So we’ve well and truly hit it, autumn, the season of gloom. The time where the novelty of the new academic year has well and truly worn off, your shiny new stationery is already looking a bit limp and lacklustre and your new diary is empty. Not because you’ve nothing going on, heavens forbid, you’re busier than a beaver with a chainsaw, but because your new school year’s resolution of being more organised and writing everything down in your new Tes planner has utterly failed. You’re back to your Post-it note on your screen system, which we all know is only as strong as a gentle breeze from a nearby window.
Not that that will be a problem, as you won’t be opening the windows again until at least April. Why is it, geographers, that even though the actual temperature outside only falls about 2 degrees between September and October, the in-school temperature plummets to about 15 degrees lower at precisely midnight on 30 September, prompting calls for the heating to be switched on from the poor inhabitants of the outlying classrooms at the Arctic-facing end of B block?
The October Campaign
The October Campaign, as I have lovingly come to know it, starts at 8.01am on 1 October and consists of increasing numbers of staff asking, requesting, demanding and cajoling the premises manager and the SBM into turning the heating on. There’s no way on earth that the heating’s going on anytime before half term, but it’s an annual sport nonetheless. The SBM knows it costs an average secondary school about £400 a week to heat a school and £400 a week will buy you an awful lot of gripe. The more creative reasons you can find not to turn it on, the better the game.
The best can range from “asbestos in the boiler room” and “commissioning pipework”, through to “waiting for an engineer” and the bare-faced lie of “yes, it’s definitely on, must just be your radiator needs bleeding”. The finest of all was the school I once heard tell of (and definitely didn’t work in) where the site team fitted fake thermostats on the classroom walls of the top complainers and told them that ta-da! - they could set their own temperatures now. The thermostats weren’t connected to anything of course, but the psychological effect of turning the heating dial up worked a treat and they never complained again.
Trick or treat
Still, it’s not all bad. Halloween is in term time for the first time in forever, and that’s bound to be fun - who wouldn’t want the joy of fake blood, plastic meat cleavers and killer clowns in registration? I’ve already seen my first conkers risk assessment and await the email flyers for special offers on rock salt. The snow policy is dusted off and ready, slippery floor signs are on standby, and the cover budget is braced for impact. The annual Flu Jab debate rumbles on, uniform battles move from skirt lengths to scarves and only the PE boys are still wearing shorts.
And would it be devilishly cynical of me to ask the canteen to put on pumpkin soup, goulash, slime jelly and devil goat biscuits (OK, we’re a bit niche) to fleece every opportunity out of upping the canteen profits during this pre-November madness? Of course it would. Mwahahahhah…
Hilary Goldsmith is director of finance and operations at Varndean School. She tweets at @sbm365.
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