High Youth Unemployment

I found this article on how the lack of decent qualifications leads to youth unemployment: BBC Article

People are getting thousands of pounds in grants from the grants from the government for this stuff you know. The report, by Research by Centre for Cities (what a ridiculous name, by the way) suggests that areas where a (relatively) high number of students get a C grade or above in English and Maths have a lower percentage of youngsters aged between 18 and 24 unemployed. Thank you Sherlock.

The report suggests that government policy over previous years has led too many youngsters down the path of meaningless qualifications in order to boost league table positions, as until recently English and Maths didn't need to be included in the 5 A* to C used to calculate league table position. That's big of them, to blame the policy-makers.

The report mainly appears to blame schools, and ultimately teachers for this failure of many youngster to be equiped for the workplace however. I personally think there may be other factors:

1. The fact that there are league tables in the first place mean that schools are almost encouraged to push students down the path that will give them maximum chance of gaining as many C grades or equivalent, no matter what those qualifications mean or are in. Due to government policy allowing parents to choose schools for their offspring, the market is very competitive and a good or bad league table position could possibly be the difference between a school surviving financially or not.
2. Student apathy towards learning. The amount of times a student has told me "I don't need maths to do what I want to do" or asked "When am I going to use this in real life?". Many students now either don't care or will attempt to do just enough to get a C grade, which invariably means that they won't do enough. The standard reply of "You will use this to get a decent qualification, which will hopefully lead to a decent job" doesn't seem to wash any more, which is a shame, because it's true.
3. Schools have little or no power to actually discipline children due to woolly legal issues - no-one really know what teachers are allowed and not allowed to do. I'm not calling for a return to the days of canings in assembly, but being allowed to keep a child behind to actually complete some useful or worthwhile work is no longer available to a teacher. We need to give 24 hours notice, and generally the parents of those who need to stay behind won't allow their little darlings to do so.
4. That leads me onto the next issue - parents/family. In my 10+ years of teaching there has been  a marked change in the attitude of parents/carers whereupon all the mistakes made by their offspring must be the fault of someone else, usually the school in some way, shape or form. They will promise to employ their child when they leave school, and probably do so for a while until they realise that due to that promise of work, little Johnny failed to get any qualifications that will allow him to perform the job given to him at a reasonable standard. Statistics show that 80% of young people employed by their family are sacked within 12 months. Enough said.
5. The national curriculumn doesn't prepare young people for the world of work. I have some sympathy for those who ask when they are going to use simultaneous equations in real life. They clearly aren't (in my 10+ years I've struggled to find a use for the things outside of the classroom), so that topic should be pushed to the higher end, for those who may want to go onto do A Level maths. The government has made a start but there is still a long way to go, and the pressure to get as many C grades as possible (we're back to league tables) mean that most students can't use anything they've learnt in context anyway, and are unwilling to try.

And I haven't even mentioned Ofsted. But as usual teachers are at fault, not the lazy youth, unsupportive parents, unhelpful curriculum or government policy.

And they wonder why teachers are striking - it's not just about the pensions you know, the pension thing is just the glace cherry on a disgruntled cake!

So We're Lacklustre Now

"There are too many lacklustre schools in England which are not pushing children to reach their potential, says the annual report from Ofsted."

This is the opening paragraph from this article: BBC News Article

My immediate reaction is "Well they would say that, wouldn't they".

I can't wait for the press release from Ofsted that says "All schools are doing really well; our job is done." It will never happen of course as they'd effectively be putting themselves out of a job. You don't get too many turkeys writing glowing reports about Christmas after all.

The article says that 40% of schools inspected this year have been found to offer a "satisfactory" education to their students. To the uninitiated that sounds fine, what with the dictionary definition of "satisfactory" being "fulfilling all demands and requirements". But in education "satisfactory" means "not doing enough".

What the report fails to mention is that the goal posts have changed for Ofsted inspections, essentially meaning that everything the inspectors required last time they visited is no longer of any importance (I'm exaggerating a little here, but only a little) and so schools have been downgraded in almost all cases because they don't really know what is required of them.

