I’ve observed Tes’s “Most Read” list with interest this past year, which has reflected grim times. It’s the first week back after the summer break and already there are several articles about the stress of enormous workloads, pressure caused by the Ofsted regime, information about the academy systems that the government tried to hide, teachers feeling like criminals and death by planning.

As I think about what needs to change, I ask myself, can we keep going on like this? Screaming our concerns into the wind without the government listening to us?

I think not.

As a headteacher, I can no longer just sit back and accept that: “This is how it is.” Even though this will mean putting my head above the parapet, risking my career, becoming a nuisance or incurring the wrath of important people… all things I have been told recently. It seems that expressing concerns about our education system and how our schools are being run can get you into trouble. I hope not.

I can no longer say or do nothing. I believe it is our professional responsibility to ask that the Department for Education responds to teachers. I would want and expect this from my own staff.

Similarly, I am still waiting on a response regarding Sats marking, as well as how these tests are being used. I mean, it was pretty big news last June but the DfE have failed to address these issues.

Teachers are too overworked to fight

Teachers, you see, are fickle things and rarely organised enough to gather the support and impetus to do anything constructive, as they have far too much marking to do. They will just rally and moan and it’ll all be forgotten about once they sip their first mojito on a beach in Skegness.

We deserve better but what we seem to get as a profession is the “shrug off”. I have never felt that we matter less in the eyes of the DfE at any time in my 20-year career.

We are missing something very important and we need to get it back. We are losing our trust both ways. We are marginalising an already fragmented sector and we are in real danger of breaking it.

I do not want that. I want my government to address the concerns within our profession in an open and transparent way. I want to know why we keep doing what we are doing, despite these issues.

The government needs to know what it is like to be a teacher or headteacher in our schools this year. It needs to realise this before it is too late, as more and more teachers are leaving the industry.

Brian Walton is a primary head in Somerset. He tweets as @Oldprimaryhead1

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