Many years ago when the world was young and I was feeling depressed with my lot I wondered, as I occasionally do, whether I could cut it as a science teacher. I have had some school teaching experience, and teaching undergraduates was the most enjoyable part of my life as a graduate student (far more fun than the actual research). In the cause of such protopedagogical explorations I found the part of the sprawling so-you-wanna-be-a-teacher-innit website devoted to attracting people of mature years into the profession, and, in the interests of … er … science, filling in/out the form and sending it in. Little did I know I’d hit the jackpot, as I was
* someone with not only a degree in science, but a Ph.D. – when fewer than half of all science teachers appear to have science to degree level;
* someone who’d been around in the real world and knocked around a bit – rather than coming straight from college;
* someone brave foolish brave enough to want to teach science in secondary schools.
Cue a deluge of glossy literature and requests for any information of when I could start, I could even train on the job, and so on and so forth in like fashion. This very nice young woman kept on phoning me up to ask if I was still interested, her calls turning by degrees into a kind of desperate pleading, as though she’d agree to have my babies if only I decided to make a change of career. I let her down gently by saying that Mrs Crox would never agree to her plans, but most importantly that despite my interest, financial constraints prevented me from making the leap. The fact is that people in mid-career have children, a mortgage and a pension plan to support, and would need considerably more remuneration than she was prepared to offer, no matter how high-minded the intentions. In other words, if she wanted me that badly, she’d have to pay me what I think I’m worth. I got no more calls after that.
I therefore read the plans of Mr Michael Gove, our Minister in charge of schools, with mixed feelings. Mr Gove plans to wrest the control of education from the left-leaning establishment which, in his view (and mine) has conspired, over the past few decades, to wreck not only the teaching of our children, but the status of schoolteaching as a profession. He plans to teach the teachers more on the job, in schools, taking training away from rarefied university courses. He also plans to bribe incentivize reward bright students who want to go from college into high-priority subjects such as science with large(ish) cash bursaries.
Well, it’s a start.
In my view such bursaries are sticking plaster over a bedsore. If we really want to get more good teachers into the profession, we should
* sack the (relatively few) bad ones and pay the (very many) good ones at least three times what they earn at present;
* allow good teachers to earn more money by continuing to teach, rather than imposing a career ladder that links higher earnings with a move away from teaching and into management and paperwork (something that all committed teachers hate);
* offer to match the current salaries of mature candidates who want to come into teaching from some other profession.
Yes, predictably, Mr Gove will face the usual dull and dreary leftish trades-unions opposition whatever he does: but this can and should be ignored, given that it is this same leftish philosophy that has demonstrably reduced the standard of teaching over the past half-century or so. In which case it would do him (and us) no harm if his plans were more radical than they are at present. So, be bold, Mr Gove. You’ve nothing to fear – I’m right behind you.
Hmm. I can’t even tell when you’re joking, Henry.
The obvious problem with paying good teachers more, paying them to keep teaching rather than becoming Heads and Deputy Heads (BTW, has anyone else noticed that schools in the UK now tend to have >1 Head and multiple Deputy Heads?), and giving older people from other professions more incentives to come into teaching – all things I would wholeheartedly agree with – is that it all costs money.
Given that one can’t see Govt. paying for this (and I don’t just mean this one – I think it would be the same with Labour in charge under present circs), where would the money to do it come from? Sadly, parents paying fees seems to be the only obvious answer.
As Ed Rybicki says below, teaching needs to be reinvented as a profession with status. This will require money, but also a change of heart. Watching the education of Crox Minor at secondary school, I have been generally impressed by the quality of teaching and by the aims of the national curriculum. There is no need to turn the clock back and reintroduce grammar schools because the comprehensive system has long abandoned a one-size-fits-all education and aggressively streams children by ability (aside: the remaining few grammar schools are very hard to get into, and produce stunning results, wonder why that is, ‘selectivity’ anyone?)
Yes, it will cost money – and this could be recouped in an instant by removing the incredible waste of people, resources and time currently squandered on second-rate universities producing barely literate graduates with worthless degrees that nobody wants. News has reached mes yeux that the government is planning to do this very thing, with proposals to provide prospective students with the means to make informed choices about the courses and universities they select, broken down by the success rate of graduates in those courses finding employment. Given that students are now being asked to pony up a fortune simply to get to university, this seems like a fair trade-off.
In my day, there were rather few universities – so few that people could have their tuition fees paid for and even, in most cases, their maintenance, too, by their local education authorities. I cherish the perhaps quixotic hope that we’ll be able to return to such times, once the dross has been weeded out.
Bravo, friend Gee…and you have just reinvented pretty much what the Singapore and Korean governments have done, which is to make teaching into a genuine profession which is not only well-paid, but respected. Where people actually compete to become teachers, because it is – like science in those countries – actually a decent profession, with actual salaries that compete with more than just bus drivers.
