Yet another survey – this time a YouGov poll of 1,000 teachers, for the think-tank LKMco and Pearson Education – tells us that a significant number (59 per cent in this case) have recently thought about leaving the profession. The study finds a general “sense of disillusionment”, in which workload plays the leading part.
The finger of blame usually points to government policies, and particularly the inspection regime. In these pages in March this year, Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, expressed a widely held view when she wrote: “I believe that Ofsted is no longer, if it ever was, a force for good in our education system.” (1)
That, though, is surely not the whole story. Ofsted inspectors make whole-school judgements, and it seems to me that if a classroom teacher is fearful of Ofsted, then the school leader needs to say: “Look at me. I’m your manager. You do your job within the policies and guidelines we’ve agreed and leave Ofsted to me.”
And yet we find that there are schools where heads and principals do use the threat of Ofsted to put the frighteners on their teachers. “Kate”, for example, an anonymous teacher interviewed for BBC’s File on Four earlier this year, said: “They (the leadership) just kept saying to us, ‘we have to keep our (Ofsted) Outstanding’.” (2)
Kate also said: “They’d want to see tons of green pen in books, because to them that was evidence that learning and feedback had taken place.”
Marking, it seems, is one of the main pressure points through which some school leaders push their Ofsted anxieties towards classroom teachers, by going for a better-safe-than-sorry, “if in doubt, mark everything”, policy that well exceeds official expectations.
Teacher and writer Alex Quigley (@HuntingEnglish) is just one who criticises this tendency to over-react: “Fearful schools often misinterpret what Ofsted is looking for,” he wrote last October. “Anxious school leaders seeking to ensure ‘consistency’ of written feedback – with all the complexity that such a euphemistic term implies – drive teachers into the mire of workload overload. I have heard tales of teachers being made to photocopy evidence of weekly feedback so that senior leaders can create a heaving folder of evidence for Ofsted.”
What does this emphasis on marking do for the quality of the preparation which should also occupy their out-of-class time? Are lessons to become repetitive, reach-me-down affairs downloaded from somewhere and designed only to produce the kind of work that can be marked according to a formula? It seems to me that the lesson which includes discussion, children talking and listening, perhaps a bit of role-play, but no pupil writing, is at risk.
Long ago, in what were perhaps less stressful times, I would say to colleagues: “Just remember that every hour spent marking is an hour that might be used more productively on preparation.”
How could I know that by 2015 teachers would be pulling all-nighters trying to do both?
Of course, marking has always had more than one audience – school leaders and parents, as well as the pupils. Now, though, it seems that some teachers live in a world where the core readership of their green pen annotations is assumed to be an inspection team who may or may not appear at any moment. Or rather, not even a real inspection team, but a fantasy version imagined by the head or principal.
And yet, undoubtedly there are school leaders who stand up to be counted on all this. They are the ones who study the Ofsted requirements carefully, interpret them in ways which best suit the professional expertise of their colleagues, and are then ready to defend what they know to be right.
Writing on the LKMco website last month, its director Loic Menzies suggests there’s at least a possibility that heads who develop this protective attitude will be the ones able to recruit staff when times are hard: “The schools best placed to weather the recruitment crisis will be those where great leaders give teachers space to be effective and cut out all unnecessary workload.
“When a desperate shortage of teachers becomes the most urgent concern, might school leaders stick two fingers up to accountability and prioritise a manageable working environment that secures them scarce teachers instead?” (3)
Children know, believe me, when their school has a happy and purposeful staffroom, where teachers believe in what they are about and bring their optimism and good humour into class. To lose that balance, and allow teachers to become disengaged, or to look for the exit, is to put at risk the very improvement that our government seeks.
That same YouGov survey says that 93 per cent of teachers go into the job to make a difference to children’s lives. If they are to preserve that sense of optimism through a successful career, then all those with influence, from the Cabinet down to leaders of schools, must start right now doing all they can to give teachers a reasonable work/life balance.
- Gerald Haigh was a teacher in primary, secondary and special schools for 30 years, 11 of them in headship. You can find him on Twitter @geraldhaigh1
References
1: Ofsted – No Longer Fit For Purpose, SecEd, March 2015: www.sec-ed.co.uk/blog/ofsted-no-longer-fit-for-purpose/
2: Teacher Stress Levels in England ‘Soaring’, Data Shows, BBC, March 2015: www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-31921457
3: Could the Recruitment Crisis Prompt Action on the Workload Crisis? LKMco, October 2015: www.lkmco.org/could-the-recruitment-crisis-prompt-action-on-the-workload-crisis/