Is it any wonder the public are at a bit of a loss as to how they judge a school if schools don't know themselves?

The whole article/report is Ofsted's justification for why it should continue to exist, what with a "big name" assuming its headship in the new year - Sir Michael "We're Not Worthy" Wilshaw.

Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister is quoted as saying "There are still far too many under-performing schools making painfully slow improvements." I think I may have the reason, or reasons why:

• Schools are facing budget cuts, meaning that they can't afford to adequately staff or resource schools (unless they are academies of course, where they get more money and can do what they want with it). It's the nature of the current economic climate, but you can't give anyone less and expect significantly more, whatever business you are in.
• A teachers' priority is no longer teaching, it's administration. It's marking books with "formative" comments significantly more (despite the fact that the students don't read them or seem to care that much); it's testing the students to provide data for use in planning; it's reporting home every half term so that the parents know how their child is performing (although many appear not to be bothered); it's writing detailed lesson plans containing every last bit of information on every child in that class, plus deciding what particular questions could push each individula child to progress and actually writing it down rather than allowing teachers to have any sort of spontaneity in class (planning has always been part of teaching, but nowadays the expected process is unhelpful). The list goes on, but who is all this extra work for? It's not the students, it's Ofsted. Everything I've just mentioned just uses up time that teachers could be using to actually come up with good ideas to make their students progress and hopefully enjoy learning.
• Pensions and pay freezes - no matter what job you are employed in, if your wages are frozen for years (and therefore, in real terms, your wages are cut) and you are being asked to work longer for less, you are not going to be overly motivated. Lack of motivation is disastrous for teachers, as it's a profession that relies on enthusiastic delivery to enthuse students.

Maybe I'm being a little melodramatic, but all these factors make a difference, and when you get some jumped up, data reliant, pompous idiot, who hasn't actually done the job for years (if ever) telling that you're doing it all wrong, how do you think the teaching profession will react?

What's even more worrying is that politicians actually believe every word they say.
What chance have we got?

Crisis In Teaching - Just Wait Until 2012

Sir Michael Wilshaw was on The One Show the other night, and alarm bells are now ringing for when his time as Chief Inspector of Schools begins in 2012. He states that he's going to target coasting schools (hang on, that sounds like David Cameron from last week's press), because if he can do what he has managed in Hackney, then anyone can do it.

The worst thing was his response to the statement: "I can't work out if this is a modern technique or it's very old fashion".

Wilshaw said: "If old fashioned means high expectations, sure. If old fashioned means [that] we're asking them to respect each other, respect us and respect staff. If traditional means ensuring [that] there are no excuses for poor behaviour, then I'm happy to be called traditional."

You can see why politician like him.

He goes on to deny that his school is any different from any other school, other than the fact that it's been rebuilt and that he has total control over the budget.

What the report does include, interestingly, is a short interview with one of his staff who says that the pressures on the staff are too great at times - presumably he's now polishing his CV.

What the report failed to mention is the expectations on staff to provide extra lessons both before and after school for no extra pay (although due to the school being an academy, Wilshaw can pay extra initially), plus having to staff detentions and lessons on Saturdays.

It also doesn't mention stories such as when the PE GCSE results came in last summer and had dropped by 5% he phoned the head of departemnt (during the holidays) telling him that he care where his department were but they would all be at a 7.30am meeting the next morning to verbally lay into them.

Is this really the way forward? Is the profession, that is struggling for quality numbers already, really going to encourage more people in the fold?

The answer's "No" - who would choose to do extra work for nothing?

This bloke is a real worry for the teaching profession, and could be the final nail in the coffin, what with pay, pensions and conditions issues. Teacher's aren't afraid of hard work but Wilshaw's demands of teachers are unreasonable. More strikes on the way? Or are people just going to find something else to do?

The Lost Generation

There have been a few headlines this week regarding over a million unemployed 18 to 24 year olds for the first time ever in Britain. This is extremely unhealthy for the country's future, but is it a big surpirse and who is to blame?

Personally I believe that the various governments of the past 20 or so years are to blame, including the current effort, despite their promises to get these young people into work as soon as possible.

