The Great Exception

Just a reminder that my book The Great Exception – Why teaching is a profession like no other is still available here.

A teacher-reviewer described it thus:

This is a very thought provoking book. It is a challenging read, but once you get into it, it prompts you to reflect on what and how we should be teaching our children. These days, education seems to be all about exam results, but the author argues that there should be more to it than [apparent] academic success. He examines the nature of teaching and learning in depth and successfully makes a case for more autonomy for teachers, who at present, are to some extent hampered and frustrated by prescriptive guidelines on how to manage their classes. Teachers in training could learn a lot from dipping into ‘The Great Exception’.

Here is a short except:

…I want to discuss here the conflicts that the systems-approach creates in terms of what it actually means to be a teacher. The choice of words is important: to be a teacher, not simply to teach. The latter implies a specific physical activity that can, at least in theory, be defined as a discrete set of actions which can therefore be specified and measured. It also implies a recruitment process that is focused on technical proficiency that can be both easily defined for the purposes of job advertisements and judged during the recruitment process. It supposedly makes the evaluation of that process relatively easy when it comes to the whole matter of appraisal, reward and even capability proceedings. However, it overlooks the crucial matter discussed above – that much of being an effective teacher is a matter of personal qualities and characteristics that are neither easily identified nor measured. These non-cognitive qualities may be difficult to identify – but they are often the things that determine what sort of role-model an individual will make – and thereby what context they will generate within which to exercise more specific skills. As Hilary Wilce has observed, children tend to take their leads from role model behaviours not instructions – and it is for this reason that wider teacher-qualities and behaviours are so important.

That schools have to operate within a regulatory framework that promotes quantifiable, accountable decision-making is, of course, not their own fault; neither is it necessarily an undesirable thing in itself, as there clearly needs to be some mechanism for regulating these processes and identifying out-and-out malpractice. However, the presence of such defined, black-or-white prescriptions for teaching can easily cause wider issues to be forgotten under the onslaught of an officially-sanctioned ‘truth’. The ways in which such constraints are then interpreted can lead to a narrowing of job descriptions and a loss of appreciation of the actual qualities that make up a successful teacher, many of which are indeed intangible. However, the latitude for autonomy and self-determination that can be read into such frameworks by individual managements can still make matters significantly either better or worse, as suggested by the varying degrees of teacher freedom observed from one school to another.

The fact that teacher-specifications have increasingly focused on technical capability at the expense of more indefinable personal qualities may be a reaction to outside circumstances, such as the need to widen the field of potential teachers to those who perhaps lack natural talent or insight, but who are nonetheless needed on sheer numerical grounds. Likewise, anti-discrimination legislation has perhaps forced more specific criteria on those involved in recruitment. But it has nonetheless shifted general perceptions of what it is to be a teacher, from that of someone with desirable personal qualities to that of ‘mere’ technical ability.

If this seems like a rather idealistic argument, then I suggest attempting a similar exercise in drawing up a ‘job description’ for an artist, actor or indeed a spouse, and then appraising their effectiveness in finding the ideal candidate. One might also consider the effect of one’s own behaviours on the responses one obtains from such people. Teaching has often been likened to acting in terms of the qualities required to ‘hold’ a class – but a merely technical outline of the necessary requirements for being an actor do not approach an explanation of why some actors are celebrated while others spend a lot of time ‘resting’. It comes down to a unique and largely indefinable set of specific personal qualities. The same is certainly true of spouses; I cannot imagine there are many people who would consider willingly marrying someone purely on the basis of a technical description, for all that dating agencies attempt to do just that…

I am told that the chief inspector of schools Amanda Spielman has a copy. Whether it has been opened or not is, of course, another matter…

She’s done it again!

When Amanda Spielman was appointed as Chief Inspector of Schools at Ofsted, there were the predictable sniffy responses from the profession: what could a non-teacher know about the education profession?

Well, it turns out that an outside voice is proving to be just what is needed. Spielman is unexpectedly becoming the ‘breath of fresh air’ that the profession so badly needs.

