‘If education in 2017 is so good, why are teachers voting with their feet, leaving overcrowded rooms behind them?’

Claims about the benefits of government interference and funding are overstated and selective; what we need is to re-vitalise teachers’ professionalism, writes a survivor from the early 1980s classroom
24th January 2017, 3:59pm

Perspective is everything when writing and reading articles about education. 

According to those residing in government or think tanks, teachers are in need of direction, reinforced by the carrot (funding) and the stick (Ofsted inspections). There may be some new schools, but other articles in the TES indicate a continuing scandal of crumbling, draughty and overcrowded classrooms for too many.

The origins of government intervention

Teachers who first entered the classroom in the early eighties will recognise some vast over-simplifications and received orthodoxies in Jonathan Simons’s article, as he adroitly circumnavigates the precedents laid down in Lord Kenneth Baker’s “reforms”. 

The “benchmark” tests for newly created key stages 1-3 ushered in a testing regime that was to suffocate the profession by the late noughties. A targets culture borrowed from commerce paved the way for the micromanagement of the curriculum and pedagogy. 

Syllabuses turned into confining and over-directing specifications. Headteachers became accountants who managed their own budgets under local management of schools, thus tying their fortunes to government directives.

That Lord Baker also re-apportioned five days of teachers’ holiday for Inset is not easily forgotten. His contract for teachers, still in existence, includes the 1,265 hours - directed time - but no stipulations about the hours that can be added on. Managerialism entered school life in the late 1980s. 

In setting out the “canon” of reading matter in English examinations, Lord Baker dictated the content of the English curriculum - which Michael Gove merely continued. 

GCSE - radical reform or hi-jacking a pedagogical evolution?

Although Lord Baker takes the credit for far-reaching reform when he introduced GCSEs, the set-up was a natural follow-on from a system that already worked. CSE coursework moderation took place in a schools’ consortium; teachers would tour the folders from partner schools to moderate up or down. 

They would not allow erratic assessment to go unchecked because they had equal stakes in the outcome - namely fair results - which made them the best judges.

We have only to read the article in a recent National Association for the Teaching of English journal on the history of the subject association to realise the value of their work in advancing pedagogy to the benefit of pupils, particularly in London.

The easiest mistake for those overseeing the system since the nineties is to assume - rather arrogantly - that all change originated in government departments and government think tanks, and that it needed “strong” political direction. Far from it! 

The most powerful movement is brought about by evolution - and certainly that was the case in the 1980s with the 16-plus examination and CSE syllabuses that included coursework.  Who can forget the Mode 3 CSE which put into the hands of teachers the construction of a syllabus? 

On the basis of the nationwide change in practice, namely the introduction of criterion-based assessment and 100 per cent coursework for English, it is easy to look back on the late eighties as a golden era of the self-directed professional - a far cry from the picture painted by Jonathan Simons of today’s needy, dependent teachers and managers. 

Needy and dependent? Or over-worked and over-directed?

The reductive truth is that for schools to be funded teachers have had to do as they are told by government ministers and by quangos. Consequently teachers have come to be regarded as a workforce rather than a profession. 

They are a cost to the system rather than a rich resource. They are managed by targets, rather than self-directed by vocational values. 

A chief source of teachers’ stress is the loss of autonomy, possibly equal to the crippling workload that many complain about on social media. 

With growing and ever more insistent concern about teacher recruitment and retention in the press and on blogs, the profession is finding a voice that cannot be stifled in the wider world. 

Some even find the time and energy to undertake action research and publish outcomes in subject association journals. 

Michael Gove did not so much inspire passion from teachers as an outcry against a programme which siphoned off the cash - not always into the right hands.

Mr Simons makes empty claims about the benefits of government interest and funding. If the 2017 classroom is so good, why are teachers voting with their feet, leaving overcrowded rooms behind them as vacancies are difficult to fill? 

However, it would also be too easy to see government education ministers and departments as the villains all the time. 

Perhaps former education secretary Nicky Morgan’s most far-reaching legacy is the Workload Challenge reports, which if read properly and applied could shift the cultural balance back to teachers’ professional expertise. 

Nearly 44,000 responses gave an unequivocal picture of the unintended consequences of interference and a targets culture.

Whilst no one could claim a new dawn in teacher autonomy, the sentence in Point 21 of the marking report: “Crucially, the most important person in deciding what is appropriate is the teacher” is a powerful statement. 

The Marking Policy Review Group report reveals deep-marking in all its multi-coloured folly. It re-assigns the audience of the marking as the pupil; and it reminds teachers, their managers and inspectors that marking is only a part of assessment. 

Sean Harford, the national director of Ofsted, is constantly reiterating the message that no specific format is expected in terms of marking or assessment, so that managers can be in no doubt and teachers can challenge practice where needed. 

Nottingham Council has set a cap on teachers’ non-directed time as an example to others. Managers will have to prioritise and shed redundant practices. Workload easing and discussion about the most efficient and effective methods of assessment are gaining in volume and prominence.

We may be disappointed that government did not place specific limits on teachers’ time and workload. It has, however, left a powerful instrument in the hands of teachers and managers who can see its potential for improving teaching and learning as part of an evolution out of the current nadir of low morale.

Yvonne Williams is a head of English at a secondary school in the South of England, and was a member of the Marking Workload Group.  She will be discussing ways of cutting workload at the BETT conference this week.

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