In this Brexit era, it is worth pointing out that the obsession with red tape and ticking boxes, which is the bane of teachers’ lives, has nothing to do with the EU, but everything to do with our own home-grown brand of incessant bureaucratic meddling. 

This is a peculiarly British disease. Although the joyless technocrats that foist it upon us claim that it boosts productivity or benefits the economy, it is having precisely the opposite effect as great teachers continue to flock abroad, turn to supply teaching or tutoring or leave the profession entirely.

Does the government listen or even acknowledge the problem? Like an ostrich with its head stuck firmly in the sand, Tick, Box and Miss Management remain wedded to the program regardless of what those delivering it - yes, the teachers themselves - think of it. It’s a strange position to take, considering that those same teachers are voters and quite vociferous ones; one would think that it might be incumbent on our politicians to notice, mind or care what we think. Did I miss something or weren’t the Conservative party supposed to be family-friendly and against excessive red tape?

This disease is not confined to teaching - the same is true of the medical and care professions and other public services. As one is forced to wait for weeks for a routine appointment with one’s harried GP, it perhaps worth remembering that he or she has some three hours of paperwork to complete once the surgery closes. Ah, the demands of the new god that is Big Data! I wonder just how many billions it is costing the economy in lost productivity.    

Less red tape, more leadership

At a conference last year, Professor John Hattie, director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute and one of the world’s most widely-quoted education academics said: “I think it’s a sin to go into a classroom and tell another teacher how to teach. Because all you do is tell them how to teach like you.”

This begs the question: what kind of world are we educating our children for?  We live on a planet where knowledge outpaces wisdom and the clever usurp the wise; where greed has become a currency. Our media screams at us through a million subliminal messages: “Acquire! Be Afraid!”

We say we want our children to display conscience and character, morality, humanity and principle. In truth, aren’t these the very qualities that they were born with and that we are in danger of ‘educating’ out of them? Any teacher worth his or her salt will tell you that teaching is a listening process and that so often we learn as much from our pupils as they learn from us. This is exactly how it should be and always used to be. There is nothing new under the sun. So often the old becomes the new, and so it should be. 

The message to our policymakers and managers would be to dare to lead more and manage less and know when to do nothing. Focus less on being clever and more on being wise. Listen to those who are delivering this country’s services. Provide training where it is needed and trust people to do their jobs. Let teachers teach, police men and women police, carers care and doctors doctor and stop trying to measure what cannot be measured. We need fewer shiny, new initiatives and more actual leadership, please. Right now, it is far more important that we extricate ourselves from our own pointless bureaucracy than anything coming out of the European Union.

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