For most of us, the most vivid events are those that happen within our own lifetime. Anything before is ancient history.
It’s the same with teaching careers: “before our time” is measured by the starting date of our busy school life and what occurred before seems quaint and antediluvian.
For me, born in the Second World War, anything earlier - the 1920s and 1930s - seems remote and sepia-tinted. A black-and-white world rather than one in colour.
Tes began even before those days, in 1910, but for me it began in 1961. This was when I did my PGCE and I read Tes for the first time - yes, I admit it, looking for my first job!
Ever since, Tes has been my constant companion in its various incarnations - broadsheet, tabloid and magazine - through its galaxy of editors, from the formidable Stuart Maclure (who scared even Margaret Thatcher, whom he wined and dined at the Athenæum club on a Thursday before eviscerating her in his Friday editorial), through to the present creative, Jon Severs.
Tes’ focus has shifted, too, from being at first on local education authorities, which were the engines of the post-war construction of the educational element of the welfare state until the 1980s, then on to how schools were governed, run and influenced, and finally on to the essential beating heart of schooling: namely, what goes on between teacher and pupil in the classroom. So, building on Tes’ online global presence by going entirely online in 2022 is a logical but creative next step.
This move coincides with the publication, also in the new year, of a book - About our Schools: improving on previous best - by Mick Waters and myself. It identifies and outlines how to fix the many problems now besetting state-funded schools and academies in the English schooling system. Like Tes, it looks back in order to look forwards.
Of course, we both started our careers in what would appear to those in schools now as unreal and irrelevant times - for example, attending and working in schools when there was no national curriculum and no Ofsted.
But there are lessons to be learned from the past and there are some things that never change about schools, one of which is the huge influence of the individual teacher on pupil outcomes, which is where we anchor our proposals for change.
After all, researchers say the teacher’s influence is many times greater than that of the school, and most agree with the teacher who said, “I have come to the frightening conclusion that it is what I do every day in the classroom that makes the difference. I can humour or humiliate … I make the ‘weather’.”
Spot on. But how a department or key stage is run also affects the likelihood of the teacher creating a favourable climate for the pupils’ learning. And the same is true of the school’s senior leadership team, the multi-academy trust or the local authority and, of course, the secretary of state and those working in the Department for Education and Ofsted.
Some would say, however, that the further away you are from the classroom, the more likely it is that all you do is send hurricanes and tornadoes - what Americans in the Midwest call “twisters” - reducing the chances of teachers making good weather. Our book, therefore, focuses on improving the lot of teachers.
Mick and I have lived for so long that we have seen two distinct ages in state-funded schooling - the first of “Optimism and Hope”, lasting from Rab Butler’s Education Act of 1944 through to the mid-1970s; and the other of “Markets/Competition, Managerialism and Centralisation”, lasting from the late 1980s to the present day.
Sandwiched between these two ages was a decade of doubt and disillusion when politicians and others worried that schools weren’t really doing what society wanted - hence the change of emphasis in the second age.
But we believe that similar doubt and disillusion is surfacing again with some of the same and other different questions. Is the curriculum, and are teaching methods, appropriate for present and future needs? Is the exam system itself “fit for purpose” and “value for money” ? Is power over our schools too centralised in Whitehall with the DfE, Ofsted and Ofqual? Has local democracy a role in schooling and, if so, what is it? How can we educate, train and continually support teachers so they are seen as belonging to a respected profession on a par with doctors and health professionals?
Is our accountability system causing a haemorrhage of teachers and school leaders because the stakes are too high? Or is the accountability system a long-overdue way of weeding out those who let down our children? Do we judge a school’s success on the right criteria? Is it a matter of concern that the four UK countries’ schooling systems are steaming ahead in quite different directions, with England the odd one out? Why, for example, do 1,500 children get permanently excluded from English schools for each one excluded from Scottish schools - and which system is better?
These and many other questions are covered in our book, which, as part of its evidence, draws on the outcomes of over 100 interviews with witnesses, who included a baker’s dozen of former secretaries of state, school ministers, HMCIs, DfE officials and advisers, and many CEOs of MATs, heads and teachers.
Many of their comments are refreshingly blunt and honest. Additionally, we reminded ourselves of the history in a quest to find out what has worked and what hasn’t in the past 50 years as we prepare for what we and our witnesses think should be a third post-war age for English schooling - of Hope, Ambition and Collaborative Partnerships.
Our book contains six foundational changes and what we call “The 39 Steps” to get there.
In Tes’ new digital format, Mick and I will elaborate on some of the possible answers to these questions and the ways in which we could achieve a better and more equitable schooling system. In the meantime, have a good festive season and a welcome break from your vital work in making the world a better place.
Sir Tim Brighouse is a British educationalist. He was schools commissioner for London between 2002 and 2007, where he led the London Challenge. He has previously been chief education officer in both Oxfordshire and Birmingham