In recent days she has observed that it is not reasonable to expect schools and teachers to address all of society’s ills – that parents and other agencies need to be responsible for their own impact too. And more recently still she has called on professional leaders to abandon their preoccupation with pedagogical gimmicks  (singling out Brain Gym as an example), and allow teachers to focus on the basics using tried and tested techniques that work for them in classrooms.

The teaching profession has always been prone to the distractions of gimmickry: the whole progressive movement is predicated on – as Spielman observed – the belief that the Holy Grail is waiting just around the next corner. It is not. The problem has only been made worse in recent years by school managements desperately plugging anything that they hoped might push their institutions up the league tables.

My only regret is that personally, Spielman has come a few years too late: during my career I was repeatedly bombarded with instructions to adopt such gimmicks by a few influential people in my school who saw this as the way to ‘lead learning’. Their influence was reinforced by rather more others in middle management who were reluctant to challenge them. It was made clear that disagreement was not permissible. It was my reluctance to comply with – and my willingness to challenge – such idiocy that first saw me marked by those who in reality were more interested in compliance that cultivating real professional excellence. Much of what Spielman is now saying formed the core of my own book on teaching and education.

There remain those for whom it seems imperative that education should dance to some all-embracing meta-tune. It is not unreasonable for the profession to seek some form of consensus over what works – but it should not be ideologically driven, and it is good to see Spielman in effect challenging this. As I proposed in The Great Exception, it is entirely possible to derive a model of good professional practice that is based in the realities of good classroom practice rather than the vanities and insanities of those who are always looking for the Next Big Thing.

Sheeple

“You can’t not have exams!” The old guy (a former teacher) was incredulous. I decided to play devil’s advocate. “Why not?”

“How would you educate the pupils? How would they get jobs without qualifications?”

The conversation came after he had finished reading The Great Exception, and I was being subjected to an intense grilling over its contents. I decided not to go down the avenues of what constitutes meaningful assessment, or the fact that other countries seem to manage very well with alternative structures.

I will say outright that I do not doubt the need for testing; the discussion was founded on a misreading of my point – but it only emphasised the extent to which the education world is lost in its own circular reasoning. One could easily get the impression that the world would stop turning were formal education – and hence exams – to cease to exist. But it is not so. What I question is that exams should be seen as the purpose of education: a view that has become steadily more pervasive.

Without exams, education would continue in other forms – after all, in essence it is nothing more than the process by which newly-arrived young creatures (even sheep) make sense of the world they find, and the vast majority of life on this planet manages quite well without examinations. It is true to say, however, that most ‘higher’ forms of life involve some form of education of the young by the old, even if mostly just by imitation. And even in ‘primitive’ human societies, some form of testing often emerges to validate that process.

As with musicians working towards a performance, a focus is desirable, if not essential for most learning – as indeed for work in general. It provides both a discrete objective and an incentive, in the form of validation of the effort invested and the standard achieved.

The problem comes from the short-sightedness that can ensue. The fact that one creates a largely artificial construct in order to motivate and validate does not mean that that benchmark is, or should be, the sole purpose of the exercise. I suspect many would accept that the point of learning to play music is not just to pass exams, or even to perform. It is an end in its own right, though the way it is often pursued makes it easy to lose sight of the fact.

Although I have reservations about the mentality that it develops, I don’t even object to the pursuit of targets per se – if that is what gives a certain kind of character its kicks – but we should still not conflate an appetite for challenge with the medium which some people happen to use to fulfil it. If ‘challenge’ is your thing, then it arguably doesn’t matter too much whether you express it through passing music exams, academic exams, learning watch-making or pushing your 100 metres personal best.

But the pursuit of challenge often crowds out the initial purpose of its ‘carrier’ medium. The point of music is to enjoy the creation or hearing of music as in intrinsic ‘good’. One assumes – though the case is somewhat weaker – that the point of running is at least in part to enjoy running. To see it as nothing more than the means to a (target) end is to allow extrinsic motivators to crowd out the intrinsic ones. This comes with a cost.

