The Conservative Party

It is worth remembering that Gove was once the Education Secretary and pretty much wrecked the state system during his time in office. The fall-out from his incompetence reverberates right down to the present day.

Basically, cash-starved schools have been using the increased managerial powers that Heads and Deputy Heads were granted by him not to identify and remove incompetent staff but to use that as a pretext to get rid of the older, experienced and therefore more expensive ones. This is one of the reasons why schools have been haemorrhaging staff, an exodus prompted by the fact that those with transferable skills who can see the writing on the wall and are young enough to get out have been doing so. Consequently, schools in many areas have been struggling to recruit teachers with relevant degrees in subjects like, say, Physics or Mathematics, to teach GCSE and A Level. Those of you reading this with children of secondary school age might find it fruitful to look around at the next Parents Evening and make a rough calculation as to the average age of the staff they can see. Younger ones are cheaper to come by. Another litmus test if your child is in Years 10 to 13 is to find out whether their subject tutor actually has a degree in the subject they are teaching.

A further reform Gove introduced was to ‘toughen up’ the GCSE and A Level courses due to concerns that they were ‘easy’. But what has happened with some subjects was that the courses were simply crammed with superfluous, additional content that is almost impossible to get through in two years. So teachers now simply cram from day one and the need to rote-learn far too much means that the more important skills of analysis and logical and lateral thinking get neglected. And the effects of the reforms have been nonexistent: the boards that examine are anxious not to lose their ‘customers’ and simply mark these allegedly harder terminal papers more generously. But the effects on the students themselves have been profound, and it is the brighter ones that suffer the most because of the amount that they have to learn and the all too frequent testing that they have to endure. Where I am, too many of the cleverer ones are self-harming or becoming crippled by anxiety, and this is not because they are lacking in resilience or part of a ‘snowflake generation’.
They are simply getting overwhelmed by the new curriculum because they are well-motivated and conscientious.

Additionally, if any teacher fessed up to drug use either back then or now they would be out of the door very quickly. I suppose that it is a different matter if someone is working with children but it was Gove who once presided over a system where the professional standards are higher than those that he is being held to.

Johnson might be habitually mendacious and manifestly incompetent but Gove is ideologically driven in all the wrong ways and therefore utterly unsuitable for any kind of high office regardless of his past drug use.
 
Last edited:
ZenHalfTimeCrock said:
It is worth remembering that Gove was once the Education Secretary and pretty much wrecked the state system during his time in office. The fall-out from his incompetence reverberates right down to the present day.

Basically, cash-starved schools have been using the increased managerial powers that Heads and Deputy Heads were granted by him not to identify and remove incompetent staff but to use that as a pretext to get rid of the older, experienced and therefore more expensive ones. This is one of the reasons why schools have been haemorrhaging staff, an exodus prompted by the fact that those with transferable skills who can see the writing on the wall and are young enough to get out have been doing so. Consequently, schools in many areas have been struggling to recruit teachers with relevant degrees in subjects like, say, Physics or Mathematics, to teach GCSE and A Level. Those of you reading this with children of secondary school age might find it fruitful to look around at the next Parents Evening and make a rough calculation as to the average age of the staff they can see. Younger ones are cheaper to come by. Another litmus test if your child is in Years 10 to 13 is to find out whether their subject tutor actually has a degree in the subject they are teaching.

A further reform Gove introduced was to ‘toughen up’ the GCSE and A Level courses due to concerns that they were ‘easy’. But what has happened with some subjects was that the courses were simply crammed with superfluous, additional content that is almost impossible to get through in two years. So teachers now simply cram from day one and the need to rote-learn far too much means that the more important skills of analysis and logical and lateral thinking get neglected. And the effects of the reforms have been nonexistent: the boards that examine are anxious not to lose their ‘customers’ and simply mark these allegedly harder terminal papers more generously. But the effects on the students themselves have been profound, and it is the brighter ones that suffer the most because of the amount that they have to learn and the all too frequent testing that they have to endure. Where I am, too many of the cleverer ones are self-harming or becoming crippled by anxiety, and this is not because they are lacking in resilience or part of a ‘snowflake generation’.
They are simply getting overwhelmed by the new curriculum because they are well-motivated and conscientious.

