What are your thoughts about the
current education system?
Goodness. Where
do I begin? Well, it’s important to point out all the opinions I’m about to
express have been shaped by 30 years in teaching, the first decade in secondary
schools and the past 20 years in Further Education. Importantly, it should be
noted that throughout my entire career, I have been a union activist, initially
for NASUWT and then UCU (as well as its predecessor NATFHE), so I’ve gained
considerable insight into the evolving situation regarding education at both
macro and micro levels. Additionally, I’m a parent who has overseen my son
progress from Reception Class to the successful completion of a Master’s
degree. Consequently, I feel I’m taking from an informed perspective.
Basically
I’ve long held the belief that the only part of the education system that is
fit for purpose in this country, despite the unnecessary and unwelcome meddling
by moronic politicians, is the Primary sector. Until the age of 11, regardless
of socio economic factors, our children are given a world class grounding in a
broad and balanced curriculum which, despite the unnecessary preponderance of
tests and league tables, is delivered by some of the finest and most dedicated
professionals anywhere on the planet. Constantly I am in awe as to the quality
of education passed down by these selfless, indefatigable heroes who spend
their working lives trying to give every child a chance in life, though they
are utterly powerless to stem the raging torrent of reality that is around the
corner once secondary schools are in place.
Regardless
of exam results, tables of achievement and whatever mountain of data they
accumulate, secondary schools in England are an utter disgrace. Huge, shiny
jails for the working classes. Many of the new builds are the size of airports,
while almost all are obsessively regimented, quasi militaristic institutions,
focussed almost exclusively on forcing young people to abandon any notions of
intellectual curiosity or personal growth, instead expecting unquestioning
obedience to a series of inflexible, petty and irrational rules that would not
be out of place in Sandhurst or Wormwood Scrubs. Teachers, taking a lead from
the blinkered orthodoxies of senior management, are forced to adopt unsmiling,
military bearing, presumably insisting on silence as most of the curriculum for
years 7 to 11 inclusive seems to consist of teach, test, correct, repeat in an
attempt to instil the ability to pass GCSE at Grade 4 or above in a Pavlovian
fashion, without ever questioning if such an approach is in the best interests
of students or not. Thought, nurture and the opportunity to explore are all
absent from secondary schools, and that is a crying shame. It means that good
teachers, as opposed to social inadequates on a power trip, become marginalised
and isolated; driven to jaded cynicism as a coping mechanism to deal with the
forced conformity instilled from above.
Further
Education used to be one of the great examples of positive social engineering
that this country was blessed to share with the world. Leisure time education,
together with self-improvement via higher qualifications, for continuing or
returning learners, kept the minds of so many ordinary working class people
stimulated. Sadly the laudable Blairite vision of the widening participation
agenda that built upon this heritage was dashed upon the rocks of austerity
after 2010. It no longer exists in any meaningful form. Since then, the chronic
underfunding of colleges has resulted in the sector not being fit for purpose. Buildings
are falling down and the teaching staff are on their knees; worn out by ever
more unrealistic demands of monomaniacal senior managers and their simpering,
camp guard underlings in middling roles.
Having spent
15 wonderful years teaching Access to Education, giving second chances to
people whose lives and social circumstances had denied them a first one, I
despair at the death of such courses. Colleges are on the educational
equivalent of a life support machine, delivering an ever smaller array of BTEC
courses at Levels 1, 2 and 3, where the sole motivation for getting each
learner through is the bounty on each head. Consequently, bullying senior
managers coerce weak and inadequate middle managers into begging overworked and
disenchanted teaching staff to collude in widespread educational fraud. The
number of learners who quit college in November, but still pass their BTEC in
June would be laughable if it were not criminal. If learners don’t leave of
their own volition, there’s no chance they’ll be kicked out. I’ve known of
colleagues who’ve had learners throw tables and chairs at them, but not be
kicked out because “it would reflect badly on our success rates.” It’s
absolutely sickening.
Looking at
Universities, it appears that the £9k a year each learner pays in fees means
that they get superb support and genuinely concerned tutors. Unfortunately, the
£5k it costs to do an MA means the lower fees sees an attendant drop in levels
of concern by admittedly overworked tutors, who can appallingly still behind
the mask of autonomous postgrads taking ownership of their own learning.
As a former teacher, what was the
main reason for leaving the profession?
As I said,
I’d spent 15 years teaching adults, but when that provision was almost entirely
swept away by government austerity, I still needed to work to pay my son
through his degree. After a decade and a half of discussing Shakespeare, T.S.
Eliot, ee cummings, Alice Munro, James Joyce and Cormac McCarthy with some of
the finest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know, let alone teach, I was
redeployed to teach Functional Skills literacy in the Department of Care, Sport
and Leisure. It was like putting a brain
surgeon in charge of a box of sticking plasters. The government’s idiotic
policy of making all learners under 19 continuously resit English and Maths
until they passed GCSE (Grade C in the old system; level 4 in the new one) meant
I had an inexhaustible torrent of serial failures to deal with.
