Regrets, I've Had A Few...

It's that time of the year again, just after the resignation deadline has passed, that I wonder whether I should have tried a bit harder to find a new job. Plenty of my colleagues, in fact more than normal, have decided to move onto pastures new (both in and out of teaching), but I am not one of those. The place will be very different next year, but my classroom will be the same, at least initially.

I must admit that I've sent out a record number of applications this year, but only to jobs that are possibly beyond me on paper. This you may think that naïve and a waste of my time, but I've always lived by the philosophy "if you don't ask, you don't get". Now I don't appear to have "got" so far, but that hasn't left me hugely downhearted, for the reasons below.

I know that teachers in my subject, at least competent ones (which I, perhaps incorrectly, consider myself to be), are fairly few and far between; they have been for years and this situation is unlikely to change in the near future, if at all. Not even the gleaming and government lauded TeachFirst will rectify the shortage of staff or potential staff as there are just too many spaces to fill. Whatever your feelings regarding TeachFirst (and I'm sure other, similar "charities" will spring up with government backing in the near future), people who enrol are filling vacancies that would otherwise be very difficult to fill, and no matter how long these people remain in the profession, some at the very least must do a good job, and some must continue to work in education.

My qualifications aren't great. I am the first to admit that I took a relatively easy option regarding my degree (a degree I genuinely enjoyed, I hasten to add, despite lacking sufficient talent to really excel in it), and I had to spend extra time at university to bring myself up to speed in my current teaching subject in which I had decnt A Levels, but I now have over a decade of teaching experience and many other positives on my CV. I have held posts of responsibility, but they didn't really "float my boat" if I'm honest. It wasn't that I did them badly, in fact far from it (I'm not boasting at this point). I was given a Head of Department job temporarily which was offered to me permanently but I didn't accept. The reason for this is that I actually quite like teaching, and the further up the food chain you go, the less teaching you do. The problem is that I am applying for positions with no management and potential employers wonder why. The current obsession with promotion is held against those who don't necessarily want it; I look at the TeachFirst logo at this point.

 

 

Some people might not want to get out of the classroom - ever thought of that? However weird you may think that is, there are some of us out there. It's not that I think I couldn't do a decent job higher up the food chain, I just have no ambition to be there. Is it really a crime not to want to be a manager? Perhaps not, but rightly or wrongly, potential employers are suspicious.

 

There's also the fact that I see no point moving for the sake of do so; my experience is that most schools are essentially the same. Starting a new school is stressful and it takes a while to establish yourself and learn new ropes, so I will only move to a "better" school. These schools get many more applicants, many of whom look far better on paper than I do, so I fully expect knock backs.

 

The problem is that in the current climate if I don't move I will be forced to leave teaching. It's not that I don't enjoy it (not all the time, admittedly), but it is becoming unbearable in certain sectors. You need a good department head, which, fortunately I have, but no leader can't shield everyone from all the faeces being dropped on educators from various heights at present.

 

I know that I'm not alone in this feeling either. People, even in the current economic climate are leaving the profession in their droves. Although, with the rise in demand for private tutors due to increasing exam pressure on students, and decreasing attention paid in classrooms by them too, maybe this is what these ex-teachers are now doing.

 

Ultimately it boils down to the fact that if I don't find something else to do or a different place in which to teach soon, I can't be held accountable for my actions. I think the main regret I have is that I'm beginning to think that becoming a teacher in the first place was a mistake.







Coping With School

There's been a bit in the press recently about young people coping with life after school - click here.

I have said for a long time now that schools in England, at least the ones I've had experience in, do not prepare young people for the big, wide world. I'm sure that there are some that do, in fact the school I went to had a pretty good go, but the majority fall way short of the mark. It's not their fault I hasten to add, it's the system that's at fault.

In a sense you can't blame children, parents or staff either, but politicians must take the blame for the current situation. Schools in England have become exam factories, with every judgement based on results. This sounds fair enough you'd think, but a school's, and therefore its staff's existence is purely dependent upon the results they churn out over the academic year. So can you blame staff for literally spoon-feeding its charges? This is the reason young people struggle with the outside world, because as older generations will tell you, you get out what you put in, unless you are in education. Employers are constantly moaning that many young people they employ almost literally know nothing of use, and they mistrust exam results as a consequence. Gove's policy of changing the GCSE to the EBacc will not address this in any way, shape or form as schools and their staff will still be based upon their results.

There will be no discernible change until young people in schools and colleges are "allowed" to get what they deserve. The problem is that in order to "allow" young people to get what they deserve, all schools will have to buy into the idea and not spoon-feed their cohort, which will never happen unfortunately because anyone in education will tell you that as soon as you stop spoon-feeding, results will take a hit for a year or two until the young people, and just as importantly, their parents learn that they have to make an effort.