Additionally, if any teacher fessed up to drug use either back then or now they would be out of the door very quickly. I suppose that it is a different matter if someone is working with children but it was Gove who once presided over a system where the professional standards are higher than those that he is being held to.

Johnson might be habitually mendacious and manifestly incompetent but Gove is ideologically driven in all the wrong ways and therefore utterly unsuitable for any kind of high office regardless of his past drug use.
Click to expand...
Great post. Thanks for taking the time on it.
 
Thanks.

Life is always a bit difficult when you join a Forum for a first time as you are an unknown quantity. And with being a teacher, the view of the job from the inside is very different from outside perceptions but it's hard to convince others of that.

To be honest, I am not that bothered by someone's soft drug use from two decades ago.

But with my teacher's hat on, I find myself thinking things like, 'How many of us were suspended, dismissed or disbarred for drug-taking during Michael Gove's tenure as Education Secretary?' and ' How many of those disbarring orders were signed off by Gove himself?'

Another problem is that Gove is an avowed neoliberal and it's neoliberalism that I reckon has been causing all the problems we have been having since 2008, when the chickens came home to roost. If people reading this post don't know what that is, there's a reason.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Recently, I learned that one of my tutees had self-harmed. He's a delightful lad who is seriously clever and in possession of a sense of humour that is so mature that he comes out with things in banter that are already on a par with some alternative comedians. I also know of several others talented students who are struggling with profound anxiety-related issues. My view is that a causal line can be drawn from Gove and his predecessors on both the left and right who have increasingly been using schools as a laboratory for the enactment of neoliberal policies to this kind of outcome.

Think of the creation of Academies and Free Schools. This policy was sold to the public on the grounds that it would increase the autonomy of school leaders and parent power too (Toby Young setting up a Free School is one example). But in actuality, academies are getting run for profit and the senior administrators are paying themselves top whack while the classrooms are getting filled with young, cheap, compliant teachers who are getting worked into the ground and whose inexperience when it comes to GCSE and A Level can be worrying. Even with the requisite subject knowledge, it can be tricky devising clear and imaginative ways to get material across, and the textbooks are not always helpful because they are often plodding, inaccurate and badly written. And there actually isn't one yet for the subject I teach at A Level, three years after the new syllabus was introduced.

Plus, talk of freedom is a smokescreen for what becomes preternatural levels of micro-management when it comes to the scrutiny of teachers themselves. It's one of the reasons why there are so many complaints about paperwork. Like the police, we are constantly having to provide documentary evidence that we are doing our jobs properly, and are held 100% accountable for the grades of our students, regardless of whether they have a poor attitude, a non-existent work-ethic or have family issues so profound that an effect on their academic performance is inevitable. But to get pupils those grades we end up teaching to the test and the students then end up getting constantly assessed, which inevitably produces the aforementioned mental health issues I referred to.

The late Mark Fisher puts this situation well in his little book Capitalist Realism. The following is an extract from some notes I made for my 'A' level students on it:

'Fisher notes that a correlation has been found between rising rates of mental distress and illness and neoliberal economics as practised in the UK, USA and Australia. For example, in Britain, depression is now, Fisher claims, the condition that is most treated by the NHS. He argues that this is due to the instability of the modern working environment, in which there is no longer any long term job security.

The pressures of constant evaluations that employees (and school pupils!) are repeatedly subjected to additionally results in an unprecedented level of bureaucracy and excessive paperwork , which mainly involves employees having to prove that they are doing their jobs properly. Fisher sometimes refers to this process as ‘Market Stalinism’, as it is more readily associated with planned economies like the ones favoured by Marx, which are typically criticised for being excessively bureaucratic.

