To tell you how schools changed within 15-10 years

[HerNeighbourTotoro]

I have been a teacher (on off, contracts and lots of supply) for almost 15 years now with some other work in between. If you have a child going through the system now and no older kids, you would not know how different things were even a few years ago.
15 years ago I did my PGCE in a fantastic school, I sadly missed out on the job they had at the end of that year and moved to a different location.

The staffroom was vibrant, lots of people always working, talking, exchanging ideas, they had a core team of teachers who were in charge of teaching and learning and each specialised in a different area, and were happy to pop in and observe or be observed. So many things were just amazing. They were also able to offer both more academic and vocational subjets.The department I worked in was wonderfuly resourced and they had a budget to buy into a few subscriptions offering students additional learning opportunities, they did trips, clubs, there were cross curricular days where departments collaborated to do projects. A dream place to work.

Over the years I worked in a few different schools and each year I have been noticing a change for worse, especially if I had a break from teaching/supply.

As it happens, last year we moved back closer to town with my PGCE school and an opportunity to do supply came up. No one I remember works there anymore, which was a shame, but what was really striking to me is how many things got lost in between. The staff rotation is however huge, and some departments have failed to recruit teachers for the vacancies and have either long term or daily supply to cover for the shortage (bear in mind when I applied, there were 50 applications for the job I ended up not getting and it was a norm to have over 30 applications in most schools in the area, and a lot more for shortage subject).

My subject lost a technician who was vital and it massively increased the workload. The department is half the size (as are many others). The classes are much bigger and some have 33-34 students. They run far fewer trips because a) the cost for the school to book suply is too big b) the workload increased so much that there is little time to organise these c) they lost office staff who used to help with the admin and now the team is smaller and can't help anymore.

The Language department used to have 3 language assistants (one for each language hey offered)- they now only offer one language and have no language assistants. The amount of subjects the school offers is much smaller and there apparently have been talks of closing down their 6th form.

All of the TAs are now mostly inexperienced agency staff that come and go and the SEN team is probably half of what it used to be as well. I have not seen a TA in any of my classes so far despite quite a few students desperately needing support.
The staffroom looks like a graveyard. Most people spend their lunches in their classrooms, eating as they prepare/mark. Forget about things like replacing damaged textbooks or other resources, so many people have to bring in their own pens and glues they buy in bulk because there is no budget.

I won't even mention the behaviour, 'teaching' a class of 30 or 30+ instead of 26 feels more like controlling chaos. There used to be a behaviour team supporting teachers, but now this is also gone because the school could not afford keeping 3-4 support staff on the team.

I genuinely feel sorry for children who are getting such different experience compared to before, with a small choice of subjects, supervised by supply teachers (I won't say taught) in the absence of teachers the school didn't manage to recruit, with few resources and few extracurricural opportunities.

For the record, the school is in a relatively well of area, I can tell you I have seen much worse elsewhere. But it is such a shame to see what was once a thriving school community in such a sorry state. All as the government is saying how supposedly schools are getting so much more money than at any given point in the past.

I don’t think there is any fundamental differences between the two sided arguments. One cannot function well without the other. Without understanding of how things work, application is limited. Theories etc can be dry and boring to kids, however, it is part of process of training the young minds to have the ability to think deeper, to quest and query, to apply.

It is far more important to have high quality teachers and better behaved classes than to only focus on class sizes. A discussion on how parents can help school will be more constructive than focus on funding.

I was very pleased to see and hear LGBT issues, kids, appropriate language used in schools when I returned in.2015 after 10 years out of education.

When I was at school lesbian was a very dirty word and there was no visibility or discussion about any issues. Teachers certainly didn't challenge homophonic behaviour so it was rife.
Schools are much more inclusive and it would have made a big difference to me if I had felt like I wasn't a freak.in school for being gay.