Essentially the problem, in my mind, boils down to the apparent importance of league tables and the resultant importance upon getting as many students as possible up to a C grade at GCSE in as many subjects as possible. This has led to the following:

1. In order to make standards appear to rise, the standard for a C grade (and most other grades) has dropped. It is still very difficult to get the top grades at GCSE, but to get a C grade is now far easier than it ever has been, despite what those in Whitehall say. 
2. Children aren't allowed to fail, because the consequences for a school are huge: reduction in budget and reduction in those wishing to attend that school all amount to a dying establishment. As a collegaue of mine said, it's like asking a an army general to go to war and return with no casualties - it will never happen, but due to education policy over the past 20 years, it actually nearly has happened in teaching. Every child, of any intellect, can gain 5 A* to C grades if they want to, and let's be honest, even if they don't, schools will attempt to do it for them (BTECs, come on down!).

As a result of the points above, the age group that is facing increasing unemployment don't actually know how to succeed because tbey've never had to lift a finger in order to do so up until now, so theefore don't know how to when it comes to the crunch, i.e. when they enter the workplace.

Unless children are allowed to fail in school, schools will never prepare children for real life. Unfortunately government pressure upon schools through agencies such as Ofsted mean that generations will continue to be lost until things like league tables and the mis-guided desire to allow everyone in school to succeed, whether they deserve to or not, will mean that young people won't have the desire to do their best (because they won't have learnt it) and achieve what they want to. Can you really blame the students? Why try outside of school when you never had to try in it? And can you blame schools for wanting to maintain their funding so that they can offer a quality education to all its students?

Another colleague of mine, having taught for around 20 years, said that in their time the standard of teaching has got so much better, but that has been counter-balanced by the plummet in the standard of student.

Teaching Methods Don't Ever Change Apparently

There was an interesting letter to Chris Woodhead, former Chief Inspector of Schools in The Sunday Times this week. It was about non-teachers and those who have little recent experience of classroom practise. It basically said that those with little recent experience have no place telling teachers how to do their job. These include Carol Vorderman (the current mathematics in education czar for the government), some Ofsted inspectors and Woodhead himself.

Woodhead agreed that Vorderman's job was a farce and that those who inspect should have relevent experience, but it was his final point that made me laugh out loud. He said that despite not having taught in a classroom since 1974, good teaching methods never change. Why did it make me laugh so much? I would love to see him teach my bottom set year 10 with his 1974 routines. It would be a (hilarious) disaster.

Why do I not think that it would work? Even though he has a point that good teaching methods don't change (and it's the point he'd justify his statement with), the attitude of children has changed enormously. Even in my 10 plus years of teaching I have noticed a sea change in children's attitudes, and perhaps more importantly, the attitudes of parents.

In my second year of teaching I taught an unpleasant child called Peter. He decided that he would draw on my desks one lesson, so I set him a detention after school, giving the (arguably ridiculous, as few secondary school children head straight home) 24 hours notice required by law. Peter decided that he wouldn't do the detention, so after he'd gone home I phoned his parents and they brought him back to school, sitting there as he cleaned all my desks, rubber gloves and all. There are two points I'd like to make about this:

1. Nowadays, very few parents would actually bring their children back to school. In fact, many would argue that Peter didn't actually draw on my tables because he'd told them he hadn't (despite my witnessing the act). The detention would be made out to be harsh and unfair, and Peter wouldn't be doing it.
2. I wouldn't be allowed to make Peter clean the tables - health and safety/human rights - you name it, they'd hide behind it. The parents would probably resort to saying that it was demeaning, and I would get in trouble.

I say this with a recent incident at my current school fresh in mind. The first involved a well-known trouble-maker shouting "f***ing c***" at me across the road, unprovoked. The school were very supportive and immediately phoned the child's house to explain that he was to be excluded for 5 days. The mother, despite having not been there, denied that he'd ever done it, claiming that it was completely out of character and that he never swears at home. The 5 day exclusion stood fortunately, otherwise I would have been livid, but it was the attitude of the parent who essentially accused the school and me of lying. This is the same parent who claims that her child struggles to make friends - he appears to have plenty of friends as he hands cigarettes out in the playground.

