'not bad for a little school with less than perfect facilities'

[ratchetcratchet]

Our head teacher put this statement in our newsletter when we had won a basketball competition.

Our school is intending to become an academy

should i be worried?

I wouldn't be worried about that statement at all. I interpret it as despite the school's not so perfect facilities they are provding excellent coaching and have created a winning team. The children must be thrilled.

Not sure why the statement worries you, OR where you expecting "perfect" facilites ? Tell you what, ds is at a prep, good facilities, haven't won a match in yonks!

yeah the children are thrilled....

I suppose its the attitude that the head displays...Kids are leaving in droves and i wonder if their parents understand something or have seen warning i have missed. (For instance- i had no idea that we had 'less than perfect facilities'. i expected that we had adequate facilities to provide the curriculum, including but not limited to sport)

I just wondered wether this is one of those warnings...

Also ... the head is a very inexperienced head

I'm very trusting in nature and find the schools suits my child.... but i dont understand what the change to academy status means, and having read another thread this morning about how its a good thing with strong leadership... i just wonder...

I dont mean to dripfeed....

"adequate to provide the curriculum" is the same as "less than perfect", though. If you were up against bigger schools with amazing sports facilities then it's an understandable thing to be proud of.

I don't really follow. Adequate & perfect are not the same thing. My dd goes to a small inner city primary. There are no specialised sports facilities but they do a great range of clubs & activities. That is adequate or more than adequate. What would be perfect is their own swimming pool!

I would think the head was foolish tbh.

If he is aware the facilities aren't great, why aren't they fundraising to improve? If they are why didn't he use the success to raise the fundraising again and ask for more donations/sell tickets to next event?

Becoming an academy would mean they will have more control over funding, so perhaps he intends to use it for improvements. But, the snipy comment might mean his personality is not strong enough to negotiate over supplies.

Really you can only guess what might happen, not know for sure unfortunately.

I am proud of our little school.

we viewed 4 schools before we picked this for our DD and it suits her perfectly.

i thought that this was, perhaps, a Gerald Ratner comment....

ratchet, doesn't come over that way to me. I'd interpret that comment as: we took on the bigger school and won. It's a cheerleader-ish sort of comment.

I'm usually on the side of the school on MN, but OP I agree with you here.

The head didn't write 'An excellent result against some stiff competition' or 'a well deserved win over a team from a much larger school'

She said 'not bad' which is damning with faint praise. I wouldn't trust a head who didn't love their school.

Think you may be reading too much into the HT's choice of words! Also you get periods where kids move from schools because of various reasons. Better to know the facts that listen to rumours which may or may not be true.

I don't think it is possible to tell much from the comment.

Is the school electing to become an academy or is it a forced conversion do you know? Who is driving the academisation?

'Not bad eh' is not damning with feint praise, it's typical english boasting! You need to imagine a little smug smirk going along with it! It means 'we were brilliant'! A bit like saying 'bit blowy out there' when there's a force 9 gale.

In spoken language I'd be inclined to agree with you. However, conventions for formal written English are different.

Not in this case. It would be odd beyond belief for a headmaster to be putting his own school down in a newsletter - especially in the context of winning a competition! The much more reasonable explanation is that he was saying 'good stuff, well done'! Ockham's razor, and all that.

Indeed it is odd and unfortunate and this is why the OP is right to be concerned.

Although supposing you are right, she should still be concerned, as the head is clearly unable to write an appropriate newsletter to parents.

It sounds like a mixture of typically English understated reserve and plausibly a snide dig at schools they had beaten with excellent facilities.

Sort of:

Punching above our weight here .... imagine what we could do with a few £££ more (not hinting at all, oh no)

yy libelulle