To Set Or Not To Set, That Is The Question

There has been a lot of debate on social media recently, particularly from mathematics teachers, about the pros and cons of setting classes by ability for their subject. I have weighed in a little but thought I'd get my thoughts down in writing, from the point of view of someone who has almost exclusively taught in schools that set, but has some experience of mixed ability.

Self-Esteem Issues With Setting
There's no denying that setting can have a negative (for those in bottom sets) or positive (for those in top sets) impact on self-esteem. This is certainly not desirable and however a school, department or whatever dress up sets, the students invariably work out where they stand in the ability "league table", which is ultimately what setting is doing, and this can affect their self-esteem. However, in a mixed ability class there will be some who understand the work very quickly and some who don't; surely this also has an affect on self-esteem too. To be the one or ones who always need extra help whilst seeing classmates race ahead must be equally as demoralising as being in the bottom set.

Perceptions of Setting
"Being in the bottom set means that you only cover certain stuff and can only achieve certain exam grades." Whilst this doesn't have to be true, it is the common belief of many students, parents and teachers. This, in my view, is the most damning thing about setting, but it is entirely down to perceptions, not the setting itself. The key to successful (if you can call it that) is that the sets are fluid and can change every half term on the basis of an assessment. This should ensure that the set are all starting at approximately the same point and can progress accordingly, allowing the teacher to target the learning and progression more accurately. Parents often like setting, especially when their child is in the top set, although possibly not so much when their child is in the bottom set. What people (students and parents) don't like about sets is that they can often be stuck for a relatively long time in an inappropriate set; this is why regular assessment and fluidity between sets is crucial. The other thing that is key is that there should be no ceiling on the learning and material on offer to any set. The bottom set should be able to access the same material as the top set if they can manage it. This is not to say that one should introduce differential calculus to bottom set Year 7 but don't write it off if their progress merits it! You will often hear the slightly cheesy phrase "glass ceiling" and for want of a better term, this should be the aim for everyone. Scaffolding "trickier" topics is the job of the teacher to enable all to reach a similar point by the end.

Perceptions of Mixed Ability
Those who believe in mixed ability are, in my experience, pretty vociferous about it. My experience of it was reasonably painful in the early part of my teaching career. At that stage of my career I did exactly what I was told as I knew no better or were yet to form an opinion, but I had to essentially produce three lesson for one to challenge all students in the class. With experience I wouldn't do it this way again but the issue remains similar if not the same: some students will fly with the work whilst some will not go quite so quickly. Keeping everyone challenged is the main issue. Parents also don't understand mixed ability so well, wondering why their "genius" is in a class with "non-geniuses". This can be explained and ultimately the parents should accept the school/teachers' judgement but increasingly parents are becoming bolder and are being encouraged to question that judgement by media/politicians. The positive is that everyone is exposed to every part of the curriculum, without fail, which is great as long as everyone understands it and doesn't feel left behind.

So Which Is Better?
Neither is the short answer to that question. Every system of placing children into classes will have a positive effect on some and a negative effect on others. There are classroom resources that cater for all systems but none are perfect. The key is that in whichever system is employed there shouldn't be a limit on progress imposed; the teacher's job is to ensure that all students reach their potential (before anyone says anything, no-one can reach beyond their potential).

Rewards - something for nothing?

This news story was floating about on social media today, a story about a middle school that held a "mufti day" only for those who had reached their accelerated reading targets. Click here to see the full story from the Telegraph.

This got me thinking about the expectations of students about to sit their GCSEs and A Levels. The Easter holidays have just begun but many secondary teachers will spend some time in school delivering revision sessions, or in the case of many of their charges, "desperation" classes for those who didn't listen in class first/second/third time around and can't be bothered or don't have the discipline to revise independently.

I had a conversation with a colleague the other day who described this telephone conversation with a parent about their underachieving child in an option subject (names have obviously been changed):
Teacher: I was just ringing to say that Alice is currently on about a C grade but is very capable of getting an A grade if she puts in a bit of effort and knuckles down for the remaining 5 weeks or so at school.
Ms Smith: "Knuckling down" isn't really Alice's I'm afraidt.
Teacher: It really wouldn't be that arduous, in fact I can tell her specifically what she needs to improve upon.
Ms Smith: I really can't see her doing it, but it's great that she's capable of getting the A grade. Is there any way she could get the A grade without putting in the work?
Teacher: Not really I'm afraid, but I was thinking that if you had a quick word that might give her some encouragement.
Ms Smith: It won't work so I probably won't, but I look forward to her A grade in August.
Teacher: *Sigh*

I'm not embellishing this conversation; it actually happened. It's not untypical in the school I work in either. Something for nothing is almost expected. The entire culture of holiday and after-school revision sessions is a toxic one that encourages this "something for nothing" attitude; one no longer has to bother to listen in lessons as you will get numerous other opportunities to be taught what you've missed. After all, teachers have to do all they can to get their classes through 4 levels of progress or whatever ministers and their quangos decide is acceptable nowadays. Ofsted's and the DfE's obsession with data/exam results is the root cause.

And who can blame the students exclusively? At home students receive rewards for nothing. An obvious example immediately springs to mind: a student who has had to leave one school due to his behaviour and is lucky to still be at his current one received but a brand new vehicle for his birthday, despite being woefully below target in every subject on his timetable. So what chance have we, as a school, got? None is the short answer.

Deadlines are not deadlines and students know that if they wait long enough a teacher will essentially be forced to write coursework for them, having been pressurised by a nervous SLT who fear a visitation if the following summer's results are below par. No wonder employers think that schools don't produce young people ready for the workplace (as this story from January 2014 highlights). I'd have to agree that they don't, but aren't allowed to, despite what ministers say.

So when a headteacher tries to highlight the fact that if you work hard you get rewarded, like the workplace, loads of people moan and pick out that those who miss out, for whatever reason, have their self-esteem damaged. You can't win.

How will those children, future members of the workforce no less, how will their self-esteem be when they can't get a job that feeds their excessive lifestyle that they see in the media because they didn't work hard? Where do you draw the line? They have to learn the lesson at some point.

The Chinese Are Coming To Save Us! Or Are They?

In a desperate bid to make British children better at maths the DfE, via Liz Truss, have decided to jet in 60 Chinese mathematics teachers to run maths classes in 30 "maths hubs", whatever they are. The story from the BBC website is here: click me!

