Mike Yarwood, a bed of lettuce and a pub in Builth Wells.

Whatever you might have thought of her yourself, I don’t think you could realistically disagree that Margaret Thatcher was a divisive figure. Her election as UK Prime Minister seemed to kill off Mike Yarwood’s career. If you’re under fifty his name might not mean anything to you, but he was one of the UK’s most successful and popular entertainers of the 1970s. He was the UK’s top impressionist, and his 1978 BBC Christmas show was one of the most watched TV shows of the whole decade. A large part of Mike Yarwood’s act was his impressions of politicians of the day. It was often said that being impersonated by Mike Yarwood was a mark that you’d arrived, and politicians actually wanted him to ‘do’ them. It’s hardly surprising. If we take the example of Labour Chancellor of he Exchequer Dennis Healey, in real life, although a very cultured and well educated man, he was a rough and tough political bruiser. Mike Yarwood made him into a cuddly, avuncular figure. But with the best will in the world, he just couldn’t do Margaret Thatcher. And after she was elected, everything changed. Cuddly was out.

If you want to understand some of the difference between the 70s and the 80s you should compare the difference between the political satire of the 70s in the Mike Yarwood show with the political satire of the 80s in Spitting Image. I felt that the writing in the first series was a little weak, but it got stronger and more savage as the decade progressed.

One politician who got the full works from Spitting Image was Kenneth Baker. Kenneth Baker, now Baron Baker of Dorking, was a senior Conservative politician who held a number of important posts within the Thatcher and Major governments. But do I think of any of this when I hear his name? No. I think of him being as a slug munching on a bed of lettuce, which is how Spitting Image came to portray him.

What brought him to mind yesterday was the fact that my grandson Ollie, who lives with us, had an INSET day yesterday. INSET days first came into being in the same year that I began my first teaching post. Which brings to mind Kenneth Baker, because he was the Education Secretary who brought them into being in the first place. Indeed, for quite some time afterwards they were informally called Baker days by the profession. And I have to be honest, the thought of INSET days made me want to get down on my knees and thank God that I’m not a teacher any more.

Now, the idea of INSET days, on the surface, is a pretty good one. Five days a year guaranteed for staff development and training – bloody great. But in reality, I would say that I took part in almost 1000 hours of INSET during my career. I’d guess that at least 600 of those hours were a waste of my time. Why? Well, in no particular order:-

So much time was wasted on bolting down educational rabbit holes, whatever the latest fad was – VAK – the Highly Reliable Schools Project – AFL – DFL – Key Skills. So much time was and probably still is wasted on ideas which actually had no factual basis to them, or which had been concocted by academics who had no experience of a classroom situation. All of them were quietly forgotten about when the next fad came along.

So much time was wasted on things which were irrelevant to my situation. For example, the last INSET day in which I participated was about the new Curriculum – sorry, the latest new Curriculum. Together with our partner Primary schools  we were addressed by a former headteacher of a primary school. After three hours in which he had ignored the Secondary contingent completely I got up and walked out. I felt slightly better about doing so because my own Headteacher was doing so too. Too much of my INSET time was wasted on things which could have no impact on my own teaching and therefore no impact on my pupils.

Terrible presentation. For heavens sake, we were supposed to be good at teaching and training, yet INSET was almost always delivered so badly! The last 10 years saw a lot more in house INSET in my schools. Not surprising since it’s a lot more cost effective. But basically, you’re asking people with a highly demanding full time job to find time somehow to plan INSET and deliver it to colleagues who they know aren’t really interested, for no extra payment. But even external facilitators who have been paid to deliver are guilty of really poor delivery. Even before I developed sciatica I found it difficult to sit still for 2 hours nonstop. When my hearing got worse I would despair of facilitators who would refuse to use a microphone, then stand and 'broadcast' to the other side of the hall.

The lack of personal development in personal development. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to sit a whole staff down in a hall and talk at to them for two and a half hours than to provide each one with a meaningful personal development activity. Sure, it was always nice to be given half a day to get on with marking and preparation while the grown ups were talking  (Heads of Department and Senior Management meetings) but that is blatantly not a developmental activity.

If I am honest, there are only two INSET days I look back on as having been a particularly good experience. About fifteen years ago we used a company to provide training for us. The presenters varied from the mildly interesting to the deranged – I think of the time that one came in to try to get us all to teach our pupils to revise by singing their revision notes to the tune of ‘You Are My Sunshine.” That was always going to end in tears. However we also had one come in who spent a half day on the subject of making quizzes a valuable part of your teaching. To me, this was about as much of a revelation as the facts that kids are unpredictable and if you go out in the rain without a coat or an umbrella you might get wet. But for partt of it he used a quiz game which involved triangles which had answers to questions on two side and a question on he other, or vice versa. He trick was to match up questions with answers. “You can have three quarters of an hour,” he said, “ but probably won’ finish it.” 10 minutes later it was fun watching the Head explaining to him why my department had fiished it so quickly. Yes, little things please little minds.

The other one was when we took an INSET day to visit an educational trade show called Education 93, held in the Royal Welsh Show ground in Builth Wells. We walked straight out of the show into Builth, had brunch, then spent a most enjoyable few hous in the pub before home time. Which, let me tell you, had a far more beneficial effect on staff morale than any other INSET day I ever took part in.