How was teaching different 20-30 years ago?

[glamourousindierockandroll]

Inspired by a thread bemoaning the lack of marking of homework done by teachers nowadays, and nostalgia for bygone days when teachers would mark everything, I wondered what a day in the life of a teacher would have looked like when the parents of today were at school themselves.

I'm in my 30s and have been teaching secondary English and working in schools for over a decade now and I cannot fathom how teachers would find the time to write a comment on every single bit of homework. I'm interested to know what was workload like prior to the 2000s. What was easier/ harder? What constituted an every day decent lesson?

I need to come and work in your school. We are still expected to write comments or a question on every piece of work.

There was nothing like the safeguarding and pastoral workload there is now, there was more direct teaching and children were better behaved. I worked in a tough area but parents were salt of the earth and saw education as their children's way to a better life.
Parents were more supportive and certainly less critical. Children were so much happier and less anxious (no hint of social media and Granny's Garden on the computer was cutting edge!). There was more notice for inspection and more external support and advice so accountability felt more reasonable.
I used to spend hours and hours marking but rather enjoyed it. We laughed more and had a lot of fun.
Forty years ago we had more textbooks for English and Maths in primary but also more freedom to really make teaching creative and respond to the children's interests. There were hardly ever any additional responsibilities and training, you just got on with the job. I had a TA for an afternoon each week and 38 children in my first class.
I worked hard and loved it. I find nowadays that teachers are more tired and stressed even though you can still see those who thrive on the love of the children and the job.

My NQT year was 1991 so 31 years ago now, if I look back then to now, you could say a lot has changed for sure in every aspect.
There is a hell of a lot more ‘red tape’ nowadays from back then in regards to safeguarding, diversity and inclusion and the way we teach students - back then, no IT equipment really so just encyclopaedias if you needed to do research!!!
I think over the last 10-15 years or so, schools have become more OFSTED savvy and teaching in some form has become a tick box exercise.

I taught for many years and started late 80s. The Government meddling had just started but essentially you were respected as a professional, your judgement carried weight and you were trusted to get on with the job. I agree that as the years went on, teaching became more and more a tick box exercise. Also there were indeed more laughs and fun in the early days of my career. We all marked everything, the children learned and it wasn't really a bad job at the time. Things got ruined as years went on, but that's for another thread.

I made good friends as we got a whole hour for lunch and we all spent it in the staffroom together.

I didn't send hours constantly testing my classes followed up with entering pointless data on spreadsheets every five weeks.

We had behaviour policies that worked for the vast majority of students - there was none of this one million chances t behave malarky. The teacher was not automatically considered to be the problem.

You handwrote a comment on a paper report once a year and that was all the feedback parents got! No computers, no emails, no data input, no data analysis, no 5 million ways to analyse pupil progress, more time in staffroom with colleagues, you spoke to people rather than emails, you just ticked work and that meant it was marked , you got home and had plans for the evening! But maybe that’s just cos u were 30 years younger with no kids or elderly parents!

In primary, you collected homework at the start of the day and put twenty maths questions on the board, which the class did in silence. You marked the homework and brought them up to see you if they needed it.

You then started the lesson before taking out the textbooks and returning to the homework.

After playtime, repeat with literacy and reading books.

God it was glorious.

I am in lreland. Started teaching in the 80s and this comment about having more opportunities to be creative and playing to the children's interests really resonated with me. No one breathing down your neck at every turn. No new guidelines coming out every week with more and more demands on your time. I started with 38 and while we were inspected regularly for two years it was genuinely supportive and encouraging leading to growth. Now it's all negative and soul destroying.
I lived with a Secondary teacher and she would bring home lots of corrections but we would laugh and chat as she corrected putting a comment on each one. But it didn't feel like work.
Now no one asks how the students are doing but all about paper work and pressure.

I started in early 90s.

Struggled to get a job because LEAs picked up the bill initially(or schools hadn't quite got the hang of running their own budget) and they tended to appoint teachers with experience . This had changed within 3 or 4 years.

Supply teachers had to be experienced but got good rate of pay.

Fewer children with SEN in mainstream secondary. No TAs.

No tech to go wrong....

Longer breaks. Staff had time to eat lunch together or have a cuppa in the staffroom.

More time and energy to run after school clubs.

Teachers trusted to plan lessons.

Parents generally supportive.

Less emphasis on grades - seen as more of the children's own responsibility.

Less safeguarding training...

Some things have changed for the better.

Although, as my son says,. I would not have wanted to take the financial risk of training today.

