Education: Living as a struggling observer

I've been working with, in and around secondary education for a few years now and hear various accounts of what (apparently) occurs behind the walls of our educational institutions and manifests itself as education. I have to say 'apparently' because I struggle to believe that there really are teachers out there who encourage their pupils to call them by their first names or regale them with accounts of their social life and the like.

Mind you, I can remember being taken to task when, as a schoolboy, I invited my form master to call me 'Vic', the reason given was that since we were going to be working together there was little point in being formal about the relationship. I also remember including the teacher's name (Jim) and it was that that saw me heading off the the deputy head's office for a bit of corporal punishment!

Yes indeed folks, A.S. Neil and Summerhill School had a lot to answer for with this (as I realise now) precocious teenager. Neil's stated aims of making the school fit the child rather than vv really resonated with me and yet I now, as a wrinkly, find myself longing that education would be more like Neil's vision with a bit of oomph thrown in.

Things get worse when I hear of bright pupils who are failing because of circumstances outside of their won control and whilst I am a living example of then 'could do better' example of scholar I am also aware that some schools are apparently happy with producing low-quality products. Not only that but some are happy to manipulate their outcomes by farming out the lower end of the population to technical and vocational establishments (something I think is disgraceful as it stigmatises the more practical or mechanically-minded as second class from an earlier age than was before)!

Looking at the grades where I live today, and discussing them with one whose children travel away from our schools, I have come to realise that we are perhaps not serving our children well when it comes to education. I hear of children who are passing with Es (rather than ease) and have heard of more lower grade results this year than perhaps before (which might conveniently be blamed on Gove and the fiddling of the figures). I have found more young people packing their schoolbooks in their old kitbag and moving away from the place that appears to have failed them last year in the hope that the new place might redress the situation.

Nigel Molesworth - my hero and role model

Of course if the kids aren't digging in and doing the work then they deserve all that they don't get (so I'm told) but if they aren't chivied, nudged and challenged to do better then the finger returns to those who are paid to educate, and where is the redress then? I'm struggling as I sit and watch what is (apparently) occurring with the children on my community because they deserve more that that which they apparently get in secondary education.

So I write this as a struggling observer. Education is about maximising and achieving a child's full potential. It is about enabling them to have the widest choice of opportunities before them and to be fulfilled and content - it is not about maximising earnings or rising up the class system (we can leave this to the people who pay for the privilege of private education to perhaps do this)!

I seek to open the eyes of the children around me as to what they can do. To encourage them to dream dreams and to make them become reality and yet this is missing from their accounts of what appears to be happening in their school life. The teachers who encouraged, imparted passion and excited with their subject just don't appear to be there (please tell me this isn't true) and instead we have teachers who are unable to control their classes and who resort to ranting, raving and screaming as their normal mode of work.

I'm struggling and whilst I try to maintain a balanced view feel reason and belief in the system slowly disappearing only to be replaced by something I'd rather not be feeling. For if I, outside of the system feel like this, how on earth do the teachers and pupils feel?

Pax

Time to sack OFSTED?

The news that some one thousand schools previously considered by OFSTED to be 'outstanding' are to be re-inspected causes me great concern for a number of reasons.

My first concern is how inspectors can assess a school as 'outstanding' and then suddenly reconsider their assessment as the teaching was subsequently regarded as "not have reached the highest standard". "The teaching was below standard," doesn't cut it because it it was then the school wasn't outstanding, was it?

This doesn't speak of poor teaching but substandard inspectors and this should trigger an investigation into OFSTED and, as we so enjoy our blame culture, inspectors and those who control them should be in the dock. It's inspectors that should be rolling here nit schools and their heads!

Of course we could always look to a conspiracy theory approach and wonder to ourselves whether there might be some future correlation between this re-inspection and the creation of more academies (which according to some of the reel Akademmix put it recently: 'Academisation' or 'Academification' - bunch of blinking loonies!!!). If this occurs then the inspectors are substandard at all, they're much worse and so is the source of the intervention and unseen direction.

