The Problem With State Education

You may (probably not) have noticed that I haven't posted a new blog for about a month and a half. There is one reason for this: I've been ridiculously busy. And there are two reasons for this, listed below.

Problem 1 - Politicians/DfE
Education is seen as a major vote winner at the moment and this is a disaster for teachers and students as it means that people with little and more often, no experience like to tinker and make education "more rigorous". This has led to major exam reforms, that have been scrapped after significant opposition from those who might actually have some idea of what they are talking about. Pay reforms have also been tabled by the government so that a teacher's pay can be linked to performance, or should I say, a teacher's pay will be determined by the results that their students achieve, so therefore most will end up losing out for reasons that will become clear later on. The government claim that this new pay policy will enable "good and outstanding" teachers will be rewarded very quickly - presumably these "good and outstanding" teachers will only teach top sets or work in schools whose admissions policy is more of a grey area than perhaps it should be.

Ministers keep ploughing the academy furrow as though it's a bag of magic dust, although some "flagship" academies have had their collars felt over results/progress, admissions policies are becoming increasingly suspect in top performing academies and alleged reports of staff altering exams to increase grades. The bad press seems to get brushed under an increasingly lumpy carpet and the DfE have a stock answer to any criticisms that goes along the lines of "we can't stand aside whilst students are being failed by poor schools and teaching, and academy status can improve standards". When they talk about academies they do tend to mean "sponsored" academies, or public money ending up in the pockets of private firms. In fact the privatisation of schools is another hot topic with leaked memos from DfE emerging, along with accusations of inappropriate behaviour from some of Michael Gove's aides at the DfE.

The future is neither bright or orange!

Problem 2 - Ofsted:
Now you could argue, quite forcefully, that Ofsted should be part of the previous problem as it's quite clear that the £200 million per year quango is driving government policy. The Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw keeps saying that Ofsted don't have a particular type of lesson that they want to see, which is great, it would just be nice if he would tell his inspectors, who quite clearly do have a formulaic view of what a good or outstanding lesson should look like. Wilshaw seems to increasingly be forcing his head into a place that the sun doesn't shine, be that the clouds or anywhere else.

Ofsted added "rigour" to its new assessment framework, which basically means that what used to be fine is no longer so. Schools are therefore panicking and are passing that panic onto their staff. Neither really know what they are supposed to do meaning that leadership at some institutions are essentially bullying staff who they either want rid of or who in their opinion of Ofsted's view, aren't cutting the mustard. Stress is becoming a major issue in schools and supply budgets are being decimated around the country as a result.

The problem for education is that all this hammering from both politicians and Ofsted is giving carte blanche to parents who can now fully justify blaming schools and teachers for their poor parenting, with the cartoon below neatly summing it up:

Now I'm not saying that 1969 was better than today, in fact I think that teaching has got better since that time, the problem is that we now live in a blame society where it's never your own fault for poor performance, it has to be someone else's.

I suppose that this post could be accused of blaming other people (DfE and Ofsted) for the woes of the teaching world, but unless something is done soon, there will be no teachers left to teach your children. The DfE being put on a "war footing" by Gove and his pal David Laws does anything other than help, although imminent strikes over changes in pay and conditions were clearly envisaged.

New Year, New Career?

As 2012 disappears and 2013 arrives it's a time for resolutions. And what will mine be this year?

This is my list of possibles:

1. Give up smoking.
2. Cut down on drinking.
3. Go on a diet.
4. Find a new job outside of teaching.

I'm sure that there are more, but these four immediately spring to mind.The one that should be easiest is number 3 as I have been building up to it since September, cutting various things out of my daily intake. The others are all linked though which makes them somewhat tougher but at the same time easier if one can be nailed down initially.

