It was only when I told people on dating apps that I was training to become a teacher that I realised the low esteem in which the profession is often held.

One online conversation that had been cruising along quite nicely suddenly juddered to a halt when I mentioned it. The silence was deafening. Another person shot back with a pitying emoji, stating that they were a graphic designer, as if that was the acme of career aspiration.

It happened so frequently that I changed my wording to say “teacher training in a career change from marketing”, to reassure potential suitors that I had done something else in a previous life.

I don’t care to date people who bring up the subject of career so early in a conversation; even less do I have time for those who put such an apparently low value on teaching. But it did make me wonder why and how this perception has arisen. I think it’s a combination of both political and cultural factors.

Teaching as a profession has changed beyond measure since Miss Jean Brodie was in her prime (“education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul”). The autonomy and trust she has in the novel, up to and including inculcating notions of fascism into her protégés, is obviously a world away from teaching as it is now: inspected, graded, targeted, overworked and continually striving to improve the data on children.

Where is the room for any kind of vision for teachers today beyond school mission statements? Personality has gone out of the classroom, to be replaced with data-mined tracking of student success. Has the profession abdicated - or been forced to relinquish - its responsibility for the whole person to instead concentrate on pass rates and other success measures? It is right that teaching should be measured, but has it become just about this?

An architect builds to specifications that are measurable, but that doesn’t capture the aesthetic value of the building.

Wider purpose diminishing

When I attended school, teachers were revered and feared in equal measure. An almost hushed tone was used by parents when talking about them. Daters would have thrown themselves at me online. As Robert Peston said in Tes, no one would dare question a teacher. I’m not sure whether that is true today.

Accompanying this diminishing of wider purpose and authority - and perhaps connected to it - the profession seems inexorably to be sliding down the list of political priorities (in England and Wales). Since Tony Blair’s ”Education, education, education” conference speech 22 years ago and his remarks at the launch of Labour’s education manifesto in 2001 (yes, there was such a thing), education has gently slipped down the agenda. Blair said in May 2001 that, as well as the basics, “children learn the joy of life; the exhilaration of music, the excitement of sport, the magic of science…they learn the value of life”.

Last year’s conference speech by prime minister Theresa May contained three paragraphs on primary and secondary education for her to cough through in a speech entitled ”The British dream”. She devoted the same number of words to the “broken” energy market. Jeremy Corbyn’s effort contained very little more and was a retread of the National Education Service thinking from the 2017 election manifesto.

It may be that the profession is relieved at the lack of ideas finding their way to the front line of political thinking. It may well be that we are all delivering a targeted package to equip students for today’s world. After Govian hyperactivity, it might be thought that the profession needs time to bed down changes. I cannot share that opinion.

Finding our soul

To see healthcare garner all the new ideas and secure new funding pledges is a sign to me that education is being allowed to fall by the wayside. Although it may seem that healthcare spending has been the priority since forever, it is only relatively recently that it has been so.

As reported in Tes recently, education secretary Damian Hinds seems content with being a tech enthusiast, tweaking the Ofsted inspection regime and offering no further funding, while praising grammar schools. Oh dear. Ideas are bubbling under at various thinktanks, but they are not working their way into mainstream political party programmes. 

The education sector needs to jump up the pecking order. A society and a politics that downgrades the profession to a data set, and which has no new ideas on how to kickstart a young life, is one that has lost its vision for teaching and schooling. As Miss Brodie might put it, it’s a society that is losing its soul.

David Hall is applying to become a teacher following 25 years working in communications. He tweets @campdavid