In an education meeting recently I was shocked to hear a head speak of how some schools were being placed in 'special measures' so that they could be taken over and made into academies as a 'hostile take-over'. Boardroom terms for education, shocking and yet fitting as we see our schools taken out of the state education system and transformed into academies where freedom of information, parent governorship and many other aspects of schooling that we have taken for granted are no longer.

I'm happy to see inspectors work with the schools and any rise in standards has to be good but I'm not so sure that 'no notice' inspections are the right way to go. The few days warning schools get now is stress-inducing enough, but to have an inspection just descend is destined to put already overworked teachers into a place where the stress will be ever present and will be detrimental to the good running of our schools and will cause more stress-related departures of extremely good teacher.

Let's look at the realities:

Budgets are being cut and so teachers have to make choices:

a. Teach and because the budgets for TAs (Teaching Assistants) are reduced they also have to clear, do presentation work and the many subsidiary tasks that are not part of the teaching role proper.

b. Spend more and more time on the processes and paperwork that will be needed to satisfy, and provide audit trails, for the OFSTED inspectors and ignore the TA tasks.

c. Do the TA work, the lesson prep', the marking, the teaching, the clearing away and the various roles within the school (special needs, curriculum and the oh so many other little areas like after school activities, visit planning, the PPA - for which support is going by the board for some because of budgets and staffing issues) and all the required paperwork and see how long it is before a different career (or breakdown) beckons.

d. Just teach and be resigned to just making do and doing enough (which will work until the new disciplinary process sees you gone by the end of that term).

e. Place a knotted hankie on the head, stick a pencil up each nostril and consider the future as a retired teacher and wonder what your CPN will be like and what pills you'll be on!

I fear our education system is becoming commercialised and removed from the state and the pressures and manipulation of means and methods are leading us to a very bad place indeed. So if you're a parent or a dogcollar - get involved and join your local governors, friends of and anything else that will get you involved and informed . . . Hug a teacher (well say "Thank You' anyway - you won't get an ASBO for that!) TODAY!

I guess these words from a recently retired teacher who left on medical grounds of stress after their second OFSTED in as many years sums it all up:

What's the difference between OFSTED and a plastic surgeon?

A plastic surgeon tucks up features . . . . .

Declining integrity?

Or is it honesty that is in decline (or perhaps, more accurately, both)? This is an interesting question as radio news coverage of this report glibly mixed integrity and honesty (much as they do with 'sex' and 'gender') as if they were one and the same. But of course they're not for, to some extent, each influences and begets the other.

A study carried out by the Essex Centre for the Study of Integrity (ECSI) found that we are apparently less honest than we used to be at the turn of the century. Societal standards have altered such that extra-marital relations, drink driving, lying and underage sex are now, apparently, much more acceptable.

It will probably come as no shock to find that the tolerance diminishes with age and that the younger the person questioned, the more liberal (in a permissive, not Biblical sense so put those pens down - at least for a moment or two!) they became and with age came less acceptance of these, hitherto perceived breaches.

Regarding infidelity, attitudes had gone down from the 2000 figues of 70% saying it was never justified to 50% now.

Those who considered picking up and keeping money found in the street as not being justified diminished to 20% from the previous figure of 40%.

The only issue where opinion had hardened against it was that of benefit fraud which had risen to 85% from the previous 78%.

The numbers of those who thought lying was wrong also fell and this study raises a few interesting (well they are for me) twists and considerations. One of the prevailing responses has been the question:

"Why are young people are becoming more dishonest?"

Professor Paul Whiteley, the study's author and ECSI's director's take on this was:

"We think it is because their role models are not very good - footballers who cheat on their wives, journalists who hack people's phones. Gradually people are tending to become more dishonest, they are more willing to tell lies, more willing to tolerate adultery. It's slow over time and going on in the background but pretty evidentially there."

Some interesting food for thought indeed.

And more thought there will be, but for now tea drunk and off to do another funeral.

Pax