In Woodhead's day he even had the cane to hide behind in a discipline sense, let alone the ability to detain wrong-doers at will. Now he would have to give 24 hours notice of a reasonable detention, which the child would probably fail to attend.

That leads me onto another case at our school, of an awkward child, who's parents are equally awkward. The child, who's decent at sports, is allowed to play for school teams, but can't do detentions after school. Why is this? The parent has to collect various children from different schools and detentions don't fit in with that timetable, but sporting fixtures do. Calling their bluff we offered to make detentions (of which many are pending) the same length as sporting fixtures, but still permission wasn't forthcoming. I have to say that at that point I asked myself why this child and their awkward parent weren't asked to find a school that would accept their attitude/pick-up timetable. The child is still in my class.

So good luck Chris, and your 1970s classroom ideals.

Cricket Is The Key - Apparently

I was browsing the BBC News website the other day and found the following articles about cricket/sport and schools:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15675694

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10086915

Ok, so the second one is not directly linked to cricket other than a bloke from the Cricket Foundation (Wasim Khan - a journeyman opening bastman) is quoted at the end, but the first one is interesting and most definitely about the game.

The first article says something along the lines of "cricket teaches people a sense of sportsmanship and calms everyone down". It's something they tried in the USA, encouraging gang members to partake in a spot of leather upon willow as a way to get along and steer them away from gang related activities. And it's worked to some extent, by all accounts. Cricket is a great game for camaraderie, mainly because it lasts what seems like an eternity, so you are forced to get along or you're in for hours of friction, which is a waste of useful energy. The England Cricket Board (ECB) has a programme called Chance To Shine where coaches go into schools and coach cricket. If a child is really interested in playing a little more seriously, a club is suggested by the coaches. The game is riddled with sportsmanship, with the main calming influence when it comes to grievances being the shaking of hands - the traditional version rather than some rehearsed sequence of hand touching - and clapping the opposition. Schools who are involved in the programme have noticed an improvement in behaviour in those who take part. Surely this must be encouraged.

The second article explains how school sport has become unhealthily competitive, whereupon children copy their heroes from the professional game. I used to coach a football team but gave up for the following reasons:

1. I couldn't really give up the time to run it properly, although I will help out if I can. The increased pressures on classroom teachers mean that those members of staff who could offer some expertise in certain areas can't afford to give up the time to share it like they would in the past. This is a real loss to school sport in general.
2. The attitude of the children became unbearable, with them refusing to come to training but still expecting to play in the matches (if they were dropped I'd get an irate phone call from a parent) and when you tried to work on the basics (which they were invariably incapable of doing) they just ignored you and challenged each other to a "keepy-ups" competition. I lost count of the number of times I said "If you were actually capable of that 70 yard pass or footballing trick, you'd be playing for Barcelona or Chelsea, not St Cuthberts' U14s".

Part of the problem, and it is taken into classrooms, is that the children and their parents all think they know all there is to know about football (football is the main protagonist here) because they see it on the TV all the time. They also see their heroes repeated petulance and take a similar attitude into the classroom. Rugby and cricket (as well as many other sports) don't really have this, and if it does occur it is dealt with swiftly and harshly to discourage others from doing the same. Football cannot say the same thing. Fining someone who gets paid £250,000 per week 2 weeks wages (the maximum fine allowed in professional football is 2 weeks wages) is pointless. If these people can be financially successful but seemingly not have to adhere to any rules, then why should our young people?

I can't wait until the money falls out of football - the world will be a better place

League Tables Are Rigged!

Would you Adam and Eve it? The government have just realised that school league tables are rigged by schools "banking" C grades for students and making the less academic students take BTEC courses because they are worth up to 4 C grades each.

Now if you work in a school the fact that students take BTECs to boost a school's C grades will not be news to you, nor will the fact that loads of students take an early GCSE in some subjects to get a C grade and then the main focus of that school is to concentrate on those who get a D grade and push them up to C. But to those in Whitehall it is news, presumably because they are so far removed from day-to-day school life that it's taken them this long to catch up.

