Will government reforms damage our children’s education?
Personally sympathetic toward the recent teachers’ strike, as a parent I’m ruthlessly more concerned with the impact on my child’s education. When school closes for a day, yes, finding childcare is hard and often expensive but it’s a short-term problem. With the strike, I am wondering about the long-term impact of government changes on our children’s education.
A pamphlet from the two unions that took strike action, the NUT (National Union of Teachers) and NASUWT (too long to spell out), reads: “Teachers are deeply concerned about the impact . . . on the recruitment and retention of teachers and on the provision of quality education for pupils.” It also asserts that proposed changes “could have devastating consequences for our schools”.
After some digging, I found myself constantly thrown back to discussion over performance-related pay. Pensions are important, and people are unhappy about stress and workload. But talk to anyone about performance and pay and you’re in trouble—whether they’re fans or foes.
Boiled down, it means that teachers receive pay-rises when they meet set performance standards. There are no national guidelines on how to measure performance and it will probably be a mix of observation and measuring class results, like SATs and GCSEs.
A representative from the NUT explained to me that this leads to two issues. First, measuring teachers based on test results means that their pay is directly correlated to their pupils’ results. We can guess the potential impact on the teacher-pupil relationship, as well as the pressure it would add onto our children.
Second, measuring teachers based on observation feels random and unfair to some. Apparently, if a child is “off-task”, your observer can put a cross on your checklist and there you go—you’ve failed your assessment; you have no pay-rise this year. This could lead to teachers only wanting to teach in schools or classes with higher results.
However, that is only one side of the story, a justified, heartfelt side, but what if we consider whether teachers should simply be treated the same as other professionals, and measured in the same way? And what if we dare to be positive, remembering all the head teachers who care about our children and their staff?
Performance-related pay—handled in the correct way—could mean fair evaluation and recognition. The people who do well out of it might be the same who would do their best in any case. And with a good head teacher, observation is not a few quick visits; it’s a constant view over their teachers’ performance, providing support where it’s needed, determining when someone is not doing their job properly. As any good manager knows, if they get the best out of their staff, they’ll get the best for their customers, in this case our children.
Having spent many years embroiled in the delivery of this type of change in the private sector—and I once resigned in protest against my company’s handling of their union relationship—I would say the big issue lies with how the government makes these changes, and how the unions deal with them. The Department for Education needs to be open about what they are doing and it needs to talk with the unions, not at them. If it’s about cutting costs, don’t disguise it, just say it—and give teachers the respect they deserve by involving them in the process. And in parallel, the unions need to face up to the harsh economic climate and how each one of us has had to change the way we work. Simply objecting to change does not help. If the government were to involve unions in early discussions, could the unions in turn help find new alternative solutions and support their members through transition?
The Guardian says that this is “part of a bitter and increasingly personal confrontation with the education secretary, Michael Gove.” Let’s hope our children don’t get stuck in the middle.
About the Author:
Alex Blackie is a Shepherd’s Bush writer, mother and big fan of the portfolio career. She’s published in the broadsheets, has a weekly column on Anglo-Australian family life in London, her own blog and loves working at Kite Studios. She spends most of her spare time writing stories and playing word games with her daughter. Photograph by Clara Molden.
