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.

Play The Game

As a teacher I am constantly being told to "play the game" with regards Ofsted, something that most teachers do, but I refuse for one reason or another. Why don't teachers tell their unions to play the game?

Teachers' unions are currently entrenched in a battle with the Department for Education over pretty much every thing from the curriculum taught to the terms and conditions of service. What makes or breaks an issue or argument generally is public support, and this is gained essentially through propaganda. Propaganda is the using of facts to back your argument and make the general public support your cause. Politicians are professionals in propaganda, and so should unions be as the General Secretaries are politicians in all but name.

Good propaganda involves picking your issues very carefully, so why on earth are the NUT making a big thing about changes to the summer holiday? If there's one thing that is guaranteed to get the public's back up, it's teachers who moan about holidays. The general public already believe that teachers get far too much holiday (if only they knew that there would be a huge shortage of teachers to teach their little darlings were it not for the holidays) - 13 weeks per year in state education, and more in the private sector. It's the six week summer holiday that the NUT most object to losing.

The teachers of Nottingham are up-in-arms about proposed changes to their academic year whch would mean a five term year of 8 weeks per term and only 4 weeks off in the summer, and they have every right to be if they believe that is a big issue. I have no opinion either way if I'm honest, other than this is destined to turn the general public against all the other legitimate issues that teachers are tackling the government over at the moment.

What the government will bang on about (or I would if I were them) is that teachers are contracted to be in school for 195 days per year and there's no proposed change to that, so what's the fuss about? The general public will see this as a solid argument and understand it. Teachers will rightly say that teachers will face burn-out as well as the children who need also need down-time, and this will affect teaching and learning. The general public will not understand that I'm afraid as it involves some understanding of the pressures on teachesr and children and the knock-on effects. The general public do not possess this understanding, so the argument is the government's.

Choose which issues to make a big noise about carefully! One poor decision can derail everything.

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?

Cardinal Sin

I'm not sure that I can sleep tonight - I actually went into school today. It's the holidays and we only get 13 weeks per year. Ok, so 13 weeks per year is great, don't get me wrong, but I am genuinely disappointed in myself for going in.

Why?

I think it's important to keep home/holidays totally free from work. During term I arrive at work at about 7.45am and leave at about 5pm. Put your small violins away because it's not sympathy I want, but I feel that I work hard enough for the money I'm paid, and a work/life balance is important. As a result I don't like to bring work home, I want to spend time with my family like most others would want to. The trouble was that I had a test to mark and other stuff to do, so I spent around 2-3 hours in school today. Fortunately my wife and child are away at the moment so it was only me I was putting out, but that's not the point.

The work/life balance was something that unions, government and anyone else that doesn't really matter were going on about relentlessly not so long ago. That's all changed with the arrival of a new government and a new Chief Inspector of Schools. Teachers should be grateful to have a job apparently (Michael Gove did actually say that), and the pressure to produce data that shows how wonderful you are as a classroom practitioner has increased hugely.

Is this a healthy situation? The answer is a resounding "No". All that will happen is that schools will be full of teachers who are too tired to do a proper job, a job they could do if they were not so tired. Term time pressure is huge, with the marking of books (I'll get onto that in a bit) and planning so-called "outstanding" lessons - "outstanding" in whose eyes? By the end of a half term the staff room is exceptionally quiet, either with a lack of numbers (staff planning in their classroom) or due to exhaustion of those in there at the time.

Marking books is a total waste of a lot of a teacher's time other than to show the students that you do actually look at what they are doing in class. We are supposed to write formative comments for every student, comments that inform them of what they need to do to move to the next level. This is fine, but very few students actually bother to read the comments written by their teacher, instead wanting to know what level/grade they are currently at. It is a similar thing to a teacher and their lesson observation feedback. Observations were supposed to help teachers improve their practice but due to the increasing influence and power of Ofsted, all a teacher's worried about is their grade. This is not healthy!

I thought that once I'd become a little more experienced I could live without taking books or planning at home. The opposite seems to be the case, as I now go in when I don't have to be there far more than I use to. I can't believe that I'm the only one either - no wonder that teachers' morale is at an all time low. Not that that bothers Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Schools or Head of Ofsted in layman's terms, as he regards this as a sign that he is doing something right.

It depends what his objectives are (I presume it's written on the board, I'm too tired to see), if they are to force loads of teachers to leave the profession through various means, he's spot on and I offer him my congratulations.

Otherwise, he's an arse.

What it's all about!

A week off - lovely. Don't believe a word of what any teacher says when they say that the best thing about the job isn't the holidays, it's the positive effect they have on the children they teach. They are lying, probably not intentionally, because they may genuinely believe what they are saying. But if the holidays were reduced to 5 weeks per year, they would be doing something else. Those children they've been waxing lyrical about will still require the "positive effect", but no-one would do the job apart from sadists.