So what's the problem? And what are the government going to do about it?

According to the various articles I've read, the league tables aren't a proper representation of how schools are performing. Had the government bothered to ask teachers (this does seem to be a common theme) they would have found this out a while ago. League tables are all about gaining 5 A* to C grades at GCSE, and now must include English and Maths, whereas before it didn't matter what subjects they were. League tables have been sold to the public as the definitive guide to how well students from certain schools do, so the public don't really know any better (unless they know a teacher of course).

The proposal is to make 1 BTEC (that takes a lot of work, and is mainly coursework assessed) equivalent to 1 GCSE (which doesn't take as much work, although is more academic). 1 BTEC = 4 GCSEs was too much, but 1 to 1 is too little. And funnily enough all those state schools that were failing (in Ofsted's eyes), were rebranded academies and are now doing really well according to their 5 A* to C count, will suffer hugely. The only thing that makes academies appear to be improving so hugely is the fact that 1 BTEC = 4 GCSEs. The government can't really win this one to be honest - damned if they do, damned if they don't.

As far as making students sit early entries to "bank" a C and therefore focus attention on those who didn't make it first time around, do you really blame schools? The pressure to gain as many many C+ grades is huge and can make or break a school, so any potential advantage to be had by entering students early must be taken, with both hands.

As far as essentially ignoring those who achieve a C grade is concerned, well that's clearly not right, but schools are in a results business. If you don't get the results, you lose customers because parents can now choose which school to send their child too to a certain extent - another well-thought-out government policy. A school that isn't full has to endure budget cuts, which then leads to staff redundancies and ultimately to the school being unable to offer a holistic curriculum because it can't be staffed.

The prime minister has also stated that some schools coast and don't move their students on enough. He says that the league tables should reflect the "value added" to the students' knowledge. Well hooray! Finally they may be getting the message, but little will change in actual fact. As I've said in recent posts, some parts of the country have a hugely selective (grammar school) system meaning that they cream off the most academic in that area and therefore will end end at the top of those wonderful league tables.

Ultimately, whatever happens the league table system is flawed. Just get rid of them so the public aren't fooled by the propaganda.

The only way to assess whether a school is any good is to go into the school and see if the children are enjoying learning. If they are, they will probably reach their potential.

You don't need a league table to tell you that.

The Top 100 State Secondary Schools

The Sunday Times this week has four lists:

• The Top 100 Independent Secondary Schools.
• The Top 100 Prep Schools (Independent Primary Schools to you and me).
• The Top 100 State Primary Schools.
• The Top 100 State Secondary Schools.

There will be parents across the land scouring the list to see if a school near to where they live is featured, particularly in the state sector. The trouble is that the state lists ought to come with a "health warning".

What do I mean by that?
It means that the table is not really showing what most people will expect it to show, and that is a true comparison of all state schools around the country.

The secondary list is not a level playing field, and just a quick glance at the names of the schools will tell you that. The word "comprehensive" doesn't feature at all, but the word "grammar" features in well over half the list; interestingly the word "academy", the flagship of recent governements only appears once, and not until number 89. This means that most, if not all the schools in that top 100 are heavily selective of the children who join their ranks through the 11+ exams. They are essentially independent schools without the fees, where the 11+ exam replaces the common entrance (the exams children sit to qualify for independent school).

Many state secondary secondary schools don't have the "luxury" of selection, they are known as "comprehensive schools", doing exactly what they say on the tin by offering a comprehensive education for the whole community. Grammar schools don't exist in many parts of the country, so schools in those areas don't feature in the list at all, unsurprisingly. I teach in one of the many areas that doesn't have the grammar system, and to be honest I'm not totally against the system, but that's another post altogether, which now the seed has been planted, will happen fairly shortly.

All that tables like these do is demoralise those who don't work in the schools featured in the lists. They make you feel inadequate even though you have little or no hope of actually competing. The teaching profession is already plumbing a morale trough with the pensions debate and various other policy issues and biased articles like this only deepen the gloom.

