It's not so much a matter of funds as of timing

It's not so much a matter of funds as of timing."Hanley lost patience with fielding the same inevitable question about his ability to work with Hughes to the extent of hanging up on air to Radio Five Live, but he did pay fulsome tribute to the two sets of people - the supporters and the players, whose support appears to have been crucial."The spectators have been fantastic. "What's happened has happened and we all move on from here."As far as Morris is concerned "nothing has changed. "I've got a football team I've got to get ready to play on Friday evening. From 9.30 this morning I got on with the job and nothing will distract me at all."Hanley even said he could come to terms with the lack of money for any immediate team strengthening -- the cause of the original rift between board and coach."I'm governed by the Board and what funds are available," he said. I always learn from my mistakes," he said yesterday, adding carefully: "If you call it a mistake It's not a climbdown at all As far as I'm concerned, I never left the club.

I was still head coach during my suspension."He also declared his willingness to work with others at the club, presumably including, although the name did not actually pass his lips, Hughes."I'm completely focused on the job I've got to do," he insisted. Even the ground announcer became a target after telling spectators that it was "nice to see that the education system is alive and well in St Helens"."It was a pity the ground reacted the way they did," Morris said, "but St Helens is bigger than the board and bigger than Ellery and will be around for longer than either."It looked like Hanley was heading for the sack, but on Tuesday came an apology in which Hanley regretted his comments "suggesting that the board is in any way old-fashioned or unprofessional".Hanley is now eager to move on "We've all learned lessons. The animosity spread to Janette Smith, the Saints' physiotherapist and Hughes' girlfriend, who was abused everytime she went on to the pitch. They were, he said in a magazine article, "disgraceful" and "arrogant and rude".Hanley and Hughes clashed again over his comments but Hanley had the backing of the fans, so much so that even when Saints recorded their biggest win of the season, 74-16, against Hull last Sunday, 1,000 supporters refused to leave the terraces at the end of the game and Hughes was warned to stay out of sight beneath the stand for his own safety. Morris described the reconciliation as "a commercial decision", adding: "Ellery is here because we decided he is the best man for the job. Ellery said some things, we said things; we're back together."That brought to an end, for now, a story that began last August when Saints decided to pay a king's ransom to persuade the 38-year-old Hanley, one of the outstanding players of his generation and a distinguished captain of Wigan and Great Britain, to come back from Australia to be their coach.Although Hughes was closely involved with bringing him to Saints on a two-year contract, relations between the two men deteriorated over the question of who was responsible for the ill-fated signing of the Australian, Phil Adamson.Matters took a further turn for the worse when the team's early season form stuttered into a series of defeats and Hanley, silent and aloof towards the media for years, came out with a string of denunciations of the board's failure to provide him with reinforcements.

Howard Morris and Ellery Hanley smiled and shook hands as they pledged their futures together, their strife of the last couple of weeks dismissed as a mere tiff. A tiff, however, that had seen Hanley suspended on full pay for nine days; a bitter two-week slanging match with the club's football executive, Eric Hughes; the board described as a bunch of "dinosaurs" and a sit-in by fans. The atmosphere at Knowsley Road had become so soured that a compromise seemed impossible yet Hanley reported back for work at 9.30 yesterday, his apology accepted and everything seemingly smoothed over at the Super League club whose proud history boasts eight championships and seven Challenge Cup triumphs. IT WAS, as the chairman and the re-instated coach kept saying, business as normal at St Helens yesterday, whatever normality means at this stage in its 104-year history. "If there's a problem, you can get help, and work on it at home straightaway."Gill Higgs says her son was a bit disruptive when he started at the school, and it helped her to come to the surgery once a term. "You felt it was a problem you were sharing with the school, and not just up to you to sort it out."One of the chief virtues of the surgeries, says Helen Clark, acting head, is that they allow much more of a "two-way conversation" between parents and teachers.

Pupils, too, can be involved in them, particularly further up the school."The preparation is quite wearing," admits Jenny Willett, deputy head, "but it's worth it because we feel we're giving parents much better, more detailed information.""We are much more involved with the parents now," adds Gillian Thomas, a year four teacher and home-school co-ordinator, "and parents know what their child is doing right from the beginning.". Only a very few fail to come at all.The detailed written notes that the teacher prepares for the surgery on the child's academic, personal and social development, are collated at the end of the year to form the annual report, with spaces for parent and child to contribute.Rush Common parents are extremely positive about the surgeries."It's personal and very private, and you can say anything you want about your child," says Gillian Hawthorn. Most parents come twice a year, but they can attend more often if they feel the need. Rush Common Primary School, Abingdon, Oxfordshire The idea of signing up for a "surgery" with your child's teacher may sound unpleasantly like going to the doctor to find out what is wrong. But for parents at Rush Common Primary School, surgeries have given them the chance to talk to teachers in greater depth than in the past and at whatever times during the year that they feel in need of support.The system began to develop about six years ago when, dissatisfied with the traditional combination of annual report and parents' evening, Rush Common School asked its parents what they really wanted.More contact time with teachers, and more discussion of the contents of the annual report, was the reply.So the school dispensed with parents' evenings, and each class teacher is now available one day a week to talk to parents after school has finished.There are three surgery appointments a week, each lasting 20 minutes or more, and parents sign up for them a week or two in advance. `Secondary School Parents' Evenings: a qualitative study' by Barbara Walker and Maggie MacLure, from CARE, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ..

p&p) from the Research and Information on State Education Trust (RISE), 54 Broadwalk, South Woodford, London E18 2DW. "I can spot quickly when things aren't going well, and help students and parents find specific ways to in which they can make improvements."`Could Do Better', pounds 6.75 (incl. "This system means I can give parents a detailed, whole picture of how their child is doing across all subjects, and they are grateful for it," she says. Rush Common Primary School in Abingdon (see panel, right), for instance, runs highly successful "parent surgeries" in place of conventional parents' evenings.At secondary level, Tanbridge House School in west Sussex has evolved detailed systems of monitoring pupil performance across the curriculum term-by-term: if a pupil is scoring low grades for effort, Lesley Cooke, head of house, can immediately contact the parents, and together with the pupil, discuss ways of tackling the problem. But Sally Power argues it's more to do with "effecting a culture change, than simply reporting more often, so schools recognise parents can be a help, rather than an interference".Schools could begin by reviewing their reporting arrangements with parents, and the new home-school agreements, legally required from September, present an ideal opportunity for this kind of discussion Some schools have already taken a lead here. Consultations tend to be controlled and dominated by teachers, who diagnose pupils' strengths and weaknesses, and then expect parents to agree.So how are parents and schools to find better ways of reporting? More frequent reports - say, two or three parents' evenings a year, and a detailed written report in January as well as the year-end summative report - might help.