I think we must focus on funding (among other things) because the physical school estate is falling apart (since Building Schools for the Future was cancelled in 2010) and the government keeps adding pay rises, NI rises and pension contribution rises that are fully or partially unfunded, plus LAs are in trouble meaning they're having to top slice the main school budget for SEND.

Plus the birth rate peaked in 2012-13 and school funding is allocated per head.

Money's certainly not the whole problem but it is a problem.

Behaviour was always pretty bad with supply teachers when I was at secondary school. Cover sessions I imagine show behaviour at its worst. In what way is it so awful compared to when you were at school? Scared to send my kids into this environment!

@Stegochops
I’ve mainly been cover TA or behaviour mentor. So the main, usual class teacher would be present.
complete chaos for permanent teachers, children throwing tables about as standard. Pastoral/behaviour management team popping their heads through doors and witnessing it and not batting an eyelid as though it’s standard, everyday occurrence.
this stuff definitely happened 15 years ago when I was in school, but it would have been a big deal. A child would be put in isolation, or excluded externally, meeting with parents etc. there’s not the same repercussions now because the staff simply don’t have the time to deal with every incident as it’s literally several times a lesson.

That sounds awful. Is that all ability sets where you’d expect behaviour like that?

I'm genuinely interested. When I speak to teenagers they seem to think they’re being put into isolation for things like wearing the wrong coloured socks so to think tables are being chucked around classrooms seems baffling.

Gove has caused a lot of the issues we have in schools. It’s upsetting to see he’s getting handed a peerage.

This just sounds like terrible management.

"Memorising large amounts of information" = learning stuff. You seem to object to kids learning stuff because they can look it up. It is exactly the 'why should I learn my times tables when I have a calculator?' argument. It's because if you know your times tables then you can quickly complete basic calculations without having to reach for a calculator. But also knowing your times tables creates a whole sense about number that makes understanding other areas of maths much easier. And the same goes for other bits of knowledge. It is far easier for me to debate the impact of Tory education policy if I know about Michael Gove being education secretary and the vast swathes of policy changes he brought in instead of having to google a list every time I want to talk about it. Knowing that his key advisor in this period was Dominic Cummings then means I can make links to Gove's actions during the Brexit campaign, and then I can follow that through to Boris Johnson's disastrous time as Prime Minister. If you know things you can make links between various areas of knowledge. If you are constantly having to look things up, however at your fingertips that information is, the threads are lost.

I brought Shakespeare into this conversation because you said the curriculum was outdated and because Shakespeare wrote his works hundreds of years ago. But apparently it's fine to study his plays? So what do you mean by outdated?

Seen and heard by whom exactly? The teachers who are leaving in droves?

I absolutely remember this dubious report about how useless TAs were. I was a brilliant TA and knew things were headed downhill from then on.

Maths is skills that can and are transferrable.
Number sense like number bonds and timetables is beneficial. However, some children have an natural maths ability and for others maths is really confusing.
I know one child who started school with a strong maths knowledge. Because of how schools work children are who just get maths are held back and bored by the repetitive maths teaching. Right at the other end of the spectrum is the children who can't keep up with the speed maths is taught. Who need time to process the basics. A child can not do multiplication and division unless they understand number value and addition / subtraction. But they will.be say in lessons expected to learn that topic regardless.

children can explore and self direct their learning and do far better this way. We need to allow children to learn at the speed and direction that suits them best. We need the right support to scaffold learning for those who are struggling to enable them to make progress too.

There are too many children leaving school/education at 16 / 18 who still don't have numeracy and / or literacy at a functional level. If the system worked every child would have functional skills as a minimum but it isn't working because they don't

It really worries me that people think that you don't need to acquire any knowledge at school because it's all a click away on the internet. It's crucial that you have some context with which you can assess what you are reading imo.

By adults. As opposed to mistreated. My how we laughed on my first placement (in a ‘bog standard comp’ in a leafy county) when a boy on work experience (who shouted out a lot but loved machinery) was sent on work experience in a garage and was found by a visiting teacher, having spent the morning in a bin where he had been put. No judgement of the garage staff just, good on them.

