Welcome
Hello and welcome to the first ever issue of The Whistle-Blower. Through this newsletter, we hope to show what really goes on at Burleigh C.C, and that we are not afraid to speak our mind where the facts are concerned.
This newsletter is going to be published every three weeks, and in every issue we are going to comment on the current events that are going on in our school. Feel free to submit your comments through our web site.
The BNCS
Quite simply they haven’t worked. People from outside school still enter the campus. What was the point of giving them to post-16 yet not year 11? The ID badge was to be the 6th form answer to uniform, we can be identified as pupils of the school this way, oh, and access the library as well. Well forgive the reference to the past, but just like the Jews became numbers to the Nazi’s we have become nothing but a barcode to Burleigh. They forget that we are only human. Another question, what was the point in spending money on the thumbprint technology as it was only in place for a year. The obvious problem with the badges is how easily changed they are. Why not laminate them? School is becoming more of a concentration camp, than a learning environment. With all are movements monitored by the all-mighty Bromcom, who sees all, and what we have to say censored.
Hotmail
404
For
the last 3 years they have been threatening, and now have finally gone
through with it. Hotmail and Yahoo have been blocked. No longer can we
read our emails or send work home via these mediums. The very sudden announcement
was made Thursday 4th November; from now on we are to use the EMBC to
send our work home. Problem? The majority of post-16 have no idea what
this is. Also being told to find out details from out ICT teachers posed
another problem, we don’t all have them in post-16. The lack of
information and consultation led to an uproar of students, and I’m
sure the ICT technicians do not appreciate the amount of time they now
have to spend putting work on to floppy discs. Hotmail and Yahoo were
convenient and useful to the majority of students. But once again the
school has taken the policy of punishing the majority for the mistakes
made by the minority. A policy we grew sick of in primary school. Not
only does the policy annoy the hard working student, but also it encourages
the behaviour. The reinforcement of letting the minority get away with
anti-social behaviour only shows a bad example to the majority. With the
majority now seeking ways of get around the block, most succeeding.
For many years now Burleigh has been wasting perfectly good learning time on ‘interventions’ as part of what they call ‘personal development’. This is merely a way of getting extra money from the government which is spent on absolutely nothing useful. In the mean time, we the students miss out.
Here are some examples of these total wastes of time:
• Student Finance, looked at are parents debts rather than our finance. And who ever heard of spending £4000 on Christmas.
• Bullying, how many more times must we hear the same message.
• 'Progress Files'– Last year at least six hours have been wasted filling out absolutely useless questionnaires telling us about our personalities. Surely we make these decisions ourselves.
I’m sure many would agree that these interventions are a TOTAL waste of time.
Why should we put up with this?
I would like to personally thank the school for enthusiastically involving the pupils in their decision on uniform. Shame you didn’t listen. The overwhelming majority voted NO. Even in the parents “significant number” vote, it was not the majority vote for YES. What has angered pupils the most is the obvious lies. We were told our votes were important and would have a real impact on the decision making process. However this decision had already been made. The majority of post-16 had no access to the intranet vote, as we have no ICT lessons. Also it was not hard to access other peoples account and answer for them, many logged on to find they had already voted. In this world of democracy we see little change for the popular vote, and in the world of free speech being a student means keeping your opinions silent. Some democracy. How can you educate young adults to be model citizens if they were educated in a dictatorship, and the school it’s self said that our time at Burleigh Community College is “not a democracy.”
Lunchtime, a precious hour in the middle of the day, when you have time to eat your lunch. Unless, of course you’ve got to spend it in a lesson. Ok, you say, you’ve got a lunchtime detention, stop whining. Except I haven’t, and neither have any of the other 6th formers who have lessons moved to lunchtime because a teacher is double-booked. Since one of our regular teachers left last year, she has not been replaced, leading to the staff shortage that caused this problem. This is not restricted to one department, but has occurs to a number of people studying completely different A-Levels. Whilst tactfully avoiding specific use of the words “incompetent” or “screwed over”, or comparing anybody’s DNA to that of a primate, I want to point out that this is rather unacceptable, to say the least. Lunchtime is scheduled break, not a spare study period. This situation is bad for everyone concerned.
Nobody who has a regular lesson in a lunch break likes it, because it deprives them of the opportunity to socialise with their friends during lunch and I don’t think the teachers appreciate working during lunchtimes either. They can never teach a full lesson because they have to get lunch themselves. We either need better funding for more teachers or better timetable organisation. Anybody else who has had a lesson switched to lunchtime, contact us through the website at www.burliegh.org.uk. We need your evidence, because there’s no way we’ll see the college admitting this “little problem” in an official letter home!
This is a little note to the college management, and anyone else who might see this as a threat. We know you’ll hate us for this, but if you won’t admit or solve problems, listen to our opinions, i.e. Hotmail blocking and uniforms, and give us some real representations, we’ll protest. A member of staff was quoted over the uniform “debate” as saying “we’re not a democracy”. What are you then, communist or fascist? Let us have a real voice.
A
Warning from History
Was it not Alexander II
on the serf emancipication (freedom of slaves) who said that it was better
to abolish serfdom from above than wait for it to begin from bellow.
Take note of this, as the Russian peasants revolted, so could we. The
point I am trying to get across is that if people are unhappy for feel
unwanted the following may occur:
• Worse work rate
• Low attendance
• low moral
It works both ways Burleigh. Right now it seems to be all one way.
Can-tastic
Why on Earth are the cans of drink at Burleigh
60p? I mean why was the price suddenly changed?
The
official line is that their supplier's prices increased, but this price
that they have charged us for the last few months is now worse than
most places in town. Almost everywhere else charges 50p or at most 55p.
If indeed the supplier put up the prices, then why not just change to
a cheaper supplier? The College seems to have increased the price probably
just to make more money - due to shortfalls in the expected budget for
recent years. The fact that the luches are also over-priced leads me
to believe that they must be making some sort of profit there too; and
they say schools are meant to be non-profit organisations - Pfft!
Thats It!
Well that's it for
3 weeks. We hope you enjoyed reading our newsletter, and hopefully you
read it again next time!
In the meantime, feel free to contact us with your stories, ideas or comments.
We are aware that the sign-up and contact forms don't work in school, this is due to Outlook not being set-up, so for those who want to email us from school, our address is [email protected].