Big Brother Probes Our Children As Young As Ten In School Questionnaire

Perhaps the most shocking survey of all to hit the education system in the UK has just unveiled its results

The 'big brother' of a survey to end all others has asked children as young as ten if they smoked, drank or took drugs regularly. For the questionnaire, 120,000 children were asked questions relating to their social behaviour which did not need the consent of their parents to fill it in. Ofsted, the education watchdog said that the survey was to find out exactly what was going on in schools, even behind the backs of the teachers. The survey has been greeted with varying mixed emotions as you can imagine. The children should have had their identities left uncovered, yet unions have suggested that children could be identified by their postcodes. Teachers unions in the UK have slammed the survey as being intrusive and against rules of parental permission, yet education inspectors have welcomed the frankness of the pupils who took part saying that the results gave a new and clearer vision of what is going on in the school system in the UK today. The survey, which was known as 'Tellus2' and it covered a wide range of questions covering health, home life and bullying. The results will be used to identify areas of bullying and problems that inspectors would invariably miss on inspection. Yet the unions have called the questions too personal and felt that such a question "..in the last four weeks, how many times have you been drunk?" was a question cutting the mark too fine. They also asked children if they smoked and if their dad or step dad had a paid job. (What on Earth was that last bit about? Why would that make a difference, we wonder?) However, a spokeswoman for the National Union of Teachers spoke of the concerns within the organisation. She said,

"There are some questions that seem quite personal. One has to ask why Ofsted needs to know if pupils have had a drink. Just because you have a captive audience doesn't mean you should be abusing that position."

The NUT has also aired concerns as to how exactly the information the survey had gathered was going to be put to use. Not to mention that just having a postcode can give you a full address of the pupil answering the questions. It is thought that a large number of Head Teachers did not give their permission for the survey to take place in their schools and that the idea of the postcodes made the questionnaire far from anonymous. Yet the spokeswoman for the watchdog, Ofsted said otherwise,

"The postcodes will not be made available outside Ofsted and will be used for analysis purposes only. Information made available to local authorities will be analysed by the first three digits only and only then when there are enough responses in any particular grouping to avoid identification."

However, if it means that for one aspect, the subject of bullying is tackled correctly and successfully due to the results of this survey, then surely, it can't be a bad thing.....