School

Our school is in trouble. On special measures for probably 2 years now, but now we have a new head and everything is looking up finally. But this improvement brings lots of paperwork, questionnaires, letters galore, ofsted reports etc. Yesterday Littl'un brought home a questionnaire about what we think of the school. The questions go something like this:

"My child is taught well at this school"
"My child's lessons are not disrupted by bad behaviour"
"My child is making good progress at this school".

Now how am I supposed to answer those without having a spy camera in Littl'un's bag?! It's hard enough to get out of Littl'un what he did in a day (mainly "nothing") without asking if he feels he is being taught well! He is 4. The most I know is that in his reading book at home I have to write detailed comments about how he is doing when we read every night. The teacher puts a sticker in his book when they read at school. No comments about progress or anything.

But I have to return the form to his teacher so I can't put anything too damning in case they take it out on him! And I doubt if I wrote a 1000 word essay on what I thought needed improving they would do anything about it.

Click and collect

Littl'un turns 5 next weekend (how did THAT happen?!?!) and I ordered his present from a well known supermarket. I decided to do that new click and collect service they offer, to make sure I didn't waste a trip to the shop only to find it wasn't in stock. The premise of this is that you pay online, and they contact you when it's ready to collect. I've done it a few times with other shops and it's been really easy. This time I realised I hadn't been contacted in well over a week, so I rang them up to check. "Oh yeah," the lady told me cheerily, "when it arrives in store they usually don't bother to scan the packages so the emails don't get sent". And this is normal?! Oh and it gets better. I asked how long they keep them in store before returning them, as if you don't know it's there you aren't going to go and collect it are you? Other stores have a 7 day policy before they refund you and return the goods. Not this one. "Oh, one time someone's stuff was in the store for over a month before we realised!" giggled the lady on the phone. And this is funny?!?! Honestly.