I intend to do little, in fact, no schoolwork this half term, although I may venture near the school at some point as I may need to get somewhere nearby. I need to check what my IT class are moving onto having delivered their (frankly awful) presentations in the final lesson before half term. I must admit that having studied the data on my IT class I wasn't expecting great things, but their total lack of listening skills when the instructions were given at the beginning of every one of their last 15 lessons is astounding. Fortunately I can't see many of the class having to give a presentation during their working life, although I'm happy to be proven wrong.

There's a local private/public school also off on half term, where day pupils are charged around £18k per year. They have two weeks off for half term because this is such a long term - it's called the Advent term in public schools. Poor little darlings, but if my child went to the school, and having done a quick mental calculation on hours spent in school, I would question the justification of this 2 week half term. Having said that, the children who go there are almost certainly guaranteed good qualifications (although one can't polish a turd, hence the entrance exam to weed those who will fail exams out) due to class sizes being much less than 30, and therefore the teacher can actually help you if you are stuck. The teacher's don't have their time taken up with pointless stuff such as performance management and delivering formative feedback that is ignored, so the teachers can concentrate on what they are paid to do, namely teach rather than dig their way out of red tape and educational faeces.

I may be off work at the moment, but work isn't leaving me alone. I normally scour my Sunday paper for education-based stories, but the cupboard was bare, until I opened the local rag only to see a still from CCTV footage released by British Transport Police in conjunction with a bag stolen from a local train. The two young girls in the picture rang a bell immediately (or at least one certainly did, with her distinctive hairdo) and I'm 99.9% sure that the girls are in our Year 10. I have informed the police. It's a tactic that our headteacher/deputy headteacher should maybe think about since there have been a number of incidents this term that should have involved the police (drugs and thefts namely) but the school has opted to carry out internal investigations.

You may well ask why the school doesn't involve the police. The answer is this:

BAD PRESS MUST BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS

Pathetic isn't it? All it means is that the problem will increase as a 5 day exclusion isn't really a deterrant as they will just practise FIFA12, whereas a criminal record might be. We get back to a lack of consequences for the actions of children who will probably go on to be criminals because they don't understand any different due to the fact that their actions as youths go essentially unpunished. Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but we learn from our mistakes when a fitting punishment is given. We learn nothing is no punishment ensues.

No doubt I'll be chastised when I get back to school for giving the school some bad press, but I reckon I'll sleep easier knowing that.

The End Is Nigh...

It's at the end of August that you see many teachers start to look miserable. Why? The summer holiday is nearly over.

It's always a bit of a reality check for a teacher that you do actually have to earn your money at some point - the worst thing about getting 6-ish weeks off is the going back afterwards. You're out of routine and can barely remember when you were last in a routine. There's also the fact that most teachers (not all) go in at the end of August to do some marking, planning or just to tidy their classroom. Even though you get so much holiday, the fact that you are in during annual leave leaves a nasty taste.

Having said that it is nice to catch up with a few colleague that you haven't seen and maybe check out how badly your classes did in their GCSEs or A levels, although, for a pleasant change, mine did Ok, despite doing the minimum amount of work. When I say say "well", mean that most got a C grade or above, the mark of a pass in statistician's' eyes anyway. This could lead me off on a tangent, but I will leave that for another day.

I went in for the first time today with the intention of marking some work that I never got around to doing in July and planning a few lessons for the start of term. I managed 50% of my targets, but the horrible 50% (the marking), so I felt as if I'd achieved something, like many 16 year olds currently.

I would say that one doesn't have to be in school to actually do some work. I like to claim that I'm "never off duty" or that the "classroom never sleeps" - with tongue firmly wedged in cheek I hasten to add, but I have had a few ideas over the holidays, one of which I texted my line manager about, which I gave myself a stern talking to about. I think it may have been late at night too, which is even worse. Most teachers do have moments of inspiration during the holidays though, for the follwing reasons: they are more relaxed and they have time to think.

If anyone ever has a go at me for the amount of holiday time I get I offer to do a job swap, which normally makes them recoil at speed, but actually it wouldn't be a bad idea for both teacher and non-teacher. Teaching is a very tiring job during term time, but you get long holidays to counteract the tiredness. This is the main thing that non-teachers struggle to understand, and how would they know after all? It would give parents some idea of what their child and their child's teachers go through on a daily basis though, and might reduce the amount of whiny phone calls from clueless parents about how their child is not getting a fair deal from their geography lessons, even though their child is probably the one who disrupts it. Another story once again.

A good number of teachers have no idea what a job outside of teaching is really like, and whether they would be able to cope in an office environment; what skills they could successfully transfer. This could be genuinely useful for a teacher who wants to get out of the profession, as they would know what they could do. I can hear those non-teachers saying:

"You get plenty of holidays, so do it then". Fair point. I'm never going to convince them.