I can see numerous business leaders and politicians breathing a huge sigh of relief that we will finally have a numerate generation ready for employment and a set of Pisa results that can be boasted about around the world. On second thoughts, business leaders aren't that stupid and surely can't believe that these 60 visitors from the East will make any difference whatsoever; politicians, however, are stupid enough to believe that this will work despite being told otherwise by various people (read the comments on the BBC article).

So why won't it work? Why the negativity?

I shall answer the second question first, as it's quick and simple:
This is just the latest in a long running campaign to denigrate the current teaching profession in the UK. For a while now ministers from the DfE have stated in various speeches to anyone who will listen that we need top graduates in teaching, and mathematics is one of those subjects where there are relatively few top graduates working as teachers. This because mathematics top graduates are like rocking horse poo (rare, if you're unsure) and get snapped up on big wages, that schools can't really afford to compete with, by industry. And anyway, would a top graduate really be the best person to get algebra across to a stroppy bunch of teenagers? Probably not, as the aforesaid top graduate won't be able to understand why these teenagers struggle to see the point of "letters in maffs". All the government are currently doing is ensuring that no-one will really want to become a maths teacher and the crisis will build in schools from what is already a critical state.

So now we move onto why flying in 60 maths teachers from Shanghai is frivolous at best:
What ministers fail to realise is that the results from certain provinces in China aren't truly representative; statistics are doctored to show them in their best light, something that politicians, particularly those from the DfE are well practiced in. What ministers, and clearly Ms Truss also fail to acknowledge, is that the learning culture of Chinese students is completely different to that of UK students. I'm not saying that UK students shouldn't be like their Chinese contemporaries, but the fact is that they aren't and are highly unlikely to change due to a guest speaker from Shanghai. The consequences of not doing well in maths in China is poverty and starvation; the consequences in Britain is the entitlement to endless benefits which allow you to have much of what you desire without any personal outlay. The incentive to succeed in maths is just not there in the UK. So no matter what these Chinese teachers, very good they may well be, if the horse doesn't want to drink, forcing its head under water will be pointless and will likely end up in a four-lettered tirade towards the guest. Until attitudes towards mathematics change in the UK, the DfE may as well save on the air fares.

This is yet another example of pigheadedness from a DfE minister designed to fool the public into believing that they actually care about anyone but themselves in the run up to a general election. Fortunately, I think that the general public have been under-estimated by ministers and they can see through their smoke and mirrors; at least I hope they can.

The Problem With Top Graduates...

The government has been on about attracting more top graduates into teaching for a while now. They've offered bursaries (see here), expanded the remit of the teaching recruitment charity Teach First to allow it to recruit greater numbers (see here), and made various announcements that have been lapped up by the media of varying quality (Telegraph, Independent, Mirror, Daily Mail to link just a few). A simple search online will unearth hundreds more articles I have no doubt, if you can be bothered that is.

The requirement to actually have a qualification to teach in the state schools of England has been relaxed in the most favoured types of school for the Department for Education, namely academies and free schools. The qualification requirement has never been compulsory in private/public schools, the type of school that a high proportion of MPs attended, or in the case of my local MP, wish they'd attended. Now you may say that if it's worked in private and public schools, what's the problem? They get great results that state schools could get after all. It's a question of intake, student motivation and support from home that is a major difference my friends. Anyway, that's a separate point; what I wanted to cover is the myth regarding top graduates.

There are a few subjects that have been highlighted by DfE ministers and other MPs on programmes like Question Time that really ought to have top graduates teaching the youth of today; namely mathematics and science. You could throw "new subject" computer science into that mix too, as you are either very good at it and therefore probably did it at university; there is no middle ground with computer science: either you're brilliant or you're crap. I'm the latter.

At A Level and Degree I couldn't agree more that maths and science could do with being taught by top graduates, although they need not be the be all and end all. Teaching of those courses is to children who have chosen to take those subjects and already have an deep-seated interest in the subject. They not only want to know how to do something, they want to know why it works that way; something that a top graduate can explain with ease, whilst others would possibly have to do a little research. So, dear DfE and those in expensive suits in Westminster, feel free to attract top graduates for those posts, but don't disregard others. You will have to dangle numerous carrots in front of these high flyers to divert their attention from the lucrative careers that top mathematicians and scientists have traditionally entered. It might help if DfE press releases and various Ofsted employees didn't consistently criticise teachers in the media too. I digress again...

My main query is whether a top graduate really is the best type of person to teach maths and science to disinterested children who have no choice but to be there and just want to get the minimum grade in order to never have to sit through a lesson again? Unfortunately with a total lack of interest in the subject, the likelihood of achieving that grade is minimal. These students need to be taught in a different way. Empathy with the inability to understand a concept first time around is hugely helpful. A top graduate in their subject will invariably have found most, if not all of their subject pretty straightforward. The trouble is this means that our much lauded top graduates will get increasingly frustrated as their charges fail to grasp covalent bonds or simultaneous equations. A teacher who was not a top graduate probably won't have found everything easy, and can therefore understand the frustrations.

If you couple this lack of empathy for a  student's woes with a lack of any teacher training or qualification then the recipe is potentially disastrous. If there's one thing that my PGCE did teach me it was different strategies for dealing with classes, mainly through teaching placements admittedly, but without it I would have floundered even more than I actually did in my NQT year.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that top graduates couldn't empathise, they are just less likely to understand. So Mr Gove, DfE, Sir Michael and the various other political types who drone on and on about top graduates, they may not actually be the answer to all your problems!

Is The End Nigh For Graded Lesson Observations?

When I was training to be a teacher all those moons ago, lesson observations were generally a pretty positive experience. They were essentially pass or fail, and would have to be pretty awful to fail. They would focus on the following:

• What went well (where have I heard that before?);
• Even better if (Groundhog Day?) I did a couple of things - how I could have improved the lesson;
• My target is (Deja vu?) to try some new stuff to improve my teaching.

I actually quite liked lesson observations, although I wouldn't say that my day was made by one, but I saw them as a positive way of improving my practise.

Nowadays, in the era of "performance related pay" and express capability procedures brought in during Michael Gove's watch as Secretary of State for Education, although I suspect others would have brought it in as a desperate attempt to tighten education's belt, lesson observations can make or break a teaching career or a school, depending on who the observer(s) is. They have moved away from their supportive nature and become a threatening entity in education.

