Here's an article I wrote for the Times Educational Supplement Online a couple of years ago. I just discovered it when doing the narcissistic google search for my name. It turned up on a teaching resource site All I can imagine is that it struck a nerve. Quite chuffed about that!

In my second year of Senior school, I remember one of my teachers telling us that he would be teaching differently from then on, that we would be given “Occasional Days” off, on an occasional Monday so that the new system of examinations, GCSE’s could be prepared for. I remember a very real shift in the emphasis of their teaching from rote repetition of facts and figures, from the practised and somewhat staid imparting of rules, to a more hectic, unfamiliar Hands-On approach, which was most evident in my English and Science lessons. At that point, I’d had two years of schooling under the GCE system and had done well. My Junior schooling had prepared me well for the “Big School” and I felt content under the system that had, for 30 years or so, been the recognised system: you got your O levels, if you were lucky or clever enough, you went on to A levels and eventually on to a Degree, though at the age of 14, I had trouble imagining getting into College, let alone the hallowed halls of University.

Then one day, I think in the Summer term of my Second year, June 1986, we were told the news that would in turns elate and frustrate us, that we would be the second year of students to sit the new style GCSE exams. I admit at the time I didn’t like the name and couldn’t see the point in restructuring the whole system - I couldn’t see the reason for altering a proven, worthwhile and respected qualification. Teachers from then on, especially in the first year of the new curriculum, became more and more hectic in their preparations, in their teaching style. Well loved methods of teaching were abandoned in favour of hastily prepared “Question and answer” type sessions where we were expected to read a passage and debate it, while we had been made aware that the teacher would be grading us on our participation. For a shy, mildly spoken 14-15 year-old, it became apparent that his grades would fall in favour of the loudmouthed, show-offish, bully types. It became a regular occurrence for us to receive letters at morning registration time telling us that we had a one-day holiday the following Monday for the purposes of Teacher Training, something that in two years, and I suspect for a good few years previously, had been all but unheard-of, especially in our modestly sized, 400 strong school in the suburbs of Birmingham.

Maths lessons became, conversely, less “Hands-On”, with teachers doling out new handbooks as we shuffled into the room and slouching at their desk while we performed three months of trigonometry, three months of fraction work, three months of calculus and – horror of horrors – three months of differential equations. While their professionalism could never be brought into question, their love of the job began to waver noticeably.

It was difficult to see how much this change altered the attitudes and enthusiasm of the teaching staff from our point of view, 96 teenage hormone packed boys who became increasingly aware of their position as government Guinea Pigs, perhaps more so than the year above us, who would be the first to sit these exams, because we would be the first year to be taught the new syllabus from their “Options” onwards, when, in the opinion of our school, the teaching really began, we would be the first year where results would be compared to other GCSE results, where league tables of schools were already being discussed in Whitehall, where we would go into the workplace facing the aftermath of the confusion over this new system, no longer GCE A-C, or CSE 1-5 but this baffling A-G scoring system, where one would be faced with the daunting and enviable task of explaining to recruiting staff, heads of departments and recruitment consultants that it wasn’t a CSE C grade, which was rather bad, but it was a G-CSE C grade which amounted to a GCE pass. This is something we all had to contemplate, and we were not getting reassurances we needed from Government that these results, our final grades would be worthwhile qualifications that would be taken seriously by employers after school, and indeed a certain number of my friends and peers did face discouraging results after gaining good exam scores, as employers simply did not accept the calibre of the new system.

As the years droned by, “Occasional Days” or “Baker Days” after Education Secretary Kenneth Baker under whom the GCSE’s were established and implemented became more and more frequent. Occurring at least once a month, and followed each time by newly despondent haggard looks on our teacher’s faces. After two and a half years teaching us Physics, one of our teachers went so far as to leave on health grounds, to be replaced by a wonderful inner-city teacher who taught us the entire syllabus in three months and saved at least one class from failure. It was obvious that this man was not coping with the change in emphasis and the undermining of his subject, one that he’d taught, presumably for at least two decades. It was only two years after his departure that we began to see the integration and further denigration of the sciences and “Dual Certification” introduced, whereby the study of Physics, Electronics, English and Biology became, instead of separate, specialised subjects, one general and unsatisfying mess of a subject, with chameleon-esque course titles which would baffle parents for years to come.

Our mock exams approached with trepidation not just from us but our teachers. This would be the first time they would be able to prepare a group of students thoroughly for the tests ahead, and we were aware of it. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction and “make-do” was obvious as we sat cobbled together pieces of previous exam papers in an attempt, with only one year’s experience, to prepare us for the exams we would sit in one month’s time, then again “for real” in another six months.

My grades eventually arrived, whilst I was on holiday, in late August. To my dismay, and over a background of tumultuous praise and, I suppose Politicians Spin that the GCSE’s had again shown an improved standard of excellence, with 85% or some such number attaining some grade or other under the new exam structure, I learned that I had only gained three usable grades, and had, for some unfathomable reason, failed Maths by one grade (But it was all right, I had passed ALL my GCSE’s, albeit with four D’s (CSE grade 2) and a mortifying G (CSE grade 5)), so there followed the inevitable and rather easy Resit Year at Sixth Form College, where I quite satisfyingly breezed to a C in Maths and to a B in French, a subject I was new to and at which none of my year at Senior School had gained more than a C. Armed with my five good GCSE’s (GCE’s) I discovered that these qualifications bore far less weight than they did a year previously, as the country had hit yet another depression and jobs were not just scarce but unbelievably rare, with one source quoting that at least 200 people were applying for each and every job on the market, with even slightly imperfect applications and Curricula Vitas becoming bin-fodder without so much as a second glance. It was an employers’ market and there was no place for a shy 17 year old with a vast naiveté of the world of work.