In state sector teaching, rigidly formatted and excessively detailed lesson planning is one manifestation of this bureaucracy at work and is part of the machinery of self-surveillance (as the documentation evidences the efficacy of the teaching). However, given that teachers these days are held to account for pupil’s public examination performances, the teaching itself tends to be geared passing the examinations. Narrowly focused ‘exam drills’ replace a wider engagement with subjects.

Meanwhile, when it comes to pupils, Fisher states that ‘it is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being classified as a sickness.’One reason for this is, of course, because teaching to the test requires pupils to be constantly tested and evaluated.

Additionally, families are buckling under the pressure of a neoliberalism that requires both parents to work (and frequently to work long hours as neoliberalism promotes a 24/7 working culture). A consequence of this is that teachers are now increasingly required to act as surrogate parents, as profferers of pastoral and emotional support for pupils who, in some cases, are only minimally socialized.

Fisher goes on to conclude that, ‘The ‘mental health plague’ in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional.’

Hey, teachers eh? Always moaning or what?

I'll finish with this: I might be citing very left-wing writers like Monbiot and Fisher but I'm not like them myself and probably like most moderate people in thinking that capitalism might just need reining in and regulating a bit, and that while professionals must be monitored in some way that it should be done in a manner that helps rather than demotivates (if the person isn't already beyond help).

Finally, I'm writing this as one of the last older teachers who is fortunate to be working in a school that has been relatively immune from this carnage. Until recently. There are still a few good ones out there that are being sensibly managed. But people need to know what's been going on. Hence, this very long post.
 
If honest I couldn't give two fucks if gove used to get on the chissel, but as it was recreational drug use in his 30s not as a daft tennager, he is open to claims of hypocrisy.

Anyway the wanker is a millionaire and seeing as osbourne got a cushy job at the ES after being binged up in parlaiment and sniffing coke off protitutes tits I doubt he will suffer much from this
 
ZenHalfTimeCrock said:
Thanks.

Life is always a bit difficult when you join a Forum for a first time as you are an unknown quantity. And with being a teacher, the view of the job from the inside is very different from outside perceptions but it's hard to convince others of that.

To be honest, I am not that bothered by someone's soft drug use from two decades ago.

But with my teacher's hat on, I find myself thinking things like, 'How many of us were suspended, dismissed or disbarred for drug-taking during Michael Gove's tenure as Education Secretary?' and ' How many of those disbarring orders were signed off by Gove himself?'

Another problem is that Gove is an avowed neoliberal and it's neoliberalism that I reckon has been causing all the problems we have been having since 2008, when the chickens came home to roost. If people reading this post don't know what that is, there's a reason.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Recently, I learned that one of my tutees had self-harmed. He's a delightful lad who is seriously clever and in possession of a sense of humour that is so mature that he comes out with things in banter that are already on a par with some alternative comedians. I also know of several others talented students who are struggling with profound anxiety-related issues. My view is that a causal line can be drawn from Gove and his predecessors on both the left and right who have increasingly been using schools as a laboratory for the enactment of neoliberal policies to this kind of outcome.

Think of the creation of Academies and Free Schools. This policy was sold to the public on the grounds that it would increase the autonomy of school leaders and parent power too (Toby Young setting up a Free School is one example). But in actuality, academies are getting run for profit and the senior administrators are paying themselves top whack while the classrooms are getting filled with young, cheap, compliant teachers who are getting worked into the ground and whose inexperience when it comes to GCSE and A Level can be worrying. Even with the requisite subject knowledge, it can be tricky devising clear and imaginative ways to get material across, and the textbooks are not always helpful because they are often plodding, inaccurate and badly written. And there actually isn't one yet for the subject I teach at A Level, three years after the new syllabus was introduced.

Plus, talk of freedom is a smokescreen for what becomes preternatural levels of micro-management when it comes to the scrutiny of teachers themselves. It's one of the reasons why there are so many complaints about paperwork. Like the police, we are constantly having to provide documentary evidence that we are doing our jobs properly, and are held 100% accountable for the grades of our students, regardless of whether they have a poor attitude, a non-existent work-ethic or have family issues so profound that an effect on their academic performance is inevitable. But to get pupils those grades we end up teaching to the test and the students then end up getting constantly assessed, which inevitably produces the aforementioned mental health issues I referred to.