I started 20 years ago. One of the big differences not mentioned here so far is that you didn't have an email culture so didn't have the madness of 20 new emails expecting responses every time you looked at your laptop. Now I'll discover at the end of the day that I've got various 'urgent' emails that were sent to me during teaching time in the afternoon by non teaching pastoral staff when presumably they must know we don't get to check emails whilst teaching. Also constant emails asking for detailed observations about students you may have only taught twice due to their absence levels or the fact that they were in student support for the rest of the lessons.

It's amazing the amount of work that that culture of forwarding a parent email or pastoral problem to 'all teachers of...' can create. In one day I'll have at least 15 emails requesting that so and so must not be sat near so and so because they have had a falling out and so and so must not be asked questions and don't give so and so a uniform point because they had their tie stolen at lunchtime. They won't include what class so and so is in and would take forever to actually do anything meaningful with even if they weren't sent when you were teaching anyway.

I personally think that level of immediate contact and the employing of so many non teaching staff into key positions like head of year has hugely added to workload and the feeling of constant demands. A teaching head of year or pastoral leader would not pass on these things and would just deal with them and they would know, for example, teachers can't read emails whilst teaching and they don't have time to call parents to explain in person every warning they ever give out.

If you wanted people to know or do something you actually had to go and see someone or announce it in a briefing the reality of which meant people just cracked on and dealt with their job rather than passing the buck to 'all teachers' via an email.

I don't see others talking about this though so it may just be a particular bugbear of mine or a problem at my school. A new colleague commented that they were shocked at the number of emails they got so it could be the former.

Also agree with lots of the above - constant assessment and arduous marking policies, endless data points, endless book looks, learning walks, mocksteds and observations.... I was a lot more trusted and was judged by how well I managed my classes and what results my students got. If those things were good you weren't micromanaged or forced to do things in some new way that was the latest trend.

I agree with all of that @swallowedAfly and don't let's even start with the initiatives that we all suddenly had to follow because they had never been thought of before (yeah ok) and would revolutionise our teaching....

Swallowedafly - totally agree. Non teaching pastoral staff became the bane of my life in the last few years I was teaching. They deal with students on a one to one basis and think they have great relationships with them. What they don't seem to grasp is that is is very easy to have a calm, rational student in front of you when you are giving them hot chocolate, sweets, a comfy chair to sit in, your undivided attention and you are not trying to get them to do any work or pass an exam. They have no concept at all of trying to manage a class of thirty plus students with half a dozen kids in the mix who simply do not want to be there. Of course these kids kick off - who wouldn't prefet to be in the cosy pastoral office than writing an essay or doing maths last lesson on a Friday!

The number of lessons that were utterly detroyed by pastoral staff popping to to extract students or return students throughout the lesson. Again, because they were non teaching they were oblivious to just how chaotic that is to a lesson where you have worked hard to maintain discipline and get the class on task.

And yes, the bloody emails. No, I can't keep moving kids between sets and rehashing my seating plans every five minutes. Nor am I able to write in their homework diaries for them because they can't do it themselves - not becuase I don't want to, but because I have this whole class to manage and because you sent the email mid lesson when I was actually teaching. The very idea that I did not have the time to check and act on emails mid lesson was utterly beyond their comprehension.

But then I did have a HT who would look at his phone throughout our one to one meetings - even interrupting me mid sentence reading out snippets from the lasest news headline. So rude - and what a way to make a member of staff feel of utterly no value.

I started teaching 20 years ago and it wasn't great to be honest.

I look back now and safeguarding was terrible. We had two sites neither of which had any kind of fencing. Kids walked between sites or simply left for the day. Registers may or may not get taken. Live files were not really a thing, you might get a list of SEN kids and the looked after kids but that was it.

Paperwork wasn't like it is now but I had to write reports which I haven't done in years. Photocopying was a nightmare as you had to submit it days in advance of your lesson. There were no emails which was great but there also was no real scheme of work. Someone experienced mighty have a worksheet or some exam questions if you were lucky.

The labs were ancient and we had flooding now and again. Often freezing cold in winter. Equipment was rubbish and I would often buy stuff for school, glue, pens, stuff for practical work.

Anyone experienced had about ten roles in school and no time to do any of them well. Cover was guaranteed.

This was before healthy school dinners so you could get hot doughnuts from the canteen at break and the best cakes and biscuits at lunchtime. I was early 20s and often got mistaken for a sixth form student so frequently paid kids prices. On a Friday we would go to the pub for lunch!

Much as it can be a challenge now I would not swap for 20 years ago.

So glad it's not just me and I recognise all of what you said lonely

I can have a lesson interrupted like 5 times by people who just need to speak to so and so or take so and so for a minute etc. Sometimes they don't even wait for you to finish your sentence. I've become quite assertive in holding up my hand and finishing getting through what I was saying to enable the kids to get on task before allowing the interruption now because it gets ridiculous.

