A Sociology teacher tells Sophie Barnes the education department’s reforms risk pitting school leaders against teachers – and leaving some pupils with nowhere to go.
“I teach Sociology to Years 7-13, so I get to see how well the kids progress throughout their time at secondary school. I’ve been working at a comprehensive in the suburbs of North London for four years now, and know the school pretty well.
I was concerned recently at the talk of replacing GCSEs with an English Baccalaureate system. Michael Gove’s U-turn on this point was interesting – it seemed to be a point that the Lib Dems wouldn’t back down on, so he was forced to drop the idea. I wondered what the ultimate goal was in getting rid of GCSEs. If they want to make qualifications harder, why is that?
If it’s to make them more rigorous, more respected by employers or universities, then great. But presumably less people will then pass them, and what’s going to happen to those who fail because the exams have become tougher? We hear a lot about apprenticeships and vocational qualifications, but how many people get onto those courses? Hundreds of people apply for apprenticeships that can pay as little as £3 an hour, and there aren’t enough of them.
On the subject of pay, recently there’s been talk of introducing performance-related pay (PRP) for teachers. It’s hard to get the case against that heard in the media, because in industry and business PRP is widespread. But in most businesses, you’re being judged on your own work. In teaching, it’s not me working hard and sitting an exam; it’s me working hard to motivate and guide a student in those seven hours that I see them each week. When it comes down to it, they sit the exam. Should my performance be judged on how they do? Yes. Should my pay be judged on how they do? No, because there are too many other factors in their life that can affect their academic performance.
What’s more, PRP doesn’t necessarily create an incentive to improve everyone’s results. I have a student on my course at the moment: he’s struggling, but he can probably pass if I put in the extra time to help him. However, if my pay is judged on pupils achieving their target grades, I might be better advised to put the effort in elsewhere and simply get him off my course. After all, my pay levels have a direct impact on my own children; and whilst at the moment my only motivation is to achieve the best for each student, if it comes down to a choice between this struggling student and my own family, I’m going to choose my own children every time. So PRP could lead to teachers making decisions that aren’t in some students’ best interests.
Where’s the evidence to suggest that we need PRP? Teaching standards have been improving for the past 20 years, so where’s the proof that teachers are under-performing?
Now we have education secretary Michael Gove writing to head teachers saying that pay should be docked if teachers protest by working to rule. Let’s be honest, we all work over our contracted hours. When teachers work to rule, then revision classes and extra-curricular classes don’t get done. So there is certainly an ethical question surrounding working to rule, because it’s the students who lose out – and I don’t know anyone who’s working to rule in my school. But is it legal? As I understand it, it is.
Encouraging head teachers to dock teachers’ pay puts teachers at loggerheads with their managers. Most teachers aren’t politicised, and join unions because they want protection rather than political action. We are reasonable professionals: just talk to us and find a solution, because I don’t think you’ll find a single teacher in the country who really wants to stop marking students’ work or supervising exams.
There’s a lot of fatalism amongst teachers: they think the government’s got a vision, and is determined to pursue it. And while the government does consult the trade unions and the teachers’ bodies, ultimately it has its own agenda. Take History, for example. Under the last government, to get a History qualification students had to learn how to conduct research and make their own minds up about a topic. But the current government’s position is all about knowledge and facts, with pupils marked on questions such as: ‘Can you name all the monarchs since 1666?’ They’re redirecting the curriculum towards a more classical approach, and you have to ask: how is that knowledge going to be beneficial in the workplace?
Education’s a political football, booted back and forth. And Labour and the Conservatives are so far apart when it comes to education policy that it’s a really long pitch we’re shunted up and down. I can’t think of another profession that gets used so obviously by politicians. We need to stop playing politics with the education of children.”