The late Mark Fisher puts this situation well in his little book Capitalist Realism. The following is an extract from some notes I made for my 'A' level students on it:

'Fisher notes that a correlation has been found between rising rates of mental distress and illness and neoliberal economics as practised in the UK, USA and Australia. For example, in Britain, depression is now, Fisher claims, the condition that is most treated by the NHS. He argues that this is due to the instability of the modern working environment, in which there is no longer any long term job security.

The pressures of constant evaluations that employees (and school pupils!) are repeatedly subjected to additionally results in an unprecedented level of bureaucracy and excessive paperwork , which mainly involves employees having to prove that they are doing their jobs properly. Fisher sometimes refers to this process as ‘Market Stalinism’, as it is more readily associated with planned economies like the ones favoured by Marx, which are typically criticised for being excessively bureaucratic.

In state sector teaching, rigidly formatted and excessively detailed lesson planning is one manifestation of this bureaucracy at work and is part of the machinery of self-surveillance (as the documentation evidences the efficacy of the teaching). However, given that teachers these days are held to account for pupil’s public examination performances, the teaching itself tends to be geared passing the examinations. Narrowly focused ‘exam drills’ replace a wider engagement with subjects.

Meanwhile, when it comes to pupils, Fisher states that ‘it is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being classified as a sickness.’One reason for this is, of course, because teaching to the test requires pupils to be constantly tested and evaluated.

Additionally, families are buckling under the pressure of a neoliberalism that requires both parents to work (and frequently to work long hours as neoliberalism promotes a 24/7 working culture). A consequence of this is that teachers are now increasingly required to act as surrogate parents, as profferers of pastoral and emotional support for pupils who, in some cases, are only minimally socialized.

Fisher goes on to conclude that, ‘The ‘mental health plague’ in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional.’

Hey, teachers eh? Always moaning or what?

I'll finish with this: I might be citing very left-wing writers like Monbiot and Fisher but I'm not like them myself and probably like most moderate people in thinking that capitalism might just need reining in and regulating a bit, and that while professionals must be monitored in some way that it should be done in a manner that helps rather than demotivates (if the person isn't already beyond help).

Finally, I'm writing this as one of the last older teachers who is fortunate to be working in a school that has been relatively immune from this carnage. Until recently. There are still a few good ones out there that are being sensibly managed. But people need to know what's been going on. Hence, this very long post.
Click to expand...

Good luck finding an alternative to Gove, who is any different.
 
Neville Kneville said:
Good luck finding an alternative to Gove, who is any different.
Click to expand...

Sadly, you're right. The Tories tend to think that he did a wonderful job in education, bringing back lost standards for example.

I reckon it'll be Johnson. But if Gove does get the job maybe schools will eventually all be like the one in this brief clip.

 
Gove saying today he will scrap VAT................and replace it with a sales tax - meet the new boss, same as the old boss............

Hunt claiming he is a deal maker and would do a better job - better job of what? The WA is a deal that was shaken on. The only deal he needs to do is with Parliament so things can move on and there is no chance of that getting through there.
 
bluethrunthru said:
McVey having a car crash on Marr effectively refusing to answer a question lol
Click to expand...
Marr: You are lifting the policies of Nigel Farage.

McVey: What I'm saying is... *changes subject*

She even tried to interview Marr instead.
 
ZenHalfTimeCrock said:
It is worth remembering that Gove was once the Education Secretary and pretty much wrecked the state system during his time in office. The fall-out from his incompetence reverberates right down to the present day.