As for the hot chocolate and sweets and blissful unawareness - yes we've had some of those including one non teaching head of year who tried to return a student I'd removed to my lesson for extreme bad behaviour because they were calmer now and said student was blatantly chewing gum and gesturing behind her back and I had to interrupt to tell him to put his gum in the bin and ask where his blazer was whilst she wittered away further disrupting the lesson that I'd managed to get back on track.

She left fortunately and I think she was a particularly awful one (all mini skirts and chocolate and apparently would slag off teachers to the students) but the theme of having no awareness of what the classroom requires and entails is still present.

I started 18 years ago. Planning was done in a comb bound book and you wrote a sentence or two for each lesson. We also used the QCA (??) units of work so planning was super easy. On the downside, differentiation was very on trend so you were expected to have 4-5 groups and a different worksheet for each group. As people said, no epic data analysis every term.

The differences between teaching now and 35 years ago, when I started, make it almost a different profession.

In Primary at least, schools mostly staffed by experienced teachers - and the job was very secure. No performance management at all. Every teacher was in a union and just refused to go along with anything they thought was unreasonable. Staff meeting half an hour once a week mostly just running through dates in the diary.

Every class had a classroom assistant (as they were then called), to assist with any task needed from photocopying to washing paint pots (not a teaching role except for supporting art & craft or maths games - it was frowned upon to do so as unqualified).
Break times were 20 minutes twice a day, lunchtime 1.5 hours - we actually had time to sit and chat!

There was no set curriculum as such - just text books or workbooks even for Reception. The only requirement was you had to teach one RE lesson a week - the rest was entirely up the teacher, as long as the work books were completed at the pace suitable for each group. There were no records kept - other than a once yearly reading test purely for the schools planning and assessment for the following year; and results not shared with parents or LEA. You wanted to know how a child was progressing - you looked at their exercise books which were kept for a year then sent home with the child.

It was inconceivable that a child would be admitted who wasn't toilet trained, or was violent towards staff. Parents knew that if there children were disruptive a strong HT particularly one with a good reputation, would tell them to take their children elsewhere - no formal exclusion as parents were keen to avoid the stigma and would then be unlikely to find another MS school.

No parent could just come in to speak to the teacher - the role of the HT was to deflect them, take any flack and support their teacher. No tech of course. Only the secretary talked on the phone to parents, and usually only in an emergency.

Special needs were supported by lots of LEA external professionals - speech therapist, reading support teachers, and various others coming in twice weekly to take out individuals or small groups, school nurses for any pastoral, health concerns.

No real safeguarding or pastoral - it wasn't really seen as the schools role - they were their to teach and not much else.

*their not there - I think my spell checker has gone into overdrive! 🙄

It would be interesting to see what the levels of children leaving primary without basic literacy were like compared to now simplify. 35 years ago is about the time I left primary to start secondary. I had a great primary experience. We did do some sort of papers in dinner hall at least a couple of times that I can remember but I don't remember any prep for them or pressure and it felt like a fun quiz or something. I think they may have been cats from what I can remember - they were similar to IQ tests.

I also don't recall ever getting results or anyone seeming stressed about them.

Stand out memories are things like getting the tv room for a slot once a week and watching Dark Towers and then doing poetry, artwork or stories inspired by a theme from that or a whole school project making our version of the Bayeaux Tapestry which hung around the top of the hall for decades after, school plays, having to sit at the naughty desk by the sink if I couldn't stop chatting, having red pen all over my stories where I'd missed out words or made spelling mistakes and not being traumatised just going and rewriting, making books and then going to read them to kids in reception, going to different classes for maths and english because we were set but it not being a big deal, learning to play chess and cello etc.

Couldn't have told you what a fronted adverbial was but probably confidently and accurately used them from so much reading and story writing and developed a life long love of learning and reading that set me up for the rest of my education.

It's the paperwork.
Primary, not secondary, but I could do a week's planning on a single A3 sheet of paper (used an A4 book, open, for a week. Hand written of course) rather than 5 different typed sheets for each day.

After your probationary year, (when there was more writing / planning) the more experienced you were, the more it was understood you could walk in to your room and teach, without spending hours upon hours writing out the miniature of exactly what you were going to do, for each of 5 groups/ levels.
You were also trusted a lot more. Your qualification and experience was respected.

OTOH, different things took more time - when handwriting reports, it was a bugger if you made a mistake near the bottom - not like using a laptop and just changing it, you had to start again. You had to source physical resources - no internet, no interactive white boards, no laminators. If you found a good resource, you covered it in sticky back plastic to try to preserve it to use again another year.
There were nowhere near the numbers of dc with significant and complex needs that there are starting school at the moment.
I don't know if I was lucky, but I always felt the HT had your back - I don't think that is the same anymore. Then the HTs had the support of the LA, unlike now when the central Gvmnt has just broken up so many LAs.
HMI were much more supportive than OFSTED.
Parents, on the whole, respected "the teacher" and didn't question and undermine everything they did, whilst senior management are now much more likely to be trying to dictate the most minute detail of the way things are taught in the classroom. Teachers used to have more autonomy.