Why can't the media and politicains/education agencies actually tell the truth about school?. A more accurate league table would be one that shows what is known as "value added" data, i.e. schools that improve a child's grades the most during their time at the school. This would allow all secondary schools to have a chance to appear on the list rather than just the privileged few.

But that would make sense of course.

Data - How Useful It Can Be

Data is the new black - schools and teachers are swimming in the stuff. You can't move for spreadsheets in your planning, and planning lessons for official observations (don't be fooled into thinking teachers do all that paperwork for every lesson they teach - there are only 24 hours in a day) becomes an absolute minefield of wading through lists and numbers so that you "really know" the students in your class. Just chatting to them and getting to know them as a person is no longer required, you need to know what they got in a test that they sat in Year 6, plus other standardised tests that they may have sat.

A colleague of mine went on a course this week (a feat in itself due to massive budget cuts) and upon their return said that everyone was in the same boat.

At our school we currently assess every child once per half term in every subject. We then record their score and level/grade (depending on what key stage they are) in a spreadsheet so that their progress can be checked throughout their school career. Why are we doing this? Ofsted want to see it is the only real reason, but there's also a culture of accountability for teachers.

Is this a good thing? In short, the answer is "No". Ofsted only want it so that they get a feel of what the children in a class are like before they observe it, although data isn't always that reliable. What statistics don't take into account is that children have a flair for making friends who aren't always a good influence, doing things that perhaps they shouldn't and resisting pleas to do any work at all, but try finding an "attitude" column on a spreadsheet, or a  "what they actually do in the evenings instead of their homework" column for that matter. There's not an "are the parents supportive?" column either. All these things are just as important as the assessment data that all schools are collecting endlessly.

When you look at it, what this huge amount of data is used for is to beat a teacher over the head with when those children that stray off the straight and narrow don't reach what the data suggests they should achieve. Especially when, in our school's case, all the target grades generated by the data we've collected are what's known as "aspirational", or in layman's terms, only possible to achieve if the child works ridiculously hard. How many 15 and 16 years olds do that? Admittedly some, but certainly not all. And since a teacher's results (or those of their class) can make or break their pay progression, you will understand that data is not the most popular educational beast.

Schools even pay a senior manager (somebody who actually has some power in school) to "run" data, costing thousands of pounds per year, per school.

And all because of Ofsted - not only do they suck up £200 million of tax-payers' money directly, they also suck up millions indirectly, millions that could be spent on actually educating children.

Sabbaticals For Teachers

There was a letter in this week's Sunday Times to Chris Woodhead (Educational columnist and former Chief Inspector of Schools) asking whether he thought it was a good idea that teachers got sabbatical (a period of time doing something else, often a year) every few years to "recharge the batteries". It is an idea that has been suggested by the new Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw.

In reply Woodhead says how impressed he has been with Wilshaw so far and goes on to state that teaching in inner city schools "can be a very tough job indeed". He then goes on to say that most teachers don't teach in inner city schools and although they have to deal with immature children, the hard work is equalled by the rewards of the job. Presumably this is why the main reason for teacher sickness at the moment is stress, the stress of all those rewarding times teachers have in the classroom. Foolish statement number one.

Woodhead also states that teachers are paid relatively well (no-one ever enters teaching for the money, but it's not bad) and despite cuts in the pension, the pension is far better than the private equivalent, assuming that those teachers actually make it to pension age due to the stresses of the job. These are contentious issues, but understandable from someone who hasn't taught in a school classroom since 1974.

He also mentions the 13 weeks holiday - the familiar dig that teachers have to deal with. As I've said on numerous occasions, no-one would do the job if it weren't for the holidays. I certainly wouldn't.

He also says, astoundingly, that teachers have "cast-iron job security". This is quite unbelievable at a time of budget cuts and many schools being forced to make teachers (as well as support staff) redundant. Not to mention the qualified teachers in subjects such as PE, Art, Drama, History (the list goes on) who can't even get their first job because there are too many qualified teachers for too feew jobs. And that's without a baseless accusation from a vindictive child that hangs over all teachers every day, where the teacher is guilty until proven innocent. The bloke is clearly an idiot. Foolish statement number two.

