This is what really pisses me off about France. And I think it illustrates why it’s still more of an agricultural country than a manufacturing one: whatever they might want us to think.
The end of the school year is next Friday, the 5th of July.
Tuesday this week Audrey finished at 11 in the morning. Wednesday she didn’t even go in because her first two teachers were busy doing union things. Yesterday and today all the teachers were busy doing everything in the world other than what our [extremely high and going up again]taxes pay them to do so there was no school.
Do you want to know what next week’s agenda is?
Games!
What fun.
In four years’ time Audrey will take the Brevet exam – like a GCSE if you like. On last night’s 8 o’clock news that was an item about high unemployment in France and the difficulty that a lot of people are having in these crisis days we’re experiencing. I thought that it was important that Audrey watched the news item simply because we’re at the stage where we enforcing homework and trying to explain how important it is that she still put’s the effort into doing it.
And the school effectively shuts ten days earlier than it should do. Crazy!
Anyway, we had the end of school report and it was very good reading as usual for Audrey. (We’ll come onto Liam a bit later on). Progress in all her classes, especially in Art & Plastic where she had a low note last year: 4th in the class as it stands so we’re quite happy. 18/20 in Maths, French, English, History & Geography and 16/20 for the rest.
And what about the (very near retirement age so doesn’t really give a toss how it’s all thrown together) English teacher? Well she’s still there and still doesn’t give a toss. I had dinner with the headmaster last weekend and he’s retiring next Friday. I gave him a nudge and a wink to see if he could get her into the proper English teacher’s class next year. He said that he couldn’t really interfere with his replacements plans. He winked back. We’ll see in September.
Liam, the little git, is averaging 4/10 so he’s in for a spanking (literally speaking for any of you ‘Don’t hit that child brigade’) but he’s only at junior school so it’s not too bad.
I’m on holiday as of next Friday so I’m going to catch up on here and add some of the holiday photos from Vichy with mum and dad.
Sean/