For those (presumably few, if any) of you who don't know, lessons are graded by management or Ofsted inspectors on a scale from 1 to 4:

1. Outstanding.
2. Good
3. Requires Improvement
4. Inadequate

In order to avoid "action plans" or "capability" procedures, a teacher must be consistently a 1 or 2, although the odd 3 is acceptable as everyone has a bad day, but expect to be seen again pretty quickly and make sure you get a 1 or 2 or else! You'd think that's fair enough, and so would pretty much every teacher as we all, as educators, want to produce lessons that encourage and enhance learning. And actually you knew where you were when Ofsted had a particular style of lesson/teaching that they wanted to see, because ultimately the observation was a box ticking exercise.

Now I'm not saying that I agree with Ofsted wanting to see a particular type of teaching, in fact I actively oppose it, but if a teacher's livelihood depends upon lesson observation gradings, then I don't see that you there is any fairer way. The problem is that now Ofsted have actively said that they don't want to see a particular style of teaching as long as learning is "rapid and sustained".

This therefore leaves observers in a bit of a dilemma when grading lesson observations, because it now becomes a personal opinion, which is anything but fair. One would hope that observers could set aside personal opinions regarding the teacher and just grade the lesson, but in my experience, this is seemingly impossible. Comments such as "I would have done it this way" and "I didn't like that" in the feedback are fairly commonplace, and surely it's irrelevant what the observer thinks; what the children in the class think is the important thing. Gradings that are linked to pay or, at worst, capability, become a personal opinion; expect numerous lawsuits for wrongful dismissal

So, as a result, some schools are abandoning lesson observation gradings to make teachers more comfortable and allow them to try to improve their practise without fear of reprisals if it doesn't go to plan straight away. It's brave but actually sensible. My school won't do it (for many reasons, most based upon the personality of the person at the top of the tree), and the fact that we now have numerous leaving speeches every term seems to be the modern trend (I personally find this cut-throat attitude towards staff/people unpleasant). The fact that children don't respond well to constantly changing staff seems to be ignored now, and please don't think that if a teacher is not up to the job then they should not be moved out, but many teachers who are "forced" (I did use the correct word there) out are actually pretty good in the classroom, but not liked by the person/people making the decisions. And what is rarely taken into account is whether the teacher being forced out can be replaced with somebody as good or better - often this isn't the case.

But what this also should mean is that Ofsted inspectors will no longer need to observe lessons, making an Ofsted inspection less stressful for classroom teachers, and ensuring taht leadership in schools actually earn their hefty pay packets. A "learning walk" (I hate that name too, but you all know what it means) will be sufficient to judge the atmosphere for learning in a school. Consistently good lessons will deliver consistently good results in exams. Inspectors therefore, will just need to look at the data of the school, aided by some informed words from SLT, to judge the school. This won't happen as I get the impression that inspectors like going into classrooms and making teachers uncomfortable; maybe I'm wrong.

The trouble is that I think that Messrs Gove and Wilshaw like threatening teachers, so the status quo will remain and the DfE budget will soar as thousands of teachers face capability based on the whim of SLT, or possibly because that particular member of SLT finds separating personal and professional feelings difficult.

This is without mentioning the potential exodus from the profession that already has a huge shortage ,in certain subjects, of adequate staff. Politicians and suits in large offices really are working wonders in education...

What does consulation really mean?

Education in recent times is littered with "consultations", over syllabi, conversion to academy status, the requirement of a free school and various other things.

The Oxford Dictionary definition of the word is below:

Definition of consultation in English

consultation

Pronunciation: /kɒnsəlˈteɪʃ(ə)n/

Translate consultation | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish

noun

[mass noun]

• the action or process of formally consulting or discussing:they improved standards in consultation with consumer representatives [count noun]:consultations between all sections of the party
• [count noun] a meeting with an expert, such as a medical doctor, in order to seek advice: a consultation with a homeopathic doctor

Origin:

late Middle English: from Latin consultatio(n-), from the verb consultare (see consult)

Here's a link to the page if you don't believe me: Click Here!

My initial understanding of what "consultation" means is this:
Somebody in management has a new idea that affects everyone so they ask for feedback on the aforesaid idea. People give their feedback, including pointing out stuff that may not work and possibly suggesting improvements. Those in charge then reflect upon these suggestions and amend the new idea where necessary.
The result:
Everyone's feels "ownership" of the idea and it goes relatively well.

In "real life", what does "consultation" actually mean?
Somebody in management has a new idea that affects everyone. They ask for opinions on their new idea because they have to, sometimes by law. People offer suggested improvements. Management totally ignore the suggestions and do what they originally planned.
The result:
The new idea may have some merits, but the suggestions that would have made it a really good idea were ignored, so everyone abandons it as a bad lot all-round, or soldiers on regardless of the consequences, neither of which help anyone.

The problem with consultation from a management point of view however is that people just tend to pick holes in a new idea; the fear of change is a major issue. The trouble is that change is almost always required if you want to move things forward. My gripe with how most "consultation" pans out is that when genuine feedback (ie. that which suggests genuine workable solutions) is almost exclusively ignored. So why bother consulting?

Nothing regarding "consultation" will change though and those affected by the decisions made at management level will feel even more disenfranchised. The argument that if you want your say, then move into management is a tricky one in teaching in that the higher up the food chain you are, the less you teach, which was the original reason for entering the profession in the first place.

Oh well, put up and shut up I suppose.

The Holidays Are Upon Us, And We Know What That Means...

The first term of the year is always the hardest for the following reasons:

1. It's the longest term of the year, usually 15 or 16 weeks altogether (before you non-teachers moan, feel free to train as a teacher and then get back to me).
2. The days are getting shorter, the weather getting worse and therefore children less opportunities to expend energy outside.
3. Christmas always makes the students excitable and therefore drain more energy from teachers as they try (occasionally in vain) to control them.
4. You know that due to the nature of the Christmas break (you rarely relax due to the various commitments at that time of year) that you will go back in early January just as tired as when you broke up.

The trouble is that rather like the sale of turkeys skyrockets at this time of year for obvious reasons, politicians and their ilk, as well as journalists with little to write about, regard this as open season on teachers - don't they get long holidays?

Some of this year's examples are below, from a mixture of broadsheets and tabloids, containing various messages to the general public, but the main one being, in many teachers' opinions, that teachers are the scum of the earth.