Basically, cash-starved schools have been using the increased managerial powers that Heads and Deputy Heads were granted by him not to identify and remove incompetent staff but to use that as a pretext to get rid of the older, experienced and therefore more expensive ones. This is one of the reasons why schools have been haemorrhaging staff, an exodus prompted by the fact that those with transferable skills who can see the writing on the wall and are young enough to get out have been doing so. Consequently, schools in many areas have been struggling to recruit teachers with relevant degrees in subjects like, say, Physics or Mathematics, to teach GCSE and A Level. Those of you reading this with children of secondary school age might find it fruitful to look around at the next Parents Evening and make a rough calculation as to the average age of the staff they can see. Younger ones are cheaper to come by. Another litmus test if your child is in Years 10 to 13 is to find out whether their subject tutor actually has a degree in the subject they are teaching.

A further reform Gove introduced was to ‘toughen up’ the GCSE and A Level courses due to concerns that they were ‘easy’. But what has happened with some subjects was that the courses were simply crammed with superfluous, additional content that is almost impossible to get through in two years. So teachers now simply cram from day one and the need to rote-learn far too much means that the more important skills of analysis and logical and lateral thinking get neglected. And the effects of the reforms have been nonexistent: the boards that examine are anxious not to lose their ‘customers’ and simply mark these allegedly harder terminal papers more generously. But the effects on the students themselves have been profound, and it is the brighter ones that suffer the most because of the amount that they have to learn and the all too frequent testing that they have to endure. Where I am, too many of the cleverer ones are self-harming or becoming crippled by anxiety, and this is not because they are lacking in resilience or part of a ‘snowflake generation’.
They are simply getting overwhelmed by the new curriculum because they are well-motivated and conscientious.

Additionally, if any teacher fessed up to drug use either back then or now they would be out of the door very quickly. I suppose that it is a different matter if someone is working with children but it was Gove who once presided over a system where the professional standards are higher than those that he is being held to.

Johnson might be habitually mendacious and manifestly incompetent but Gove is ideologically driven in all the wrong ways and therefore utterly unsuitable for any kind of high office regardless of his past drug use.
Click to expand...
All very true but he did give us a signed bible (we tried to send ours back. As a Catholic school we already seemed quite well stocked).
 
ZenHalfTimeCrock said:
Thanks.

Life is always a bit difficult when you join a Forum for a first time as you are an unknown quantity. And with being a teacher, the view of the job from the inside is very different from outside perceptions but it's hard to convince others of that.

To be honest, I am not that bothered by someone's soft drug use from two decades ago.

But with my teacher's hat on, I find myself thinking things like, 'How many of us were suspended, dismissed or disbarred for drug-taking during Michael Gove's tenure as Education Secretary?' and ' How many of those disbarring orders were signed off by Gove himself?'

Another problem is that Gove is an avowed neoliberal and it's neoliberalism that I reckon has been causing all the problems we have been having since 2008, when the chickens came home to roost. If people reading this post don't know what that is, there's a reason.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Recently, I learned that one of my tutees had self-harmed. He's a delightful lad who is seriously clever and in possession of a sense of humour that is so mature that he comes out with things in banter that are already on a par with some alternative comedians. I also know of several others talented students who are struggling with profound anxiety-related issues. My view is that a causal line can be drawn from Gove and his predecessors on both the left and right who have increasingly been using schools as a laboratory for the enactment of neoliberal policies to this kind of outcome.

Think of the creation of Academies and Free Schools. This policy was sold to the public on the grounds that it would increase the autonomy of school leaders and parent power too (Toby Young setting up a Free School is one example). But in actuality, academies are getting run for profit and the senior administrators are paying themselves top whack while the classrooms are getting filled with young, cheap, compliant teachers who are getting worked into the ground and whose inexperience when it comes to GCSE and A Level can be worrying. Even with the requisite subject knowledge, it can be tricky devising clear and imaginative ways to get material across, and the textbooks are not always helpful because they are often plodding, inaccurate and badly written. And there actually isn't one yet for the subject I teach at A Level, three years after the new syllabus was introduced.

Plus, talk of freedom is a smokescreen for what becomes preternatural levels of micro-management when it comes to the scrutiny of teachers themselves. It's one of the reasons why there are so many complaints about paperwork. Like the police, we are constantly having to provide documentary evidence that we are doing our jobs properly, and are held 100% accountable for the grades of our students, regardless of whether they have a poor attitude, a non-existent work-ethic or have family issues so profound that an effect on their academic performance is inevitable. But to get pupils those grades we end up teaching to the test and the students then end up getting constantly assessed, which inevitably produces the aforementioned mental health issues I referred to.

