parents' evening: a special Groundhog Day report

Once again we tread the familiar corridors. It's the same every time, only slightly different. One day we'll get it right.

The ex-Mr Baroque, the tall blonde rock god and I are milling around among the milling, sweating hordes of other parents (and their bizarre offspring who actually do coursework, get haircuts, sleep at home at the weekend and go to school before 10am) to sit before teacher after teacher and be told the incontrovertible truth. It starts at reception when a kid (reception is staffed by eager year 9s) hands me a sealed brown envelope containing the rock god's attendance record. I can't help looking, as I've never seen the truant record of a deity before, and indeed it is an impressive sight.

Handing it to the boy, credit where credit's due. He sits there while teacher after teacher tells us he hasn't been in class that day (that very day! Is he stupid??); he's missed 14 out of 33 maths classes; there was an incident when he put his enormous black overcoat on in science, for the second time running (it's against the rules; apparently Mr Emerson, the Blairite head, is more than happy to put a kid in the 'inclusion room' - their Stalinist euphemism for 'exclusion room' - for not taking their coat off, although the school won't do anything to make it inconvenient for him to routinely stroll in at breaktime, miss a third of his classes in a core subject and often just not bother to come back for the one lesson that's held after lunch). It all got ugly apparently, and in the best rock-god tradition he "abused the teacher," which must mean he swore; which is a shame. She seems nice. So "there will be repercussions." For that - but not for not having done his coursework!

The English teacher seemed to calm down once she saw that we were behind her (and compos mentis). The three of us cross-examined the recalcitrant rock god, trying to understand why he simply hadn't done his English mock. "But Nat," we expostulated, "why couldn't you even just write something little? You've read the books..." (I mean, ex-Mr B and I have both sat with him, read with him, watched the assigned videos with him - he has an assigment to compare the opening sequences of The Matrix and Blade Runner, of all things; "you don't even have to watch the whole movies!" the teacher tells him - and we've both rented these movies more than once for the stony-faced one to watch...)

Eventually he shuffles in his seat. "I dunno," he mumbles. "It's not like there's even a right answer. I mean you don't know what to put. It's like..." We look at him. Encouragingly. I mean the other two look encouraging; I think I look a bit stricken. He continues: "I mean with those English questions, they're so vague... I did read them but it's like there's no point, some of them you can't even tell what they mean."

This is a bright boy. This is a boy who, once he's put in his ten hours of slog, can turn out a rather elegantly simple little 300-word essay (yes, they accept that). He gets the gist of things. He was a level 7 in maths in year 9 (that is really good). He wanted to be an archaeologist until he discovered dad-rock. He taught himself to read all on his own, playing Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures and digging in the garden with a stick. I know he wears the coat as a sort of security blanket, he does it at home too sometimes. I really do think on some level the lad is not so much lazy as confused.

The next day at lunch some colleagues and I were talking about kids. I forget the context. I mentioned a thing or two and one of them said to me, enviously: "your kids sound really cool... are they cool?" Of course! That's it. I couldn't help laughing. But I don't know why she's so flipping envious.

"Cool?" I said. "They're the coolest."