Diary of a Trainee Teacher

I recently read this article on the Independent. Chris Parry, a former rear admiral and the new chief executive of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), spoke out on his view of state education and was accused of snobbishness by the NUT and of being ‘misguided’ (i.e. wrong) by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

His views was as follows:

1. State schools are ’struggling with unteachable children, ignorant parents and staff who don’t want to be there’

2. ‘Comprehensive school pupils cannot be expected to get into top universities if they are bullied by classmates from “disadvantaged backgrounds”.’

3. ‘There are too many leaders but not enough leadership, there are a lot of managers but not enough management. There aren’t enough teachers and aren’t enough teachers in the subjects we need. It’s lacking human, material [and] financial resources.”

This seems to be a fairly accurate view of the situation, albeit very generalised. Of course schools are struggling, when inclusion forces them to take children who should be separated from other kids for their own protection, when parents insist that their little darling has done nothing wrong and ‘Miss X’ is just picking on him, and when they have teachers exhausted from working all the hours God sends for no respect. The comment about leaders has been fully covered on Old Andrews blog Scenes From the Battleground here and here, and he has much more experience in these matters than me. The TES forums to tend to support this view though. 

The one point I do have experience on, however, is the second point. In many ways mine, and many of my classmates’, success is despite the state education system, not because of it. As much as the powers that be would like to deny it, even when I was at secondary school (about 10 years ago now) it was not a good idea to do well (except at sport). 

Here are my tips for surviving state education:

Hollyoaks to feature the new diplomas!
Part of me thinks this is a good marketing strategy… the rest of me despairs that this is necessary. I can only think of two reasons the kids don’t want to do these diplomas, one, they haven’t given it any consideration and gone for the simpler option, or two, they have considered it and decided to go with the one that will give them the better chance of getting into a good uni. Hollyoaks can only help with the former, not the latter reason. 

Long school holidays ’should end’I actually don’t know how I feel about this. Shorter terms with small breaks might really help with concentration, and to prevent teacher burn out. They might also mean more parents taking their kids out of school in the summer, as the summer vacation period will become even smaller and more expensive. 

Every school has at least one bad teacher
In my opinion stories like this one are severely damaging to the general morale of the teaching profession. Of course there are bad teachers, and of course they should be found and either helped to become good teachers or else ‘moved on’ as Jim Knight put it. All stories like this do is give the media and the public fodder to claim that all of society’s ills (including anti-social behaviour, poor numeracy and literacy in our young people and the economic downturn) are entirely the fault of teachers in general, and bad teachers in particular.

This independent reader missed the point entirely, when she complained about her daughter receiving numerous after school detentions. By concentrating on the inconvenience of the detention’s timing, this parent ignored the fact that the child is clearly disrupting the learning of the other children in her school. 

And finally, if anyone can demonstrate how this new assessment for GCSE oral examinations can be fairly administered then I’d be most grateful to hear it.

Recently there has been a great deal of fuss made over the fact that the elite universities are not admitting a fair number of kids from ‘bog standard comprehensives’ and even going so far as to blame the teachers for this phenomenon, but I was astounded when I read this! This ‘academic’ has the temerity to claim that working class people have a lower IQ, and therefore shouldn’t expect to gain a place in ‘elite’ universities! That this is a meritocracy, nothing more. 

I, for one, take offense at this! 

Definitions of ‘class’ are complicated, and depend on which direction you are coming from. Is class defined by culture, by income, by outlook? My grandparents were definitely working class, and this is how my parents were both brought up. Two of my uncles on my dad’s side are postmen, but the other is currently a university lecturer. My father got decent A levels and worked his way up through the ranks of a well known department store to a senior management position and later did a degree in computer programming. My mother works for a well known supermarket, where she started as an assistant, and now she’s management. This is my background, this is how I was brought up. Am I working class, or middle class?

We always had enough money, even if it was tight sometimes, and I never had free school meals, so, financially at least, we were just about middle class. 

I always had books and computers in the house, my parents encouraged me to read anything and everything, bought me musical instruments and music when I wanted to play and sent me on exchange visits to hone my language skills. Culturally, then, I am middle class.  

