Fin de siecle...

Every year for, well it's either 14 or 15 years around this time of the year I have been dealt an evening of torture.

This is the annual primary school Xmas concert.

This starts with the percussion band, bashing away on things to music.

Then things escalate, out come the recorders and the violins, the horrendous caterwauling din grates the ear till the point where the will to live has left.

Finally you get the two plays, one by the infants and the other by the juniors.

And here, this year, we went out on a high.

When we first started, the school was very firmly located in community. Teachers were alumni, who lived in the valley, the annual concert was scripted by the teachers and it was a collection of pieces with a firm local focus on local issues.

In short, it was hilarious.

Some few years back the staff changed and they commuted in.

Far easier than writing a play was buying one in.

You felt the disengagement.

But not this year, the play was not written by the staff it was another bought in item, it had been twisted to make the theme local though.

The performances very polished, young people displaying quite astonishing talent, like an X factor without the hype.

One of the great things about a little school is that in the Xmas concert there is a part for everyone and everyone does their part.

A 250 pupil school has a limited role for a few in the Xmas concert.

A 25 pupil school has a cast of 25.

It shows, in secondary school this primary school's children stand out, they have a certain something. A confidence in front of people that is inculcated by being part of the school concert from the age of three.

But enough of this ramble, tonight was the last school concert I have to go to, next year we will have no children at this school, the one that at times we have as a family represented 20 percent of the roll.

My little Bethan (first one at the school and 17) is doing a number at the high school talent show this week, Lovers Gold by Ella Fitzgerald. A really simple song, OK not at all, but she can do that in front of 1000 people because she did simple stuff in front of 100 people when she was 4. A skill as valuable as the A levels she does this year.

The challenge for the education establishment is to reinvent that as a target to be met and a box into which a tick can be put.

Ramble over.....

But, it will be very odd next year, no need to go and endure the torturous rasp of recorders.

I think I am glad...

R