Attendance: The Sticker Version

So Temple Moor's attendance sucks. It's officially recognised and, to their credit, the school is trying to do something about it. Not just via the RAG system's implementation, either. No, the school's latest weapon is...a sticker.

The sticker is to be stuck to the inside cover of your planner. The very first bit of it, that's how "important" it is. It then has a space for your name and form. Hang on, your name and form? Well that's on the front page of your planner! Whose idea were those boxes? Anyway, the next space for writing is last year's attendance. Don't know it? Don't worry, your form tutor probably has the information.

Then, as the year progresses, you get to fill in your attendance for each half term. Brilliant, except how will we find out our last half term? We'll be in the summer holidays, so it's pathetically useless. Add to that fact that Year 11 won't give a damn, seeing as they're off during most of that time - some won't be returning for Sixth Form, either.

You know what's crazier? The "targets" boxes! Surely, your target attendance should be 100%, right? Not at Temple Moor - the school with bad attendance records. Say last year and the past half term's attendance was 80%. Your target, then, is about 90%. Which, effectively, means you can skip a few days at school. Awesome!

School's "Special" Attendance

With the school taking every opportunity to remind you that attendance is important, term-time holidays are a bad idea and the new traffic light system RAG analysis, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the school really cares about your grades. But don't be silly. It's really because the school's attendance levels are bad, and they're under "special" observation.

So clearly, Temple Moor's attendance rate is dipping - and it's all your fault! That is, essentially, what the school would have you believe. And they might be right - but does this mean you'll turn up for school? Hardly, if anything, you're more likely to stay away from school to get them into trouble.

However, at Templar Truths we have this to say: turn up for school. But only because it's full of hilarious amounts of failure.

RAG - It's Traffic Lights, TMHS Style

Traffic light systems seem to be assaulting Temple Moor and not letting go. They're used for many things now (soon, reports home will be coloured cards, we reckon) but they're not traffic lights now. In assembly for Year 11s, a teacher called the traffic light system for attendance "RAG".

At first, his audience thought he was going mad, but no. RAG stands for "Red, Amber, Green". Instead of the simple-to-understand concept of traffic lights, the school's given it a wholly unnecessary acronym that will need explaining.

And why have they done this? It's blatantly obvious they've stolen the idea from traffic lights, they don't need to badly conceal it. Perhaps they realised traffic lights were over-used in Temple Moor and tried to still use them, but change the name. It's not even necessary. Anyone with half a brain can figure out that attendance above 95% is good. Or is the school's system of infinite monkeys on typewriters unable to decode percentages and only works in colours?

Again With The Traffic Lights

The brains behind Temple Moor are now going to look at children's attendance records with a system based on traffic lights. Where did they get the idea? Possibly from the other implementations of traffic lights around the school. Currently, you can use traffic lights to:

• indicate whether you understand what's being going on in the lesson
  
• see how near your target grade you are
• take part in quizzes ("hold up green for A, yellow for B...")
• cross the road

And the idea of red, amber and green is being carried over into attendance.

Why? Are parents and their children so dim that they can't understand percentages, so must have "bad" numbers thrown at them in colours? And where does this leave the colour blind? You'll have to actually say "that's red" or whatever.

The idea of traffic lights seems to be so popular with Temple Moor that, no doubt, in years to come, Temple Moor will be using traffic light systems for positive discipline, the healthiness of school meals, your uniform and probably even your health (because regular attendance to the HYPS clinic will be compulsory).