• From the Daily Telegraph and suggesting that a significant percentage of teachers are suspended due to illegal activities, which is costing the taxpayer - all their good readers - thousands of pound each year. Here is the article. As a teacher I read two messages from this: 1. Lots of teachers are criminals, whereas actually less than 1% of the teaching profession is suspended, and no comparison with other professions is available; 2. This has made a significant contribution to the economic downturn in the UK, whereas actually the amount being paid to teachers, some of whom are innocent, is tiny in comparison with, for example, MP's expenses. It's a blatantly a selective use of data to illustrate a non-point; Gove would be proud.
• From the Daily Mail, Michael Gove suggests that all schools should remain open for 51 weeks per year and longer every day. The article is here. Now I don't have a massive problem with this since me and my partner spend hundreds every month on childcare costs, and I'm pretty sure that many other teachers do the same. The unions have, as is their regular tactic, moaned a lot about the idiocy of the policy and how teachers are being made to work harder for less money. But as usual the unions, the voice of teachers in the public eye, missed the opportunity to question Gove on how he plans to implement this initiative. Who will staff these extra hours, especially since there aren't enough quality staff around to man every classroom in the country as it is, according to Ofsted? How will these extra weeks and hours be funded or will teachers just have to have their contracts changed and do more for less money? When will teachers get their holiday? Flexi-time will be hard to implement in schools after all. It's the sort of sound-bite that idle journalists and editors crawl all over, and Gove knows that as a former hack himself.
• From The Guardian/Observer there was an exclusive interview with Ofsted Chief Sir Michael Wilshaw who states, amongst other things, that moaning parents are to be applauded for driving up standards. The article is here. So why pick on the parental part of what he said? simply because the parental stuff is the bit that infuriates me the most. Parents often get just one side of the story (often not bothering to listen tot eh other side), namely the myopic view of their child, who in a self-preserving way, will make themselves look angelic and the teacher some kind of ogre. How does this drive up standards? All it does is demoralise a staff who can only feel "got at" by this. A demoralised staff will not perform to their potential in the classroom, which will, in turn, mean that the students aren't getting the best from their teacher. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that will not make us, as a nation, climb the "oh so important" Pisa league tables. I think what Wilshaw is trying to say, but extremely badly, is that all "stakeholders" (whereas my bullsh*t bingo card?) have a part to play in the improvement of schools, and he's right. He has moaned a lot about his comments being mis-interpreted by the press, so why does he continue to talk to them? Idiotic.

There are probably many more stories, but these are the ones that have stuck in my mind. You will notice that a large percentage of the column inches are dedicated to the words of Gove, Wilshaw or whoever has decided to stick their oar in despite having little or no recent classroom experience. Teachers rarely get to offer their point of view, in fact the main respondents being union leaders, who are no longer teachers, if they ever had been. Those who make decisions about classroom practise are rarely affected by them; the teachers who are affected being left with no right of reply. And herein lie the frustrations of the teaching community.

I actually tell a little porky here, teachers do have one opportunity to speak out in The Guardian's "Secret Teacher": the link is here. Now I suspect that the majority of the readership of "Secret Teacher" are teachers, and the rest of the population just see the articles on there as the regular teacher moans. Now not all teachers moan (a huge number do I hasten to add) but the press have created that impression and the unions reported at whinging at every given opportunity. If those in charge actually read the "Secret Teacher", they should be very worried about some of the practises in schools and the ramifications upon the mental state of the country's educators; I am assuming that the "leaders" haven't buried their heads in the sand over this.

Ultimately the press in this country are, in many teachers' views, in the pockets of the politicians. There's little evidence to argue otherwise and Gove, Wilshaw et al are making hay whilst the sun shines. I suppose that you can't blame them for milking the press for all they're worth, if only the unions were as clever. You can blame the journalistic community for laziness however, which is frankly, unforgivable.

Has Michael Wilshaw Lost It?

I read with interest the Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw's speech to the Westminster Education Forum on 7th November this year.

You can read it for yourself HERE.

Now I don't know about you but I've not been Sir Michael's biggest fan. The reasons for this are listed below:

• From the evidence I've seen and experienced via Ofsted, I think his methods of leadership are tantamount to bullying.
• His Ofsted regime has led to a climate of fear in education in England that could be disastrous for young people for many years to come.
• He is phenomenally arrogant (although people who know me may see that as the pot calling the kettle black!).

His "raising of the bar" regarding education has been unreasonable in the sense that schools and teachers have absolutely no idea of what is now required of them. What was once graded "outstanding" is now far from being that and schools don't know why. I have no problem with bars being raised but when you've no idea what you've been doing "wrong" for years, it's difficult to put it right.

However, recently he's been saying things that I've found it difficult to argue against, namely that Ofsted should not be looking for one particular style of lesson (specifically those with group work integrated) but the lesson must exhibit good or outstanding learning no matter how it's delivered. I don't think that any educator would argue with this point of view - learning is the ultimate goal after all. The problem is that his inspectors don't appear to have got the message, as @oldandrewuk talks about in his blog "Scenes From The Battleground" repeatedly.

He seems to be trying to quash the rumour that his quango is the DfE's lapdog, by sending letters to a whole load of academies that they need to up their game and judging free schools as "inadequate", something that can only embarrass the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, which is no bad thing. Wilshaw still has work to do in this area, as his pro-academy leanings are well documented.

The speech on Thursday undid all the positives and gains he'd made though. As I read it my blood pressure rose. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but from classroom teacher's point of view I got the following messages from it:

1. Great teachers don't exist without great leaders.
2. Headteachers should consult with staff, but then do their own thing anyway.
3. Teachers should put up and shut up.

