Conference Season

I really don't like Easter. It's not the holidays because after all, that is one of the few benefits of being a teacher. It's because the three major teaching unions (NUT, NASUWT and ATL) have their conferences.

Now I like unions, and I think that they have an important part to play in the life if any teacher (those who aren't members of a union are fools I'm afraid). They provide support for any teacher who finds themselves in a bit of a jam whilst at work. They will, if the case warrants it, provide legal support whose cost would be prohibitive otherwise.

So if I actually like unions, why do I dislike their conferences?

The problem is that anyone who is a member can make a speech in theory. Now I might sound undemocratic at this stage, but some people need to be prevented from talking in public. All unions have militant members, many of whom probably have a reasonable point, but the fact is that they just sound a bit pathetic and ranting.

Currently teaching has a few issues of which these are the main two:

1. Ofsted - the fear of senior management in schools is almost unbearable and the Chief Inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw comes across as a bully and an idealist living in a fantasy world. The workload his rhetoric has produced is unsustainable and is driving people out of the profession.
2. Michael Gove - Secretary of State for Education. He is in the process (presumably because he knows that his party won't get voted back in at the next election) of radically changing the way schools work and teach the youth of the country at a frightening pace. Some of it is sensible and needs doing but much of it is lamentable, and this has been stated to him repeatedly by "experts". He ploughs on regardless.

There are others: pensions, pay freezes, attitude to learning and pupil/parental behaviour being among them.

The problem is that rather than focusing on pointing out the flaws in Wilshaw and Gove's policies, members if the various unions have cried "strike" at every given opportunity. There's a reason that this is a stupid and frankly annoying way to go from those speaking at the various conferences. The votes of no confidence are fair enough however - Gove and Wilshaw need to know just how unpopular and unwanted they are.

In the public's eyes teachers are doing a job that few would choose; on a par with the police if truth be told. Teachers do get 13 weeks of holiday each year (something the police don't get), and it's an accusation regularly levelled at teachers. So when the NUT are reported to have asked for teaching time to be limited to 20 hours per week this doesn't go down well with Joe Public as our Joe doesn't realise that classroom time is the least of a teacher's worries. The general public have no idea what goes into a lesson, and why would they? They just assume that teachers turn up and whitter on about stuff then mark a few books - end of.

What teaching currently needs is public support before a series of strikes over pay and pensions from the NUT and NASUWT who represent around 90% of teachers. By asking for what the public will perceive as less work is frankly idiotic. The fact that most teachers have little more than 20 hours per week of teaching time makes the request even more idiotic.

Teaching unions must get their act together. Most of the country find politicians abomnible, but by making silly requests they are playing into these people's hands. I have no idea if the unions have a PR department, but if they do they need replacing. It's inviting the press and public to label teachers as lazy, whinging freeloaders with too much holiday.

That's why I hate Easter.

Playing Them At Their Own Game

So all the teaching unions conferences have finished and surprisingly its been the NASUWT rather the NUT who have been making all the headlines. There has been a lot of whinging that won't win much public support, despite the fact that many of the points raised have been legitimate, the public will generally just wish that teachers would stop moaning. Hot classrooms are not going to extract much sympathy I'm afraid.

Arguably the best bit of conference season was Chris Keates' (General Secretary of NASUWT) closing speech. Having taken a leaf out of Gove's book she used the gimmick of having a cadboard cut out of the Secretary of State for Education to symbolise the fact that not a single Minister has attended any part of any conference. Keates described Gove as a teaching union's poster boy as his reign in office has led to a huge increase in membership for all three teaching unions. This is worrying for two reasons: government policy has made more teachers feel threatened but also because there are a lot of teachers who aren't union members, which is naive at best.

Keates used the opportunity to accuse Gove and his cronies (yes Wilshaw, you are one of those) of "eroding the professional status of teachers", and she is absolutely correct. Gove seems hell-bent on demoralising the profession in what he claims is a bid to raise standards. An army general doesn't instil courage and fight in their troops by telling them repeatedly that they are sub-standard and should be worked into the ground. All the Department for Education ever say is that teachers have been given more power to rid classrooms of disruptive influences and that academies offer schools and staff greater freedom to teach children without government interference.

