Turning To The Dark Side

Excellent, that's my sister's Christmas present next year sorted: a red light sabre. All those in the Star Wars films who have turned to the Dark Side own a red light sabre.

My sister, who is also a teacher has turned to The Dark Side by accepting a job that starts in September at a private school on higher wages and what has to be better working conditions than she currently endures. After a few years teaching at an academy she has finally had enough.

She has been called every name under the sun by students, regularly has boys pulling each others trousers down in class, trashing the classroom/equipment, found subjects on her timetable that she has no desire to teach and had requests for assistance to the leadership team ignored, or even worse, told "what you need to do is...". Having got into her car and bursting into tears one Friday, a quick polish of the CV and a first class stamp later she was at interview being offered a job, which she took with no hesitation at all. The academy now has to replace a hard working and good teacher, spending hundreds, if not thousands advertising a wholly undesirable post in an academy that is arguably going to the dogs due to overpaid leadership being reluctant to get their hands dirty in any way, shape or form.

Can you blame her?

The simple answer is "No", and I nearly did the same thing a couple of years ago, but with the increased travel coupled with a similar wage as I was already on, I decided not to take the post I was offered.

What are the benefits of teaching in a private or public school (there is a difference, but both essentially involve parents paying money for their child's education)?

1. The term are shorter, although more intensive for the teaching staff as the days are longer and the running of extra-curricular activities tends to be an expectation. The holidays are longer though, which means that staff can take of advantage of cheaper holiday prices as they can go outside of state school holidays.
2. Discipline is far stricter due to the fact that private schools can just get rid of those students who feel that it's beyond them to be able to behave. If you are too much hassle as a student (behaviourally that is) you can leave - the school can live without your fees, thank you very much. In a state school evidence has to be gathered in the form of statements from all witnesses, staff and students, and even then the governors might just let the child back or the local authority will rule that your school has gone over its quota of exclusions this year, meaning that the student can continue to cause havoc without fear of recrimination. All, that drivel in Channel 4's "Educating Essex" about not excluding permenantly just doesn't teach kids how the world works - if you mess up you face consequences. Not in state education people!
3. Resources don't tend to be as good in private schools as they are in state schools, purely because the school has to buy the stuff itself rather than get it all funded by the local authority. The upside in private school is that because the discipline is good, you can use what you've got effectively, whereas many resources in state schools are just abused by children who don't realise how lucky they are. The state-of-the-art equipment is rarely used to its full potential because the teacher is constanty trying to discipline the class or stop them breaking the stuff.
4. Extra-curricular activities are allowed to flourish at independent schools in general - the facilities are excellent and it is made clear that you are privileged to be allowed to use them. Time is given for students to reach their potential outside of the classroom, which can have a positive effect in the classroom; whereas in state schools, depending on the make-up of the top brass at individual schools, extra-curricula activities often get sidelined due to pressure on achieving results to gain a decent league table position.

Many teachers and people in general may feel a little intimidated by the independent school system, not knowing how they really work. Some have a moral objection to their existance, but you have to remember that not every student in private education is going to be or act like a front bench politician (fortunately), most are just like the children in state schools - decent and hard working if given the opportunity to be so.

I must admit that I did start looking at local independent schools again after a recent incident at school where I was told that I was an "F****** C***" by a child in class. I told the boy to "Stop acting like a prat and sit down" as he was just showing off to his mates. I was told shortly afterwards that I had made the deputy head's job almost impossible with my comment and the child dutifully received a day in internal exclusion and an hour's detention. The child not only swore at me, he then used his mobile phone (which he shouldn't have in school) to phone his father to accuse me of all sorts of things that I hadn't done (my story was backed up by the "statements" of all the other students in the class) and the father abused the deputy head down the phone. The deputy duly folded to parental pressure and relented from excluding the child for a few days. How supported I felt - not!

I will be checking online for any upcoming jobs, as well as finding a red light sabre. I might even get one myself.

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!

Sanctions In School (Or Lack Thereof)

As everyone knows, in order to do something you’re not sure that you want to do, you need incentive. At school as a student that incentive is that you will get to keep all your free time and be able to remain on role at that school.

Let’s be honest, if you had the choice, would you do homework or classwork? I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t, but I’m beyond school age, have a load of qualifications (many of which are of little use, but could be if I changed career) and have little desire to gain any more than I already have.

For children under the age of 16 in the UK, you have no choice: you have to go to school/gain an education. It’s been the law for a while now, so I’m not telling you anything new. There will always be some young people who seem to feel that school is not really relevant to them, but as the law makes them go and they don’t want to get their mum/dad/carer a fine (a fairly common excuse for people who don’t want to be at school but attend) they turn up and just ruin anyone else’s chances of gaining an education.

In previous eras these young people would have been either sent to a special school that would be able to cater for their individual needs or they would have be excluded and given another chance to prove their educational worth at another school, and perhaps eventually a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU).

For those that couldn’t toe the line, there was always the threat of them being ejected from that school althogether. Special schools have been closed on economic grounds, but under the umbrella of the “Inclusion Policy” by successive governments (it doesn’t matter what colour your rosette is, you are as bad as each other I’m afraid). PRUs are scarce and have very few places available.

From the next academic year (September 2011) though, very few schools will be able to afford to permanently exclude students because if they do, they will have to pay for that student’s education at a different establishment, which is extremely expensive, if not prohibitively so. So that removes the final real threat that any state funded school had, and schools will have to provide those students who cannot behave like a civilised human being with an alternative arrangement within that establishment, where they’ll still be able to see their mates and disrupt other student’s learning.

Do politicians lose all common sense upon election to parliament?

As an ordinary teacher, I can essentially do nothing. I can set a detention during school time, but they have to be allowed to have 5 minutes of a break to go to the toilet/at something/smoke a cigarette or whatever else they can think of that could be construed as an infringement of human rights (rightly or wrongly). If I want to keep someone after school for more than 30 minutes (although most schools work a 15 minute rule) then I have to get permission from the parent/carer normally 24 hours in advance. That’s all fine, but many of the students you’d like to detain won’t turn up, will walk out or have parents who hated school in the first place and won’t “allow” their child to be detained. I am not allowed to shout at them in case they feel “intimidated” (30 students aren’t intimidating at all, are they?) and obviously can’t manhandle them even if I wanted to, so that’s me pretty much out of options.

And so it moves up the food chain. Middle management can get a child internally excluded, in other words, put in a supervised area of the school away from all their mates, but the next day they will be back. And with the greatest respect to internal exclusion areas (the staff are great but have no real work to offer the students, because the students were sent with none in the first place), the students may not be able to socialise but they have little to do other than surf the internet in many cases, which isn’t a huge punishment. The internal exclusion facility is usually already full of nice kids who dyed their hair the wrong colour or wore the wrong type of socks that day anyway, depending upon what the senior management’s latest “crackdown” is.

An incident occasionally ends up at the top table, with assistant or deputy heads (headteachers rarely get involved in this stuff for whatever reason you can think of, but usually because they can’t be bothered or don’t have the bottle) who then had the power to externally exclude (send unruly students home for a period of days). This is the thing that has now been fiscally prohibited by those wonderful people in Whitehall.

What this new policy is essentially saying is this:

“Do what you like in school kids, because there’s pretty much nothing anyone can do to punish you for it.” And I’m sure they will.

Fortunately most young people can behave, but their school lives are blighted, increasingly so, by total idiots who should be locked in a secure room until they can learn to be civilised. Without the threat of external exclusion there are no real consequences for actions, and therefore the unruly students will never learn to be civilised.

Teaching really is becoming an untenable career.