If you drop litter you stay at school until 6pm...

... and the same applies if you don't wear uniform properly or you fail to complete your homework properly. In return, teachers work hard to provide appropriate teaching for every child in their charge and assessment and feedback is careful and targeted. The children come from Hackney primary schools, where many of them were failing before they arrived at secondary school. Last year 10 of their sixth form left in possession of offers from Cambridge University.

In a world where the most stubborn educational statistic to shake, more so than differences in race or gender, has proven to be the social background of a child, this is a cheering story. This is Mossbourne Academy under the leadership of Michael Wilshaw, much beloved of Michael Gove.

Check out the video on this website: www.mossbourne.hackney.sch.uk

Being something of a zero tolerance teacher, I think this is great. I was taught very early in my teacher training that hildren live up OR DOWN to their teachers' expectations of them. It is the first rule of my classroom practice. People think that the idea of imposing strict rules to achieve ends is a right-wing attitude, and I feel uncomfortable sometimes espousing that notion, but if the end goal is that the child's life chances should be enhanced, then surely that is the over-riding consideration. I'm sure that a lot of sneering goes on when Mossbourne is mentioned, but quietly I wonder how many people would like to give their model a whirl.

Oh, no, Shane. No, Shane, no, Shane; NO!

What have you let her do to you, Shane? Weird chestnut hair, taut uber-polished skin around clear dead eyes, eyebrows belonging on a camp waiter... Do you look in the mirror and think "Man, you look young?" Or do you gaze at yourself in fear and horror, the dawning realisation of something beyond your control crystallising in your head? Is that glazed expression really masking blind panic, a 'how do I get myself out of this?' white haze?

You've got to worry about Liz Hurley, mind. I once had respect for her. She was bright, articulate, a bit of a party animal. And then she started believing her own hype. This erstwhile 'most beautiful girl in London' I read about in the early 90s has morphed into some kind of sniffy, over-cooked, age and looks-obsessed celebrity hag who has so far lost touch with what real people (or 'civilians' as she once so memorably dismissed us as being) look like when they haven't made use of the dubious gifts of assorted surgeons, needle-wielders, chemical-peelers, star hairdressers and eyebrow-shapers. You can't look a bit rough and characterful in that world. If you put someone in a shell like that I bet character and humour suffocates and dies. Does she really think she's improved him??? Really?

Well, Shane. I don't think you ever were or ever will be much of an oil painting but you did have bags of character in your face and your over-highlighted hair. I honour THAT Shane.


Oh, and one last thing, Shane...

RUN.