In January, I find myself playing ABBA’s 1980 track Happy New Year regularly. One part pushes me into a minor existential crisis: “In another 10 years’ time,” Agnetha speculates, “what lies waiting down the line, at the end of…’89?”

As a child of the 80s looking back from 2018 at a group for whom 1989 seemed impossibly distant, it’s dizzying. 2029 is pretty close compared to the late 70s.

Our perception of time is tricky and in education it can be misleading. People are prone to believing that things are getting worse, and too easily forget what went before.

Since I started teaching just over a decade ago, I’ve seen vast improvements in our approach. We’ve moved to more progress measures in accountability, and away from attainment, so that we’re focusing our efforts on all students. Ofsted has removed individual teacher gradings, making it harder for poor leaders to shift blame for institutional failings on to frontline staff. In English, the emphasis of assessment has moved away from memorisation and regurgitation to creativity and confidence.

We too quickly forget the horrors of yesteryear and easily buy into a narrative that we are fighting a period of “gloom” in education. Under that banner, the progress agenda can be wilfully opposed by those who never really wanted to have to teach the most challenging students or to have to challenge the most able. Ofsted can continue to be blamed for lesson observation pressure that is actually created by dodgy consultants and insecure leaders. And it’s easy to bash subjects like GCSE English, as all we do in lessons is memorise the names of Dickens’ children, right?

Andrew Otty leads 16-19 English in an FE college