Somehow, Ed, we must create that ethos in Britain. It’ll never happen, though, while the trades unions think more of themselves than anyone else, and – and this is actually more important – while teachers in general have such low expectations of the children they teach. How has this happened? I attribute this to the liberal middle-class patronage of the working classes. They must be helped, poor dears, but don’t expect them to do very well. Perish the thought that a working-class child might do well and go to a decent university, because that would flout their entire ethos. It’s no accident that upward mobility under the last Labour government was at its lowest for decades … while Labour ministers had their own children privately educated. Did anyone say ‘social engineering’? Did anyone wonder at the Left’s production of a permanently cowed proletariat that can be kept amused by a constant diet of porn and game shows, or, as nobody these days would understand, because they haven’t had the education, panem et circenses?
I remember a cartoon I saw long ago in Punch. A scruffy schoolboy sits in a headmaster’s office. ‘If you were middle-class,’ says the head, ‘you’d be dyslexic. But you’re working-class, so you’re just thick.’
“while Labour ministers had their own children privately educated”
It’s unfair to paint this as a party political issue, rather than an issue with politicians in general. Under Thatcher and Major, only one Minister for Education (or equivalent – the title changed a few times over the years) had their kids in the state school system. (I forget which one, but I well remember my parents – both teachers – being pleasantly surprised when it finally happened).
“Perish the thought that a working-class child might do well and go to a decent university, because that would flout their entire ethos”
Interestingly, I know lots of teachers, and I’ve found that it’s a common career choice for people from working class families where no-one else has ever been to university. My Dad is the son of a coal miner and was the first person from his village to go to university; he became a teacher. My Mum’s Dad had the exact same story. Many of my parents’ friends come from mining and other blue collar backgrounds. The only one of my high school or university friends who became a teacher was the first person from her family to go to university. I don’t know why this is, but in my experience it’s a common story.
Yes, well, Cath, my Dad was the first of his family to go to university – he went to a grammar school, which allowed bright children from working-class backgrounds to get a good education without paying for it. Why, Cath, do Socialists hate grammar schools so much, when they offer working people such chances of self- advancement? Because grammar schools tend to deplete the stock of people likely to vote Labour, that’s why.
Why do Tories generalise?
(I’m a socialist and think grammar schools are a great idea, as long as there are high quality alternatives for the kids who don’t make the cut, and opportunities for late bloomers to transfer to grammar schools).
I went to a state comprehensive, FWIW.
The scene in South Africa is complicated – as in, inheritance of a very tiered schooling structure, where class = race, and the bottom end is so bad that it’s a wonder that anyone gets out of it at all.
Trouble is, the solution that seems to have occurred to the Powers That Now Be is to take away from the reasonably good State-funded top end (the whole SA educational system is crap, BTW: Zimbabwe’s used to be MUCH better) and fritter it away on an abysmally bad and much larger bottom end. Where teachers don’t come to school, kids roam around unsupervised, and there are no books and precious few other resources. And the same Dept of Education is in charge of the whole spectrum!
Shitfuckwanktitheads going on strike. See the ArchBish’: http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2011/06/teaching-unions-give-lesson-in-blind.html
My point exactly. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, innit.
And while I am on the subject, it struck me recently how leftish educationalists have ruined education by the preoccupation with class war to which I alluded. My mother still seethes at the fact that when I was a mere tot, asked a question to rank names of mealtimes in the order in which they were taken, I was marked down for saying that ‘dinner’ happened in the evening rather than at lunch time. Too middle-class, you see.
Later on, at a state primary school, I suffered by not being taught English grammar – a disability from which I still suffer. I caught up a bit at private schools when I learned Latin – all my knowledge of grammar, such as it is, comes from studying Latin, and, later, German. It is my firm belief that Latin should be compulsory, as should a firm grounding in English language (as opposed to wishy-washy Eng. Lit.) and that any bleats about it being elistist should be countered with vigor – such criticisms go hand-in-hand with the general poverty of expectation with which the teaching profession is rotten.
However, the worm is turning. As I have recounted elsewhere, schools have at last realized that skills such as oratory and rhetoric stand people in good stead, particularly if those people come from da inna city.
@Cath – it’s not a generalization to say that the policy of the Labour Party is and always has been to close grammar schools, which they loathe with a visceral hatred.
Thoroughly agree with this article, Henry — because I am *on* one of these courses!
You are? Do tell!!
Suffering too much unnecessary assessment on a Subject Knowledge Enhancement Course at Reading Uni — chemistry. Then in September on to a GTP at a local school. At least this way I will train on the job and am employed by the school, the way it should be. I wouldn’t touch the PGCE – another year-long university course. One would only get £9K and would be subject to the whims of academics for far too long.