In the case of intellectual activity, the purpose is not to pass exams, but to develop one’s cognitive ability for its own sake, of which any specific application can only ever be a sub-objective. This is perhaps the most important activity of all, because the ability to use it is not only intrinsically rewarding, but also adaptively useful. It allows one to address life‘s problems in a more considered way, and generally to act more autonomously through the ability to analyse for oneself rather than being reliant on others for what to think or do.

To some extent, I can close purpose with my interlocutor here, because there is no doubt at all that one use of such abilities is indeed their application to Work, and the certificate that one gains through achieving a certain level is (supposedly) a marker of one’s effectiveness in that respect. But we should still not confuse the validation with the process itself.
Einstein is credited with the quote:

“Education is what is left when one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”

– though he may have been borrowing it from a perceptive but unknown wag. It is surely correct: the only inherent purpose of education is that which is common to all species: the development of the cognitive abilities that allow one to operate more effectively. All else is peripheral, no matter how enjoyable, or socially-useful we make it.

But the old guy’s comments were evidence of the extent to which we have lost sight of this: the social and economic advantages which recognised education can bring have trumped its fundamental purpose. Inasmuch as intellectual fulfilment can be gratuitous, so has this too: the capabilities one can acquire in specific disciplines are useful, and intellectually rewarding in their own right – but they too are nothing more than ‘carriers’ for the neural effect that such experiences can cause in building networks in the brain. This is what Einstein meant: the only true purpose of education is its cognitive effect; once you have that, everything else flows from it.

This is not to say that the incidental benefits of learning are unimportant but they are still nothing more than incidental, and their use is still dependent on effective neural development. It is quite possible for forms of formal education to fail to develop that – while still handing out certificates like confetti, in effect for simply having ‘breathed the air’.

The vast multitude of ‘qualifications’ held by populations around the world do not stop them from making some pretty stupid decisions, which better ability to self-scrutinise cognitively might reveal this fact. This is no surprise: qualifications are simply social constructs that attempt to reflect (imperfectly) someone’s real abilities. But the focusing on the peripheral benefits – to the extent of losing sight of their true status – can even prevent people from using their brains in the way they need to. Alvesson & Spicer’s book The Stupidity Paradox is a testament to the fact the even extremely clever people can act very stupidly when circumstances conspire.

The inability of people to scrutinise claims made in the Brexit debate is just the most extreme recent example of how all the certificates in the world do not in themselves prove people can use their heads. It may even be getting worse. There was some correlation between education levels and voting decisions, but I am not implying that there was a ‘correct’ decision – simply that the grounds on which it was made were often flimsy. Subsequent developments have shown this to be so.

This comes at the time when the subject that arguably most directly addressed the issue has been removed from the school curriculum. Simply because it did not meet QCA’s administrative criteria, Critical Thinking ‘A’ Level is no more. I suppose I should not be surprised: the formal educational establishment in Britain long ago lost sight of its true raison d’être. Just as the financial sector stopped funding the real economy when it was allowed to manufacture greater (spurious) benefit from financial engineering, the education sector long ago stopped being about actually educating people in the neural sense, and started being about fulfilling its own internal objectives.

So long ago, in fact, that it seems that even several previous generations of teachers cannot be relied upon to have noticed. But the consequences of this myopia are very real, and living with us in the way society as a whole is changing today. Its growing failure to do anything more than equip people with meaningless bits of paper is the elephant in the room of why education is not achieving what it supposedly sets out to.

With even the professional educational world largely thinking like sheep, one wonders what hope there is.

The Joy of Confirmation Bias

I wish I had read The Black Swan sooner. It is an engaging if sometimes challenging read. Taleb is a somewhat unconventional writer and he does not always explain complex concepts with the layman in mind. (I was initially floundering on the use of fractals in probability calculations…) But its basic message is worth the effort, and confirmation bias alone sees to it that it is satisfying to read something that justifies one’s own prior thoughts!

