The striking mistake
pete quentin, 25 April 2008
It is of no great surprise to read in the Times Education Supplement (TES) today that a majority of parents were not sympathetic to the National Union of Teacher’s strike yesterday. Aside from the obvious reason – having to make childcare arrangements for the day – a large number of parents felt that teachers should be satisfied with their pay. (A teacher’s basic starting salary in the UK is currently £20,133, with an additional £4,000 London weighting, whilst the average experienced teacher’s salary is around £34,281).
Together with the TES, the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations surveyed the views of 750 parents and found that 63 per cent of parents thought that the government’s 2.45 per cent pay increase was either sufficient or more than sufficient.
The strike, which affected nearly a third of schools across the country, was the first industrial action of its sort for 21 years. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) went ahead with its 24-hour strike after members voted to do so in a protest against the government’s proposed 2.45 per cent pay increase – rather than a pay increase in line with inflation according to the Retail Prices Index, which would equate to around 4 per cent.
The depressing thing about yesterday’s – and there is talk of further – industrial action by the NUT, is that it is not in reaction to the real issue which is severely hampering teachers. If there is a need for a revolution from within the education system, it is in relation to conditions, not pay. Research on teacher recruitment and retention in the England has continually found that it is the workload and straitjacketing of teachers, rather than salary, which is the main source of alienation. Warranting a revolt in particular, are two of the biggest open secrets in the education system: the deeply pernicious pressures on teachers to teach-to-the-test and the pointless hoops which schools are required to jump through for Ofsted. Were there to be a backlash against government-via-Local Authority pressure on schools to narrow the curriculum in order to cram pupils for official tests, for example, then parents would likely be more sympathetic. When the situation in terms of distortions through ‘micromanagement’, as former Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Chief Executive David Hargreaves referred to it this week, is at such crisis point, it is worrying that the country’s largest teaching union is using up its energies on something which is not even bordering on crisis point.
Defending the decision to strike, the NUT argued that ‘decent pay levels’ were needed to indicate that ‘teachers were respected and valued’. However under New Labour in particular, it is much less through pay, which has seen a continual increase, than through teacher de-professionalisation – which has also seen a continual increase – that the respect and value of teachers has been undermined.
I spent seven years at my local grammar school, convinced, on the basis of my experiences there, of my own lack of ability. I spent half my time in class trying to stay awake, with predictable consequences for the standard of my work. Nor did I seem to have anything in common with my classmates – my nickname was “Martian”.
I was repeatedly told by my teachers how lucky I was to be at Bourenemouth School – how what happened there could easily affect the whole of the rest of my life, and therefore how important it was that I should trust them. I believed them implicitly, as did my parents. I could therefore only conclude that my poor performance reflected my own lack of ability – nor did I hear anything from my teachers to contradict this.
I failed my O Levels the first time around, and had to resit, my parents having to come in and apologise to the school on my behalf, asking for me to be given a second chance.
I left school deeply depressed, believing that I had been offered a chance I had simply lacked the potential to take advantage of. My eldest sister said that she thought that I had had the potential to try for Oxford or Cambridge, but I could only assume that she was allowing her family feelings to overcome her common sense.
Some years later, having gained a string of qualifications by part-time study, I passed the Mensa entrance exams with a score placing me in the top 1% of the population.
Trying to make sense of this, I discovered that my experiences were not uncommon for gifted chilldren within the state system. I also discovered that my school had know of my true status, from some tests I had taken at the end of my time at Junior School, but had simply kept the details quiet.
However, when I tried to take the matter further with my old school, I was told that, as a gifted child, I was not legally recognised as having special needs. My teachers may have concealed the truth from me, done me immense long-term harm, but they had apparently had no responsibilty towards me, despite the fact that they had repeatedly urged me to trust them.
As a Mensa member, I have become aware of how little status – how few rights – a gifted child enjoys in a system dedicated to “fairness” and “equality”.
A few years ago, the then Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, expressed his concern at the large number of “particularly bright” teenagers he had found in the various YOung Offender Institutions he had visited – victims, as he saw it, of an education system that failed to meet their needs, leaving them bored and frustrated, all too apt to indulge in anti-social behaviour.
Shortly after that, we saw the arrival of NAGTY – the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth – designed to provide special tuition for the very brightest students.
Unfortunately, at the beginning of 2007, the Daily Telegraph carried an article stating that the government was worried about the future of NAGTY, due to the failure of so many teachers, on ideological grounds, to co-operate with it.
I could go on.
You will appreciate that, as a former member of what might be described as a persecuted minority within the education system, I find it difficult to accept that the system’s problems can be solved by giving teachers more freedom, given what they do with the freedom they have.
Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name! The same applying to equality, it would seem.