I'd like to deal with each point in turn:

1. Surely educational "greatness" it's a symbiotic relationship between classroom practitioner and leadership; you can't have one without the other. To dismiss the efforts of classroom teachers and place them firmly at the feet of management is frankly insulting as a classroom practitioner. What Wilshaw is saying is that "inadequate" schools must have 100% "inadequate" teachers, which simply can't be true; the school is only inadequate in the eyes of some inspectors whose judgement is potentially questionable (although not by MPs), but that's another story. But simply, on inspection, I can't believe that an "inadequate" school had 100% "inadequate" teaching.
2. Here's where Wilshaw's true colours shine through. Classroom teachers clearly aren't valued by the Chief Inspector, but he forgets that without them, schools couldn't function, or could only function if those "great leaders" went back into the classroom. He bemoans the fact that too few are being groomed for leadership in education, but when the expectation upon leaders is to be a tyrant, you can understand why few are champing at the bit to do the job. And as an aside, those who do want to do the job are probably the last people you'd want with that sort of power and attitude.
3. How to motivate an already demotivated workforce; or perhaps not. Teaching has been advertised as a short-term career for would-be city highflyers for a number of years now. Workload has become almost unmanageable for teachers and of those entering the profession from the various pathways available, only around 40% survive beyond 5 years, with some subjects facing a major shortage of staff. How helpful is Wilshaw's rhetoric? Not at all is the answer.

And I haven't even mentioned this part of the speech:

"There is absolutely nothing wrong in my view in saying to youngsters ‘do as I ask, because I am the adult, I am older than you, I know more than you and, by the way, I am in authority over you.’"

Would you want your child taught by a man who thinks this? Nor would I. Respect for authority is a good thing, but respect should be earned.

I was starting to warm Ofsted's great leader, but forget that now. Teachers will always dislike the Chief Inspector of Schools, but when I see parents slating him on social media, surely the man's position is now untenable. Fingers crossed...

Performance Related Pay - Smoke and Mirrors

We got an email recently telling us that we had to complete our Performance Management so that they can be approved by the wise and worldly at the top of the food chain. It's the usual fayre:

1. Grade related - 100% have to meet their given target.
2. Department related - how can to assist the department's move forward?
3. Professional development related - something you need to work one.
4. To do with TLR payment, if you receive one.

Now I have no problem with any of these types of target in essence - every teacher has to do them and in my experience, they are the same school in, school out. The only difference this year is that a teacher's success in achieving those targets will form the basis of the judgement upon whether they should receive a pay rise or not.

So as a result, I have a problem with one of them - the most important one as far as Ofsted, league tables and ultimately job security are concerned: target 1. The targets at our school were described by Ofsted as being extremely challenging, but teachers are expected to drag, in some cases kicking and screaming, all their charges up to those grades.

Just to explain how targets are generated, for those who don't know: in short, by various computer programmes that analyse the children's previous exam results, what they eat, and various other stuff and come up with a number of targets along the lines of:

• Target 1 - the child would get this in their sleep.
• Target 2 - what the child would get if they progress at the "normal" rate.
• Target 3 - what a child would get if absolutely everything went right, luck was on their side and the examiner inexplicably awarded you an extra 20%. Ok so not the last bit, but in order for the child to achieve this target, something special needs to happen and the child makes well above average progress.

Guess which one we use...

As a motivator, the message "your targets are almost impossible, but you still have to achieve them" is not a great one. Perhaps that's why schools are haemorrhaging staff - just a thought.

So after a rant about targets being "achievable", 100% being unreasonable when Ofsted didn't expect the wholeschool to get 100% and that some of my class don't even turn up to school, I was told exactly how I should word my targets in order to achieve without achieving them. As long as I tick a set of, frankly meaningless, boxes, it makes absolutely no difference what grades my classes get, in theory of course, because if my class' results were that bad I would fail, but as long as I get close-ish, I'll be fine.

My next thought was that this makes the entire process pointless, which hasn't changed, and I doubt ever will. The entire process is about your ability to word your targets and manipulate data in such a way that you can con your way to a tick in each box.

Of course, if you manage to word your targets correctly, you then lay yourself at the mercy of the whim of your headteacher and whether there's enough money in the pot for the school to afford your pay rise.

The brave new education world - it's rubbish.

Consequences For Actions

FACT: If I told my boss to "F*** Off" I'd get the sack.
FACT: If I repeatedly told colleagues to "F*** Off" in anger, I'd get the sack.
FACT: If I prevented colleagues from doing their job, I'd get the sack.

The constant moan from employers is that schools aren't preparing the youth of Britain for the world of work, so why don't the same consequences listed above apply to school children?

The summer is a period when many schools send students on work experience. Many students, if they had been bothered to find a placement that they might be interested in, find work experience extremely rewarding, but the number who act like they do at school (ie. refusing to follow instructions) seems to be on the increase and turn up at school having had a strop and stomped off from their placement.

Why is this?

In my view it's purely down to a lack of consequences for actions in schools for students.

Now I'm not advocating that schools should kick out every child who misbehaves, and I also realise that school children are liable to make more "mistakes" than adults, but part of the problem is that when a student seriously crosses the behavioural line, a day spent out of circulation and then a return to a regular school day is perhaps not enough of a deterrent.

Behaviour of children is a major gripe amongst teachers (although politicians are up there too). Every school, no matter what the headteacher says, has challenging students who you would think would be in line for possible exclusion. As a colleague of mine was saying the other day, there are a few things you need to weigh up when prioritising who should possibly face this (extreme) sanction:

• Do they regularly misbehave?
• Is there evidence for this behaviour? (Evidence is crucial now due to the appeals process.)
• Has the school put a plan in place to help this child modify their behaviour?
• Is this plan making a difference to their behaviour?
• Does the child regularly prevent other children from learning (a consequence of preventing the teacher from teaching in many cases)?

I don't want to see loads of children excluded from school - they have to go somewhere after all, but does repeated poor behaviour mean that they relinquish their right to choose where they are educated? The problem is that if there are no obvious consequences for poor behaviour, the problem will only get worse as those students push the boundaries further and more students jump on the poor behaviour bandwagon.

At my school we have a few students whose names regularly crop up in behavioural discussions, but none appear to be on the brink leaving for good despite the fact that their behaviour is getting worse. One child who I have had the "pleasure" of teaching recently appeared on the board yesterday, presumably for swearing at the teacher, constant disruption of lessons, refusal to follow instructions, storming out of class and then telling a senior member of staff to "F*** Off". I don't actually know why they've been excluded, but that is what has happened on numerous occasions in the past, and still that child will come back in a few days as if nothing has happened, despite having been told repeatedly that they are in "last chance saloon". 

