The PD Shop

Here's the reason we get those red pigs in our planners. The PD shop. When you can exchange your pig stamps for whatever is being sold.

They've taken this concept of rewards for getting rewards for doing good stuff and taken it to their own level. But what's it like? What does it sell? Why do you even care?

Walking into M4 - the classroom that becomes a PD store after Period 5 - you get a sense that it's all been FUBAR (a military acronym - if you don't know what it means, Google it). There's children lined up behind tables waving their planners around. Some people have just one pig, others have stupidly high amounts. Occasionally, they will be offered the chance to buy something. For one stamp, you can get three pens or pencils. Two stamps gets you a bit more, or possibly a maths kit. Remember: pigs mean prizes. Or something.

The other selling point is the raffle. Buy a ticket and be entered into the draw. For an iPod Shuffle. We've heard that the school has only procured this iPod because they didn't give it out in a past competition as a prize, even though they were supposed to.

The PD Shop is, as far as we know, currently closed until some later point in the year, when it will be open for "business" once again...

Credits Error/Cafeteria/Revision

Whether it be websites, computers or the prone-to-failure BSF project, there seems to be no end to Temple Moor's stupendous ability to turn every aspect of school life a farce. Except the Stock Market Challenge, where the Temple Moor team managed to finish second. Bravo!

Look in your planner. Go. Now. Check the amount of spaces for credits you've got in those green pages. It goes all the way up to 800 credits. How anyone is supposed to get there I don't know, but that's not the point. The SIMS.net database that's used by the school to centralise every bit of data - target grades, achieved grades, attendance records for every lesson and even photographs - has a space for teachers to input credit amounts during Guidance or registration. The maximum amount you're allowed to put in? 700. So if you reach that number of credits, just give up.

It may be over-priced, over-healthy and packed to its capacity, but enjoy the cafeteria while you still can. See, over Easter, it's going to be demolished. But don't worry! They'll build a new one. The new cafeteria will take the same spot occupied by the current cafeteria, so they need to knock one down before they can even start on the next. And they've got two weeks to do it in. What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently, those on "amber" for History (using everyone's favourite system, traffic lights RAG) get more revision sessions than those on "red". We're not sure if this is true, but if it is, then Temple Moor have royally screwed up their own ridiculous system.

*Oink*!

So as it turns out the PD shop wont be next week but in fact the first week back on the Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Supposedly not all the teachers have their pig stamps yet so come Monday most people wont be able to use the PD store. However as it turns out some tutors do have a pig stamp.

Well for starters, the first key issue is that the page is titled "PD voucher Stamps" although these don't look like vouchers, they look like pigs. Well that's what most people would say. But to me it looks like it has a testicle for a nose. Secondly, it's not exactly pink. It looks more like a red to me. And in the land of TMHS what does red mean? Underachievement. Fail. Awful. Get it away from me before I gouge my eyes out with a history textbook. How ironically fitting.

We'll do a poll for the colour. Let the Templars as a whole decide on the vindication of this fail. Also, if you have an opinion on the stamp, e-mail us it and we might post it.

The recession of currency.

Thanks to our sources behind the PD store, we at Templar Truths now know the lay down for the school PD store. Information the school is still yet to publish.

Well to start with, the school are taking a leaf out of the Dark Ages book and the currency for the PD store is going to be pigs. And the exchange between credit to pig is 50:1. Also these pigs are not reusable. So the average student is expected to get about 2 to 3 pigs a school year.

But what will the store be selling? Unfortunately, it is craptastic things this stationary we hoped wouldn't happen. However as it turns out, you can put all your pigs in one basket as the phrase goes in Temple Moor. If you're feeling lucky. You can be just like the other 250 students in your year and use your pigs to enter a raffle were you can win an Apple iPod. The amount of iPods that are going to be raffled is unknown at the moment. However knowing our school, expect a grand total of one. Also I bet we'll see some sort of additional fee when entering the raffle. £5, £10 maybe?

The store will be open on the last week of school after school. Probably because the school feel it might "disrupt" lesson times if it was at break or lunch. Regardless, with it's poor start to the school year so far, expect this, like all other Temple Moor projects, to go tits up.


In other news, it was Year 11 parents evening earlier tonight. Expect more on that tomorrow after we get a wide spread (and frankly one sided) opinion.

Not for Smiley faces.

