Optimism from the classroom vs. pessimism in mainstream discourse.

If you have access to the myriad education conversations and collaborations on LinkedIn or spend time visiting some of the thousands of classrooms led by gifted teachers across the globe, you would be rightly optimistic about the future.

However, if you are listening to, or reading about education in the mainstream press, or from the mouths of some political leaders, the opposite is true.

I sat through an entire day of Andrew Laming’s exploration of teacher workloads a few years ago, but when the report came out, I couldn’t believe we had been in the same room. The questions were sound, but the interpretation of the answers was astonishing.

Some of us thought the change in government would have more respect for the teaching profession. The announcement of Jason Clare as federal education minister was a surprise, but he did seem to be passionate about education and teachers.  Sadly, he has shown a similar lack of ability in interpreting the data gathered from teachers in various round tables and committees. Right alongside the Grattan Institute.

A Seat at the Table: Who Should Shape Education Policy?
The need for greater teacher and student representation in decision-making.

Teacher mentoring and coaching

And about those roundtables, we have to stop being grateful when politicians invite a couple of teachers to join the discussions.  One teacher at a table for five is not enough, it needs to be the other way around. There also need to be students at the table.

When I was a classroom teacher it was the daily time spent with remarkable high school students that gave me hope. Our students are smart. They ask good questions and display a keen interest in the future of our world. They have fewer biases and can’t get their head around some of the ridiculous attitudes of the past.  What is more, they are keen to take responsibility for the future that they will need to live in. 

Trusting Our Students: Moving Beyond Bans
Why listening to young people is key to future-ready education.

Recent moves to ‘ban’ things, be it mobile phones or social media, show a profound distrust of our young people.  If you were working  with them and/ listening to them you would realise that they know more about technology than any of the people trying to ‘protect’ them.  Even more shortsighted is that by banning things we are robbing teachers and students of the chance to learn about and develop processes for managing new technologies.

At Edutech last year, Michelle Dennis,  the Head of Digital at Haileybury College, and without doubt one of our most experienced educators in the field of technology, pointed out that it is not the specific technology that we have to worry about.  As many were wringing their hands in fear of AI, Dennis’s voice of reason explained that the specific technology was not the issue, teachers already know how to teach critical thinking,  to teach responsible use and explore ethics. 

Warning Signs: The Return of Industrial-Style Education

I had a terrifying conversation late last year with someone who had returned from a fact finding trip with the Grattan Institute. They had visited some schools in depressed areas of the UK.  The schools were showing improvements in their results. This person was so excited and animated as they explained how all the desks were in rows facing the front and the teacher was at the front and in control. The students had some kind of tablet or something and if they had a question they held it up where the teacher could see it.   

I had to tell this person, who I both admire and like, that they needed to know I would fight, with my last breath, to stop any such Orwellian practices being adopted in our schools.   My friend was surprised, she said everyone was thrilled with it. The teachers, the students and the parents.  Of course they were happy with it. The teachers were probably just relieved that a little of the pressure had been alleviated,  the parents were happy because the children were easier to manage, and the children were happy because they didn’t have to do the hard work anymore. They just followed instructions. 

My response to several of the arguments was simple. ‘Fascism works.’ A claim she finally ruefully agreed with.

Prioritizing Teacher Retention and Respect

Resources for Teachers

As I mentioned at the very beginning of this article, there are unbelievably committed educators doing great work in classrooms across the world. Here in Australia, we have teachers who are regularly being named on lists of the best teachers globally.  They know what we need in education and schools, and they keep working despite being disrespected and ignored. 

The announcement of some $40,000 scholarships was nice, but it will do nothing to solve the current teacher crisis.  Recruitment is all very well, but if they are just bleeding out the other end it is money being thrown down the drain.

I remember way back when I was in high school, one of the only ways for a working-class student to get to university was a teaching studentship.

It was not common for the average student to stay at school beyond Year 10, so you sat an exam at the end of that year which was designed to indicate whether a student had potential. Then at the end of Year 12 you sat the matriculation exam which could give you access to a teacher’s college or university.

The important point here was that the exams were not easy. Getting to be a teacher was hard. Teachers were the best and the brightest.

While getting to be a teacher is not quite so hard these days, every time a politician or bureaucrat talks about getting the best and the brightest into classrooms, the profession bleeds another batch of brilliant, exhausted and disempowered teachers.

We need to keep the teachers we have.  Not only because of their experience and expertise, but in basic economic terms the cost of recruitment is much higher than the cost of retention.

The Insult of Standardised Solutions

It is retention that needs attention and money. And not just for teacher pay. 

When teachers told researchers from the Grattan Institute that they were concerned about time to work on lesson plans, the Institute thought they could help by providing teachers with lots of ready-made lesson plans.

It is hard to quantify the magnitude of that insult. Creating lesson plans is a core activity for teachers. They are complex documents that teachers create based on the individual needs of the students sitting in front of them.  Every class is different, what works with one may not work with another. And every day is different. Our students are children and children are not ever standardised or even consistent. 

If you want to really understand the concept of innovation, spend a month in a classroom.

The correct interpretation of the Grattan Institutes data was that teachers needed to have the crippling burden of administration and reporting removed so that they could do the work that they were trained to do.

The work they care about.

A teacher in a classroom sorting papers

Governments need to allocate funds that can be used to hire admin support for curriculum departments.  Support that can manage budgets and the paperwork around excursions and incursions. Help in managing the mountains of reporting that gets in the way of actually teaching.  

Unless governments and departments make a concerted effort to display their respect for and appreciation of teachers, things are not going to get better.

Education’s Place in Society’s Priorities

While it may not be obvious straight away, I do believe that an example of our government’s and societies disregard for teachers and education could be seen in the move to curb the number of international students.

The primary reason given at the time was that numbers were to be restricted depending on the universities ability to provide housing.  On a side note, there was a somewhat misguided move some years back to downgrade student housing in line with what was happening in the US and the UK but that is another article altogether.

It is important to understand the value of international students to our economy. They bring in a lot of money, but you don’t hear much about that.  You hear more about the economic value of a loud and intrusive car race. 

If governments, and I mean all of them, were serious about solving the housing crisis there are 2 things that could quickly help. First they could get rid of negative gearing, and second, they could restrict housing ownership to citizens. After all, the great Australian dream consisted of one family home, not a property portfolio. Each of these could be effective ways of dealing with the housing issue, but they would not be popular.

Much easier to put some responsibility onto universities, because our society as a whole doesn’t really care about them.

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