My parents were very definitely working class, at least in upbringing, but they were also clever, and they worked hard to ensure that my brothers and I all got a good start in life. They passed on to us the traditionally working class values of a good work ethic, an understanding of the value of money and the need to be thrifty, and most importantly a knowledge of the importance of the family network. When I was old enough, I voted labour (back when that meant something), I am accepted and loved by my predominantly working class family and I flinch when I hear something like this. In many ways I still identify with the working classes. 

I excelled at school, and found everything easy. I got fantastic GCSE and A level grades, due as much to good schooling and parental support as to my own abilities. I got these at a bog standard comprehensive in a former industrial town in the North East (incidentally, Dr Charlton is a professor at Newcastle university). I won a place at Oxbridge, and went too. 

If my dad had everything I had, he would have got into Oxbridge too. I firmly believe that. Whether he would have wanted to go is another matter entirely. The elite universities have a culture that is a mystery to the working class. They have lunch, then dinner, whereas we have dinner and tea. They have matriculations in latin, gowns in formal hall, beautiful old buildings with lawns you’re not allowed to walk on and sherry with the fellows once a term. Pimms and croquet, a hearty rowing culture and special names for their exams. They are full to busting with people entirely comfortable with this way of life, not wonder the working classes are reluctant to apply there, especially when they come from a family where no one ever lives more than a thirty minute drive from the others. That’s just the culture. Almost all the other students went to public schools or grammar schools, are widely read and super clever. You have to be very bright indeed, and very confident, to hold your own in such company. I am speaking from experience, not stereotypes when I describe this way of life. I had a great time during my one year there before I failed and moved on, but I never truly felt I belonged. This is the problem. Bright young people from working class communities don’t necessarily want this life. 

That’s just the culture. What about the money? In this era of top up fees and general high cost of living, it’s no wonder that students from lower income families would prefer to stay at home and save some of the costs of living and studying elsewhere. There was a student in my Oxbridge college who had everything paid for him, always bought people drinks at the bar, because he always had the money and had a charge card for the main book shop in town. I had to scrip and save my meagre student loan, plus what my parents could afford to give and an overdraft allowance to be able to afford books and day to day expenses. 

Academically? Oxbridge conjures up images of almost casual intelligence. Philosophical chats over Pimms, poetry readings in dark cafés and one on one tutorials with the most intelligent people in the country. This is perhaps a little daunting for someone from a Comp, who has perhaps been beaten up for playing in the band, attending a chess club or getting 10 out of 10 on a test, or whose parents believe they should get their noses out of those books and go and earn some money. 

If the middle classes do have a higher IQ it’s because they have had all the opportunities in the world to develop their intelligence. Because they have been socialised into a culture where intelligence is rewarded, not scorned. This academic believes this is meritocratic. The middle classes are smarter and therefore deserve it more. Rubbish! The middle classes have an almost unassailable advantage over the working classes. 

The elite universities are often so far removed from the day to day reality of many working class communities that it’s no wonder they’re not applying for them. They’re an impenetrable world meant for other people, for the upper classes, people with money and brains, not for them. This is the problem. These universities can admit students if they don’t apply. 

I don’t mean to say that students from comprehensive schools shouldn’t apply to elite universities, quite the opposite. The ancients in particular (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham) along with the London Universities and the major city red brick institutions provide an excellent launch into a world of work where the source of a degree is becoming increasingly more important. We need to know what barriers exist, so that we can abolish them. I hope that as a teacher I will play a small part in this, but attitudes like Dr Charlton’s can only harm the situation.  

Just to keep my loyal readers up to date with the story so far.

Now I just need to make sure I have gotten some of life’s important things out of the way – doctors, dentist and opticians spring to mind. I also need to make sure my OH has a job and that we both have somewhere to live.

If anyone thinks I’ve forgotten something please let me know!

A work colleague recently referred to this as a major life reorganisation.  I can’t think of a better way of putting it!

Today’s online Independent has posted this story. Apparently, the country’s top ranked universities have a problem accepting the academic merit of such courses as drama, media studies and performance and tourism, preferring such old fashioned subjects as Physics, History and Languages ……. I can’t believe this is even news!!!!! Surely this is so ridiculously obvious that anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have grasped this already.

