In the wake of French principals’ protests, Lynne Field urges British educationists to follow suit. At the end of last year nearly 6,000 principals of French schools took to the streets for the first time in their history. Their sedate march through Paris was in protest against the increasingly heavy responsibilities they have had to assume in schools often housed in decaying buildings.
In Britain similarly respectable middle-class people energetically oppose the export of live calves and climb trees to remonstrate against the construction of motorways.
What will be the final straw that will make the respectable figures on the British education scene - school heads, college principals, university professors - stand up and be counted?
Everywhere one turns budgets are woefully inadequate and professionalism is being undermined and all we do is wring our hands. We watch our colleagues being made redundant and class sizes growing to impossible proportions in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors and all we do is sit muttering in staffrooms. Heads’ associations are desperately concerned about how they are going to balance their budgets, but will we be out on the streets?
Probably not. For in education, as in most spheres of business and public life in Britain today, we are ever more fearful for our jobs. Let me recount an experience of my own.
I have taught evening classes in French for many years. The rate of pay has remained static but, because of the withdrawal of subsidies for adult education, the cost of courses is already prohibitive for many, so one does not complain. Besides, I enjoy teaching such committed students. However, I am beginning to wonder how much longer this goodwill can survive.
I am now required to purchase my own course materials. The BBC has brought out the French Experience this year and I have had to work for two evenings just to pay for the book and tapes.
Then the college which runs the course has written a mandatory clause into the contracts of all hourly paid staff requiring us to attend a two-hour induction section without pay. The purpose of this is to fulfil their own obligation under health and safety legislation. So I work for a pittance, pay for my own resources and turn up at the meeting without a murmur. Why? Because if I won’t, the college can soon find someone who will.
In other respects part-timers in education, as elsewhere, have recently achieved better employment conditions as a result of European legislation with which the British Government has been grudgingly forced to comply. More equitable working practices have been established on the other side of the Channel because, as we know, they take to the streets over there.
In this country there is one group of people who cares passionately about education and whose jobs are not on the line if we ask them to raise their heads above the parapet. These are school and college governors.
They are currently having to take painful decisions about redundancies, class sizes, crumbling buildings and are only too aware of the stress that arises from the pressures staff are under.
In the last two issues of The TES there have been stories of governors in some areas threatening to resign en bloc if they were forced to take on major budget cuts.
Isn’t it time others followed their lead or even went a step further like the animal-rights activists around the country?
The French find it most singular that the British get more incensed about animals and landscapes than they do about education and employment.
I can sympathise with their incomprehension.
Lynne Field is a teacher and governor trainer, living in Bristol