The late Mark Fisher puts this situation well in his little book Capitalist Realism. The following is an extract from some notes I made for my 'A' level students on it:

'Fisher notes that a correlation has been found between rising rates of mental distress and illness and neoliberal economics as practised in the UK, USA and Australia. For example, in Britain, depression is now, Fisher claims, the condition that is most treated by the NHS. He argues that this is due to the instability of the modern working environment, in which there is no longer any long term job security.

The pressures of constant evaluations that employees (and school pupils!) are repeatedly subjected to additionally results in an unprecedented level of bureaucracy and excessive paperwork , which mainly involves employees having to prove that they are doing their jobs properly. Fisher sometimes refers to this process as ‘Market Stalinism’, as it is more readily associated with planned economies like the ones favoured by Marx, which are typically criticised for being excessively bureaucratic.

In state sector teaching, rigidly formatted and excessively detailed lesson planning is one manifestation of this bureaucracy at work and is part of the machinery of self-surveillance (as the documentation evidences the efficacy of the teaching). However, given that teachers these days are held to account for pupil’s public examination performances, the teaching itself tends to be geared passing the examinations. Narrowly focused ‘exam drills’ replace a wider engagement with subjects.

Meanwhile, when it comes to pupils, Fisher states that ‘it is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being classified as a sickness.’One reason for this is, of course, because teaching to the test requires pupils to be constantly tested and evaluated.

Additionally, families are buckling under the pressure of a neoliberalism that requires both parents to work (and frequently to work long hours as neoliberalism promotes a 24/7 working culture). A consequence of this is that teachers are now increasingly required to act as surrogate parents, as profferers of pastoral and emotional support for pupils who, in some cases, are only minimally socialized.

Fisher goes on to conclude that, ‘The ‘mental health plague’ in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional.’

Hey, teachers eh? Always moaning or what?

I'll finish with this: I might be citing very left-wing writers like Monbiot and Fisher but I'm not like them myself and probably like most moderate people in thinking that capitalism might just need reining in and regulating a bit, and that while professionals must be monitored in some way that it should be done in a manner that helps rather than demotivates (if the person isn't already beyond help).

Finally, I'm writing this as one of the last older teachers who is fortunate to be working in a school that has been relatively immune from this carnage. Until recently. There are still a few good ones out there that are being sensibly managed. But people need to know what's been going on. Hence, this very long post.
Click to expand...
We’ve only our supine selves to blame - no cohesive strategy to counter the nonsense you describe so accurately.
 
ZenHalfTimeCrock said:
Thanks.

Life is always a bit difficult when you join a Forum for a first time as you are an unknown quantity. And with being a teacher, the view of the job from the inside is very different from outside perceptions but it's hard to convince others of that.

To be honest, I am not that bothered by someone's soft drug use from two decades ago.

But with my teacher's hat on, I find myself thinking things like, 'How many of us were suspended, dismissed or disbarred for drug-taking during Michael Gove's tenure as Education Secretary?' and ' How many of those disbarring orders were signed off by Gove himself?'

Another problem is that Gove is an avowed neoliberal and it's neoliberalism that I reckon has been causing all the problems we have been having since 2008, when the chickens came home to roost. If people reading this post don't know what that is, there's a reason.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Recently, I learned that one of my tutees had self-harmed. He's a delightful lad who is seriously clever and in possession of a sense of humour that is so mature that he comes out with things in banter that are already on a par with some alternative comedians. I also know of several others talented students who are struggling with profound anxiety-related issues. My view is that a causal line can be drawn from Gove and his predecessors on both the left and right who have increasingly been using schools as a laboratory for the enactment of neoliberal policies to this kind of outcome.