Anyone who has had any recent experience of schools will tell you that it is still nigh-on impossible to exclude pupils, and is arguably even more difficult now since the excluding school has to pay for the excluded student's future provision from an increasingly shrinking budget. Academies, it is claimed by unions, are a step towards privatisation of education and an invitation to privateers to make a profit from schools. I think that it may be a little dramatic to suggest that private companies want to take over schools to gain profit but there is very little evidence that academy status raises standards at all, especially considering that the new academy has the same under-achieving students wandering through the doors, probably late. Academies offer most teachers worse money, worse benefits regarding sick, maternity and paternity pay as well as longer hours. Are the government really surprised that teachers are opposed to the move? Turkeys don't queue up to vote for Christmas.

The fact that no-one from the Department for Education has attended any conference shows the contempt for the unions who represent the profession, and in my view, the cowardice of politiians. Ministers are happy to sit in press conferences or typing up press releases in their comfy, air-conditioned offices that slate teachers, but are extremely reluctant to actually face them.

Strikes seem imminent - bring on the revolution!

More Strikes Ahead

The two biggest teaching unions, the NUT and the NASUWT are having their annual conferences this week you are bound to see plenty of articles about strikes over pensions. It seems that anyone who is either a teacher or is related to one seems to be on the side of the teaching profession, but anyone whose experience of teaching is that they went to school a while ago seems to keep pointing out that teachers' work short hours, get long holidays and should see their job as a "vocation".

Whilst I sympathise with those on the outside seeing teachers striking seemingly on a whim, meaning that they are inconvenienced over strikes/closure of schools, something has to be done. I am not convinced that striking is the answer however, as dwindling public support will only give politicians ammunition.

It's funny how those who don't teach like to point out the benefits of the job - if the benefits are so great, why haven't they chosen teaching as a career?

So what are the benefits according to those who don't?

1. Holidays - 13 weeks per year in state education. Bear in mind that teachers have no choice over when they can take their holidays, and the lovely, supportive travel companies double their prices at least to cash in on the increased business. Also take into account that teachers don't get paid for the holiday time, only the time they spend in class - the wages are spread out across the year.
2. That leads me onto pay - competitive, indeed, and one can't grumble about the hourly rate paid for classroom time, but teachers get nothing for planning and preparation time outside of school hours, which is normally around the same number of hours as the time spent in the classroom. All of a sudden that hourly rate for time in the classroom is halved and not so attractive.
3. It's a vocation, as someone pointed out on a recent BBC message board, so teachers should just be happy to have their dream job and the money is irrelevent. I'd like to spend time on the cloud that poster came from, it must be lovely surviving on happiness alone.
4. Apparently teachers only work from 9am to 3pm during the week - I wish! I am not unusual in that I arrive before 8am and leave at around 5pm every day, occasionally taking work home. I know that many colleagues work at home until late into the evening - they certainly don't pay me enough to do that every evening. If something is urgent, then fair enough, but there was something called a work/life balance a few years ago, although you'd need a good memory to recall those days in teaching!

The problem is that people remember the bad old days when some teachers (the ones we all seemingly remember) were, shall we say, less inclined to plan lessons and spent much of a lesson sat at their desk reading a newspaper. They were few and far between, but for some reason everyone seems to think that they were the majority rather than the minority. In very expensive schools, you didn't even need to be qualified so essentially made it up as you went along!

What teachers and potential teachers face nowadays is the following:

• Training for a minimum of 4 years at the cost of thousands of pounds per year, and if you don't get a first or second class degrees, forget it. With those sorts of qualifications in some subject areas (eg. maths and physics), you could earn a lot more in industry with far less grief. Ultimately there will be no teachers in some areas of the curriculum.
• Pay freezes for a couple of years, meaning that teachesr are increasingly worse off.
• Pensions where you pay increasing amounts in and receive ever decreasing amounts when you retire, assuming you haven't pegged out by then.
• Retirement age increases to 67 or 68: I heard a great statistic the other day. Teachers who retire at 60 live for 17 years on average; teachers who retire at 65 live for 17 months on average. So the policy seems designed to kill ex-teachers off! Almost genocide!!!
• Conditions that are almost unbearable due to unsupportive parents and a system so wrapped up in red tape that students who cause a problem can't be dealy with effectively.
• A curriculum that is constantly being tinkered with by people who have no experience of teaching in the modern classroom, meaning extra work (in their own time) for teachers trying to keep up with the changes.
• Ofsted and politicians insisting that all students get good grades, whether they make any effort or not. If the student refuses to work, that's the teacher's fault.
• The threat of the sack hanging over every teacher due to recent government policy changes,
• The drive for all schools to become academies meaning that headteachers get more power and can sack any teacher they aren't keen on, regardless of teaching ability.
• Changes in regional pay to reflect the area in which the school is situated, which can only mean one thing: many teachers will see a drop in pay, or a frozen pay packet for far longer than previously advertised.