I show below a table reproduced from the later stages of the book. In it Taleb summarises contrasts in ways which different paradigms approach uncertainty. A Black Swan is a high-impact, low-frequency event that nonetheless has a massive effect; for instance, Taleb claims that 50% of the value of American stocks has been added by just ten tumultuous days in the last 50 years; similarly, just one blockbuster can completely turn a publisher’s fortunes around. Getting lucky enough to ride such a wave can be transformative, as can the negative impact of unforeseen catastrophes.

The salient point for teaching, I think, is that there are aspects of life where grand master-plans and scientific predictions simply do not wash. Taleb points out that the social sciences and human behaviour in general are amongst them. There is no point in organising such phenomena around the diktats of elegant theories, or statistical predictions: the range of possible human responses to educational acts is just too great to call, and it does not regress to the mean either – something which most models assume. It is the educational equivalent of the Butterfly Effect.

One might conceive of a small event in a pupil’s schooling, that unbeknown to the teacher ‘lights a bulb in the mind’, and eventually causes that pupil to become the next Bill Gates or Stephen Hawking. I wonder what effect size John Hattie would ascribe to that… But to a lesser extent, the same is true about the actual effects of any educational (or other) interaction; this is why trying to identify and then depend on known ‘outcomes’ is pointless. (One might also consider the effect on the ‘total career impact’  of a teacher, of the act that produces the next Einstein!).

When I was writing my own book, I felt slightly uneasy that I could not substantiate sufficiently my claim that educational interactions are ‘irreducible events whose outcomes are only known to those involved’. For all that it felt right, justifying it was more difficult. But here, at last, is something that I think comes close. If it is indeed true that some effects in this world are governed by a fractal model of probability rather than a Bell Curve, then it is entirely possible for the effects of a teacher on a pupil to be unknowable – an educational Black Swan.

This does not mean that extreme events will occur frequently, but equally it does mean that they are eminently possible, and that we should not seek to build theories without allowing for them. Likewise, for every pupil who ‘works hard and succeeds’, how many (often unseen) pupils work hard but don’t? Or don’t work hard, but still do? It’s a deeply misleading relationship to suggest to people.

But given that they are unknowable in both nature and occurrence, we cannot therefore build accurate models of our effect. Resorting to those we have on the grounds that they are better than nothing does not make them any more accurate.

Taleb suggests that the only sensible response to this is Sceptical Empiricism, in other words a mode of working that is deductive: it works from reality to concept, rather than the opposite, always remembering that the past is not a good predictor of the future. The chart summarises the differences between this approach and the more conventional one, which does indeed look more like the present-day character of some education systems.

I was delighted to note that Taleb describes this approach as being ‘sophisticated craft’ rather than ‘poor science’ – which is indeed exactly how I would characterise my view of teaching vis à vis the established one, and what I proposed in the conclusion of my own book. And as he says, it is better to be broadly right than precisely wrong.

Which is what the current models being used in education are.

Icarus

The criticism of schools minister Nick Gibb by an educational researcher for quoting a ‘mere blogger’ (Old Andrew) seems to have created a minor storm – and rightly so.

That ‘mere blogger’ happens to be not only a practising professional teacher, but also one of the most incisive voices in the British education world today. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that he has helped to bring about substantive change in the educational landscape. But beyond any personal slight is a more far-reaching point. Blogging happens to have become the major vehicle by which grass-roots teachers are able to communicate their thinking and experiences.

By seeking to invalidate such media, those in the educational research (and sometimes management) realm are in effect trying silence anyone who does not have access to the supposedly-superior educational macro-data that they do.

My own (now) rather cynical voice has been honed by similar experiences: while still teaching full-time, my attempts to contribute to the wider debate and development within my school were repeatedly ignored by management seemingly because they did not come from an ‘appropriate’ source – and because they sometimes contained difficult, but necessary and well-meant truths.

Yet as with OId Andrew, my contributions found much favour amongst my teaching colleagues, as a huge pile of enthusiastic CPD feedback sheets shows. Those in charge must have seen them – but on no occasion was I able to persuade any of the school’s senior ‘leaders’ to attend. On the sole occasion that one of the lesser minions did appear, he described the session as the most thought-provoking CPD session he had ever attended. And still none of the others would come.

