I wrote last Saturday that I was meeting a journalist to answer a few questions concerning the school I'm working for. One of the biggest newspapers in Stockholm has started a "tear it down!" campain against us. Based on a few old teachers and a few old students that wants publicity.
Tonight they wrote the 8:th bad article about us. What's strange is that none of the other magazines even mention the bad things about us.
Next week we will get a visit from the school authority (sp?) and they have made it sound like we don't want that. But we have said a couple of times and even wrote to them that they should come and inspect us. They're supposed to come every 5:th year and we had them the last time for 1½ years ago. Then we got the grade excellent with no small things to report. I don't think it will get so much worse this time. The problem is that the results will only be shown after about 2 months. They (magazines) can do a lot of damage in 2 months...
It feels horrible, most of it is lies.
One of the leading old teachers got fired since he's a razist and tried to start fights between the students with foreign backgrounds and the ones that arent. I think the school did the right thing. If he still worked here then we would have those problems the magazine is talking about: "Violence at school every day." Our students ask us what they're talking about and if they have missed something. In the 6 years since start we have only had 2 cases of fighting...
Another thing they write about is that we set unfair grades and that the prcincipal changes them. A note: I've heard that in the UK you send all tests to another place to be graded. This doesn't work in Sweden. Here a teacher can choose whatever grade he or she wants... in our school we have a rule that it should always be atleast two teachers setting the grades on tests. This makes it harder for a teacher to set a low grade on a student beccause the student aren't liked by that teacher. We had a incident like this 3 years ago with a female teacher that didn't like two student beccause they talked and wrote bad swedish. Another teacher went in and checked the results and said that they should recieve an higher grade from failed to passed. The teacher that had set the lower grade was so angry and quit as fast as she could. Another teacher we don't want to have...
Ok, my boss isn't the best one nor the nicest, but he and the school doesn't deserve al this *beep* that they're writing about. It can be soo bad for us and could end with that we have to close the school down. Our students won't be happy about it either.

fight it all the way your school doesnt seem that bad and thats a good idea about double marking.are there any other papers , mags you could talk to to get articles printed about acheivements of the school

The other magazines don't dare to write the other side of it. The magazine that writes these stuff have too much political power and could easily destroy those magazines... Horrible I know.
But we will continue to ask them.

coooooooooeeeeeeeeee I'm here * witch hunt over now

Keep fighting, the press just write what ever they feel like.. I have learnt that one this week

tell me about it. The worst part is that they write about it now when the young kids are choosing for their gymnasiums right now. Really good publicity.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't reporters and journalists supposed to present UNBIASED reports, stating the FACTS and so on when they write articles?
Perhaps they need to be reminded of this...
I hope everything comes out well in the end. It'd be awful if the press used this abuse of their power and got your school closed. If it can be proved to be lies the paper could probably be sued for liable!

That's the problem here in Sweden... if we sue someone/a company you only get a tiny sum if you win. The layers are more expensive than that. But if the "Skolverket" (The ones desiding rules etc for schools here are coming to inspect next week and for some time forward.) comes and see no problems then the magazine will have to write a big article and take back all their badmouthing and fire the 4 journalists that has written the articles...
I'm crossing my fingers.