Sitting in the reception of a school last week, I caught the end notes of an assembly before perfect lines of children started to file past me. In the middle of the third group, a small boy, maybe 7 years old, noticed my presence and, wide eyed, stage-whispered to a friend: “That’s a new teacher!”

Alas, no: just a journalist clutching at the vapour trails of that powerful mix of feelings that teaching must induce - pride, curiosity, excitement, frustration, joy - and wanting to experience that ride, too.

Since I started at Tes in 2012, visiting schools has been a perk of the job. I love the feeling of stepping into the current of a timetable and being swept along, bobbing between classrooms and in and out of the eddies that impact every school day. I am in awe of the interactions and relationships teachers have with their pupils and with each other - and how they adapt to the hardships of the job. I want to share the laughter and the tears and the drama.

I know I never will, though. I would make an awful teacher. I am impatient, awkward, too easily frustrated and demotivated. So I have lived that life vicariously instead and it has been crucial to my ability to report on the sector: it’s only in seeing it at first hand that you can fully understand its complexity.

Nadhim Zahawi needs to listen to the melody of school life

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because, during the pandemic, when my regular visits to schools were stopped, I got to experience how the vast majority of people view them. Most of the public never come into contact with the day-to-day experience of a school, and the parents and carers who do interact do so in a very structured, ceremonial way: the drop-offs, the pick-ups, the assemblies and the “engagement” opportunities. As a result, education can become something being done, not something being felt. It can be reduced to objectives and outcomes, not serendipity and progress. It can become a shadow of itself, stripped of its complexity and detail.

Last week, as I sat and watched the frenetic life of a school unfold around me for the first time in 18 months, these thoughts that had been lingering crystallised. Often, the consistent misunderstanding of education by politicians and the public can be interpreted as hostility and wilful ignorance when, actually, I now believe that a huge part of the problem is disconnection.

It’s a hidden problem because it seems improbable: schools are incredibly visible in community life, we have reams of data points and we have, of course, all been to school. We must know, therefore, what it is like. But the community role of a school is a blurry snapshot of the reality and, as I am reminded on every visit, your own experience of education is quickly out of date and heavily skewed by selective memory. As for data, it tells the story you want it to tell.

So, what can we do? Of all the potential solutions, visiting is the most powerful. Unfortunately, for good reasons, the public cannot simply walk into schools; nor can they book a visit unless there are valid grounds for doing so. But the politicians can visit. They can choose to shun the staged drop-ins to favoured schools and, instead, visit a varied and random selection regularly. They can listen and watch on those visits; they can ask questions and seek answers. If they were to do that every month, what a difference it would make to policy.

So here’s a challenge to schools: send Nadhim Zahawi and his team your invitations. And here is one for Zahawi: accept as many as you possibly can. Sit in those reception areas, listen to the melody of school life, remake the connection with schools. You can’t run education if you don’t truly understand it.

@jon_severs

This article originally appeared in the 1 October 2021 issue under the headline “To learn the ropes in his new role, Zahawi should go back to school”