Last month, the prime minister announced that all secondary schools would receive training to equip schools with the skills to help tackle mental health issues among young people, with a third of secondaries to be trained this year.
None of us in education would question that it is right to confront head-on the very real challenges that we all see day in, day out in classrooms across the country. But there is a rather large elephant in the room, and it’s an elephant that potentially becomes even larger as a result of the additional responsibility being placed at the door of the profession.
The mental health and wellbeing of the children and young people that we are responsible for is, of course, something that all teachers care about deeply. But there is also the question of the profession’s own mental health and wellbeing that needs to be confronted head-on, too. And this is not a box that can be ticked just by popping a bunch of flowers in the staffroom, or making sure the biscuit tin is filled to the brim with tasty treats.
Until Christmas, I was the executive headteacher of a successful primary school in Hertfordshire. I know only too well the pressures that our profession is facing, and the very real sense of things feeling overwhelming and being overwhelmed. The reality is that teachers are already working at full tilt - it’s not about wringing out more minutes and hours in the day.
The job is never done
We have also chosen to be in the most challenging of professions: the job is never done. There is never a day when every book has been marked, every child has been spoken with, every parent has been called. There is never the moment when you can sit back and think “all done”. And the truth is that this is part of the joy of the job, but it is also what makes it downright difficult.
And it is this very tension that has been at the forefront of my mind since I took up my post as chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching in January. We know only too well that nearly a quarter of new teachers leave the profession after just three years. We also know that we are struggling to attract enough new teachers into the profession - or indeed, returner teachers.
Wellbeing strikes at the very heart of this. The fact is that we are a very conscientious profession and, as a result, some of the habits that we have got into can prove extremely difficult to shake, even when we know that they add little to the sum of educating a young person to the best of our ability.
When teachers are allowed to do something meaningful, our pride in our role takes on a more positive hue
Take dialogic marking, for instance (where teacher and pupil engage in an extended dialogue about the pupil’s work). I know full well that extensive marking is alive and well in too many of our schools - and this is despite Ofsted and the Department for Education being clear that such an approach is to be discouraged. Regardless of those assurances, there is still a sense that it is what others expect.
And when we spend time doing things such as endlessly feeding tracking systems - which we know not only add very little but absorb huge amounts of time and energy - that is when wellbeing starts to creak a bit at the knees.
Conversely, when teachers are allowed (and allow themselves) to do something meaningful in the classroom, how we feel about ourselves and our pride in our role in young people’s lives takes on a different, more positive hue.
Courageous leadership
So, what can we do in practice? Well, some of it is down to courageous leadership. Bold leaders embolden their teachers who, in turn, spend more of their time on the things they know work, not the things that squeeze the living joy out of the job.
It’s also about sharing those things that work. Ironically, teaching can feel very lonely. We might not know what is going on in the classroom next door, let alone the school down the road, or in another part of the country. We need to collaborate more. The best teachers are natural learners, and through the Chartered College of Teaching we want to stoke that natural curiosity and inquisitive nature that is hardwired into teachers’ DNA.
Our new digital platform available for members to use in the next few months will help do just that. For those who are comfortable sharing their experiences of what works, the platform will create a window into their classrooms. This is not about Ofsted inspectors arriving at your door, pens poised to scribble their judgements. It’s about inviting in other like-minded professionals and sharing.
Dame Alison Peacock is chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching. Teachers can join the college at www.collegeofteaching.org
