{"id":36233,"date":"2016-02-24T13:25:44","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T12:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=36233"},"modified":"2017-05-08T19:39:02","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T18:39:02","slug":"if-you-want-to-explain-whats-happening-in-the-nhs-just-look-at-schools-and-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2016\/02\/24\/if-you-want-to-explain-whats-happening-in-the-nhs-just-look-at-schools-and-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"David Oliver: If you want to explain what\u2019s happening in the NHS, just look at schools and teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"david_oliver_2015\"<\/a>Imagine you are a teacher or headteacher in a good enough local authority school in an area with its fair share of deprivation and a shrinking funding envelope. The school increasingly struggles to balance its books, yet it\u2019s told to make further savings.<\/p>\n

You are experienced and good at your job. You chose and trained for this career because you cared about children\u2019s education. Your school takes all comers\u2014it can\u2019t select its intake. Exclusion is frowned upon and special needs have to be met as best they can.<\/p>\n

The school has staffing problems, sickness rates are on the rise, and it relies on supply teachers. But you\u2019ve been told to crack down on hiring those. Senior teachers are retiring this side of 60\u2014burnt out and demoralised.<\/p>\n

Local birth rates are rising and so is demand for places. You now have to cope with class sizes that are just too big to be safe or effective, either for the kids or the staff.\u00a0Equipment is in short supply. Money has been transferred from capital to revenue budgets to keep local schools afloat so expansion through building is hard.<\/p>\n

You know that you and your colleagues have to work till 9 or 10 every night and often at weekends and during\u00a0holidays preparing, marking, and updating your own skills.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a radio phone-in or newspaper article about schools or teaching, against your better judgement you tune in or read \u201cbelow the line\u201d comments. There\u2019s an inexhaustible line of people with ready opinions talking about your \u201clong holidays,\u201d \u201ccushy job,\u201d and \u201cgold plated pensions.\u201d They don\u2019t seem to live in the same world you do.<\/p>\n

You are aware, of course, that most parents have their children\u2019s interests at heart and know them well (but sometimes through rose tinted spectacles given the behaviour at school they don\u2019t see, or the parent\u2019s misguided belief that their child is uniquely gifted, which leads to\u00a0false expectations of the child’s level of attainment). Yet there you are with years of experience at dealing with every ability level, every scenario, and yet your own expertise in children and learning in general isn\u2019t afforded the same weight.<\/p>\n

Politicians and know-all columnists keep banging on about returning to \u201cmaking education about the children\u201d (though it often seems that they are more interested in the parents). Isn\u2019t that what you and your colleagues have always done? It\u2019s hardly an innovation.<\/p>\n

Parents even sometimes side with their kids against you. And if there is a complaint, however groundless, however malicious, however much everyone in the staffroom knows it\u2019s a joke, the school is expected to come over all apologetic and not push back. This doesn\u2019t exactly make you feel supported, or like it\u2019s a fair exchange of power.<\/p>\n

When school is cancelled due to adverse weather or power cuts, or when there is a threat of industrial action, the howls of protest are about \u201cordinary hard working people\u201d having to take time off to look after their own children. Even on a normal working day, you end up with a handful of kids waiting far too long to be collected, as if you are a glorified childminding service.<\/p>\n

You are put through inspections that seem at once superficial, officious, and more interested in documentation than the real job you do. You aren\u2019t sure what the credentials of the inspectors are, but you doubt many have taught recently or any better than you and your colleagues. You never get to find out, but you did note that recently the chief inspector of schools dismissed a thousand or so for not being up to the job. Yet these inspection reports carry weight, are regarded as incontestable, and feature in league tables bizarrely regarded as gospel by posh newspapers and by parents who will even move house on the back of the tables. Some schools miraculously go from outstanding to good or vice versa in two years, even though nothing much seems to have changed in the ones you know about.<\/p>\n

At least the current Ofsted chief is one of you. He may be an attack dog, but he did teach for 40 years and was a headteacher in some tough areas. You\u2019ll forgive some of his abruptness and grandstanding. But now ministers are talking tough about bringing in a new inspector from the US\u2014one who has experience of \u201ctaking on the teaching unions\u201d and \u201ctackling vested interests.\u201d Considering that you can\u2019t fill your vacancies and hang on to teachers as it is, and that your pay has been frozen and pensions capped while contributions increase, you aren\u2019t quite sure why this \u201ctalking tough\u201d is necessary.<\/p>\n

Somewhere up there in Whitehall, you see a parade of education secretaries and school ministers come and go. They\u2019re in post for two to three years max. They rarely have any background in education. They all come in with pet theories, and try to drive through \u201creforms\u201d at an unrealistic pace before an election or a reshuffle. And every time it sends your school and your kids\u2019 lives into turmoil and makes morale worse.<\/p>\n

The last one seemed to want everyone to study as if they were a gifted child in a 1970s grammar school like he was. He thought he knew more about writing curriculums than people who had spent their whole lives in teaching and teacher training. He referred to them as a \u201cblob\u201d and the \u201cenemies of progress.\u201d He had clearly spent years thinking about just what he would do if he got the job and wasn\u2019t minded to take advice.<\/p>\n

The minister\u2019s successor was brought in to smooth things over\u2014to build bridges. It\u2019s not going so well so far. She behaves like an automaton and in her own way is no more teacher friendly.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the politicians have become obsessed with \u201coutsourcing\u201d exams to private contractors. They want parents to have the right to set up \u201cfree schools\u201d even in areas where more local authority primary school places should be the priority. They are also obsessed with \u201cany qualified provider\u201d in the form of academies. They would love \u201cchains\u201d of academies to mentor other schools, but seem hostile to even the very best local authority schools providing this kind of support. Yet recent experience and reports commissioned by the government have shown that neither the academies nor the free schools perform better than the existing state sector. They don\u2019t want to hear this.<\/p>\n

On top of that, the government seems fixated with a few pet schools and headteachers, using their stories in effect to let everyone else know how good they could be\u2014better still if they are from America. You know full well that many of these star performers are either private schools with five times your per capita funding, or urban schools where they judge their success on a handful of gifted children getting to top universities\u2014\u201caspiring to excellence\u201d and all that\u2014but what about the other kids.<\/p>\n

There is a final kick in the teeth in what is becoming an unbearable, undoable job. The press and politicians are obsessed with organisations such as Teach First giving \u201chigh fliers from the private sector,\u201d \u201cbright graduates,\u201d or \u201cex forces\u201d personnel\u00a0a few months rudimentary training and putting them in schools, effectively giving you the message that your four years studying or your PGCE is irrelevant, and that you are second raters anyway. Thanks a bunch!<\/p>\n

If you work in the NHS frontline, you won\u2019t need any illicit substances to imagine any of this. It\u2019s pretty much line for line what\u2019s happening to us. And it\u2019s why all of us in essential public services need to stick together in opposing so called \u201creforms\u201d that will do irreparable damage to those services and to the workforce that will be hard to undo. Despite the snotty comments on the phone-ins and below the newspaper articles, the public still trust us far more than the politicians or the tabloids and we do essential, valued work.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let the bastards get you!<\/p>\n

David Oliver<\/strong> is a consultant in geriatrics and general medicine in Berkshire and writes the weekly \u201cAcute Perspective\u201d column in <\/em>The BMJ.<\/p>\n

Competing interests:<\/strong> None declared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine you are a teacher or headteacher in a good enough local authority school in an area with its fair share of deprivation and a shrinking funding envelope. The school increasingly struggles to balance its books, yet it\u2019s told to make further savings. You are experienced and good at your job. You chose and trained […]<\/p>\n

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