I think that what worries me the most is the fact that our young people are being encouraged by the government and their schools to take these ’soft subjects’ and told that they are considered as being just the same as the more traditional A Levels. While I have my own ideas about the validity of these subjects, I’m not going to go into that now. The fact is that universities want certain skills and they need to be sure that their applicants have learned them. The academics themselves don’t have any experience of drama, media studies or performing arts, so they don’t know what skills these pass on. What they do know is that Physics and Further Maths A Levels means that their applicants for science will have the appropriate level of maths for their course, that applicants for Law who have French A level have no problem with strange and difficult vocabulary and that Arts applicants with an A level in English literature have had plenty of practice writing academic essays. By telling students that the top universities will consider drama on the same level as English Lit schools are potentially damaging their chances of getting into Russell Group universities. It’s all well and good saying that these alternative options are just as useful, just as valid, but until universities come around to this way of thinking, the bright pupils should continue to consider ‘traditional’ academic A levels as their route to the top. And since Languages are widely considered one of the hardest subjects to get good marks in, teachers should definitely encourage their pupils to study them!

Continuing in my quest to get up to date I’ve done a little research into changes to the MFL GCSE exams. The BBC had this to say. This the Guardian’s take on the subject and this is the main Times Education Supplement Forum thread on this topic.

The main gist is that they will be removing the dreaded oral exam – where you trot out your pre prepared and learned by heart presentation on a subject of your choice and then do a role play with your classroom teacher – and replacing it with ongoing teacher assessment. The general feeling is that these exams are too stressful. The main benefit of this is that this could be considered a more realistic assessment of speaking ability, the pupils would be speaking more ‘off-the-cuff’ rather than in rigorously practised sentences. It also removes the element of ‘a bad day’ or ‘nervous blank’ and will help to ensure that the really able and hard working students are appropriately rewarded. 

However, this also means that there will be very little in the way of accountability for the outcome of the exam – the oral exam is at least recorded so it can be considered by a third party. More opportunity for schools to fiddle the system to make sure that they get good exam results for the purposes of league tables. Also, by removing this ’stressful’ exam they are doing the pupils a disservice. The oral exam is a rare chance to test your ability to perform at the correct time – this is a very useful skill out in the real world. 

Personally I think the oral exams could do with shaking up a bit – we do need to test pupils ability to think on the spot, rather than their ability to learn by heart, and despite the opportunities for cheating I do think that this is a better way to ensure that the students who deserve the As are the ones who receive them than the current system. I would still add an ‘interview’ or some other one on one method of assessment, for which the student could prepare, as a way of giving the student who doesn’t like to speak out in front of the class a chance to shine, and as a way to inject a little of that ‘real life stress’ feeling into their language learning. It can be stressful to be in a foreign country trying to get a point across, and we need to make sure they’re prepared for that. 

The question of how to handle and motivate disengaged and rowdy pupils is one that I’ve put a lot of time and energy into considering. I’ve read several books on classroom management, regularly trawl through the TES behaviour forum and spend time looking at teachers blogs for inspiration. You see, up until mow my teaching has been quite sheltered – nice children hand picked for university outreach days, the advanced English classes during my year abroad and other university students when choreographing or directing for university performances. I don’t have a lot of experience with troublesome teenagers (though I’d better be careful not to mention this in the interview). 

I do have some thoughts, though, based on the few problem classes I had during my year abroad combined with my own school days. At school I found that the teachers who could best manage a class were the ones that didn’t shout and didn’t lose their temper, but they also didn’t cave in to student demands or allow bad behaviour. 

In Germany there was one class, the class that wanted to know about my personal life when asking me questions. They were the ones who didn’t want to speak to me in English and who claimed not to understand me. And there was a small group of boys at the back who didn’t want to learn English. I can understand, this was a vocational college, not a grammar school, and they were they to learn accountancy, not English. This was compulsory though, so they had to put up with it.