The list could go on and on and adds up to the fact that fewer and fewer people will enter the profession and more and more will leave. You don't have to be a genius to work out that this situation isn't healthy for anyone: teachers, parents or students. Politicians won't care, as long as they look good in the press.

I do understand that the general public are getting a bit tired of hearing/seeing whinging teachers in the media, but there are good reasons for the moaning, I just wish we could avoid strikes. The NASUWT had the right idea by working to rule, but it needs to go a bit further to really make an impact. Any suggestions?

"Segregated Schools"

It's union conference season at the moment and the ATL (Association of Teachers and lecturers) have just completed theirs in Manchester with a summing up speech from their leader Mary Bousted. She has always come across well on television but does get paid a lot of money to do so at well over £100,000 per year. I struggle, as a teacher on around £30,000 per year to take union leaders seriously as champions of teachers' causes, but they are the only people we have, so I suppose I don't have any choice.

Bousted's speech hit the now regular union buttons of having a go at politicians and Ofsted, and three cheers for that, but her speech was ultimately useless and designed to win applause rather than bring to light real issues facing teachers. [Click here to see the article]

Her speech centred around the fact that schools and classes are "segregated" on the basis of class. She went on to say that teachers are regularly blamed for the failure of children from poorer backgrounds failing to achieve their potential academically, and with this she has a point, but is it really news? This situation is frankly always going to happen for the following reasons:

1. There may be more choice when it comes to choosing a secondary school for your child, but most will choose the closest if at all possible, purely for convenience. If the closest school to you performs poorly then you will only go elsewhere if you have academic aspirations for your children, otherwise you don't really care, as long as your children attend and therefore the authorities keep off your back.
2. As a result of the above, it therefore depends upon the situation of the school and what sort of housing is in the vicinity. Teachers can't help that, no matter what statistics you throw at it as a politician. Ok, Wilshaw turned around his academy in Hackney, but only by reducing the life expectancy of his staff by forcing them to work longer hours and deal with increased stress by offering the children a safe environment compared to the estate they inhabited. That's his vision for the future of teaching though, which doesn't bode too well.
3. Those that Bousted was going on about have no aspirations at all, and haven't needed them as the state has paid their way through life by providing them with cheap housing and spending money through benefits. Again, this is not teachers' fault, but teachers bear the brunt of the criticism as students from these backgrounds enter the "family business" after their compulsory education ends. If you have the means and the will to give your children the greatest opportunity to succeed then you will travel to get your children into a supposedly better school. You regularly hear of people moving home to get into a certain catchment area, and catchment areas can add thousands on to property prices.
4. As I said in my previous post, with few jobs available and being brought up in an environment where work is not part of the equation doesn't encourage children to perform to their academic ability.

I would like to say that not all children from a certain class, the class Bousted was talking about, have zero academic aspirations, but with the lack of opportunity in the market for young people, there seems little incentive to break the social mould.

Bousted has highlighted a valid point, but this is hardly news to anyone, despite it being rarely mentioned by politicians. - I suppose that's why she spoke about the issue After all it's far easier to blame a profession who have a history of moaning but doing little of substance. The trouble is that those who are left in the profession are beginning to do something about it, with the ATL actually striking for the first time in decades towards the end of last year over pensions. The best news from the conference was that Schools Minister Nick Gibb was heckled so badly that he had to pause during his speech, three times whilst the heckles died down. I hope he felt as small as the teaching profession does every time he and his colleagues in Whitehall open their mouths.

Interesting times ahead, but please teaching unions, stop stating the obvious.

Next year's topic for debate: the exodus of teachers from the profession due to government and Ofsted policy.

"Societal Problems"

Schools minister Nick Gibb at the ATL conference:
"The societal problems that these schools have to face are much greater today... but the best way to tackle this is to make sure children are leaving well educated."

How do you suppose schools educate these children Mr Gibb, whilst they abuse each other, the staff and any equipment that is within arm's reach? Politicians are consistently asking the teaching profession to perform the impossible, and that is to educate those who have absolutely no interest in being educated. And let's be honest, why should the youngsters of the UK bother with education?

