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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

Frolics and Detours

3/5/2022

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I am indebted in this blog to Paul Muldoon’s volume of poetry of the same title, and, in particular, his 1916: the Eoghan Rua Variations. In it, he discusses the contrary nature of the longevity of English power in Ireland. Caesar and Alexander fell, so why not the English? Well worth a read.
Faber London 2019 ISBN 978-0-571-35499-8.
​
Now the world’s been brought low.  The wind’s heavy with soot.
Alexander and Caesar. All their retinue.
We’ve seen Tara buried in grass, Troy trampled underfoot.
The English? Their days are numbered too’
​

Some people are a pundit’s gift. Social Mobility Chair Katherine Birbalsingh is a worthy successor to  Lord Agnew and Gavin Williamson in these Pulitzer-worthy pieces. You’ll recall that I heard her say (to a thousand school leaders) that she didn’t know what the Social Mobility Commission was doing? This week she’s said that she has no idea how DfE White Paper GCSE targets can be met, and that fewer girls choose physics because “physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy……they don’t like it. There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think they would rather not do.” This she backs up fully with detailed evidence: “The research generally … just says that’s a natural thing….I don’t think there’s anything external.” Surely her days are numbered?
 
As the Grauniad said, this prompted anger from leading scientists.
 
‘Dame Athene Donald, a professor of experimental physics and master of Churchill College, Cambridge, said the comments were “terrifying” and “quite damaging” and questioned to which research Birbalsingh was referring in suggesting that girls had an intrinsic lack of appetite for maths and physics.
 
Dr Jess Wade, a physicist at Imperial College London who campaigns for equality in science, said: “I honestly can’t believe we’re still having this conversation. It’s patronising, it’s infuriating, and it’s closing doors to exciting careers in physics and engineering for generations of young women. Whilst girls and boys currently choose A-level subjects differently, there is absolutely no evidence to show intrinsic differences in their abilities or preference.”
 
Rachel Youngman, the deputy chief executive of the Institute of Physics, said: “The IOP is very concerned at the continued use of outdated stereotypes as we firmly believe physics is for everyone regardless of their background or gender.”
 
Surely the inevitable will eventually take its course? Surely she’ll eventually be moving along?
 
Sadly, as with the PM, no one is surprised. KB was the Deputy Head who sank her own school at the Conservative Party Conference in 2011. Four years later she set up a Free School and now calls herself the strictest headmistress in the country, as if that doesn’t raise more questions than it answers. Invited to reflect on the scalability of her model, she says – all schools should be like mine, look at the quality of the artwork. (This echoes her 2011 claim that children in state schools didn’t read whole books, in comparison to fee-paying children who might read four or six a year). What? I saw the artwork, which was nice, but lots of us have remarkable teachers eliciting fabulous stuff. Many of our students would think four to six books a year pretty thin stuff. Her pronouncements are often met with well-raised eyebrows. Surely one day she’ll have to give up?
 
I wonder. We have a DfE which appears to be better led in the ‘I want this: Ofsted will inspect it and I’ll name and shame those who aren’t managing it’ style. Around, above and below sit all kinds of Tsars and Tsarinas, favourite MATs and pseudo-research. KB is, to the current government, a very attractive figurehead for the not-very Tory endeavour of social mobility, her media-savvy performances a wonderful distraction from the job in hand. Just like the PM.
 
And yet why say that about girls? KB’s school-based pronouncements about the need for total control and discipline are all about clearing a space for potentially disadvantaged students to not-fail. Because they aren’t given any choice, they are freed to achieve. It is an argument, certainly. So why doesn’t it work for girls doing physics? Shouldn’t the same lie in store for girls with no family history or university or science thinking about storming that citadel? As Mandela said, freedom is indivisible. You can’t raise the economically disadvantaged while oppressing those disadvantaged by gender. Why would you?
 
Part of me wonders, flying in the face of the political zeitgeist, if this latest set of gaffes might dislodge her from favour. Perhaps the cup might pass to someone else’s more reliable lips? Perhaps she’ll get what’s coming to her? Then I look hard at the evidence before me and the sorry context in which we’re in and give myself a shake.  Personal integrity is less important than a snappy soundbite: blame and distancing are more worthwhile than trying to solve an intractable problem; sounding iconoclastic is all that matters. Brexit happened thus, and we sink under its weight.
 