Well as a lot of people will know, we now have a new head of PD (nothing positive about it) at Temple Moor. Despite the post a week or so back, I wont name names. However I personally think that giving this specific teacher the role of "head of PD" is like bringing Hitler back to life and arming him for World War three. In the passed this teacher has annoyed pupils with her annoying ability of making a half an hour video last three weeks. Now we could find a time relapse and the cane will be brought back.

Anyway, onto the main point of this post. The school is finally going to do something about their PD shop. Templar truths has heard from a very reliable source that tomorrow, the new head of PD is meeting with some students to start the PD shop. If the students are as mentally inclined as the Templars we hope they are, they will hopefully get us merchandise in the store that does not just consist of vouchers to stores we never go to or stationary.

However one problem I see is, a lot of people (including myself) have reduced (or improved) the PD shop stamps page in an area to draw smiley faces in. But who couldn't resist drawing smiley faces when you have a useless page filled with big inviting circles?

Hopefully we can get information about tomorrows meeting ASAP and expose the sinister truth.

Pupils to get a say in school's running

Today it was revealed to some forms and all school council members that pupils are going to be given a chance to have a say in part of the school. For once, we at Templar Truths like this idea. It's brilliant to give the kids - who are the people who really matter at Temple Moor - a say in what goes on. After all, they're the ones who deal with it.

But there's a downside. Pupils will (or in some cases already have) vote for which area needs most attention from the students. There's seven choices:

1. New build's layout, social areas, and stuff like that
2. New ICT technology
3. Lessons and teaching
4. Healthy school meals
5. House competitions
6. PD system
7. Bullying

Clearly what's most important here is the new build - we don't want to pass up the opportunity to say how our school's physical aspects should be - and the atrocious, flawed PD system. If enough sane pupils opt for voicing opinion on the PD system, perhaps we won't have to suffer under its idiocy.

Whether or not student ideas will be listened to is another matter entirely.

The daft rules about smoking

Today's first period was replaced with a lesson with your form tutor about everyone's favourite Temple Moor fail: the positive discipline system. We've mentioned its inadequacies, stupidities and problems previously in the blog, but today it was taken to a whole new level.

An alright match-the-offence-with-the-punishment exercise was given out and completed. It was relatively easy - but conflicted with the "pyramids". These pillars of positive discipline, mentioned in Year 11's morning assembly, guide pupils and teachers on what crime gives which punishment. For example, the yellow/orange "pyramid" (in quote marks because it's really a triangle, despite what teachers say) says unprovoked assault is a fixed term permanent exclusion. Yet the match-up sheet said it was a detention, isolation or exclusion, depending on the severity of the assault. Make up your minds!

Now let's move on to the smoking. Smoking earns you an instant isolation, according to the pyramid. That's actually quite soft for a punishment, seeing as smoking is against the law for most people in Temple Moor. According to today's match-up sheet, you can get a detention for being around people who are smoking. This seems far too harsh. Is it sensible to punish someone for being in the wrong place and the wrong time? Furthermore, it's punishment for who your friends are. If anything, you should be awarded for not smoking if your friends are: defiance of peer pressure is surely a good thing!

One form tutor remarked "we know where people smoke, so just stay away". At first, this seems like sensible advice, until you realise this: the school knows people smoke and knows where. This raises the troubling question of why the school doesn't stop it happening. It's against the law, so Temple Moor is really stopping the law taking effect! What sort of example is this to its thousands of students?

Aim Higher and more RAG

As my first post on here for a while (well, since Halo 3 came out), I'll be discussing, or better to put it, ranting about the "Aim Higher" system implemented by the schools fascist administration. The idea behind Aim Higher is to bludger students with hour after hour of "optional" school work. I put the word "optional" in quote tags because that's how these lessons are advertised across, the reality being much more different - or so it seems to us. Other lessons include staying over during the holidays which could be better spent trying to eat broken glass rather than doing coursework.
As another Templar put it, the school is not trying to teach us, but make us into exam monkeys.

Second of all, there is a new development with the RAG system that has been discussed more than once here before. The school administration has taken a leaf out of Nazi German's "Buch" and is now labeling all pupils by colour. You guessed it. Red, amber and Green. Pupils will be awarded Green if they're on target over all. Amber if they are under achieving in some areas, and Red if they are doing not as expected. Of course, the school's first choice of punishment would be firing squad, but when the school found out that was now illegal, instead pupils under achieving wont get any study leaves instead.

