I have an interview next week, which requires hotel stays and long train journeys again. It’s cost me about £150 so far. JC+ are, of course, unwilling to help remunerate that cost, for it is not a job I am applying for… it’s a course. Annoying.

Talking of annoying… and of this 13 week course…

Before I started, I was volunteering at a local secondary school, getting good quality experience. I had enrolled on two short courses to get decent qualifications. I was sending up to six application forms a week and getting a rather good ratio of applications to interviews. Now I’ve started, I’m not able to carry on my volunteer work, and the placement in exactly the same place doing exactly the same thing they have meant to have organised has not materialised. I have been told I cannot attend those two courses and must do one rather pointless one instead, because they can get double-funding. I attend this course for about 30 hours a week, doing six hours of “jobsearch”: which actually prevents me from filling in application forms.

When you add communist protesters camping outside, weekly bomb scares and fire alerts, crying staff and violent outbursts, it’s not a great place to be. Having said that, I’ve been allocated to a group that’s actually quite nice. But I still feel I would have been much better placed carrying on what I was doing off my own back.

The tutorial could have gone better. I had gone into the tutorial with an idea of trying to get the students to talk as much as possible about their experiences of revision so that they can discuss together how they could improve their revision techniques. I managed to make it last the twenty minutes (further than some others had reported) but it became a little fragmented towards the end. The interview in front of the post-16 tutors and the student panel were more fun, and I felt I did well in those. I also did rather well in writing the reference, though I did not manage to finish within the twenty minutes (and I made the schoolboy error of forgetting to write my name on the paper…).

The final interview was also much more relaxed and comfortable than I had anticipated. They gave me scenarios of some things that could happen in the course of the job. I think I coped rather well.

However I did not get any of the jobs that were available. I did well to be in the shortlist of ten from the 111 that applied, but it seems in the end not having school experience was again my downfall: the other candidates apparently had been in positions of similar roles in other schools.

It’s unfortunate. They were quite clear and accepted that many of those applying want to get paid experience in a school in order to eventually become a teacher; and that any decision they would make would not be impacted by my desire to teach in the future. In my feedback I was told I would make a good teacher "without doubt", but it’s looking even further away now.

I don’t see a generation out there who are lost or are hoodies, I don’t see the world like that, when I go around that’s not what I see.

I’ve taken a rather pessimistic view of sport in Britain, and that the Olympics will do little to change that. In my personal experience, sport is only pushed in the way of those that display early talent. And even then, only those that get personal attention early on have a chance of making it into the big time.

It was a gripe of mine that while at Borden Grammar, that despite years of concerns from teachers about lack of funding and teaching resources for academic studies, funding was made available for and spent on a huge astroturf pitch, a new pavilion (with impressive catering facilities) and an additional all-weather area for other sports. It felt like a betrayal, in part, that I spent time in a school supposedly encouraging academic excellence, which maintained a firm eye on improving the sports facilities. This wouldn’t have irked me so much had there not already been an astroturf pitch in Sittingbourne, and had the school not been surrounded by a park, a leisure centre, further field space and a local workers’ group recreation centre.

But despite this, during my time at university and at school, I’ve found that time is invested in you only if you are a marketable asset. If you can represent the school or university at a competitive level, you are open to all sorts of time investiture, financial investment and perks. I never felt welcome at football or cricket trials at school and was never really encouraged at all during that time. At university, participating in any sort of sporting activity requires money (and a substantial amount): that is, of course, unless you show any sort of finesse. In which case, you are not only treated to free gym membership and use of all the university’s sporting facilities (and I dare say priority in obtaining them), you are also privy to free personal attention, performance monitoring and any advice they can spare (see the CPRS site).

In essence, sport is for those that have the time invested in them. This is the kind of thing Lord Coe sees. If you have been able to build on early talent, you will never see a locked door. If you are like me and want to get into sport, I hear tiddlywinks is quite affordable.

He then asked me to read mine. "Straight" wasn’t one of the words on my list. I won’t deny that it was quite a confusing time, and put into that position I did want to affirm my heterosexual orientation, so I followed suit, changing one of the words on my list.

On finishing, the teacher was close to fits of rage. He branded the class as homophobic bigots and dismissed the class. At the time I did feel rather ashamed. I had let peer pressure get to me, and I had described myself with a word that did not immediately come to mind, so I can’t really say it was an honest reflection of my opinion of myself. But spending two hours last night staring into space, reflecting on these kinds of things, I thought to myself: ‘what if I had said "gay"?’.

If anyone in the class had done just that, perhaps they might have been admired for their courage, but they certainly wouldn’t have been admonished for their narrow-mindedness.

It seems that is what political correctness is all about. It’s not so much about ensuring that individuals and minorities aren’t offended by the words or actions of an individual; rather it seems to be a concession by those of the majority to accommodate a minority group.

Having said that, I empathise with the origins of the "PC movement" — its purpose is to give everyone a level playing field, to let everyone know where they stand, and to give the appropriate protocol for those who wish not to cause offence to others.