I apologise if this sounds a little like gilding my own cage – but the fact is, while it has become easier for the grass-roots teachers make their thoughts known, if anything, those in control seem to be shutting their ears ever more firmly to what is being said. My book (the publication of which by John Catt is hopefully a reasonable validation of its content) has also encountered scepticism from the same quarters that it might contain anything that those who make the decisions need to hear.

We have in Britain an education system that is becoming more like a regular branch of autocratic commercial activity by the month. The behaviour is strikingly similar: those at the ‘sharp end’ are treated with visible contempt, while those in charge continue to feather their own nests even at a time of crisis. The effects are the same everywhere: given my own experience there, it was with some schadenfreude that I learned recently that my former school is struggling to recruit humanities teachers to replace the several that it seriously disaffected in the past few years. Had they listened when we tried to speak, this might never have happened.

The ‘executive’ arm of the education system is increasingly becoming what in my book I called ‘management cancer’: not merely is it making life more difficult for the regular functionaries, but it is actively eating away at the system it supposedly serves. The dismissal of practising professionals as ‘mere’ anything is an expression of an attitude that sees education as either some kind of high-handed abstract apparatus for social intervention, or an under-handed personal career opportunity for a few – rather than a crucial personal-intellectual process that shapes the actual lives of real people. The punters and the labourers are little more than the necessary grist in that mill.

Emeritus Professor Michael Bassey asked in The Guardian a few days ago whether “school standards, teachers’ morale, young people’s wellbeing and parents’ aspirations are being held back”. The answer is yes they are – not in the main by classroom practice, but by the vast, stifling thicket of management ideology and so-called research which claims to be powering the system – but in actual fact is doing much to damage it, while uttering the usual platitudes of executive parasites everywhere about how essential they are for the smooth-running, indeed mere existence of the whole edifice.

 

I should, as always, temper my comments with the acknowledgement that there are undoubtedly many school leaders everywhere who are doing a decent, genuine, unsung job of running their schools as humanely well as they possibly can. It is not them who I am criticising, but those with the sharpest elbows and loudest voices who have acquired – no, seized – disproportionate influence in education. I have sources from enough schools around the country to know that this is not just an isolated problem. A tellingly-anonymous article in The Guardian over the weekend which described experiences and sentiments amazingly close to my own might suggest the same – and is worth quoting from:

“…Then there was the endless river of snake oil flowing from educational consultants – mountebanks who promise they can solve all your educational ills if you follow their five-minute fad. And while you’re at it teachers, solve the problems of society! Teach kids to avoid drugs, underage sex and radicalisation.

So how should things be? Let teachers get on with the job; stop politicians interfering in education; allow good teachers the freedom to inspire their pupils. This is not going to happen. No wonder the average length of service for a teacher in the UK is five years. No wonder I left after 30.”

I also accept (as should we all) that due allowance needs to be made for ‘unknown unknowns’ when criticising the actions of others. It would be good if the same allowances flowed more often in the opposite direction too… We should probably also throw into the mix the fact that in a field like education, a single, stable, universally-applicable consensus is probably a dream too far – but all the more reason to accept and respect all parties in the debate.

I see a corporate culture whose hubris shows no sign of abating – to the point that its subscribers are no longer even ashamed of decrying their front-line practitioners in effect as ‘mere teachers’, whose views and needs can reasonably be ignored and even publicly dismissed. It is becoming more autocratic by the month and as some high-profile cases have shown, some individuals will not even stop at bringing the profession into disrepute in the process of furthering their own interests. How can this possibly be good for education?

Like the writer of the Guardian article, I have no doubt that these people will continue to fly higher and higher, to the detriment of the rest of the educational system. Indeed, I hope they do, for I have a new name for them: Icarus.

We need to discuss management openly – while dodging the bullets.

If one sticks one’s head above the parapet, one should expect to encounter some low-flying ordnance. Parts of The Great Exception do seem to be causing controversy – which is good.

