Eindexamen engels vmbo kb 2012, tijdvak 1

St Trinian’s - school can be a riot! M IKE J ACKSON RECALLS DAYS - AND NIGHTS - WHEN HE HIMSELF WAS IN CHARGE OF A BOARDING HOUSE 1) OF YOUNG SHE - DEVILS . embarrassing because they usually 1 The new St Trinian’s movie brings back memories of two traumatic years when I was in charge of a boarding house of 30 teenage girls. They tormented me with constant rows, escape attempts, smoking in the lavatories, alcoholic dazes, flooded bathrooms and out-all-hours excursions. 2 When I took the job in 1965, it 3 looked like a piece of cake. I had run a boys’ boarding house before and girls were supposed to be sweet, charming and much more persuadable. My wife looked at me knowingly: “Just you wait and see.” And I swiftly discovered that real teenage girls were even more alarming than the girls in the movie St Trinian’s . The first hurdle I faced was trying to get them in at 10pm. It

normal length but were open up on one side. A girl could seem perfectly neat but, once out of sight of authority, with one quick hitch she would suddenly transform herself into a Britney Spears look-alike. 4 The next task was to stop them smoking in the lavatories and showers. 6 This sounds easy enough, but trying to catch them in the act meant hiding outside the lavatories, which was highly embarrassing. I was surprised how shamelessly they would lie to me too. Teenage boys, caught smoking, will come clean. Teenage girls, even while stinking of cigarette smoke, tend to bat their eyelids and deny everything. 5 Security was my top priority. The windows would only open a mere three inches to stop anyone getting out (or in) and the doors were set with alarms overnight. From time to time I got up to check that all was well. One night, noot 1 boarding house = kostschool / een huis, waar jongens of meisjes onder toezicht wonen

Keeping up with the Family speaking to my son and daughter- in-law than using the phone. It’s lovely to see them on screen as well as being able to hear them.” 3 enthusiastic about the project. He was able to give his mother a virtual tour of his Canadian home, complete with black bears playing 1 A care home is giving its elderly residents the chance to see and hear relatives thousands of miles away using the Internet. Staff at The Elms in Lowgate, Sutton, UK, will encourage the residents to use the webcam facility two or three times a week. The residents can now easily stay in contact with close family members as far afield as North America and Saudi Arabia using what is a pioneering project in the region. 2 Its aim is to improve the quality of life for the elderly in care homes, which has certainly been the case for Betty Carlton. The 83-year-old uses the facility to speak to her son in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, and also when he is away on business in Canada. Betty said: “It is definitely a better way of

Can she fix it? Yes she can! As Julie Bindel discovers, female builders are in huge demand – but can they ever compete with the tea-slurping boys? 1 Of all the construction workers employed at London’s Wembley Stadium, what percentage would you guess are women? Five? Ten? Twenty at a push? How about 0.05%? “Out of 10,000,” notes Karen Procter, director of the national organisation, Women and Manual Trades (WAMT), “between three and five are women.” 2 It’s a statistic that seems even more shocking when you consider that, in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics in London, Britain is short of 350,000 builders. Across the building trade, women account for fewer than 1% of workers, making the building site still very much a man’s domain – what Procter describes as ‘the last bastion of sexist discrimination in the workplace’. 3 The government belatedly seems to have taken notice. Education Secretary Alan Johnson recently reserved £20m for training women in construction. Whether this will be enough remains to be seen. 4 Amid all this bad news, though, there are a few success stories. Plasterer Janet Shelley says that she has always wanted to “do things that people think are impossible”, and so set up Women Builders, a company that now employs the UK’s largest female construction workforce – 14 full-time builders. “We have no problems filling vacancies,” says Shelley. “There are lots more women wanting to work in the trade than there are jobs.” 5 So I set off for Milton Keynes, where Women Builders set up three years ago. Women Builders are renovating a local village school, ripping out kitchens and rebuilding walls. I meet Louise Horwood, a 20-year-old carpenter. “I always wanted to be a builder,” she tells me, “but my dad, who is in the trade, was dead against it.” After leaving school, Horwood briefly tried hairdressing college, but hated it. “I had never been so bored in all my life,” she says, “and my dad’s pressure on me only made me more determined.” She entered the world of construction aged just 16 and at first struggled to cope. “Men would harassingly say, ‘Don’t break your nails on that, love, it’s too heavy.’ But I kept going and now I’m one of them.” 6 Janet Shelley works closely with WAMT – which represents and supports women working and training in skilled manual and craft occupations – to try to establish better working practices and reduce discrimination. When WAMT