Clever people don’t make accidental gaffes. The PM has never said anything he didn’t mean to say, whether he meant it or not. Oxford-graduate KB may or may not care about girls in physics, but she cares hugely about herself, her profile and her future. Raising the numbers of girls in A level physics and Further Maths has been a long and painful journey for all thinking schools. I wonder if she knows this, has tried her best and not-quite succeeded?  She’s had all the plaudits for so long that perhaps she can’t risk-assess admitting failure. 
​
The world’s topsy-turvy, though. This dust’s the dust that fanned
Caesar and Alexander as each gained ground.
Tara’s under pasture. At Troy, it's clear how things stand.
For the English, their time will come around.

​Where next? From Social Mobility Tsar to oblivion, the Lords or a safe seat? I don’t think she need worry. I think she can say what she likes. I’ll keep you informed.
 
CR
29.4.22
 
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Baggy at the Seams

15/1/2022

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I was wandering in science, and dropped into a cover lesson, all going well. I berthed near a pair of girls, one with green hair. They were doing something that required sheep drawing but were dissatisfied with their efforts. In this, I could help. Sheep figure frequently in RE what with the parables and so an occupational by-product means I can draw them pretty sharply, in the manner of clouds with legs.  I demonstrated as much on the walkabout rota sheet. The ladies were not only delighted but could also remember the sheep-and-goats routine, so that’s a job done. Who needs performance management?  

January requires new thinking even though it's halfway through the school year. I’m thinking about three unmanageable topics at once, just to keep me fresh. 

First, as per, ethics. I talked to some young staff yesterday and we chewed over the values and virtues of the Framework for Ethical Leadership. The biggest ethical problems they identified – unsurprisingly – were the way we measure the value of a young person based on their academic scores, and the kinds of curricula we push them through. Wouldn’t it be better, several mused, for young people who struggle on our fearsomely overloaded GCSE courses, to be allowed to take very practical courses about looking after themselves and saving money?

Well, yes, perhaps all children need that, but the argument is multi-faceted. Why shouldn’t a child who cannot score at GCSE History be exposed to some of the stories and lessons from history? They need to be able to tell the difference between truth and revisionist lies as much as anyone else. The problem is in the qualification, which has to be the same for everyone and apparently, inexplicably, shamefully, has to have a third of below-pass grades (‘fails’ in normal person’s language). The problem isn’t with history, but the way we measure children using a qualification designed to prove some old lie about teacher slacking.

They’re not worried – and why should they be, learning to be a teacher is hard enough – about admissions. Mike Ion wrote about it in Schools Week last week and I couldn’t have put it better. He railed at the use of parental interviews, school fund requests, birth and marriage questions and the use of tests, all for y7 entry, and how the sharp-elbowed negotiate it all. The fact remains, he says, that secondary school admissions are ‘the secret scandal of our system, fostering delusions about consumer choice and reinforcing outdated perceptions of quality in education. 
The outcome of covert selection practice is to produce an educational apartheid that creates vast areas of underachievement which then suck in vast amounts of public money to compensate for structural inequality.
My second issue is linked, about Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). I’ve just seen a great article in the TES about SEND ‘magnet schools’. This is also to do with performance and admissions of course, but also with the limited understanding some educators have of their role in building up a good, national, comprehensive system.
It goes like this:

Bagpuss Comp has good provision for SEND, so increasing numbers of parents of SEND children choose Bagpuss over Rupert High. The Ruperts then say to any inquiries - we don’t have much provision for SEND, have you thought of Bagpuss? Neatly circular. Further, the money that Bagpuss gets isn’t equal to the provision specified in the Education, Health and Care Plan, and the likelihood of their meeting performance measurements is constrained. All the Bagpuss children get a worse deal, resources-wise and the clipboard brigade descend, with the usual range of results.

Some schools are really committed to inclusion. Some avoid it. How is that allowed?

You’ll recall my tedious attempts to communicate with G Williamson, late of Sanctuary Buildings, SW1. Nothing daunted, I may try afresh with Mr Zahawi who seems pretty efficient. He’s about to publish a consultation on SEND of which we Bagpie have rightly high hopes. I will report further on this.

