End-of-term Optimism
End-of-term Optimism
End-of-term Optimism
Forgive any whiff of demob-happiness. I’m writing this as the end of another school year gets tantalizingly close whilst in the midst of a strong course of aversion therapy.
According to a learned journal (oh, all right then – Wikipedia) aversion therapy is a type of treatment designed to ‘make a patient give up an undesirable habit by causing them to associate it with an unpleasant effect’.
That seems about right. In my case it entails reading stuff about education in the (okay doctor, here goes, deep breath) Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. The side-effects are fiendish – a tendency to rant, to cry out in nighttime horror, and to fester endlessly on whether we have failed our own children by not sending them to a private school. I gather this is perfectly normal.
These newspapers, it seems, are where we are most likely to unearth the latest golden nugget of government thinking about education. Their pages are where we read of falling standards or inadequate teachers or the shimmering promise of a golden age soon to be restored.
In particular, it’s where we get headlines confirming that Michael Gove is the saviour of Conservative ideals, someone proudly rekindling the dreams of a once-great education system discredited by unruly comprehensives and that only-good-enough-for-slackers qualification, the GCSE, as well as a continually restated affirmation that everyone working in the state sector is – how shall we put this? – rubbish.
So, as we scramble to regain our perspective from the welcome foothills of the school holidays I’d like to lob in some advice to Michael Gove for the year ahead and to fellow school leaders. It’s completely arrogant of me, of course. But as my friend Glenn Ombler said to me in a Maths lesson when I was fourteen: ‘You know your problem don’t you? You suffer from a superiority complex’. His vocabulary as was impressive as his insight.
I take as my first text the holy scripture of Tony Blair’s A Journey (which - talking of big-headedness - was originally to have been called ‘The’ Journey – a title with a certain Old Testament self-confidence about it). In it, he laments the fact that the levers of power are so deceptive, that ideas rustled up in Whitehall bunkers are so difficult to translate into practice, especially across thousands of classrooms.
That’s why I would want to be more cautious than some in awarding Michael Gove an end-of-year A*. There’s certainly been lots of activity, a million announcements, lots of giddy Twitter feeds chirruping stuff. But I subscribe to John Wooden’s motto: "never mistake activity for achievement."
And I’ve recently read Ben Levin’s How to Improve 5000 Schools, based on his experience as deputy minister for education in Ontario (one of the many places overseas the DfE’s policy tour reps want us to emulate). One of the keys to success, he says, is ensuring that ‘public statements of the government are constantly supportive of public education’. Constant criticism won’t make things better.
I would suggest the DfE takes note, so that it begins to feel like a department that’s genuinely ‘for’ education. That means stopping the sniping, the corrosive tone that leads the very parents we need in the state sector to feel that perhaps their local school isn’t as good as everyone locally tells them.
As for school leaders, perhaps we need to stop being quite so cowed in the face of it all. Let’s remind ourselves that other jurisdictions frequently look enviously to us – for the quality of school leadership, our innovation, our emphasis on creativity. They marvel at our pastoral support and the richness of our extra-curricular provision.
After all, the great advantage we have over those working on education issues in distant offices or conferences is that, day in, day out, we work directly with young people. Even on bad days, they usually exude a kind of optimism. Let’s savour it more, celebrate it louder, enjoy more laughter, and relish the privilege of helping to shape young lives for an uncertain but exciting future. They’re the people we truly serve.
Geoff Barton
TES
28 July 2012
Saturday, 28 July 2012