It's a huge difference. I think I would put the micromanagement and scrutiny above the paperwork even. In some ways I did more work - I'd write my own SOW for example - on the other hand I could write a SOW over a weekend and it didn't require power points and I could structure that SOW in such a way that if there were a couple of teacher heavy lessons in a row they could be followed by a lesson with pretty much independent near silent tasks and we could have the radio on as long as they were working quietly.

That latter bit sounds silly but having a bit of control over building in lessons that were for them to work and you to step back gave you some sense of control and manageability of energy levels and you weren't paranoid that someone was going to walk in on the one lesson you were sat at your desk marking with the radio on whilst the kids worked quietly and be outraged. In fact it would be seen as a good thing probably ie. classroom management and kids being able to crack on and work independently.

Variety and all the different ways of learning etc were shown over a series of lessons or sow NOT expected to be presented and highlighted on the powerpoint every single lesson as is often the case now. If someone observed a lesson and didn't see group work in it they didn't somehow leap to the conclusion that you never do group work and need that as a an area for improvement and target ffs.

Yes to having to create your own resources we had publisher and computers in staff areas by my time and I used a lot of clip art and comic sans to make my own resources because most of the textbooks I inherited were dire but I don't recall begrudging that. I rather liked planning - short and long term and was mostly free to do it my own way and then offer it to others if they wanted it. We had a syllabus and were trusted to deliver it and end of unit assessments or exams proved whether we'd done that effectively. How we did AFL etc was down to us.

I'm making myself really miss it now.

Oh and there were a row of desks on our floor by the faculty staffroom and if kids were being disruptive and wouldn't settle you could put them outside to work and no one judged you for it or came and interfered. If they cracked on and did the work and settled down by the time you went out to check on them you might let them back into the lesson. If they were still being obnoxious you'd leave them out there and set a detention. You did not have to justify this to anyone - you were trusted.

We had a big dept cupboard with a filing cabinet. You'd flick through and find worksheets to risograph.

I had those rollover boards with a whiteboard bit and a chalkboard bit. Without fail if you rolled it over there would be a big knob drawn on it. This hasn't changed. I now work in a PRU and every morning I turn my fancy promethean on to find a knob drawn on the whiteboard page.

I had so much autonomy- I decided on SOW, nobody examined my planning. No drive by drop ins. Ofsted stayed for a week but it was actually better- nobody can hide everything for a week. The inspectors expected a real school. Feedback was useful. Not everything was data driven. Progress was still expected but it was more realistic.

Year 9 SATS.

Staff smoking rooms- gross but normal!

Although safeguarding wasn't such a thing, I had more help to access. My school in the early 2000's had MONEY and we had lots of extra curricular and free breakfasts to give out etc. There was NOF and ESF funding that meant we could run tons of great groups and build new CLC's (City Learning Centres) and facilities.

I don't recall parents being any more or less engaged than they are now, but more parents were available to talk to - i see far more parents working flat out now for longer with less time than they had before for their kids. Myself included in that until I switched sectors.

There was no time spent sorting out social media bollocks. But teens still fought and we still had to get between them- it just wasn't filmed.

If anything, I feel life is harder for teens. We haven't moved on at all in provision of non-academic routes. It was better way back- my first secondary school offered practical subjects and even bricklaying from 14. Now, we keep them penned in and retaking maths constantly.

I still like teens. And want to kill them in equal measure!

25 years ago pupils got sent to the head when I said they misbehaved.
Now it seems teachers get sent to the head when pupils say the teacher misbehaves!
Happened to me twice this year! Used to be teachers were trusted and believed a bit more.
From what I’ve seen when supply teaching it’s now all a bit of a mess.
More challenging behaviours from more kids, and fewer sanctions. Less fun as a lot have said above.

Safeguarding was a big thing 20 years ago. We had safeguarding policies and reporting structures. But the number of issues covered by safeguarding training was fewer. The number of SEN-related behavioural problems and associated EHCPs I encountered was far fewer.

In my first school we had no smart boards. My classroom had a blackboard and we had a really tight photocopying budget. It was a grammar school and in a very poor state of repair. The secondary modern down the road was getting huge injections of cash from the Blair government, such that they had smart boards in every classroom and a computer screen welcoming people on arrival in the school. It had sparking new paint throughout. I remember thinking that no one was going to want to take the 11+ when they see the difference.