The government’s whole attitude towards teaching has to change

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/sep/06/teachers-education-shortages

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Your report on the shortage of teachers draws attention to a serious issue not only for today’s children and their schools but also to the future of this country(“Shortage of teachers set to spark new schools crisis”, News). Over many years, the government has constricted the ability of teachers to respond to the broad educational needs of the children. The emphasis has been on the narrow final results deemed desirable. The current testing is much more concerned with putting children and schools in an order rather than diagnosing children’s needs and is certainly no better than the old 11-plus test that, the Plowden report of 1967 noted, caused a considerable percentage of children to be misplaced in grammar or secondary modern schools. A similar process has been followed in the inspection of schools and teachers under the Ofsted arrangements, ie the main object is to find fault.

There will be occasions when positive action has to be taken to modify the behaviour of a child or a school, but the overwhelming activity should be on helping that  child, teacher or school not simply because we can all manage life better in some aspects but because we must respond to the changes that are taking place around us. Professor Norman ThomasFormer chief inspector for primary education in EnglandSt Albans, Hertfordshire

I was a head of department in a large state comprehensive for 30 years. During that time, I saw a steady but relentless erosion of teacher confidence, autonomy and satisfaction, with the inevitable and now sustained reported crisis of recruitment and retention.

What is disappointing about the Observer’s analysis is that it parrots remedies that have already failed, to the point of being part of the problem: “strong accountability”, enforced by unsympathetic inspectors, and “high-quality leadership”, usually parachuted in from outside the institution. The article does however mention a “rewarding, values-based vocation” and the need to recruit the best.

What most commentators on education omit to mention is so obvious that it is almost tedious to point it out, though all teachers know it, and most parents too. What draws good people into the profession is not money or status, though these help enormously. The real motivators for great teaching are a passion for the subject and a gift for sharing this with inquisitive young minds.

No price can be put on these qualities, though they can be easily crushed by ideological reorganisation, relentless pressure to “get results”,  political tinkering, autocratic syllabus change, endless micro-management and constant vilification by officials. The only training teachers now receive is transactional, efficiency-based instruction, not open-ended sharing of ideas and good practice. What children are inflicted with is a static, transmission-based model of learning, which hardly suits the spirit of an age dominated by innovation and change. 

Our schools will continue to drift until they are made once more places of creativity, enjoyment and exciting discovery, though at present there seems no appetite for this, and even less vision.Trevor RollingsGoring-by-Sea, West Sussex 

In your editorial on the teaching shortage, you suggest that “teaching unions have rightly highlighted the profession’s low morale and rising stress levels” but “this is used to justify arguing for a move away from a high-stakes accountability system”. This is a gross misrepresentation of the unattractiveness of a vocational career at a time when remuneration is limited, severely restricted by punitive and unreasonable performance targets and an unhelpful avalanche of criticisms of school performance.

There is a severe shortage of teachers in south-east England, but this is a national crisis, certainly not helped by the worrying signs that the government is burying its head in the sand .Fred Greaves Division secretarySurrey NUT