I regret I don’t think even the SoS can help the third issue, to which all the above are stuck like glue. That’s of the retracted, restricted thinking of educators who take measurable achievement at 16 for their lodestone, inexorably drawn to it such that they don’t recognise the responsibility to map their own path so that their school makes sense as part of our national provision for all of our young. Does it increase results? No? Don’t do it, appears to be the mantra.

A colleague told me she was going to treat herself to a trolley now that the financial year is nearly up: a small pleasure. She needs a bit of help to get herself and her baggage from A to B. So do we all, but the hallmark of a good society is how fairly it distributes its goods, in both senses. I’ve told everyone who gets an email from me that I’m reading Sandel, and I often quote Rawls. There’s no better way to start a new year that with two philosophers. They say:
Those who have been favoured by nature, however and whoever, should gain for their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out. Societies should be arranged so that such contingencies work for the good of the least fortunate. 
Or, as Anthony Crosland, another Secretary of State, said in the seventies:
The system will increasingly be built around the comprehensive school…..all schools will more and more be socially mixed; all will provide routes to the universities and to every type of occupation from the highest to the lowest….then very slowly Britain will cease to be the most class-ridden country in the world. 
Everything needs tightening up. Over to you, Mr Zahawi.
 
CR
14.1.22
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The long night and icy dew

3/12/2016

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​My year 9 philosopher berthed alongside near the memorial garden. Regular readers will recall her specialism is calibrating bleakness. Everyone’s terrible, she declared, but all I could see was some bottle-flipping, irritating in itself, but possibly permissible at lunchtime in this far corner of planet Tallis. It’ll end in insults and chasing, she foretold, as two shrieked past. I thanked her kindly and went to stick my nose into a group of year 11 boys who were randomly cheering, just to annoy. Second lunchtime, Thursday, December, week 13 of 39. 

We travel in darkness at this time of year so the short days take on a sort of flicker-book illuminated urgency. We rush about doing and talking constantly, then it goes dark again and we wait for reanimation in the morning light. Time telescopes once you get to December and the pull of the exams gets stronger. Nothing’s new anymore and we’re starting to feel tired, especially year 7s unused to the distances and the sheer physical demand of secondary. Diversion is welcome.

Oblivious in my lair two weeks ago I was surprised to hear and feel a bang like the trump of doom. I rushed to the window and saw the smaller lunchers jump a bit, look around for entertainment, not find it and resume annoying each other. I put my whistle on for protection, just in case the end of the world needed whistling in, jammed hands in pockets and strolled (never run towards potential disaster in school for fear of gathering a crowd) downstairs to find - nothing. Business Director, usually clued up, was also missing, presumably vaporised in the boom. It took some time for her and I to stop calmly chasing each other and eventually coincide in block 5. The bang was, of course, that chemical, the one that caused all the trouble somewhere else (I’m not a chemist). Anyway, Science found it, told Business, who rang 999. By the time she got from her office to reception – admittedly a bit of a trek through a lot of doors – to warn of imminent constabulary, the Bomb Squad, good grief, had arrived. Minutes later a hole was dug on the back field, the offending stuff carried carefully to it and then exploded safely at a distance.  15 minutes from call to bang. 

Musing over the sequence of events on the stairs we happened upon some year 10s, fresh from a triumphant Talent Show production with Barclays mentors the previous night, and deranged with curiosity. They questioned me closely and found me wanting. One tossed his curls: I’m going to ask Sir about this. Thank the lord for Sir, who could explain the bang without using a frankly unsatisfactory phrase to hear from a headteacher ‘it was stuff that might explode’. What isn’t? 

Children need the world interpreting for them. Not everyone heard the bang, so we could have ignored it, but we didn’t. Science explained it on Monday and there was general discussion and wry amusement.

Later that week, another explanation, another explosive issue. This time it was sexual and relationship danger with a fabulous theatre company doing Chelsea’s Choice. Four actors slipping in and out of two or three roles each telling of a terrifying slide into abuse and desperation. When each scene ended with review by the actors of the play within the play the audience visibly relaxed. Some apprehensively chewed their jumpers, or their neighbours’ jumpers. Girls held hands. Rapturous applause and a great q and a at the end. Fifteen-year-olds think they’ll never make mistakes, but I’m old and I know that they will, and their optimism is heartbreaking.  