So I sat A levels.

Meanwhile, my younger sister began studying and sitting her GCSE’s some three years after me. By then more Training Days were being sat, Maths teaching had joined the ranks of the ridiculous with coursework being set and agonised over by teachers and pupils who together couldn’t figure out what the coursework was supposed to achieve. I remember sitting with friends of mine who had been set Maths coursework, which involved dividing a field of sheep into units with certain lengths of fencing, and having read the aims of the coursework, and the instructions, coming away truly and thoroughly baffled, with no more clue of how to proceed than, I had been informed, the teacher had.

Shortly after completing my A levels, I fund myself, like so many others at the time, on the dole. Collecting my Income Support, once a fortnight and waiting the three months until the dull and pointless Restart Interview, where you would be coached, finally, on how to construct a C.V. that someone might actually read. A job did come to me through the Interview, albeit a month of Temping for an insurance firm that believed that Asbestos was a healthy atmosphere to keep its workers in.

As can be imagined, between the ages of 20 and 25, heavily involved with clubs, pubs, girlfriends and bedsits, my knowledge of the secondary education system becomes somewhat diminished, and the tidbits I have gleaned in that time lead me to believe that Teacher Training days became a fortnightly event, even occurring once a week. That new schemes, incentives and pressures were being piled, almost weekly on already emotionally and professionally bruised teachers. It became a recurring news headline that once again the Government planned a review and alteration to the system of teaching one subject or another. Each time, as in my school days, there would be images of haggard teachers, buckling under the strain of having to rethink their lesson plans to fit in with new practises and guidelines as handed down from the great LEA in the sky. From 1986, teachers have not been left alone, the profession becoming more and more about paperwork and meetings and less and less about teaching and providing social skills. Good teachers these days have to surf waves of red tape and tiptoe around international childrens’ rights laws, to the extent that a teacher has become barely more than a target and not the figure of respect that they need to be in order to do their jobs.

These days a teachers lot is certainly not a happy one, with danger and inco-operation classroom norms. Traditional methods of controlling a classroom, including the ability to exclude disruptive students are being frowned upon from the ultra-PC powers that be. Teachers have also to learn to tread the ever-shifting sands of the curriculum changes, new memos and edicts being forced on overworked staff on a far too regular basis. Teaching is definitely NOT the career it used to be.

So why do I want to follow that career? Why in gods name would I want to be subjected to the demoralising undermining of my hard-won respect? Why would I want to force unwanted knowledge down uncaring gullets? Why would I want to sit up for ¾ of the night revising class schedules and re-marking term papers in accordance with the guideline memo from the EU that got Emailed to me during Eastenders? Why would I want to be complaining to the unions once a week about how I can’t do my job under these conditions, that I need more money for the work I’m expected to do, that I’ve destroyed my social life, for no reward so that a bunch of the ungrateful children can trampoline or play football until 8 at night? Does job satisfaction really take any part in a modern, 21st century Teachers working life?

The answer is, of course that I have no idea. Education is the one job I have any protracted experience of. Education is the one job I feel that I could make a difference in. Education, teaching is the one area of skill where I feel that I have any aptitude at all. I’ve given short lectures, successfully. I’ve given practical demonstrations and helped difficult students to understand simple problems. I’ve sat in a classroom and had nothing to do because my opening comments have been good enough to settle the class down to a productive and satisfying day’s work. I’ve made class schedules and kept to them. I’ve been a teacher, even for the shortest while and I know I enjoyed it, I know I can do it and I know I can be good at it. I also know it’s the only damn job I have any chance of being any good at.

Also, I want to make a difference to the education system. A bold statement indeed. I want to make Whitehall sit up and take notice of the plight of our profession. I want a better working life for these hardworking, underpaid punchbags that we call teachers. For many years, since the introduction of the GCSE system it has been obvious to me that the revisions being constantly made to the curriculum, that each fine tune and re-working makes teachers jobs more and more difficult, that it is becoming glaringly obvious that any system that has so many flaws in it as to need constant reappraisal is not fit to be taught to our youth. At least that is what non-participants would surmise. That is what the outsider must be thinking – there’s something wrong if the system needs constant revision.

This is simply not the case. GCSEs DO work, and they work well, just as they are. It’s true that the education system pre-1986 was in a rut; it’s true that the teaching styles used for O levels were outdated and were in need of an overhaul. But 15 years of constant overhaul has murdered the profession to the point where the government has to offer sweeteners and higher education incentives to would-be teachers. Disillusionment, the undermining of and inability to enforce discipline and the constant monitoring and revision of the education system and of individual syllabuses are the major causes of teacher dissatisfaction at this moment in time. So my message to the powers that be, a simple message that would have profound affects on the working lives of the teachers and the learning lives of the students, is this:

Stop analysing.

Another study of how the subject can be taught is simply not needed. One thing we MUST learn from O level days is that the longer we stay with a certain system, the better teachers get at teaching it, the better the students get taught and the more confident teachers get. Confidence is at an all-time low, faith in the system is at an all-time low, and it can all stop, it can all be turned around if you just stop mucking about with the curriculum. Once a decade is fine. Once every five years is perhaps more reasonable. Once a year or once a month is shattering the profession. Let the poor sods do their job and stop lumbering them with more and more rules to adhere to, stop thrusting new angles and new goals at them, stop introducing new exams and new streaming methods. Let these people do their jobs.

To the supposed New Government, I would say this: Get the beaurocrats out of the classroom and let the Teachers teach.