Your daughter’s being bullied, your son’s class isn’t learning anything because the teacher can’t control it, the playing field has been sold off, the roof leaks, reading levels are below average and Year 4 have had five teachers in two terms but stop worrying – the school has its priorities right….

The kids lunchboxes have been secretly opened, the contents photographed and certain parents have been summoned to the school and accused of not conforming to official “healthy eating” guidelines…

A recently discovered unpublished chapter discovered in a mislaid file in the office of the publishers of George Orwells “1984”?

If only….

Its from something that’s been going on in schools in Gloucestershire in the UK for several months. However it has now been stopped because some parents thought it was a little intrusive.

Nonsense, said the school, acting as “soft cop”

we did it in a very nice and careful way, and in no way was it demanding and intrusive

The local Director of Public Health was “hard cop”

Childhood obesity is a serious concern and has major implications for the individual’s health and health services

The lunch boxes were opened and photographed by teachers who then marked them and fed the information into a database and parents who failed to get good marks were “invited” to discuss their failure with teachers (whose union leaders are always claiming are overworked)

All the parents were very positive about it

No doubt – but one can’t help wishing that several parents had gone in and suggested, forcefully but politely, that the man hours wasted in this KBG type snooping would have been better spent teaching the kids to improve their reading, writing and arithmetic……