Government introduced red tape, including the right to appeal, doesn't help as schools lose money every time they exclude a child permanently, but they would lose a lot more if they kept a child who affected the results of many due to their behaviour. If politicians genuinely want standards lifted (a debatable issue) then they may want to think about allowing schools to excluded children who keep those standards low through their choices regarding how they behave. Teachers often complain that most of their time is spent on the minority of students who misbehave rather than imparting knowledge that may actually raise standards. This clearly isn't right - teachers shouldn't essentially be stewards, predominantly keeping control in their classrooms, they should be teaching, the job they were trained to do (in most cases). How are standards going to improve if teachers aren't allowed to teach?

And then we get to parental support...

It is often no coincidence that many of the students who fall into the category above have parents who either don't set consequences for their children's actions, or will defend their children until they are "blue in the face". But that's a subject for another blog.

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.







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.

Ofsted Don't Want A Show

Sir Michael is out of his hibernation period and greets schools with this: Click here!

This interview only goes to show how out of touch the Chief Inspector of Schools is. I have a number of issues with this:

1. Not for one minute does he consider why teachers "put on a show" for Ofsted inspectors.
2. He claims that Ofsted don't have a preconceived idea of the ingredients that make a good lesson.
3. Schools should just carry on as normal when Ofsted are in.

Ofsted holds all the cards in education at present - they have outgrown their remit. Their judgements go unquestioned and unchallenged in the main. When someone does dare challenge an Ofsted judgement they are accused of not being forward thinking, happy with mediocrity and various other politically barbed comments from various parts of Whitehall.

Ofsted has the power to make or break careers in education with one of their judgements. Many teachers firmly believe that inspectors judge a school before they have actually arrived based upon exam results, value-added etc. As any half-competent mathematician will tell you, data can be made to show what you want it to show without too much effort. Lesson observations and conversations with management are also subjective. Observations can go a number of ways that are generally out of the control of the teacher. A really bad lesson is obvious to both inspector and teacher, but otherwise it's harder to call unless you literally tick off bulletpoints in a list of things inspectors want to see. So Wilshaw's claim that there isn't a particular type of teaching expected has to be at least partly rubbish, or the message hasn't filtered down to the Ofsted minions.

Wilshaw claims to want to see children engaged in their learning, but his inspectors seem to regard this as meaning "the teacher says as little as possible" and the students "discover" what they would have been "taught" is bygone eras. There are some things that are very difficult to "discover" and need to be "taught", although this is frowned upon by Ofsted as the learning is deemed "passive", whereas Ofsted want to see "active learning". If you are playing Education Buzz Word Bingo you may be close to shouting "HOUSE" at this stage.

A teacher should be allowed to decide whether their charges can "discover" something new or need to be "taught" it. Teachers are (still) professionals, for the time being at least. The trouble is that this decision is taken out of their hands. Thousands, if not millions of pounds are spent by schools every year on speakers who tell staff that Ofsted want to see teachers leading less from the front, "playing the Ofsted game". This money could be used to resource faculties fully rather than giving tips on Ofsted hoop-jumping. The fact is that these (presumably rich) people are employed by many schools each year, and must know what they are talking about in order to keep getting invited. So Wilshaw claiming that there is no game is frankly wrong and the fact that there is a market for Ofsted inspectors to charge £600 per day to "help" schools get through an inspection only proves this (see this article from The Independent: Click here!).

The main thing is that teachers are rarely sure of what Ofsted actually wants and their "show" for the inspectors is just like a pet trying to impress its owner, which many appear to get panned for. With Ofsted regularly changing the goalposts since Sir Michael's ascension to the "throne", teachers have no idea what to do.

Eventually teachers will just give up in a number of ways. They could leave the profession as many are doing, to be replaced by fresh faced top graduates through scheme like Teach First, but these schemes are a mixed blessing for the future of education as many of these graduates leave teaching after just a few years. How teachers should give up is by not caring what Ofsted say, and they can do this in a number of ways:

• Don't get lesson feedback - by getting feedback you are showing the inspectors that you actually value what they think, and let's face it, no teachers really do. So don't bother.
• Only be civil to them, never go out of your way to smile at them, even if they smile at you. Let them know that they are unwelcome because they are. Some inspectors delude themselves into thinking that they are doing schools and teachers a favour (I have had an interesting conversation with the partner of an inspector who was brave enough to call themselves "Anonymous"). They are not, they are an expensive political animal that no-one wants or likes except other inspectors, their partners or narcisistic politicians.
• Get them involved in a lesson by asking them questions. Embarrass them; put them on the spot; after all that is what they are doing to you and your colleagues so why shouldn't they taste their own medicine? If they make a stupid comment, make it very clear that you think it's a stupid comment; I once replied to an inspector who observed a challenging class and said "They seem like a nice bunch" with the following: "How would you know? You've seen them for half an hour and just looked at books and folders, not talking to a single one of them." He left with his tail between his legs after he asked if I wanted feedback and I replied "There is nothing you could possibly tell me that would be of any benefit to my teaching practise".

Wilshaw can make all the noises he likes from his ivory tower in Whitehall, with his direct line to his mucker Gove. Ofsted is now a political vehicle, used unapologetically to drive through ill-conceived government policy without question. Wilshaw may appear to disagree with Gove on some issues but his inspectors don't appear to.

Ofsted has outgrown it's own remit and really should be abolished for the future of education in England. If this doesn't happen the exodus of staff will continue and there won't be enough teachers left.

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.

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...

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...

A Week In The Life Of A Bog Standard Teacher

Now is the time of year that those who are thinking of doing a PGCE next September are spending a fortnight in a school observing things as part of the preparation for the course. We have a few in our school, and I pity them. I've therefore decided to write a week-long diary so that if they search for "Typical Week For A Teacher" in a well-known, or even not very well-known search engine, this might appear to warn them off. Please remember that I don't teach in an inner city school, I teach is a pretty well-to-do town in a leafy county. I am also not making any of this up!

Sunday:
I've got some planning to do today which should take a couple of hours, plus I want to spend some time with the family (wife, children etc.). They will probably have to wait because I don't want to get caught on the hop with a "drop-in" from senior management, which is bound to happen if I put this planning off.

I did the planning and spent the rest of the day barking at my daughter and wife because I know I have to go back to school tomorrow and try to get "above average" progress out of a load of pupils who genuinely care for little other than gossip, where their next cigarette is coming from, and social networking sites. All my planning since I got my current timetable has been to try and create interest in my subject with kids who have no interest themselves and are supported fully in this attitude by their parents.