Conversely, for those that exercise their right to "Freedom of Speech" in order to cast aspersions and wilfully cause offence are entirely wrong to do so: indeed it is quite possibly a criminal offence, and as such Freedom of Speech does not entitle them to intentionally offend someone.

So, in summary, political correctness is a good thing in its foundations, but has lost its way in its development. In my view, I don’t really follow the political correctness protocol, but I don’t cause offence either. Rather, I follow the don’t go there protocol, since for the most part there is no real need to. If you don’t want to cause offence, you naturally stay clear of anything that might.

But gone are those days…

I was making some sort of comparison between time spent now and time spent while I was at school. It feels like time passes more slowly now than when it did while at school, which is just typical really.

I always enjoyed school while I was there, which isn’t something everyone can say. They usually look back and realise how good it was. But not me. I loved it. If I could go back and do it again, then I would. And I do.

And that is my time travelling. It’s brilliant. You don’t need a Delorean and a mad scientist (though perhaps it could be argued that I have one of the two). It’s also disappointing. You remember how great school was and serves as both a distraction and as a benchmark for how things should be now, and you find life falls a little short.

It started while at school. I was 16 and I was choosing my subjects to take at A Level. I was dead-set on becoming a doctor. I was doing well in the subjects required – namely the sciences – and I believed I would enjoy it. The Careers service sent me to a Doctor’s surgery for work experience. It was a waste of time. When the practice manager had something planned for me, I was mostly shadowing the doctors at the surgery. Otherwise I was left to my own devices. I tried to make myself useful, so all that I could do with no objection from the owners was filing. I did not learn anything other than all patients’ records had to be stored in fire-proof containers by law.

I had been looking at University prospectuses already by this time, and all of them wanted Chemistry, and usually another science-based subject. Other than that, it was my own free choice. So I chose Chemistry, Double Mathematics (which is Mathematics and Further Mathematics) and French.

The Careers Advisor at the school then hunted me down while doing my work experience, and he told me that I must do Biology. It transpired that I need not have done Biology, but I was keen to follow his recommendations, as undoubtedly he has more experience in Careers advice than I. It was unfortunate and a little disheartening that I could not take French at A Level: I had already spent my “school prize” money on a book on French verb conjugations.

I don’t think I had ever been encouraged to become a doctor. Everyone was keen to enforce the negatives, and there were many. I did not need to research the process, as it was fed to me ever since I uttered “when I grow up I want to become a doctor”:

• “It’ll be seven years before you start earning money…”
• “When you qualify, you’ll be spending most of your time working – sometimes in 36 hour shifts…”
• “Wouldn’t like to think of all that debt you’ll be in by the time you qualify…”
• “Doctors get very little time for themselves. They don’t often get holidays. Even when they do get time off, they are usually on-call…”
• “If you marry, it is likely you will marry another doctor, and there is a very high percentage of divorce rates…”
• “Doctors often suffer from high blood pressure and stress, and there is a high proportion of suicides amongst doctors…”

The latter two came from my Careers Advisor. Three months into the A Level courses, I decided against Medicine, and opted for Mathematics.

It started with a DVD talking about the plight of those in Sub-Saharan Africa with the scourge of AIDS and the hindrance of poverty. Following that, we played a silly little game with some paper, and then had a quiz. Our team won, and here I am with my box of Thornton’s chocolates – the one with all the truffles so I am smiling as I write this.

I had noticed that they didn’t have a website, so I have volunteered to help them out with that. They seemed very pleased… I am nervous now – what aren’t they telling me?!

Anyway, I had my first load of lectures today. They weren’t at all intensive, though we did start the material straight away. I also had my first ever “double lecture” ever at Uni, and that time seemed to fly, so hopefully that will continue to be the case.

And that’s it really. Hope you are all well!

This will prove controversial, especially as talent and gift are difficult to measure, particularly in developing pupils, who may wander in and out of that magic 5% as they progress through their school careers.

When I was school, which was a grammar school, those that were talented were singled out. In Year 11, about 30 out of the pool of 120 in the year were selected and put into one class. For that year, that was as good as it got. I don’t feel that we were pushed or encouraged any more: rather more we were encouraged to feel a little more big-headed and a cut above.

About five of us were also carted out to visit Cambridge University in Year 9 or so… the effect was that we were taken out of school for a day, and we indulged in the feat that we had achieved in that we were considered, at that early stage, material for Cambridge. I remember that at the time I thought it would be a doddle to get there.

In Years 12 and 13, about six or seven of us were invited to “E.

A.

T.

C.” – or Exceptionally Able and Talented Children. This was a lesson taken in our own time to discuss our A Level subjects to a depth not expected at A Level. In practice, this was just an exercise in talking in front of a small number of people about a topic that was loosely based on our subjects and tied more with our interests. I feel that it might have been useful had I applied for Oxbridge. But seeing as I didn’t – and that I didn’t attend a single interview to get to university – it didn’t seem like a huge help.

So what good will singling out these children do? They will be expected to attend summer classes and do extra work. Not sure I would have appreciated it… Having said, I think I would have achieved much more if I felt was being monitored more closely.BBC News – What constitutes a gifted pupil?