And lessons were often dreary. Reading out chunks of text, taking notes off the board, even being encouraged to get pupils to do dictation. Constant word searches, no group work, lots of listening and repeating….

I am certainly not arguing that all is rosy - far from it - but in some ways education is very much better than it was 35 years ago when I started teaching.

Not perfect?! I've been a teacher for 30 years and I think the majority of things have got worse, not better. To take just one of your examples, 'being more aware of misogyny' doesn't seem to have had any positive effect, judging by the number of rapes and sexual assaults in schools and the way many male students speak to and about girls and female teachers.

And lessons were often dreary. Reading out chunks of text, taking notes off the board, even being encouraged to get pupils to do dictation. Constant word searches, no group work, lots of listening and repeating….

Oh no - not dictation! Dictation and reading aloud are both parts of the brand new MFL GCSE exam. They are both excellent exercises actually, and always have been. Incidentally, one of the things that has gone wrong with the education has been training students to expect to be constantly entertained, and to behave poorly if they are not. Learning is not always fun, especially in a subject you don't like. Fun activities are more fun if they are sporadic. Constant gamifying of learning just encourages extrinsic rather than instrinsic reward.

Scotland have had a more theoretical driven and less knowledge based curriculum and their pisa (international) scores have declined. But perhaps pisa is measuring the wrong things.

I think all public sector is knackered by the same stuff tbh. School was set up and funded so that the whole population could learn enough to contribute economically. Now we want our institutions to provide personalised services for all, at a higher level than was expected in the past but for a couple of grand a year per kid. It’s not possible. Expectations are through the roof and everyone is wanting different things for their dc and many feel entitled to this. So you get this rubbish mishmash of no one getting what they need and a very stressful environment for the staff trying to provide what they can.

100% agree. Variety helps though. I was given hours of dictation (in English) and no differentiation. Wall to wall group work is also awful. But lessons are much more varied now than they were. I remember the tediousness of reading round the class. Thankfully, we do that much less. And one of my classmates was seriously unwell with what is now common (anorexia) but no one realised until she was no longer able to walk properly. (Boarding) Pastoral care has come a long way, as has healthcare in educational settings.

As an aside, I did AS French for Business (in 1985) and our oral exam involved making fake telephone calls booking hotel rooms and arranging dry cleaning, plane tickets etc. Always for a male boss, never a female or for ourselves. But A Level French involved the study of 4 novels (Grande Meaulnes, La Dentelliere, Noed De Vipers and L’Etranger - excuse rusty French spelling) which I absolutely loved.

So some things have changed for the better - by no means all!!

I’d think it would be almost impossible to teach theory without enough prior knowledge. I don’t know anything about pisa and can’t comment on that.

Absolutely this.

The grant per child's more like 5 grand isn't it? Plus Pupil Premium funds can be significant: hundreds of thousands.

While things have certainly worsened financially over the last 15 years, we're not anywhere near the low levels of funding of the 80s when I went to school.

Schools were a lot cheaper to run in the 80s, tbf.

children can explore and self direct their learning and do far better this way. We need to allow children to learn at the speed and direction that suits them best.

Yes well, schools aren't home education so have to function in a different way.

The idea that children will explore and self-direct their learning in a way that is actually productive is pretty funny though. Kids are kids. We don't allow them to explore and direct their food intake because we know better than them what is healthy. We also know better than them what things are worth learning. Lots of children like memorising hundreds of Pokémon names and attributes but that doesn't mean we should start teaching it in schools, or should allow a kid who is interested in Pokémon to learn that instead of cracking on with Shakespeare.

The aim of school is to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, not to pander to individual children's interests. Sure they might end up having to learn stuff that doesn't interest them at the time, but it might keep options open for them later down the line that they will value. And some things they just have to suck up because e.g. being literate and numerate is important and valuable to society as a whole.