Work experience, apparently, is imminent for the S4s.  I say ‘apparently’ as there’s been no contact from the school about this and we have no idea what’s going on.  My main source of information is, as usual, the mothers of friends marginally more communicative than GP1.  I thought perhaps we’d missed some vitally important missive but if we have, my straw poll findings indicate that so have they.  I did find a form yesterday in GP1’s bag to be filled in (one up there on at least one of the friends) if we’re going to find him a placement ourselves, asking for information about the company.  

So my initial questions are:-

• When is it happening?
• When do arrangements have to be made?
• What should we and the school expect from work experience?
• If we’re going to find a placement ourselves, what should we be looking for?
• What opportunities do the school provide?
• How can we work in partnership with the school if we don’t know what’s going on?
• Why haven’t we been told anything about it? Is it not considered important?

I feel that the answer to the last question is probably ‘No’, otherwise surely the school would have let us know what was going on.  Wouldn’t they?  Or perhaps it happens at the same time every year and so, as with so many things during their school career, we’re just expected to know.  This system of expecting parents to know, honed over many years, functioned moderately well at primary level, with a well-developed gossip network in the village and an on-the-ball child minder.  Unfortunately it doesn’t really wash in the much wider community at secondary school, particularly with a first child going through the school.  I expect I’ll have it figured out by the time GP2 gets there. 

But really, I thought we’d moved beyond telepathy as the primary means of communicating with parents.  Anyone ready to develop a telepathic parent-school partnership?

Postscript:

GP1 will be working in the lab at his dad’s place of employment, and he seems surprisingly happy about the prospect.  Picking worms – little does he know!  He already thinks that biologists do the work of the devil (“I’m never going to be a biologist” spoken in a very deep monotone). So that’ll teach him to pass on information, then.