Over the past few weeks on social media, there’s been a trend of people posting pictures of themselves in 2010 and 2019 to show how they’ve changed across the decade. You can see wisdom gained, hair lost and some incredible stories of dreams worked for and realised. A lot has happened, for everybody - so it’s amazing to think that a snapshot of society’s attitude to education would look much the same today as it did at the start of the Turbulent Tens.

It is apparently in the nature of things that the education sector will always strive and fail to achieve a nirvana in which politicians and public alike accept that it is both efficient and high performing. There are more than a few reasons for this sad state of affairs; what follows is not a complete list.

First, it is because pretty much everyone has been through school, and the average adult tends to assume that the failings they faced in the classroom in 1985 are what children are experiencing in 2020.

Second, it is because “reaching potential” is a nebulous expression that hangs like an albatross around the profession’s neck - there is no such thing, of course: human potential is endlessly expanding. And as a result, teaching’s overlords (and, to some extent, teachers themselves) will always judge the sector as falling short. It isn’t.

Third, it is because it is both easy and useful to blame schools for all society’s ills. Obesity, radicalism, knife crime? Yup, look to Smithers Street Secondary to do something about it. While you’re at it, Polly Place Primary ought to be upping its game on countering cyberterrorism, too.

Fourth, it is because politicians nearly always need a public sector football to kick about, and no one is allowed to say anything mean about the NHS any more.

All of these were true, to a lesser or greater extent, in 2010; they feel even more pronounced now.

This is not to be negative, it is to be realistic about challenging nature of the conditions in which the profession exists.

In fact, there is a mood that the profession now has an opportunity to take some kind of ownership of these problems and change the narrative. (To some extent, this is exemplified by how England’s excellent Early Career Framework came into being and how most of its best recommendations were driven by the profession rather than by ministers.)

This could be a result of the laws of supply and demand. As teacher supply dwindles, those left in teaching are in a position to start making demands.

But that will take the profession only so far. External change cannot start without internal improvement.

So, instead of looking backwards over the past decade, perhaps we should look instead at what teaching can do for itself in 2020 and beyond. In a bid for answers to this tricky question, I decided to ask the teachers of Twitter - and I didn’t regret it.

One former secondary head of department, Mike Thain, came back quickly: “Be braver with calling out poor leadership practices and decisions that have a negative impact on your workload with little or no tangible benefit for your students.”

And Richard Kieran, a primary leader, suggested a simple approach: “Just be nice. To parents, children, colleagues. And smile … lots.”

Wise words indeed.

Be brave, be nice, and reject pretty much any extra work that doesn’t improve the lot of your students. I can think of many, many worse ways to kick off a new decade than that.

@Ed_Dorrell

This article originally appeared in the 3 January 2020 issue under the headline “Let this be the decade in which teachers steer their own course”