• There are very few jobs for them to go into, so the government wants young people to go to university, at a cost of up to £9000 per year. Do the maths if a regular course at university lasts 3 years - if you want to be a teacher (4 years minimum) and other professions like medicine far longer. That's no incentive, certainly not on the wages that are going to be offered when wage changes proposed by the government come into force. Teachers pensions all over again: pay more to get less.
• Their parents have managed perfectly well without a job all their adult life, living off benefits and essentially doing what they want, when they want to without much fear of repercussion. Threats from politicians to remove benefits from those who refuse work or training haven't materialised, although I'm sure that some statistics can be manipulated to show that actually this policy has been enforced. There are plenty of jobs out there, but perhaps not the kinds of jobs desired by those who require them.

And so it's down to teachers to essentially bring up these children, be their parents and instill the ambition to achieve through education.

We have two hopes people, and Bob Hope's on the golf course in the sky.

Every week I have at least one child tell me that they aren't ever going to use what I am teaching them, and every week I respond with "How do you know?".

Have they already got a job lined up? No. So why are they writing that off? Because they can't be bothered to try, that's why.

The last occasion I had this was when we were doing algebra and one nice lad stated that he didn't see the point of it. The conversation went like this from that point onwards:
Me: You don't use Excel then.
Student: Only in school.
Me: You're never going to work in an office I suppose.
Student: No.
Me: What are you going to do for work then?
Student: Don't know.
Me: Anyone else think that they are never going to use algebra in work.

Over half the class' hands go up.

Me: You have all just written off about half the job market by saying that you won't do anything with formulae in your work life.
Students: So.

I give up. These are genuinely nice kids too, I shudder to think what it's like in tougher educational environments.

What will happen? Teachers will get told to try harder or face a lowering of wages and increasing hours in order to give them more time to fail to inspire those uninspirable children. The only way that some children can be inspired to achieve educational success is to totally remove them from the toxic environment that is their home/background in some cases. All children will be forced to board at school, making teachers their actual guardians 24 hours per day - you heard it here first people.

Although, due to the prohibitive cost of beoming a teacher, there won't be enough in the profession to make this plan viable. Classes of 60 anyone?

Politicians really are clueless.

Michael "Braveheart" Gove

I was on duty on our school field recently when there was a small commotion by some gates overlooking the road that runs past the school. Around 4 kids who should have been in school were requesting an audience with a well-known fool on our role. The fool's mates all came over and started shouting abuse at these 4 "undesirables" safe in the knowledge that they were going to be in no trouble whatsoever due to the 3 metre high metal fence and a bunch of adults (us teachers) there to protect them. I said to one student "Ooh, aren't you brave calling the boy some nasty names when he can't get you. Now go away and stop being pathetic."

Had I been a member of the Association of School and College Leaders and attended their conference I would have said pretty much the same thing to Michael Gove. He gave a speech at the conference in Birmingham which is reported on the BBC News website (click here to read it) where we saw the man's true colours. Gove is trying to paint a picture of himself as a reformer. In fact he could do a passable impression (pun intended) of Van Gogh had the Dutchman cut both ears off rather than just 50% due to Gove's lack of listening skills. He, the Secretary of State rather than the painter, promised the conference that reforms were to keep coming thick and fast, which was quite brave I suppose as almost everyone in education is in agreement that he's rushing policy through without due care and attention. So a home run for Michael.

He then went on to back-track about no notice Ofsted inspections, saying that there may be a bit of notice, but palmed that decision off onto the "independent" Sir Michael of Wilshaw - which got a laugh. Not very brave from the Secretary of State - strike one Michael, and don't forget that you are out on the third strike.

Now if you're reading this blog, you are almost certainly involved in education in some way, and would have read or heard the constant slating of the teaching profession in the UK, headteachers, classroom practitioners - you name it, they've all felt the sharp end of the Gove tongue, metaphorically fortunately. But I quote from Gove's speech, and see if you can hear the distant sound of the reversing beeps: "We have the best generation of young teachers ever in our schools. We have the best generation of heads ever in our schools. And our whole school system is good, with many outstanding features." That's a huge turnaround from what we've been reading in the newspapers and hearing on the news bulletins where there's been rarely a good word said about educators and many of us could be facing the sack for being rubbish. Ironic that it was said in front a large audience of educators, don't you think? Not very brave Michael - strike two.

The speech finished only for the Secretary of State to be caught in the lobby by a group of handily placed reporters, whereupon he is quoted as saying: "If people say 'It's all just a bit too much', my view is 'man up!'". Michael, that's strike three I'm afraid - you're out.

Pathetic - I can kind of accept it from a 14 year old, but from a fully grown and well-educated man, it's frankly sad. I wonder what he'd say if I threatened him with a Chinese burn? I'd probably get all his dinner money.