I'm not saying that teachers deserve a sabbatical to "recharge their batteries", although I believe that some countries do offer them. The cost would be prohibitive as those on sabbatical would need a wage, and their replacement would also need payment. Also the public may not welcome the news, and the disruption to classes may outweigh the benefits.

Chris Woodhead - totally removed from educational reality.

The Wisdom of Chris Woodhead

I don't know how many of you read The Sunday Times, but in the one of the numerous sections of the newspaper, News Review, Chris Woodhead has a question and answer section where he attempts to help out (mainly parents) with any educational queries. As I don't tend to read too many papers (I don't really have the time), I can only assume that most broadsheets have a similar section amongst their various reams of "news".

My longing question, and one that I may well email him, is whether he is actually qualified to offer solid and up-to-date information that can be of any use to those who write in to him?

In my opinion the answer is a resounding "No", and I will qualify this with some facts.

Woodhead has not been a full time teacher since 1974, at which point he entered a career in teacher education and ultimately became Chief Inspector of Schools, or head of Ofsted in layman's terms. I've been a teacher since 1999 and even in that time the profession has changed immensely, so would Mr Woodhead even recognise a modern classroom if he stumbled into one nowadays? The answer is no,the two are poles apart.

As far as his experience in teacher education goes, that is ultimately irrelevent insofar as what he was dealing with was classroom theory, not classroom practise, which as most would realise, are two very different things. As a mentor of trainee teachers at my current school, I am often astouded, if not flabberghasted by some of the ideals university lecturers feed their trainees, ideals that fail to prepare their enthusiastic charges with the stresses and strains of the classroom.

He was then Chief Executive of the National Curriculum Council, before becoming Chief Inspector of Schools, neither of which are classroom-based, the former just stating what should be taught (again a theoretial role) and the latter as someone who looks at data whilst beating schools over the head with a stick.

He was a target of huge amounts of abuse from the teaching profession (mainly the unions) in his role with Ofsted and continues to make what one can only assume is a very good living pontificating about schools and education in general, when he really has little idea of how a normal teacher's day actually pans out.

The fact that newspapers employ him as an apparent expert in education and government's reliance on whatever Ofsted says only magnifies the huge difference between what is reported about schools and what actually happens in them. In his column Woodhead continually points people in the direction of Ofsted reports, which is surely counter-productive for the future of his column, as people will cut out the middleman and stop writing in, simply going to the Ofsted website.

What baffles me is that people still listen to this man and to his former government quango, whose inspectors tend to have similar CVs to that of their former boss.

I've made up my mind, I'm writing to him, although I'm not necessarily expecting a reply, or at least not a polite one.

Teachers Pensions - A New Deal?

I thought I'd go and see what changes were offered by the government today and copied this from the official government leaflet:

What will stay the same?
You will continue to receive a guaranteed income in your retirement.
You will keep the pension and lump sum you have already earned and this will remain linked to your final salary on retirement.
Regardless of any changes to teachers’ Normal Pension Age or the State Pension Age, you will retain options to retire at any age between 55 and 75.
Those within 10 years of normal pension age on 1 April 2012 will see no change to the age at which they can retire, and no change in the amount of pension they receive when they retire.
What is proposed to change?
A move from a final salary pension to a career average pension scheme.
A phased increase to teachers’ Normal Pension Age in line with changes to the State Pension Age.
A rebalancing of employee and employer contributions to provide a fairer distribution between members and other taxpayers.
When will this happen?
The intention is for a phased increase to employee contributions from 2012.
The other reforms are proposed for 2015.

Call me picky, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of change there.

• We still work until we're well beyond the age that anyone can function effectively as a teacher.
• We still have an average salary assessment rather than final salary meaning we'll lose out.
• We will still pay more and as a result of the previous point, get less.

I don't really understand the difference from the previous one, despite it being described as a deal for a generation by those in power. I therefore reckon that strikes may well be forthcoming, althoughI won't be joining in as I can't afford to lose a day's pay. And before anyone says that I'll be losing out in the long run, I'll have paid my mortgage off by then.

All another strike will do is alienate the popultion once more as they have to take days off or pay for child care.

Less and less desirable...