Monday:
I have 4 lessons today, two with Year 11 who have mocks starting soon and are currently fairly keen, although having said that during one of the lessons the guy sat in front of me talked all lesson about computer games various other irrelevant stuff despite my attempting to persuade him that perhaps those conversations weren't the most productive. He's a nice lad too, intelligent, nice parents who should do fairly well in the summer but won't get what he should do because he will leave everything to the last minute, which rarely works.

My other two lessons are with bottom sets, one in key stage 3 and one in key stage 4. These will be constant battles to stop them talking, essentially playing musical chairs until we find a seating arrangement that is quietest. In fact the musical chairs in key stage 3 lasted longer than normal and my classroom isn't a hexagon, so all the people I wanted to sit in corners (ie. as far away from the people they wanted to talk to), I couldn't. The key stage 4 lesson was actually worse where they all think that qualifications are irrelevant because they have "work experience", to the tune of pot washing in a cafe, selling weed in the local park etc. You ask them to get on with some work and they look at you as though you've just torn them away from a close relative's funeral. The teaching assistant was equally baffled as to what to attempt, so I said she could go and help some people who actually wanted it.

Meeting after school to discuss all the students in my house who has "cause for concern", The list was lengthy, although I know that we actually get off quite lightly. Nine of the names that cropped up were from my tutor group, and that doesn't include my Year 11s, many of whom are being mentored separately. It all boils down to the same thing: "the kids mess about in lessons (not just mine), and when their teachers ask them to do some work they turn on them". The meeting was not a happy one and consensus seems to be that behaviour is on a very slippery and steep slope at present.

I arrived at about 7.45am this morning and am now leaving at 5.15pm. I still have a bit to do when I get home.

Tuesday:
I woke up at 2.30am and eventually got up at 4.15am having attempted to get back to sleep but my mind distracted by various work issues, mainly centred around a boy in my tutor group who I also teach. He can be unpleasant, but hasn't really been recently. I did get a snotty email from the school's head of special needs the other week regarding him though, and I need to feedback to her on his recent performance in my lessons, which include attempting to talk to seagulls in the playground, annoying/distracting as many people as he possibly can, and shouting at a bloke walking past the school. A far as I can see the only thing that's wrong with him his that he's a sociopath, but I've not doubt that he's been diagnosed with some form of special need as his parents try to excuse their inadequate parenting with medical certificates.

Not many lessons today due to Year 11 mock exams, which is great. I do have reports to write though, and various other things to get my teeth into, so it won't be a tea and chat day, I will be sat at my desk for almost all of it. I may even have a look through some exercise books and write a formative comment along the lines of "Well done Johnny, your method for doing this is excellent, but next time, to push you on to the next level, why not attempt a question like this...". The kids won't read my comments, but Ofsted will think it's wonderful, and that's the main thing I'm told, as we are expecting them soon.

Quite a nice day actually due to the mock exams and even the student who ruin every one of one particular class' lessons wasn't in today, so superb. Spent about 3 hours marking, but it's out of the way now so I don't have to worry about it any more. Tomorrow will be worse, so I made the most of today! I still arrived at 7.45am and left at 4.45pm plus did a couple of hours in th

Wednesday:
I teach every lesson on a Wednesday and it's hard work! II woke up but as most teachers will tell you, being away is more hassle than going in when you rubbish. What many don't realise is that a sick teacher still has to get up and plan all their lessons, which isn't easy when you know that the person covering is unlikely to be a specialist in your subject.

I made it anyway, and got a bonus free due to mock exams. Only got sworn at once and had a massive struggle trying to get a couple of classes to do something was like extracting blood from a stone, mainly due to a couple of snowflakes coning down early on.

I got in as usual at 7.45am and left at 4.45pm but have marking to do when I get home which will take a good hour and a half. I will probably cook dinner for the family and then settle down to it after that.

Thursday:
Four lessons today, but two tests thanks to the fact that we have to track every student and therefore they do an exam paper every half term. This is so that we knbow how each child is progressing, but puts pressure on teachers to fit the entire curriculum in, but on the other hand at least the kids get used to exams and the types of questions that are asked. It does add marking pressure on to teachers, but we can get the class to mark their own for some of it - in a different coloured pen of course, to avoid cheating!

What is the main thrust of this though? You guessed it, Ofsted. As time has gone on it does appear that everything that schools and teachers do is geared to what Ofsted would think rather than what's best for the children. In general Ofsted are trying to do the right thing, with little success, and seem not to have grasped the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day and a teacher has to have a bit of time for sleeping and eating. Take, for example, out new marking policy, all based on what Ofsted expect to see. We have to mark every book fortnightly, which doesn't sound too bad, but not when each book has to be checked and the3n around half a page covered with some praise, a tip on how to move onto the next level, plus a challenge question for the kids to have a go at. Marking a set of books takes between an hour and 90 minutes, and at my school each teacher has around 6 classes. That's 9 hours per fortnight, which is all your free time at school. Add to that the lesson planning as well as other paperwork a teacher has to do, meaning that in order to get by you have to work at least a 9 or 10 hour day during the week, plus a bit at weekends.

Started at 7.45pm and left at 5.15pm, plus did a couple of hours in the evening. I forgot to mention that I had duty (unpaid) before school, during break and after school.

Friday:
Five lessons and lunch duty on the playground. Ok, so I get paid for the duty but I didn't choose to have it on a day when I have no free periods - I was stitiched up a bit by the guy who organises it and isn't a teacher. There you go.

The day went as usual with a mixture of apathy and abuse, and that was just from the staff! In all seriousness it was a pretty miserable day where one student, who has already been told that they should think about applying for another school before he forcibly has to find another school told me to "F Off" and was generally vile. As well as that I got a volley of abuse from one of my tutor group who had a detention, not set by me, but another subject area. I was just the messenger, but had to take it as that's just how it seems to work with students from a certain background who are essentially untouchable discipline-wise.

This time of year as we near the end of the longest term of the school year, the children are tired as are the staff. It's dark and cold and thoroughly miserable. One comes to accept the fact that the students will get a bit tetchy and so will the staff.

Started at 7.45am and left at 5.15pm. I've decided to leave the work I need to do for the weekend. A couple of hours should do it.

Performance Related Pay - A Heads' Bully Charter

The "Heads' Bully Charter" is a comment I read by author Michael Rosen (follow him on Twitter, he's a genius on @MichaelRosenYes" and he's absolutely correct.

