IF YOU want to get some idea of how hard it is to be a teacher these days, take a look at the titles of some of the books available in the education department of your local Waterstones.
For a start, there is ‘Getting the buggers to turn up’, which just about says it all. Other volumes include 'I'm a teacher, get me out of here', 'Teacher on the run; true tales of classroom chaos' and even 'Guerilla guide to teaching'.
Guerilla guide to teaching? I mean, I knew things were bad and that Class A drugs have probably overtaken fags in terms of behind-the-bikesheds popularity. But can year eight really be sufficiently forbidding to merit Baader-Meinhof tactics? Is it entirely necessary cruelly to execute little Johnny simply because he didn't hand in his homework?
Personally, I have nothing but admiration for those able to earn a living by teaching in Britain's toughest secondary schools. It is not something I feel I would be able to do myself.
Various people I have known have tried and failed. One mate had a nervous breakdown after his first term in the job. Another former drinking buddy – a strapping Geordie bloke of working class origin, and certainly no wimp - spent a year doing supply teaching in Newham before jacking it in to become a painter and decorator. The money was better and the work was far less hassle, he explained.
On the other hand, I did once date a Cambridge languages grad who claimed some success in drilling Spanish irregular verbs into the consciousness of the youth of Harringey. So obviously it can be done.
Nevertheless, volunteers aren’t queuing up to fill the many vacancies in the establishments Alastair Campbell once frankly branded as ‘bog standard comprehensives’. Things are so bad that the government is now stumping up £10,000 bonuses to teachers who can hold down the job for three years.
The money will be available to around 6,000 teachers in around 500 so-called ‘National Challenge Schools’, where fewer than 30% of the pupils achieve five good GCSEs and more than 30% are on free school meals.
As far as I’m concerned, they more than deserve the extra cash. But as the National Union of Teachers points out, offering individuals a sum of money equivalent to what Linda Evangelista used to charge for getting out of bed in the morning will not ultimately make much difference.
There is a close correlation between educational attainment and the dominant social class of the surrounding community. The best-performing LEAs include Richmond Upon Thames and Surrey, while the worst include Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney. Go figure.
Moreover, the simple act of designating a school a ‘national challenge’ cannot help anybody’s morale; it sends a very public message to heads, staff, parents and pupils alike that their schools suck, despite the best efforts of everybody who works in them. Any lingering hope of attracting cute and clever middle class kiddies simply evaporates.
And not only is 10k over three years not that much of a carrot, but the stick is pretty draconian, too. The penalty for failing to live up to government targets – often entirely arbitrary - is either ‘special measures’ or even closure. How about spending some real money on reducing class sizes instead?
Because when it comes down to it, not even putting inner city teachers on six-figure salaries would abstract from the brutal reality of class-divided Britain.
Posted at 13:54, 13 January 2009
Comments (9)
I'd happily take up a job in a 'bog standard comprehensive' and I know quite a few people who have done so. In the middle of my teacher training, however, I interrupted my course because I simply got too angry with those in charge of it.
We had classes where the lecturers turned up and read through a powerpoint with us, from 9am to 3pm. We had classes where the lecturers had us acting like children, doing children's tasks as though somehow this will make us understand what it is like to be on the other side of the classroom.
And that's nothing compared to the asinine rubbish which we have to write essay pieces about. Stuff that is never used, in class or out of it, in all the time that you are a teacher. However many problems the children cause, ITT courses are just as bad.
Worse still, however, really inappropriate people manage to qualify for these course and thence to qualify as teachers (presumably because the government is desperate). I sat my course at Canterbury Christ Church - which is apparently 20th best ITT provider in the country - and there were real retards, who failed the majority of their on-the-job observations etc, still passing the course.
There was even a rumour that if you failed, the course directors would throw you back in for three weeks towards the end of summer term, wherever they could fit you, with a mentor likely to pass you. I don't know how true this is, but I can believe it - perhaps something to do with the money the universities want to make from the government's new desire to have all teachers armed with MEds.
I'm all for postgrad studies, and I think teachers should be able to operate at an advanced academic level - but the MEd is a cash cow and a waste of time for normal teachers. Universities simply see the fees, which is, I think, £1400 over two years for a few night classes.
Now that's the Times Ed Supp 20th's best ITT provider...what are the rest of them like? And what sort of teachers are they churning out to fill the spaces in these bogstandard comprehensives? A government which throws money at the problem has lost the plot, especially when simultaneously it is "performance managing" so many teachers towards quitting and/or nervous conditions.
I think failing schools are defined as those failing to achieve a 30% GCSE passrate, hardly an arbitrary or even particularly stringent benchmark.
Putting schools which consistently fail to provide minimal educational standards or a bullying-free environment for their pupils under special measures may be unpopular with people like David Osler but what would he suggest as an alternative? That failing institutions are simply kept open and allowed to go on as they are, failing the children in their care, who, remember, won't get a second chance.
Would David Osler send his children to a failing school? I doubt it. So why does he expect others to accept the low standards he himself would reject?
...Britain's toughest secondary schools...
Has Grant Mitchell done a TV show about these yet?
a strapping Geordie bloke of working class origin
A strapping Geordie bloke? Fucking hell, he must be working class, and hard.
Back in the seventies the ILEA paid a "social priority allowance" to teachers in tough areas like Hackney. It was finally abolished about three years ago. Who are these idiots running our education system.
Or is this yet more proof of Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence"?
Public School Punk Rocker. Big leftie ponce!
Sean: Are you stalking Dave?
I agree that loss of morale is a serious issue.
However, to suggest that school failure is purely down to class divides is a very divisive comment. Educational failure can be attributed to all sorts of problems - poor leadership, lack of resources, a pathetic LEA etc.
If Brown had adopted the Conservative plans for school funding, the schools with the most deprived intake would get the most funding. Brown's policy is just a press release that will help no more than a handful of schools across the UK. On this issue, the Conservatives are far more progressive.
I say bring back the 11+, and then promise to spend treble as much on each child that fails than on those who pass...that'll sort it.