To remind myself how far I've come - my debt diary. - SOA added

pandapaws

Sorry to hear that it's a bit of a sad day for you guys. Makes us remember we're not invincible, and money isn't the most important thing in the world. Did I read right that both funerals are today - that's pretty rough, although in a way it gets them both out of the way so hopefully your OH won't be worrying about them over the weekend.

Hope the school visit goes ok - is it 'your' school, or is it just DD that goes there (in her pyjamas!)?

chocaholic110

Yes, both funerals are today. In fact they're 15 minutes apart which means he's only going to his friend's funeral as he's only met the other lad once or twice.

And yes, it's "my" school where DD goes, which is exactly why I don't trust her teacher to let them put warmer clothes on (He's a bit clueless about life in general and doesn't have children of his own)

chocaholic110

Well, not all bad news today.

£50 cheque came from the premium bonds after I changed the address for OH a couple of weeks ago. Think possibly National savings don't actually want to pay it out as they actually sent the cheque to my neighbour's house a few doors away!! Anyway, he actually won in October 1995 so only waited 12 years to claim the money! (Or you could say it arrived when we actually needed it - 12 years ago he was still single, had plenty of money and would have used the money to get drunk at the weekend - that all changed when he met me the next year!!)

Also got £10 Argos voucher and just got a PureProfile survey paying £3. Only £3.50 to go before I reach the payout level!!

pandapaws

That's a bit better, things are looking up slightly! No post here yet but doubt there'll be anything exciting in it anyway!

Sorry if my question earlier didn't make sense - panda speak! I was wondering if your son also went to your school? So are you having to go there this afternoon and see your colleagues (good luck if so!), or is he at a different school from you & DD?

chocaholic110

lol, sorry, I obviously just can't read. No, DS goes to secondary school so I don't know his teachers - although I did know quite a few in his first year as they also taught me 20 odd years ago! They've mostly retired now though. It still feels weird going back there though - makes me feel as if I'm about 12.

chocaholic110

Taken the ebay amounts off my signature as stopped keeping track and can't be bothered to work it all out. Think I made about £150 profit altogether and got rid of a fair bit of stuff. However, the money all seems to have been swallowed up and despite the fact that the last couple of weeks I have ebayed, freecycled, binned and donated to Children In Need binbags and binbags of stuff there is no extra space anyway in my house?? How can that be possible????

pandapaws

That's not so bad then, at least you don't have to turn up feeling guilty about being off 'sick'!

I think that when you get rid of stuff from your house, the clutter decides it has to fight back, and regroups itself to make it look even worse than it did before! It's like germs - if you get rid of some but not all, then the remaining ones just get stronger and develop immunity to the chemicals you used - as you de-clutter, you need to keep becoming more and more harsh with your methods of getting rid, and get rid of the whole lot, or you'll never win the battle!

That's obviously said by someone with a 40 foot storage unit packed to the gunnels - every time I have something in the house I don't want to see, I just chuck it in the car and dump it in storage!!!

chocaholic110

Just back from DS's school and not sure I know any more than I did before I went! Had a few questions to ask but his teacher didn't seem to know the answer to any of them.

Any secondary school teachers around that could maybe shed some light on things for me?

Sea78

Yep - I'm a secondary school teacher What's up?

Sea xxx

chocaholic110

I was just wondering about DS's targets and current levels - not sure how much emphasis is put on them in secondary school but I know we have targets that we have to meet in primary.

Some of the questions I was wondering were:

Does the school have a national expectation for levels that should be achieved in Year 9? (The teacher told me it was Level 4. When I pointed out that was the expectation for Eng / Maths / Science in Y6 she said "Oh, it's probably Level 5 then")

How many levels or sub-levels would you expect them to progress in a year? (She said probably a full level, then backtracked and said she didn't really know)

Should I be concerned that he got level 5 for all SATS in Y6 and is still ony showing as 5b in English now? (even though his end of Y8 report said 5a) (Maths and Science have gone up to 6b and 6a - English doesn't seem to be keeping pace). She said she didn't think I should be worried but she didn't teach English so didn't really know.

And I didn't ask this but was just wondering anyway - are secondary schools assessed for Value Added the same as we are?

Then the targets she set him were fairly woolly and unchallenging - improve at art and maintain his excellent behaviour (He got all 1s and 2s for behaviour - using the OFSTED scale - of 1 =outstanding, 2 = good etc)

Now am I justifed in feeling that the meeting didn't accomplish anything or am I (as OH said) a teacher's nightmare?

If you can help at all, Sea, I would be very grateful!!