Imagine it’s 11:30am on June 30th. What are you doing? Apart from trying to get the last 30 minutes of the curriculum into almost 40 cola and sweet-fuelled children who believe the summer holidays started two weeks beforehand, you’re probably trying to balance your rollbook. Inevitably, it doesn’t balance. Ever. And even when the last of the children sprint out to their mammies for eight weeks, the numbers just won’t add up. Calculators are prodded violently over and over again until…. just before moonlight, there it is – there’s an extra tick beside Mary Murphy for some reason. As you punch the air triumphantly, you swear that you’ll be more careful next year or, like me, you curse the Department of Education and Science for making our lives unduly difficult. Every year, I say, “Why can’t they computerise the roll book?”
