We’ve just seen another addition to the Telling Teachers Off brigade, as the newly appointed children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, makes her mark. 

This time, our apparent offence is causing pupils to “panic” over “lost learning”. Teachers are taking the rap for the hot air that originated with politicians and the media.

A quick visit to EduTwitter would have told Dame Rachel two important things. Firstly, not all teachers subscribe to the doomsday scenario. Secondly, teachers do everything in their power to avoid creating anxiety in their classrooms, because it is so counterproductive.

Before a single grade has been submitted, teachers are being ticked off about overgenerous grading and potential bias in teacher-assessed grades by the very boards whose work they are doing for free.

From his remote podium, Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) chief Andreas Schleicher is telling us to be more inspiring in the classroom. Safely ensconced in the House of Commons, schools minister Nick Gibb asserts that schools that ban mobile phones achieve better results. And Ofsted is there to tell teachers how to teach science the Ofsted way. 

Covid and schools: Teachers ‘working 25/8’

Sadly, there isn’t time in teachers’ Covid schedule - we’re working 25/8 right now - to be grateful for this hefty input from the loud and partially informed. Teachers live the reality. We work with actual people in many different contexts. We are getting on with the job we know best how to do.

What is so deeply unattractive on the part of the highly visible critics is their failure to recognise the magnitude of the task - or rather many tasks - that schools have had to take on. What really stings is that anyone, no matter how highly placed, should be judging the profession on what are at best partial and generalised truths. 

This is not the time for conference speakers or media interviewees to grow a public profile, advance an agenda or promote their organisation at the expense of the very people who have kept the education system going over the past year. 

Worst of all is the lack of gratitude. Teachers have regularly stepped into the breach, allowing others to avoid stepping out of their homes. Is it possible that those outside the system are unaware of just how much effort, ingenuity and care of others has gone into supporting children this year? Those at the top don’t always see it, so preoccupied are they with the working of the system as a whole.

So, for the benefit of those who have overlooked the many achievements of the people they’ve been lecturing, I’ve compiled a list of some of the things that should have made their way into the public discourse.

What teachers have achieved over the past year

1. Teachers continue to work in less Covid-secure conditions than many other professions, so that children can have the benefits of face-to-face lessons for as long as possible.

2. Teachers continue to provide practical support for children living in nutritional and digital poverty, who have been left behind by the state. Schools have been running food banks and helping with uniform.

3. When schools were shut, teachers took their schools online. Oak National Academy provided an incredible menu of lessons that benefited many a teacher, but what it could not do was to provide the holistic educational experience. The classroom professional was the connector and the supporter.

4. Teachers have helped to drive the revolution in technologised education, not just by rapidly learning how to operate online platforms but by adapting their practice to a completely alien environment.

5. More than any other occupation in the pandemic, the education sector has adapted to government shifts and U-turns, as well as day-to-day change. The government juggernaut has been slow in comparison with the ability of schools to turn on a sixpence - often at the cost of headteachers’ time and mental health.

6. Senior leaders have provided an efficient track and trace service. 

7. Schools have been transformed into Covid-testing stations. 

8. Key stage 4 and 5 teachers are not only doing the paper-setting, marking and grading that is the remit of awarding organisations, but they are also doing it in a far more dynamic environment than the one exam boards usually operate in. They have more complex judgements to make: examiners mark only one or two papers and have a well-rehearsed set of criteria - unlike the ones issued in haste this spring.

9. Where exam boards can issue a one-size-fits-all paper, teachers have to adapt their assessments to the classes and individuals they teach. 

10. Exam boards can concentrate on their primary purpose of assessment in the summer; teachers are keeping all their classes going. They don’t have the luxury of dropping everything. They are doing their utmost to ensure that no child is left behind - as they have been doing throughout the pandemic.

11. As children’s mental health suffers, schools are having to provide more support and deal with more correspondence and bureaucracy. 

What is most inspiring about the work of teachers in the pandemic is that they are still finding time to discuss pedagogy in online conferences and in online expert teaching groups, to experiment and to improve their practice. 

Anyone talking on education platforms this year should feel humbled by what has been achieved by teachers under extraordinarily difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions. This is not the moment to place the profession on the naughty step. Teachers deserve a place at the top of the podium - and a well-earned rest over the summer holiday.

Yvonne Williams has spent nearly 34 years in the classroom, and 22 years as a head of English. She has contributed chapters on workload and wellbeing to Mentoring English Teachers in the Secondary School, edited by Debbie Hickman (Routledge)