The problem with Nicky Morgan’s National Teaching Service
Dr Jon Berry takes issue with how the education secretary plans to incentivise the 1500 outstanding teachers and middle leaders that will make up the new National Teaching Service… Sometimes you just have to admire people’s nerve. The Conservatives tell us they are the true workers’ party. Nicky Morgan uses her speech to the Policy […]
- by Jon Berry
Dr Jon Berry takes issue with how the education secretary plans to incentivise the 1500 outstanding teachers and middle leaders that will make up the new National Teaching Service…
Sometimes you just have to admire people’s nerve. The Conservatives tell us they are the true workers’ party. Nicky Morgan uses her speech to the Policy Exchange to tell us that she wants schools to be ‘the real engines of social justice’. They’ll just have to forgive me if I’m struggling to match this up to a party that makes the poorest in society responsible for paying down debts run up by the richest.
As part of this commitment to social justice, Ms Morgan has realised that there are parts of this country where economic deprivation and a lack of worthwhile employment need to be addressed. In such areas, low educational achievement goes hand in hand with an equally low regard for the importance of school. What’s more, it’s difficult to recruit teachers to work in such places. Who knew, eh?
Spot the flaws By 2020, she tells us, the new National Teaching Service will deploy (her word) 1500 outstanding teachers and middle leaders to underperforming schools. These crack squads of ‘the brightest and the best’ are going to ‘tackle underperformance’, ‘drive up standards’ and ‘deliver’ (there seems to be a lot of delivery about in schools) excellent education. In exchange for their efforts, this glittering elite will be placed on ‘a clear path to promotion and leadership roles’. I can’t wait to meet them.
You may have spotted a flaw or two. Ms Morgan herself acknowledges that she is “Acutely aware that recruitment isn’t easy at the moment for lots of schools”. So does she have a plan? She certainly does. She and her colleagues will “Continue to look at what incentives we need to attract these outstanding teachers.”
Well, that’s okay then. For a moment I was worried that she might just be making it up as she went along. Unfortunately, we’re not made privy to what, precisely, these incentives might be.
Recurring crises One thing that won’t solve the problem is money. Generous bursaries and rapid promotion may well be attractive to this new cadre of super teachers, especially if they’re saddled with student debt or, heaven forfend, trying to find somewhere respectable to live south of the Trent. Getting them in isn’t the main problem (though that is becoming progressively more difficult). Keeping them there is another story.
I expect that most readers of this piece will be teachers, so I won’t bother refuting stale arguments about short hours, long holidays and not being in the ‘real world’. If teaching were such an attractive proposition then we wouldn’t have these recurring crises of recruitment and retention.
However, it’s worth repeating a truism about teachers that I know from being one, training them and researching them over five decades – if there is one group of workers who need no lectures about the nature of hard work, it’s teachers. They sign up for it, expect it and relish it – just so long as it all manifests itself in good lessons and proper learning.
Micro-managed What drags them down and drains their spirit is an unremitting regime of data collection, high-stakes scrutiny and a need to ‘prove’ that their pupils have learnt something. The constant requirement to measure progress, usually against dubious and arbitrary criteria, now dominates school life at every level.
No teacher ever came into the profession to depress standards or diminish children’s chances of success – but to look at how they are now micro-managed to within an inch of their working lives, you’d be excused for thinking that this is precisely what they want to do.
As if to prove the point, Ms Morgan now wants to reintroduce tests for 7-year-olds. More tests, more coaching and rehearsal, more high-stakes publication of results, more pressure on teachers. When a House of Commons Select Committee tells her that it’s workload and bureaucracy that drive people out of the profession, you have to wonder where she’s getting her ideas from.
An energetic army of bright, creative teachers who won’t run out of steam after a year or two? Yes please. But if that’s what you want, let’s leave them to learn how to teach and gather valuable experience without squashing them with marking trawls, learning walks and meaningless spreadsheets.
Dr Jon Berry is the Programme Director for the educational doctorate at the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Education; he can be contacted at j.berry@herts.ac.uk
Jon’s upcoming book, Teachers Undefeated: how education reform has failed to crush the spirit of educators, is due to be published by Trentham Books/IOE press in March 2016
