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If you don't know what an Education Welfare Officer (or EWO) was (or had ever seen one), then you probably would have had 100% attendance throughout your school years. As I did almost everything to avoid going to school because I hated the place (Comprehensive School anyway). I just assumed that they were basically Social Workers assigned to a specific school or schools in a certain area - they even had their own office in the school, and their own car, but were not seen very often on school premises, unless ironically enough, one was not seen very often at school. I had often thought to myself quite ironically that the occupation must have so much freedom - having one's own office and car; travelling around the neighbourhood to different people's homes - not a bad way to earn a living, even if it is not too glamorous. I sometimes felt that they were just as bad as the teachers.
For some reason, I felt safe at home without the peer pressure of people of my own age group, the bullying and trying to juggle several lessons at once in one day, not to mention homework worries, and the threats of detention. I would rather have faked illness and watch Daytime TV and programmes such as Kilroy or The Time The Place and watch a debate about bullying rather than go to school and be in the middle of it. Sometimes I wished that I could crawl into a hole and disappear - certainly in Years 10 and 11 I felt like that.
The Form Tutor notices consecutive absences in the class register, and lo and behold the good old Education Welfare Officer is eventually notified, and makes a visit to someone's home. I recall at least three different ones and on more than one occasion they gave me a lift to the school in their car, but for some reason, they never gave me a lift back home again. In Year 11 the final one gave me a lift to the school in the morning - it's a pity that she had not given me a lift back home again as I was attacked whilst walking back from the school - the irony that the EWO hadn't drove me to school on that day, it wouldn't have happened. I would never have said that I played truant as my parents obviously knew where I was.
I have always felt bitter about my school days and the fact that my difficulties were either ignored or not attended to, and I hated the EWO's involvement - it did feel like "the do-gooders brigade" striking again. As I said before, I believe that we have more education out of school than inside it, which in many cases is quite true. It is only thanks to forums like this that I have managed to write about it in public and let people know about what I had to put up with all those years ago.
There were two EWOs in Grange Hill as far as I can remember - there was Mrs Wilkins in the 1984 series who visited Annette Firman's mother because of Annette's bruises, and another one in the 1988 series who talks to Trevor Cleaver in the street, and Cleaver gives his name as Vince Savage, played by the same actor as the man from the council who came to investigate the road accident in the 1985 series.
Now I am almost certain that as we are mostly former school pupils of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the Education Welfare Officer may have visited our homes - probably because of illness, truancy, or something else? Did you once get a knock on the front door and find out that it was someone who wanted to know why you were not in school? Perhaps it was similar to myself - that I didn't wanted to go to school in the first place? The irony of not answering the door to strangers, indeed.
For some reason, I felt safe at home without the peer pressure of people of my own age group, the bullying and trying to juggle several lessons at once in one day, not to mention homework worries, and the threats of detention. I would rather have faked illness and watch Daytime TV and programmes such as Kilroy or The Time The Place and watch a debate about bullying rather than go to school and be in the middle of it. Sometimes I wished that I could crawl into a hole and disappear - certainly in Years 10 and 11 I felt like that.
The Form Tutor notices consecutive absences in the class register, and lo and behold the good old Education Welfare Officer is eventually notified, and makes a visit to someone's home. I recall at least three different ones and on more than one occasion they gave me a lift to the school in their car, but for some reason, they never gave me a lift back home again. In Year 11 the final one gave me a lift to the school in the morning - it's a pity that she had not given me a lift back home again as I was attacked whilst walking back from the school - the irony that the EWO hadn't drove me to school on that day, it wouldn't have happened. I would never have said that I played truant as my parents obviously knew where I was.
I have always felt bitter about my school days and the fact that my difficulties were either ignored or not attended to, and I hated the EWO's involvement - it did feel like "the do-gooders brigade" striking again. As I said before, I believe that we have more education out of school than inside it, which in many cases is quite true. It is only thanks to forums like this that I have managed to write about it in public and let people know about what I had to put up with all those years ago.
There were two EWOs in Grange Hill as far as I can remember - there was Mrs Wilkins in the 1984 series who visited Annette Firman's mother because of Annette's bruises, and another one in the 1988 series who talks to Trevor Cleaver in the street, and Cleaver gives his name as Vince Savage, played by the same actor as the man from the council who came to investigate the road accident in the 1985 series.
Now I am almost certain that as we are mostly former school pupils of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the Education Welfare Officer may have visited our homes - probably because of illness, truancy, or something else? Did you once get a knock on the front door and find out that it was someone who wanted to know why you were not in school? Perhaps it was similar to myself - that I didn't wanted to go to school in the first place? The irony of not answering the door to strangers, indeed.
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