Probably
half of them were a bit miffed at having to do this qualification, but saw the
value in getting a C if they wanted an apprenticeship or a place at university.
About a quarter were so docile they just did what you asked them to do, albeit
slowly and without enthusiasm. The remainder were feral lunatics; almost
entirely Health and Social Care harridans of some stamp. Indulged and feared by
the simpering, mendacious layabouts who were their tutors, these Beverley
Allitts and Myra Hindleys in waiting were utterly unteachable. Often it wasn’t
their fault; catastrophic family backgrounds and an almost obligatory medical
condition involving foetal alcohol syndrome, ADD, ADHD and general, inborn shithousery combined to make them an absolute nightmare. I hated them and I
held their weak, feckless, lying subject tutors in utter contempt. However, my
deepest disgust was focussed on the evil senior managers and their quisling
underlings I’d once called colleagues, who’d engineered their own cushy numbers
at my expense; they were to blame for my talents being wasted. Once it became
clear that voluntary redundancy was on offer, I grasped the opportunity with
both hands. Despite being driven to the gig economy and Universal Credit to try
and make ends meet, not to mention humiliating trips to the food bank, I’ve not
regretted it for one single second since.
In recent years did you find
there was ever more pressure on you inside and outside the classroom?
If pressure
means volume of work then the answer is no. From the moment I started working
in FE, I have spent a minimum of 50 hours a week attempting to keep on top of
things. However, at first there was a sense of gratitude for what you’d done.
If pressure means emotional blackmail, then the answer is a resounding yes.
Initially, the pressure was on getting learners to achieve the results they
needed for university and to demonstrate “distance travelled” in terms of
exceeding expectations. This was particularly irritating between 2003-2005 when
my boss was the single most loathsome individual I’ve ever encountered; to the
extent I blocked her from sending me emails. However, with Access for
Education, the pressure was mainly to retain learners, as well as the annual
drive to enrol sufficient numbers. The endless bellyaching by senior management
about retention was never something OFSTED or partner HE institutions were
bothered about; adult students have more life changing events than teenagers.
People move for jobs, have kids, end relationships, become ill and suffer
bereavements; any of that happens and you’ll put things on hold to get through
your day to day job. Anyone who isn’t a fucking moron, or a College Senior
Manager, understands that.
Attendance issues were solved by
managers filling out registers incorrectly, resulting in retention staying sky
high. Success and pass rates were massaged by the fraudulent use of IV and EV
procedures, photocopying model assignments from the past and bare faced lies.
Slightly harder to manage when you’ve got external exams, but possible if you
get Learner X to take his Level 1 Functional Skills exam 6 times in an academic
year, all on-line, so he learns how to pass it by Pavlovian osmosis. Pressure
was also ramped up with the kind of micromanagement and surveillance that would
not have been out of place in 1960s Leipzig.
In 2017, 81% of teachers said
they had considered leaving the profession; are you surprised by this statistic?
Not at all,
but I often wonder at what stage in their careers those expressing thoughts of
leaving were at. When I first started, I hated the job because I couldn’t do it
well enough. After a couple of years, I loved it, because I’d learned how to do
it properly. You see, back in the 80s, we didn’t do in school training the way
they do now, we spent the first term debating Marxian educational theory, the
second term on teaching practise and the third poncing around Leeds University
gardens, acting out a third wave feminist interpretation of Taming of the Shrew when we weren’t
sinking pints in The Fenton. Hence, you could say I wasn’t really prepared for
the likes of Angela Bell, Shaun Porter and Colin Walker; the thought of who,
thirty years on, still brings me out in a cold sweat.
If it is
older teachers who express a desire to leave, then I’m even less surprised as
I’ve long believed that almost all teachers, in marathon running parlance, hit
the wall in their mid-50s. You simply can’t do it any longer and it’s almost a
cruel and unusual punishment to expect someone to deal with the impossible
workload of an FE teacher. Remember, the top of the FE pay scale is a minimum
of £7k less than the same spot on the school scale, not to mention a working
week that is (nominally) 2.5 hours longer and 10 less days holiday per annum.
Of course, we shouldn’t forget the truism that almost every teacher you’ll ever
meet is a moaning twat.
Science, Maths, MFL and IT are
the subjects which have the most severe shortages of teachers; do you think there
is any specific explanation why these subjects are struggling?
I don’t know
enough about the specifics of secondary school staffing to be able to comment,
but I’d imagine it is because graduates in those disciplines can make
considerably more money in the private sector than in education, without such
minor inconveniences as being told to fuck off several times a day by 11 year
olds. As a Chemistry teacher in my first job told me; “schools would be
wonderful places to work, if it weren’t for kids and managers.”
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