At the end of this academic year, after 38 years in the classroom, I will be leaving the profession for retirement. In doing so, I will become one of an increasingly rare breed, and an experience close to home sheds light on why.
In 2015, my son announced his intention to follow in my footsteps and train as an English teacher. I greeted his announcement with a mixture of joy and trepidation.
On the one hand, I was delighted he’d been inspired to enter the world of education: clever and good-humoured, he’s the kind of burly bearded positive male role model you’d like to see in the classroom.
However, maternal pride was dimmed by fear. I’ve seen many teachers consumed by the job; even the most positive school environment has its challenges.
My son had a successful PGCE; he emerged with glowing references and was snapped up. He joined a department with – and this is where alarm bells started ringing – five other NQTs.
The next two and half years were gruelling. In November 2018 he became the fifth and final member of his NQT cohort to leave education for good.
Home – broken – he asked: “How have you stayed in teaching so long?” The answer is simple: the job is not the same.
In 1986, we had no laptops, no spreadsheets, no Ofsted, no league tables and no national curriculum. Targets were for archers; no adult sat and cried over exam results. No one arrived in school on Monday at 6:00am to get the week’s photocopying done, because there was no photocopier. The students’ mental health was a concern for their doctor and their family – not us.
But I don’t write this while yearning for good old days that never existed. In the intervening years schools have changed for the better.
We care about the whole child and aspirations for all students are quite rightly higher. Expectations of professional conduct are clearer; we tackle the bullying, prejudice and abuse that lurked in the shadows of a less regulated profession.
I don’t yearn for good old days that never existed
Meanwhile, kids (well, most of them) turn up to school every day, making it the perfect place to ensure they’re kept safe.
But this means our role as teachers is spread very thin. In some areas, we have become the mainstay for safeguarding and the days when all we had to do was teach our subject are over.
But data on spreadsheets and the belief we can predict futures through a series of checks and balances – as if a child is a sentient bank account – is overwhelming and at the same time an oversimplification of the human condition.
I know; it’s not just teaching. The world is awash with computer-generated information and every profession must learn to manage the deluge. I’m also aware that overuse of the internet has led some of us into a perpetual state of anxious hypervigilance.
But teaching is all about human interaction. In a busy day between assembly, lessons, a break-time duty and a chat with a Year 11 student who’s panicking about her revision, our reliance on communication via laptop is not always useful.
Among the pleas for a lost PE kit are instructions about a student’s unstable medical condition or a potentially volatile falling out between two Year 9s. When do you have time to absorb that information?
I haven’t mentioned the skill and energy required to focus 30 boisterous Year 10s on the details of An Inspector Calls – particularly when some of them would really rather not. That’s the job.
The previous evening spent planning an engaging way to get them to remember which one’s Eric and which one’s Gerald is also the job. No wonder we’re exhausted.
There have been encouraging shifts in the culture since my son left the profession in 2018. Some of the more over-zealous accountability measures have softened. The role of the classroom teacher is starting to return to a focus on our core purpose – teaching, assessing and reviewing.
However, if we are to continue to support the whole child effectively, pastoral teams must be strengthened; the external agencies we rely on for expertise must be funded appropriately so we can work with them, instead of as them.
It’s not going to be an easy task or a cheap one; but if we want high quality education to be delivered by a new generation of practitioners, it must be done.
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