I have a couple of Year 11 classes who have exams in January and I've been telling them to do some past papers that we've put on our website and bring them to me when they get stuck. How many have actually done this out of around 40 students? None. And my classes are not unusual as out of around 150 students who are taking exams in a couple of weeks, the total number seeking the help offered is under 10. We still get students asking what they should do to revise despite letters being sent home as well as texts and emails. And many of the parents are just as bad if I'm honest as they flatly ignore the messages sent home.

The trouble is that our students all know that they will get to college with whatever results they end up with, because "bums on seats" is the key phrase - their funding from government relies on numbers, so again you can't really blame them, The young people therefore find it almost impossible to fail, which is why when they start work and get both barrels from their employer for not doing their job, they crumble because it's probably the first time it's ever happened.

Due to the pressure on results, staff in schools also struggle to cope with the pressures placed upon them, especially when you consider that they are essentially having to do the work they are setting as well as teaching it. As the years have gone by my term time sleep patterns have changed hugely. I now get around 4 hours sleep per night during term as my brain races over how to deliver certain topics to certain classes/students in order to encourage them to think for themselves. This is now creeping into my holidays, which frankly can't be healthy for anyone, me, my family, the students I teach or my colleagues.

Not that any of this seems to bother Michael Gove or his old mucker Sir Michael Wilshaw. Their rhetoric seems to be "put up, shut up or we'll get rid of you". Now that's fair enough but replace me with someone as good or better. Good luck with that...

"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.

Do schools prepare young people for the big, wide world?

How many jobs could you do the following and still be allowed to turn up the next day?

·         Call your boss every name under the sun.

·         Regularly turn up late.

·         Walk out if you’ve been asked to do something difficult.

·         Smoke in a non-smoking area.

·         Not turn up with the tools required to do your job.

·         Wear the incorrect uniform regarded as part of the job.

·         Forget to do the work you were asked to do.

I could go on, but you get the idea. At school you can do all these things with the worst sanction being spend 5 days at home. Ok, so if you repeatedly do these things you may find yourself searching for a new educational establishment, but that assumes that reports have been filed with meticulously crossed t’s and dotted i’s.

Is it any wonder that a huge percentage of school leavers fail to hold down a job? They are used to being able to do pretty much what they want, when they want, with a detention being the punishment for overstepping the mark, a detention that they may well fail to turn to, so it escalates to… another detention.

As far as I’m aware, in most jobs it’s the “three strikes and you’re out” system:

1.       Verbal warning

2.       1^st written warning

3.       2^nd written warning

4.       Sack

In fact, if you are on your probationary period, you don’t even get that. It’s understood and therefore adhered to by those who want to hold down a regular job.

You may argue that children are not mature enough and therefore make mistakes, from which they learn, but unless some sanctions are put in place that are going to make a difference (detentions don’t cut the mustard really), then behaviour in schools will continue to deteriorate.

The problem is that the children are pretty legally savvy nowadays, although they are under the false impression that they have rights (they don’t really, their teachers are legal guardians whilst they are at school). An even bigger problem is that parents believe what their children say, and children will say some pretty serious things without realising what the repercussions could be. Children are far cleverer than most adults give them credit for and will know what buttons to push in order to dig themselves out of a hole.

I’ll give you an example:

3 boys played truant and missed an assessment. Their teacher wasn’t pleased and told them off in no uncertain terms. The boys faced quite severe sanction s for truancy so claimed that the teacher had intimidated them. He hadn’t, I saw the incident. All the focus went onto the teacher who was dragged over the coals, and the students got off scot-free.

What children don’t realise is that in the workplace they won’t be listened to, they will be expected to listen to and follow instructions, something that they may not have done for a relatively long time.

Being on time is habitual, so all those students who have said to me in the past “I won’t be late to work” are liars unfortunately, not that they know it at the time. Plus the fact that they all think that they are going to walk into a well paid job straight out of school, or become famous and therefore rich. I do like asking students who want to be famous exactly what they are going to be famous for. Most just look confused.

I had one 16 year old tell me that he could earn “£80 per week” if he wanted to. I pointed out that he may have to keep on his parents’ good side if he wanted to live anywhere other than under a bridge in a cardboard box on those wages, then did the sums on the board. He came around to my point of view, that £80 probably wasn’t going to get the baby bathed.

The education system is failing children as a result. The lack of consequences for actions is the biggest problem society has at the moment, in my view, and the more people who have little to do with the actual doing of the job (I’m thinking government and the media here) get involved, the worse it will get. These people who make the rules/laws, think that they are doing the right thing, and in some cases they are, but in the majority of cases, they are hindering the children’s discovery of the real world.