All those who work in the private sector will be sitting there wondering what the problem is - they've been doing it for years after all. The difference is that they work on sales, teachers work on attitudes and aptitude/willingness for pubescent teenagers to learn. Gove, in his wisdom, says that this will encourage hardworking young, good teachers to join the profession and encourage poor teachers, whose pay will stagnate, to leave the profession. Once again it's the talk of porr teachers that is amusing, because you will never find anyone argue that poor practioners should not leave the profession (if it 's still considered that) but those "poor" teachers are the best of those who applied. Get rid of all the "poor" teachers and there won't be enough people to teach. Plus, "poor" teaching is generally an opinion of a headteacher.

What you have to remember is that headteachers often don't teach at all nowadays and haven't done so regularly for years. Those wishing to become a headteacher are weird in the sense that they have entered teaching and then opted to do as little as possible, if any at all. I have been the victim of a headteacher who has prejudged my lessons based on the fact that they don't like me or don't understand the banter that occurs in a healthy classroom. The very same headteacher also told a new head of department that they would see an inadequate lesson when they observed me despite having no idea what I was doing. This same headteacher will control my pay soon. How is that fair?

Now I would never describe myself as a brilliant teacher, but I have had enough decent feedback from parents, students and colleagues to know that I'm not rubbish, but Gove's plans will allow a headteacher who isn't keen on me as a person to freeze my pay indefinitely unless I move, which I may be forced to do.

Once again the unions are objecting, but due to the various policies Gove have introduced since he came to office, the unions just seem like moaners. It's been a very clever campaign from Gove as he essentially outlaws unions and isolates teachers more and more.

The bloke has been and will be a disaster for education in this country, mark my words.

Why Teaching Isn't For You

Or at the very least, shouldn't be!

I regularly check the BBC News website for education stories, which currently there are plenty. Every now and then they allow people to comment on the news stories and hundreds of people do so. They mainly fall into two, admittedly broad, categories:

1. Teachers, former teachers or people who are related/in a relationship with a teacher who claim that they are working every hour God sends in a desperate bid to keep on top of things.
2. General members of the public who despise schools and all those who work in them, considering the "profession", if you can call it that, work shy, overpaid, having too many holidays and all union activists.

Now everyone is entitled to their opinion and that's fine, don't get me wrong, but why the BBC continues with these opinions is beyond me as the ground is well trodden to say the least, and invariably ends in each side abusing the other. I would like to comment on both groups however.

Group 1:
I have been a teacher for over a decade and apart from my first year or so where I was attempting to find a routine that worked for me, I have rarely taken work home. I get in early (around 7.30am) and leave late (around 5pm) and aim to get all my work done in that time. It's not always possible, but in general I manage. The teachers who post on the BBC who say that they arrive at 7am, leave at 6pm (or when kicked out by the caretaker who understandably also has a home to go to) and then continue to work until 10pm or later every evening, plus at least one day over the weekend I have always considered to be doing too much or lacking in organisational skills. It has been known for me to use the phrase "It's all about time management". In the last year however, I have been doing much the same thing. It has meant that I rarely talk to my partner in the evenings (I'm sure they won't grumble too much about that!) and I struggle to sleep because I'm thinking about all the stuff I am yet to complete. Now I consider myself pretty organised, but I genuinely can't avoid this and still certain things have to be put on the back burner until I can find the time to complete them. Why is this? Three things: government initiatives, Ofsted and apathy of the young people of the UK. It's not a healthy state to be in, whatever way you look at it and will surely lead to burnout and leaving the profession.

Which brings me onto my next point and that is that if teachers are genuinely working this hard, and I genuinely believe that they are now, then people will leave for jobs that pay similar or less wages, but offer a better quality of life and that begs the question "Who will replace those people?". Government of all colours, but recently blue/yellow, have been saying how we really need to get rid of poor teachers, and they are correct, but who is going to replace them? Attempts to encourage top graduates are the current trend, but as a mentor of trainee teachers, I can categorically say that "there ain't a lot coming through", both in numbers or quality of teacher, which is different from "highly qualified teacher". This is not a healthy situation.

Children nowadays expect everything to be plated up for them nowadays, and I suspect that this is the reason why many teachers are working such long hours. I call it the X Factor generation where success can literally land in your lap with minimal effort being spent. The problem is, and many children don't realise this, that for every success on this route, there are thousands, if not millions of failures, I remember teaching a PSHE lesson where we were discussing possible careers and I had one conversation along these lines (the names have been changed to protect the idiot):
Me: So Tracey, what do you want to do for a job?
Tracey: I want to be famous.
Me: Ok, for doing what?
Tracey: Just being famous.
Me: But you have to do something in the first place in order to be famous.
Tracey: I'll go on Big Brother or something.

I know I sound really old when I say that "there's no substitute for hard work", but the number of ex-pupils who say to me "I wish I'd tried harder at school" is astounding. Pupil apathy is often backed up my parental stubbornness where their attitude is instilled into their offspring: can't do it, won't do it. Maths is a prime example of this. Many parents will say at some point in a parents evening appointment, usually at the start: "I am useless at maths" or "Don't expect me to be able to help" and then wonder why their child has a similar attitude.

It's what's known as a losing battle.

Group 2:
These people clearly had a bad experience at school. Presumably they were bullied by other children or even the odd teacher and are understandably scarred by their experience. They assume that teachers arrive at 8.30am and leave at 3.30pm, do nothing at home and jet off around the world in their 50-odd weeks holiday that they get every year.

The trouble is that these opinions aren't entirely their fault. Politicians over the last 15 years or so, and possibly longer, have taken every opportunity to bash teachers with large sticks. The people of Group 2 are only believing what politicians are telling them, and why wouldn't you? Politicians have been very clever in setting up a situation where they can now cut teachers' wages and pensions with the majority of public support. The only option left to the teaching profession being strike action or work-to-rule which just compounds the view that teachers are lazy, work shy and left wings union people.

It's what's known as a losing battle. Deja-vu!

So all in all, don't bother teaching, it really isn't worth the grief. Those moments when a child's eyes light up and they say "I get it" are now far outweighed by all the negatives, an you can't even go on a decent holidays in the umpteen weeks we get off because travel agents hike up the prices so much that they are unaffordable on the wages that teachers now receive. Brilliant!