Why are numbers 1, 2 and 4 linked so closely? I actually gave up smoking in the middle of the summer and lasted until around October but found myself getting so annoyed with the apathy of students and demoralising edicts from government (Gove/Wilshaw, that means you two) that I started again. I realise that I was weak willed, but unfortunately I reverted back to smoking when I was at the end of my tether. A similar thing happened with the drinking, although I never gave up completely. I cut right down to less than half of what I been consuming on an average term time evening, but that has also slipped back into the old regime.

I have therefore come to the conclusion that teaching is bad for me and that I need a change. A colleague of mine said to me, knowing that I wasn't the happiest, that there was a job being advertised in the local sixth form college, to which I replied: "Why would I want to apply for that? Teaching's shit". And that is genuinely how I feel, but I didn't wlays feel like this, so why now?

There are a number of reasons, and they are below in no particular order, but in some cases are linked:

1. Teaching has become an exam factory, where league tables and results mean more than actually giving young people a proper education, the problem being that when young people leave school and go into the workplace they are not prepared and that means that business leaders say to the press that education in this country is rubbish and that's teachers' fault. It's not teachers' fault, it's the fact that exams results have become more important than imparting knowledge. With education the most popular political football, teachers get caught up in a slanging match between the political parties, where unqualified politicians with no experience of the things they are talking about and making policy on, come up with bright ideas about the system in an attempt to make their mark and move up the political ladder. Health has suffered similarly, it's just education's turn.
2. In order to justify the constant changes of policy to make his mark and ultimately become leader of the Conservative Party (he thinks, hopefully mistakenly, that he will be Prime Minister one day), Michael Gove has turned teaching upside down. Now don't get me wrong, not everything was rosy in the education garden before, with exam passes having become easier and easier under successive governments of different colours, but the way Gove has justified change (by rigging exam results for example) is beyond comprehension. The way he has forced schools into becoming academies by cutting their funding until they agree to convert is also scandalous and had it been done in a playground would be described as bullying. New policy is consistently controversial and never comes directly from the Department of Education but is leaked the the press on days when there are major news stories that will bury it.
3. As a result of the constant abuse from politicians and the negative news stories emanating from the DfE regarding teachers, the general public now feel empowered to criticise teachers. A colleague of mine told me that every weekend people phone him to literally abuse him about the school, teachers and anything else they want to get off their chest. This is simply not on and purely due to the constant statements from suits in Whitehall saying that teachers are rubbish.
4. And so we come on to Ofsted. Goalposts have been moved for right or wrong reasons, I sugest the latter. Wilshaw (I can't bring myself to give him his full title) was handpicked by Gove, and therefore one could suggest his puppet. All Ofsted's goalpost moving has played, unsurprisingly, into the hands of Gove who uses the findings of the inspectorate to impose his policies - the irony is not lost on me!
5. Ofsted bases their entire judgement of a school before they arrive at it, looking at exam results (notice we've gone back to these) which you may think is fair enough, but the judgement comes purely from targets that are generated by a computer program based upon where you live and what each child got in an exam 5 years previously. This target takes into account whether they are entitled to free school meals, but not their general attitude which changes hugely in that time. We were (un)lucky enough to have a visit from Ofsted recently and since we weren't told the grading, one has to assume that it wasn't very good! But they had made their mind up beforehand, and nothing they saw was going to change this, so why bother with the visit in the first place? What this will mean is increased pressure on staff and some being hounded out of the school, to be replaced by who? Not a good time for anyone.

Education has got its priorities all wrong, is putting undue stress on staff (whether teaching or non-teaching), and couple this with frozen pay (in reality a pay cut relatively speaking), the only thing that's keeping education in the UK afloat is the fact that we are in an economic downturn meaning that people are stuck. As economic recovery materialises you will find that more and more people seek their fortune in other areas. There's already a shortage of decent teachers according to politicians - this is not going to get better by demoralising those who are there and actually might be competent.

The pros of teaching (the holidays and ?) are now hugely outweighed by the cons (everything other than the holidays).

I must go and tidy up my CV...