How do you feel about either of the new "punishments" the school's implemented? Post a comment or sign up and make your own posts.

"PD is unfair" says teacher

Kids have often remarked that the Positive Discipline system of stamps and credits is fatally flawed: less intelligent people get more stamps than higher sets. So far, these cries have been ignored, but it seems like one teacher is agreeing - and it's not hard to see why.

It's a well-known fact that if you're in set B4 for Maths, saying "x is 14" even when it isn't will earn you a stamp or three, for trying. Say it in A1 and you're more likely to be told you're wrong, leaving you wondering what x really is. And you can't ask for stamps, because that's just wrong.

We at Templar Truths have also noticed that even when teachers do give out stamps, it's wildly inconsistent. Some teachers will give you a stamp for handing in homework; others will do only if you've done it well. This was particularly noted by the teacher who said it is "unfair" and "wrong".

What does this mean, then? Stamps and credits are a stupid idea, basically. They're given out differently by teachers, making them random and not uniform. Unless you're in a top set, where you just won't get any - even though you're the one who will make the school's statistics look good. Fairness? Temple Moor doesn't know the meaning of the word!

Are we early? Yes! I mean, no!

As Bus 10 rolled into the Lightwater Valley, kids aboard thought "here we are". Yes, positive discipline's most positive aspect - a trip to the theme park if you get 50 or more credits and manage to keep yourself out of isolation - arrived for another year. Bus 10 was first on the scene at Lightwater, and arrived at about quarter past ten.

Upon arrival, the students on the bus were told that the bus had arrived early, and they'd have to wait another fifteen minutes sat in the coach. Yes it was hot, yes everyone wanted to go on The Ultimate as fast as they could...but the theme park wouldn't upon till 10:30. Sounds like your average blunder.

More coaches turned up, and the pupils from those coaches got off, tickets in hand, and went straight into Lightwater Valley. Apparently, it was open and the Bus 10 people had been sat on the coach for no good reason looking like idiots.

Thinking ahead

As well as the many problems the planners contain, from first glance at the pages, it seems the school has gone all out to fix any problems with the last planner. Here is a few of the mistakes they fixed with this one.

1. The cover and colours pages: To stop the "loseage" of pages from the planner this year. The school have seemed to have replaced these pages with a stronger plastic similar to that found at the bottom of drill bits. In fact if you had a ravenous, ten tonne, Bengal tiger and let it loose on the planner, it would not break its cover. Even with a lack of thumbs, the tiger would have destroyed any previous puny planner covers.
2. "Miss, I've forgotten my ruler!": So many times a teacher would be haunted by that phrase, but not anymore. As well as being used as bullet proof armour by the Royal Marines, the back cover of the planner is printed an 18 centimetre ruler to aid you where ever you go. Though we reckon some teachers will give you a comment then add, like an afterthought "oh, use the one on your planner".
   
3. Forgetting planners: No more will pupils forget their planner. Thanks to new technology, the red strip on the front of the planner, which seems pointless at first, in fact contains a microchip that will constantly remind you that you need your planner.

That is just a few of the improvements the government wasted the tax payers money on to make your planners even more unbearable.

Planner Troubles

That essential bit of kit for a Temple Moor student (or Templar, as we like to call them on this blog) is the planner. Lose it and you have to buy a new one, for £5. So they're not especially cheap. But are they any good? There seem to be some mistakes, blunders and printing errors in the Key Stage 4 version. These are:

1. "Inapprpriate" instead of "inappropriate" written on the Computer Access Policy page, rule 3.
2. "Parents/Carers signature" lacking apostrophes.
   
3. Left-hand-side pages for weeks beginning 15th October, 22nd October and 29th October have no subject names on them (in my planner, at least).
   
4. "Learning styles" text blurred and nearly unreadable.
5. "Sanctions For Misdemeanours Committed Around School" chart says the orange triangle is a "Pyramid" - it is not presented in a 3D way and is so a triangle, not a pyramid.
6. "The Rewards System - Individual" states 400 credits earns one a "Titanium" award, when the green credits pages say it's a "Certificate Of Achievement Award" - which is it?
7. Like point 4, the Periodic Table is hard to read. The one last year was of much better quality.
   
8. "Where In The World" pages have country and city names that are blurred like points 4 and 7.
   

That's eight mistakes. Which, for a school, is really eight mistakes too many, don't you think?

Contribute: if you've spotted any mistakes in the planners, leave a comment.