I expected my critique of ‘Big Management’ not to go down well in some quarters, though most school managers will no doubt be far too thick-skinned to be riled by comments from the likes of me. In any case, I hope it is possible to separate the issue from the people. Over the years, I did encounter a few managers whose behaviour was truly despicable, but they were very much the minority, and I have many friends and former colleagues who are or were managers: this is not personal.

We need to ask this question – because there is no reason whatsoever why management should be any more virtuous or above reproach than the rest of the system. Indeed given its huge influence, it has the capacity to cause far more harm to education than the inadequacies of mere individual classroom teachers – and that is without considering the huge costs that big management imposes on a cash-strapped system.

The worst thing to do would be to dismiss criticism out of hand, which would rather prove the point about the risk of hubris.

I am more concerned with the system that is being operated than the people enacting it, most of whom have to operate within frameworks over which they no more have complete control than anyone else. I am confident that most people in such positions are genuinely acting in what they believe to be the best way. But that is not to say that either they – or the system – are always getting it right: outside pressures can result in very perverse behaviours, especially as people move further from the grass-roots classroom experience. Neither is it untrue that self-interest sometimes clouds their judgement. Yet it is worth re-stating that no-one is forced to take such posts, and I would not wish some of their dilemmas on anyone.

For all that education has come under intense scrutiny in recent years, nobody seems to have stopped and asked whether ‘big management’ is actually helping. It seems to be taken for granted that it does (even when that flies in the face of experience) and I do not get the impression that the alternative views presented by highly-experienced managers like Margaret Heffernan, Daniel Pink and John Kay are widely known (that is why they’re in the book…). One manager I persuaded to read Daniel Pink described his book as “a revelation”. I’m afraid to say that plenty of conversations I have had with managers over the years betrayed nothing so much as a certain tunnel vision.

It is not sufficient for management teams solely to self- or peer-appraise; this is not acceptable for classroom teachers, and neither is it reasonable to dismiss the comments from those lower down the ‘food chain’ on the grounds of incomplete insight. If that were the case, we would stop all ‘pupil voice’ exercises today.

It is undoubtedly true that the situation is not the same everywhere: while I focus on many of the generic pitfalls of the management process, this is not to imply that practice is universally bad. But I also know from direct experience that the actions of management in certain circumstances can be responsible for a great deal of difficulty, distress and over-work. Over the years, I have been variously told that I was “naive” to call for more compassion in the workplace, that management should be “bullish” and that “things would be a lot harsher if we worked in The City”. I was told it was “insubordinate” to question a particularly difficult manager. None of this is remotely helpful. I would hope that well-meaning managers would acknowledge this and be concerned about it: why would they be otherwise?

This issue needs to be discussed in the open: there is a crisis of recruitment and retention in the profession – and it is not true that it is solely caused by low pay or the behaviour of the children. ‘Management’ is responsible for creating the climate (and many of the pressures) in the educational workplace – and there is plenty to suggest that it is not always good. I have repeatedly seen this with my own eyes – and I know that it is not always taken seriously. What greater own-goal could the profession score?

If it is true that poor classroom teaching needs to be addressed without much compunction, then the same is surely so for poor management – and the ability of those in senior positions to close ranks and insulate themselves more from adverse situations should not prevent that. Hypocrisy is destructive – and if managers feel uncomfortable about being criticised, then perhaps it will remind them how regular teachers feel under similar situations, many of which are management-instigated. In fact, I would much prefer to see a more consensual, less confrontational climate all round.

My book is not mainly aimed at new teachers as one reviewer suggested: I will be only too pleased if senior managers read it: some at least need to.

But I also hope that the (necessary) coverage of these issues will not distract from the more positive sections on good practice later in the book. I take the view that all in education have largely been co-victims of outside pressures, and my intention was to offer a constructive view of a more realistic, sustainable and humane way forward.

Getting that right would be one of the surest ways to improve the sector for everyone.