began in 1975, small numbers of middle-class, white, educated women entered the trade partly to protest at women’s exclusion. Today, however, 60% of members are black, and have similar class backgrounds to their male counterparts. “Most of these women are moving out of manual jobs like cleaning and catering into trades where they can earn four times as much,” says Procter. 7 Women Builders is never short of work, but there is still the occasional customer who does not understand the kind of firm they are. “Sometimes you turn up for a job at someone’s house, or business, and the highly surprised client will say to us, ‘Oh, you really are women!’” 8 Shelley and Horwood say that when they are on a building site, people will stop and openly stare at them. Some will shout and ask what they are doing. “We are at the stage with women construction workers today that we were 25 years ago with male nurses,” Procter believes. “In a few years, it will be far more common to see women in hard hats up on scaffolding.” 9 If women in building are to really flourish, organisations such as WAMT say, it is crucial that the opportunity offered by the 2012 Olympics isn’t wasted. “We will see how keen the government is to end the extreme levels of sexism and discrimination in the building trade,” says Procter, “and we expect to see many more women encouraged and trained to work on building sites, alongside men who treat them as equals.” A tall order, maybe, but these women certainly know how to stand up to the big boys.

Big Kids on the Block Johnny Dee 1 Last Saturday, an account manager from south-east London spent seven hours sitting in her Vauxhall Zafira parked outside the house of a stranger she knew only as the Giraffe. “It was,” she says, “one of the most exciting things I've ever done.” The woman, who would like to be known as Agent Squirtel, in order to protect her identity from rogue commandos, was taking part in StreetWars Killer, a water-pistol assassin game that has turned 150 Londoners into paranoid snipers with super-soakers. At about 8am her target emerged from his house and she gave chase down the street, successfully aiming her gun at his upper torso. It was only then that she realised she had squirted the wrong man: it was the Giraffe's flatmate, Dave. “He was OK about it,” she says. “It was a hot day, he said he would dry out.” 2 StreetWars is just one of many large-scale urban games being played in cities all across the world. All of them are similar in that information spreads via the internet. To anyone who chances upon them on the street, they seem like surreal, random events. All of them also utilise wireless technology such as GPRS 1) , use real streets rather than boards or computer screens as their game's grid, and all resemble childhood games in their simplicity. noot 1 GPRS: General Packet Radio Service, used by GSM mobile phones noot 2 Peter Pan complex: when you suffer from this, you don’t want to grow up

Stern Words 1 It’s Sunday lunchtime and Sam Stern is doing something with a Dover sole 1) . “Cooking is fun,” he says. “I use my intuition and see where the ingredients take me.” Sam is a ‘chuck it all in and see what happens’ kind of cook like Jamie Oliver. At just 17 and still at school in his home town of York, his work rate puts his older rivals to shame. He published his first book, Cooking Up A Storm , when he was just 14, closely followed by Real Food, Real Fast. Both shot off the shelves and were translated into 14 languages to keep up with the worldwide demand. His third book, Get Cooking , has just been published and he is already well on with the fourth. And, unlike Jamie, Sam still has to do his homework too. 2 He started cooking with his mum, Susan, when he was just four years old. She was, and still is, his inspiration. “We started off doing the usual simple little buns,” says Sam, “but then I moved on to more challenging aspects of cooking, like baking my own bread. I was learning all the time. Learning what ingredients worked together and learning to trust my own instincts.” 3 Sam first started putting his recipe ideas down on paper for his elder brother who went to university. He also noticed that a lot of his own friends were not eating well and wondered whether he could do something about it.

to love cooking and for his passion for food. I want my food to be accessible. If you haven’t got exactly the right ingredients, chuck in whatever you have got. Experiment, innovate and enjoy what you eat.” 6 Sam’s books have proved massively successful – his fourth, he reveals, will concentrate on leaving home and the culinary challenges that can pose – and a noot 1 sole = a kind of sea fish

Laptop lessons 1 The days of the pen and paper are 4 numbered. Pupils in the second year at Queenswood School in Hertfordshire are to abandon their copybooks in favour of portable computers, carrying them to classes like satchels. They will compose their English essays, do their geography projects and work out mathematical problems with the aid of their laptops. The work will then be presented in printed-out form, or emailed to their teachers to mark. 2 The machines cost between 500 5 and 800 pounds each but the school has arranged with a local company for the pupils to hire the laptops for 50 pounds a term. Queenswood may be innovative, but others are not far behind. Two other independent schools are making use of laptops and a growing number of state schools are undertaking pilot schemes. 3 Clarissa Farr, principal of Queenswood said: “I don’t believe that handwriting will completely disappear, but it could become as unusual as illuminated script from the Middle Ages. We could end up teaching it as a 6 special subject.” If the experiment among the second-year students is successful, it will be extended to the whole school.