual generous best for youngsters in the long summer break.  It was a Year 5 teacher and she was in her colleague’s Year 4 class as I visited the school.  “Getting to know them ready for next year, Mr. Brighouse.  I always do that.  Gets us off to a flying start,” is how she put it.  “Mrs. Jones,” she went on, “says they are a good lot so I am expecting good things from them after the summer holidays, aren’t I Class 4?” at which they all cheerfully nodded and smiled.  I would have done the same if I had been them!  This particular teacher explained how she gave them some maths puzzles to solve, a family challenge that involved mapping places where relatives lived to engage a wider support and, to my disbelieving but admiring eyes, a whole set of words to find the meaning of.  “You cannot have too much language,” she declared firmly.

Her future class were showing her the piece of work they were most proud of and she was going to take away another project they had done to show the new teacher what they were capable of doing.  Her school claim this practice in the junior years helped sustain a sense of place at a time when children’s minds are often at their most elastic.

Elsewhere in the city in a nursery school, the summer holiday presents all sorts of challenges for the family of 8 teddy bears, each one of which has a personality and identity of its own.  During term time each nursery child takes turns on birthdays and a special treat to take home one of the bears with stories, games and pictures.  Through the bears the children’s families become involved also.  Photographs, pictures and letters present a kaleidoscopic picture of the bears’ adventures in the various families of the community.  Early library skills, music and movement are all the by-products of the teddy bear project.  It never fails to amaze me how the use of a make believe third persona - in this case one of these bears - enables the skillful teacher to glimpse insights to a child which would otherwise remain unseen.

The other evening I attended a special school which was running a club for youngsters and their families from all over the city.  What they had in common were specific learning difficulties.  “Some people call it Dyslexia: it makes them feel more comfortable and somehow or other less to blame,” declared the Head, “and if it makes them feel more comfortable that is fine with us because that is part of the battle”.  The group of staff, all of whom have committed themselves to successful further accredited study, have already had extraordinary success with individual pupils and their plans for the summer include a week long course after the end of term.  It promises to be a pilot for a series of ‘springboard’ courses designed to help those youngsters who have become frustrated despite their own and their teacher’s best efforts in gaining the self-confidence to be sufficiently language competent to keep up with the rest of their school curriculum studies.  It looks as though the special school’s initiative will get another unexpected bonus from the University of the First Age, which runs its first pilot course for Year 7 youngsters in the Aston, Newtown, Heartlands area this summer holiday.

For the senior management in a secondary school I know the summer holiday this year is a time to prepare for a real campaign on achievement in the autumn.  They have decided to focus on Year 7 when they arrive.  Their SAT’s scores in this summer’s Year 6 English, Maths and Science are to be placed in their homework diaries along with a suitably ambitious personal target for Key Stage 3 SATs (which they are going to take of course in three years time).  The Head says they will ask their primary colleagues for guidance, but as a rule of thumb they reckon a two level gain is possible.  So, for example, a level 3 (i.e. two years behind their chronological average) will be marked up to level 5.  (Incidentally, the same Head tells me they are predicting success in translating a level 5 in Year 9 in the pilot SATs a couple of years ago to a GCSE Grade C or better this summer.)  So the Year 7 youngster on entry will carry round their homework diary with English, Maths and Science targets.  When I object that three years was a long time and therefore of doubtful motivational value, the Head looked at me despairingly.  “We shall use the record of achievement process of course with the pupil’s self-assessment to build in short-term achievable targets”.  I should have known she would have thought it through.  They are a thorough senior management team in her school.

They have already asked the timetabler to ensure that they are all off timetable on Tuesdays so that they can take over the teaching of a whole department, thus releasing the department for visits to another matched school where there appears to be some value in comparing results.  “We shall be able to see the performance of the same children in different subjects when we are teaching as a senior management team and help to achieve a whole school consistency in marking”.  Their plan is to take over the major departments for two Tuesdays running each throughout the year.  Of the remaining Tuesdays they are going to continue to use 15 for individual pupil discussions in conjunction with form tutors whose release they secure through supply cover.  In this way each youngster in Year 9 and Year 10 are given a personal review session about the progress they have made against their personal targets as well as discussing their own learning successes and difficulties.  They plan also to release tutors for one-to-one time during assemblies as part of their drive to increase the amount of individual tutoring for pupils.

So there will be a lot going on in Birmingham during the school summer holidays - some good and some in our unsupervised community settings not so good.  And I have not even mentioned yet the many activities based on the libraries, the Centre for the Child, the Children’s University, the museums, parks, play schemes and the youth challenge, all of which will tip the balance in the right rather than the wrong direction.

I hope all who read this are in the privileged position, as I shall be, to get a deserved rest and recreational break some time during the summer months.