Think of the creation of Academies and Free Schools. This policy was sold to the public on the grounds that it would increase the autonomy of school leaders and parent power too (Toby Young setting up a Free School is one example). But in actuality, academies are getting run for profit and the senior administrators are paying themselves top whack while the classrooms are getting filled with young, cheap, compliant teachers who are getting worked into the ground and whose inexperience when it comes to GCSE and A Level can be worrying. Even with the requisite subject knowledge, it can be tricky devising clear and imaginative ways to get material across, and the textbooks are not always helpful because they are often plodding, inaccurate and badly written. And there actually isn't one yet for the subject I teach at A Level, three years after the new syllabus was introduced.

Plus, talk of freedom is a smokescreen for what becomes preternatural levels of micro-management when it comes to the scrutiny of teachers themselves. It's one of the reasons why there are so many complaints about paperwork. Like the police, we are constantly having to provide documentary evidence that we are doing our jobs properly, and are held 100% accountable for the grades of our students, regardless of whether they have a poor attitude, a non-existent work-ethic or have family issues so profound that an effect on their academic performance is inevitable. But to get pupils those grades we end up teaching to the test and the students then end up getting constantly assessed, which inevitably produces the aforementioned mental health issues I referred to.

The late Mark Fisher puts this situation well in his little book Capitalist Realism. The following is an extract from some notes I made for my 'A' level students on it:

'Fisher notes that a correlation has been found between rising rates of mental distress and illness and neoliberal economics as practised in the UK, USA and Australia. For example, in Britain, depression is now, Fisher claims, the condition that is most treated by the NHS. He argues that this is due to the instability of the modern working environment, in which there is no longer any long term job security.

The pressures of constant evaluations that employees (and school pupils!) are repeatedly subjected to additionally results in an unprecedented level of bureaucracy and excessive paperwork , which mainly involves employees having to prove that they are doing their jobs properly. Fisher sometimes refers to this process as ‘Market Stalinism’, as it is more readily associated with planned economies like the ones favoured by Marx, which are typically criticised for being excessively bureaucratic.

In state sector teaching, rigidly formatted and excessively detailed lesson planning is one manifestation of this bureaucracy at work and is part of the machinery of self-surveillance (as the documentation evidences the efficacy of the teaching). However, given that teachers these days are held to account for pupil’s public examination performances, the teaching itself tends to be geared passing the examinations. Narrowly focused ‘exam drills’ replace a wider engagement with subjects.

Meanwhile, when it comes to pupils, Fisher states that ‘it is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being classified as a sickness.’One reason for this is, of course, because teaching to the test requires pupils to be constantly tested and evaluated.

Additionally, families are buckling under the pressure of a neoliberalism that requires both parents to work (and frequently to work long hours as neoliberalism promotes a 24/7 working culture). A consequence of this is that teachers are now increasingly required to act as surrogate parents, as profferers of pastoral and emotional support for pupils who, in some cases, are only minimally socialized.

Fisher goes on to conclude that, ‘The ‘mental health plague’ in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional.’

Hey, teachers eh? Always moaning or what?

I'll finish with this: I might be citing very left-wing writers like Monbiot and Fisher but I'm not like them myself and probably like most moderate people in thinking that capitalism might just need reining in and regulating a bit, and that while professionals must be monitored in some way that it should be done in a manner that helps rather than demotivates (if the person isn't already beyond help).

Finally, I'm writing this as one of the last older teachers who is fortunate to be working in a school that has been relatively immune from this carnage. Until recently. There are still a few good ones out there that are being sensibly managed. But people need to know what's been going on. Hence, this very long post.
Click to expand...
I've been chair of governors in different schools and glad I got out before we were expected to know every aspect of management or get marked down by Ofsted.

What annoys me is the cuts to schools but the govt always says "we're giving schools more money".
 
Vic said:
I've been chair of governors in different schools and glad I got out before we were expected to know every aspect of management or get marked down by Ofsted.

What annoys me is the cuts to schools but the govt always says "we're giving schools more money".
Click to expand...
Governance of school - a thankless task.
 
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