The lesson I remember best was one where we read from a play about footballers, with the students taking turns to play the characters. They liked it, it was a good play, not too difficult and about  a very popular topic. What really surprised me was when one of the boys in the back repeatedly volunteered to play anyone he could. He always put his hand up rather than shouting out, because he knew that if he did he wouldn’t get the part, which he did a pretty good job of. This one lesson idea has formed the basis of what I hope will be my idea of classroom management. Find something they enjoy doing and use it as a reward. For many of the disengaged pupils punishment can be worn as a badge of honour, what they need to learn is that it’s better to be rewarded for things done well than punished for bad behaviour, even is this does result in kudos from their peer group. The point is that a punishment is not something they care about, whereas if they lose the chance to do something they like they may well do what’s necessary to get it – even if that does mean sitting down, shutting up and getting on with their work.

Like it or not, the French really know how stage a protest! Teachers and students seem to care enough to kick up a stink when their government tries to do something they don’t like. Perhaps our teaching profession could learn a thing or two?

I googled ‘what makes a good teacher’ and got quite a few hits. Clearly this is something that has been thought about and considered by a lot of people around the world. Teachers are important because they help to shape the next generation of people, and good teachers can have a long term effect that goes well beyond just getting good/bad marks in their subject.
Here are a few examples I’ve gleaned from my surfing.

• good teachers really want to be good teachers
• good teachers listen
• good teachers take risks
• good teachers never have enough time
• good teachers love their subject and are able to convey this
• good teachers are firm but fair. 
• good teachers are fun
• good teachers try to understand their students

When I was at school my favourite teachers were the ones who loved their subject and made me love it too. They were the ones with a sense of humour but good classroom management skills. Most importantly, they were the ones that made me feel like I had really achieved something. 

Usually these were the same people. 

Ok, I’m stumped. I have to admit that these new qualifications are confusing – I’m a product of GCSEs, A Levels and a Degree from a good university. I never tried to understand NVQs, GNVQs or BTECs, I never needed to, so the world of vocational qualifications is a little outside of my realm of experience. It seems that these Diplomas are intended to be more than just a vocational qualification though, and that’s where it gets complicated.

In my quest to understand ‘current educational issues’ I read this, this, this and even this in order to better understand these Diploma things. I’ve come to this conclusion – the government intends them to be the be all and end all of educational qualifications at the earliest possible opportunity. The foundation diploma is ‘worth’ about 4/5 GCSEs and can be done at age 14, as can the higher diploma, which is ‘worth’ about 5/6. The Advanced diploma is the A Level alternative and is ‘worth’ three A Levels. There is also a progression diploma, which is worth just two A Levels. The government has also recently announced an extended diploma – and to be honest I’m not entirely sure I know what to make of that. Perhaps that would be worth 4 A levels? Or maybe a full set of GCSEs?

As far as content is concerned, these diplomas will contain a bit of everything and will attempt to combine traditional GCSEs and A Levels with more vocational courses. There are 5 diplomas currently available, in IT, Engineering, Creative and Media, Society, Health and Development and Construction and the Built Environment. They will combine classroom teaching in necessary subjects, as well as functional numeracy and literacy, with experience in employment. There are more to come, with the planned implementation of ‘academic’ diplomas in maths, science and languages – is it just me or does that sound like a direct replacement for A Levels?

This diploma system has ousted the governments former pledge to offer the International Baccalaureate as an alternative for all school children. Personally, I believe the IB is a tried, tested and proven system which gives a well rounded education and allows for good educational and career progression. I’m concerned that kids who take up these new diplomas will be cutting their options – a diploma in engineering, for example, probably won’t include the hard maths that’s a prerequisite for an engineering degree, nor will the IT diploma provide the necessary maths for a degree in Computer Science. I’m also concerned that students taking diplomas in the ’softer’ subjects, such as Creative and Media’ will be cutting their university choices in half – the best universities already don’t look favourably on subjects such as media studies. 

If their goal is to get more young people into universities I’m not sure this is the way to do it. Universities whose degrees are worth having have high entrance requirements for a reason and they are slow to accept change. 

On the other hand we are short of social workers and carers, people who can sort out your computer when it goes on the blink (i.e. IT technicians rather than computer scientists) could be considered as highly useful and there is always a place for creative workers. The country doesn’t need an endless supply of graduates, but nor do we need manual workers, we need plumbers, construction workers and staff to man the endless number of call centres. These jobs need numeracy, literacy and IT skills, so if the new diplomas can provide us with young people with the necessary skills then perhaps there’s a place for them after all.