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Date: 15 August 2008 07:29:05

Some things make you glow with pride, others make you glow with a kind of sideways smile which is a sort of pride mixed with an appreciation of how much of life is meaningless fluff. So it is with me at the moment, I'm glowing with mixed types of pride - not for my own achievements as much as for others who I care about in one way or another.

Yesterday I was glowing with pride for my A Level Sociologists who had worked their socks off, as a team, for the last two years. I knew the personal stories behind each one of those students and the way that some of them had shown determination in the face of really big issues to get their grades. I knew how hard they had worked and how seriously they had taken their studies. I knew what it had taken for them to get through and get through well. I was very proud of them.

What was going on with them is what LSC statistics will never be able to measure (even including value added) because you can't quanitfy the tears of joy form a student or their parent. You can't quanitfy the feeling of both satisfaction and relief a student has when they know, despite everything, they have achieved something. The fact they all got through was not only down to individual hard work (although they all did that), it was also down to the fact they were always willing to help each other out. Their results demonstrated the power of a whole range of things that the statistics don't measure but we as teachers see and know make the difference. Things we can encourage and hope for, but things which ultimately have to come from the students themselves.

The more twisted glow comes from the fact that my father, and Storytelling generally, is apparently going up market. Today the "art" is being featured in the books section of the Independent . Have to say I think it's highly amusing, particularly the way he encourages people to grab a rug. Um, in my day it used to be a blanket if you were posh or your coat for the rest of us. Still I guess that it simply reflects the way the festival culture is changing and is now more Pimms than homebrew.