The Great Exception is out…

I have just taken delivery of my author-copies. Quite a moment after more than three years’ work. By nice coincidence, this is also post number 300 on my blog.

My thanks to John Catt publishers for having done a really great job with it. Those with pre-orders should be receiving them soon.

TP hits TES…

From this week’s edition…

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/its-a-mistake-assume-good-classroom-teachers-will-make-good

The Great Exception

I’m pleased to announce that my book will be published on 19th February. Pre-ordering is now available at  Amazon preorders   or it will be available from selected bookshops or direct from John Catt publishers in a couple of weeks’ time.

Unfinished Business

Thanks to Old Andrew for flagging-up the continued existence of this ‘blogging legend’ on Twitter. I try to limit my social media activity (it takes up too much of life as it is) so I only notify on Twitter, rather than participate. I am always very pleased to receive comments and correspondence via the blog itself, though, or at: blog [at] sandistock.plus.com.  I rather wonder whether a “legend” is something very old, imaginary and probably redundant…

I had been wondering again whether the blog warrants continuation. I’ve now been out of the classroom for well over a year, and the immediacy of my experience is fading. That said, I still keep more than a weather-eye on the education scene, and still read others’ blogs reasonably frequently.

The future here is still not very clear, other than the fact that a crust will somehow need to be earned again from early summer, even though ‘the head’ is still far from right; dilemma – and one that what’s left of the welfare state in this country doesn’t seem unduly concerned about. At least I’ve kicked the drug habit, so there’s a clearer view of the real situation. Salutary lesson: anyone who thinks antidepressants are an easy answer should think again.

There are a few irons in the fire, some in education, some not. One may involve becoming a student again for a while. But without implying criticism of those who have helped me, I don’t think anyone should be under the impression that there is a lot of support out here for people in difficulties. Any hope of ‘obligation’ borne from years spent in public service is pie in the sky. Regrettably, I include my Union in that: I guess that regulation and legal constraints perhaps prevent them from doing more than offer very general observations. Which is all very well – but not especially helpful just at the time when one could do with a stronger lead.

One of my long-time correspondents has urged me to keep the blog going, so that is what I will do, albeit probably on an intermittent basis as and when something comment-worthy comes up. As he put it “There is unfinished business with the toxic culture in education.” Yes indeed: I now know of six people even in my small pool who are signed off/medicated for teaching-associated mental health problems, and many more who are at varying stages of unhappiness or distress with what the job is doing to them. This is not right.

I suppose it is unsurprising that a forceful personal experience makes one more aware of ‘issues’ but once there, the situation seems obvious. Even amongst the zealots who often manage education, it must take a particularly callous person not to be concerned for the mental health of one’s staff. Which is not to say they don’t exist; how they manage not to see either the damage being done to their own institutions or the massive irony of the supposedly life-affirming education sector being toxic to those within it, is beyond my understanding. Of my original group of close colleagues, the last one left the school in question at the end of last term, for largely similar reasons. One might hope that those in charge would reflect on why they are losing good teachers – though I suspect they won’t. Management blindness is too self-confirming for that.

But we should also remember that there are those such as John Tomsett who have been rightly recognised for taking a different approach with regard to wellbeing – though it is informative that Ofsted felt it necessary to tell him that his school’s ‘Outstanding’ came because of his compassion not in spite of it.

Unfinished business there indeed is: not from any need for retribution, but simply because the sector is too important to be allowed to continue in its current unsustainable form. There is plenty of evidence around to support that view, quite apart from my own that much of what education is currently doing (or is perhaps being made to do) is entirely counter-productive to its supposed aims. Damaging entire generations is too high a price for politico-economic dogma…

…which leads me to offer an up-date on my book for those whom I know are already interested – and as a shameless plug at those who aren’t (yet…?). Titled ‘The Great Exception: why teaching is a profession like no other’ it is one teacher’s view of the reasons for education’s intractable problems, and a proposal for a more sustainable model. It is about to go to print, and should be out fairly early in the New Year. More details as they emerge.

Unfinished work – indeed. At which point I will wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year.