Politicians are priceless. Since Kenneth Baker first gathered subject specialists and shut them in separate rooms, ensuring they came up with a national curriculum which couldn’t possibly be delivered in the time available, people have been appointed at the highest levels to ensure the decisions of politicians were put into place.
These people appointed like-minded people and the training cascaded down through a range of initiatives to the literacy and numeracy hours, with those training teachers using approved scripts and teachers being forced into a “one size fits all” method of teaching. This resulted in teachers delivering the politicians’ vision of good teaching methods over at least the past 10 or 12 years.
Now that the evidence is beginning to show that this investment hasn’t made much real difference to standards, the “education establishment” and teachers are suddenly to blame for “causing damage through the teaching methods they have used”.
But are not these methods the very ones politicians ensured we were trained to use?
Mike Wright, Teacher, St Edward’s Primary School, Plymouth.