Year 9 saw it before lunch, brilliantly, year 10 after lunch. Well. Let me just say that they certainly benefited from the show but also from the bonus opportunity of 20 minutes lining-up-and-entering-the-hall-in-silence practice while we reinstalled a piece of operational software that must have been dislodged by the bang.

This darkness takes me back to an Advent 37 years ago, on the Strand when I first heard Geoffrey Hill’s poem that begins:

What is there in my heart that you should sue

so fiercely for its love? What kind of care
brings you as though a stranger to my door
through the long night and in the icy dew
seeking the heart that will not harbour you..?
 
We throw ourselves at the education of the young in the hope that some of it sticks. There’s so much to tell them and we have to get it through the noisy clamour of living, the insults and chasing, the cheering as well as the darkness, just to make them safe for life. What is there in their hearts for which we sue so urgently?  The flickering urgency that illuminates our days, the best hope for a better world.
 
CR
1.12.16
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Run Boy Run

27/3/2016

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​I started on the Education White Paper. On page 11 it declares that autonomy isn’t apathy, which is interesting as I didn’t know they were alternatives. However, two can play at that game. Lettuce isn’t fishcakes. English isn’t French. Lesson 2 isn’t hometime and Mr Nicholls isn’t Ms Minnicucci. We’ve been a bit busy at Tallis so it may be that I haven’t read the whole thing yet. 
​
It's tricky settling to read a long document (124 pages) at school and evenings are a bit full-on as term ends (and I go to bed at 9.30 because of advanced age). So, I plonked myself down at the cabinet table to make a start on Monday, after leadership briefing and year 11 assembly. Then a civil servant came a-fact-finding to talk about staffing pressures and after that an upset parent. 
I read a couple of pages before going to another school for lunch to talk with the HT about what the thing that neither of us had had time to read might mean. Then another 2 pages before talking to a science teacher about the future then Parent Forum (eSafety with Mr Pape) and home. 

​Tuesday was bound to be more productive, so the WP roosted on the table overnight.  Only what with the Head of Maths, year 10 assembly, more parents, break duty, meeting the union reps, tracking down a child, talking to the Chief Scientist about the future (physicists, they see the future everywhere), trying to get out on lunch duty, meeting the Deputies, writing to other parents, leadership group meeting and then Governors, I didn’t make much headway.  Certainly my goal of being able to refer the WP knowledgeably at Governors was properly fettled, so thank goodness they postponed discussion. Wednesday?

Business Manager and I had to catch up then there were farewells at the briefing. I teach on Wednesday, which was Community Day this week (Tallis Law) so we talked about the foundation of law in ancient religions and meandered through the byways of Leviticus.  The Iceland trip needed discussing, then a different union rep dropped in. Jess came to tell me how well she’s doing, then there was the secret photograph for Mr Quigg’s farewell.  All 300 of year 7, being noisily secret on the yard in plain sight: it’s the thought that counts. Year 8's Great Debate couldn’t judge itself, then I visited the scientists in person which they civilly reciprocated an hour later. After that the Fashion Show: if only I’d got there sooner I could have eaten more of year 10’s canapés. Then home.

Thursday morning after the 0745 meeting didn’t turn up I put the damn thing in a folder to take home to read on the train a week on Monday. I predicted that what with the saying goodbyes, writing the bulletin, sounding out old stagers, getting through the list of 24 things to do before term ended (reached number 12), seeing a parent, trying to solve a wicked (as in currently insoluble) problem, meeting a maths man, an English man and the HR advisor again that I might conquer the next 101 pages. I’m not telling you this to annoy, just to explain why it is that this game-changing paper hasn’t been committed to the Roberts memory yet. Of course, if the SoS had taken the chance with 1100 school leaders two weeks ago and actually told us what was going to happen, then I’d know more.

Just in case you’re worried, talking to unions is normal once a half term and the HR chap is a blessing. Science are hatching a plan, always good. But on Wednesday night I saw the Fashion Show and it was just wonderful. Dancers, singers and models, led by the sixth form designers and supported by media, art and technology made for an evening of joy and wonder, with teachers’ small children dancing in the aisles. Most wonderfully, a repeat of the year 9 dance company’s Run Boy Run first shown at Christmas. Fast and moving with an explosion of exuberant speed and leaping acrobatics at the end, it’s made hard- hearted old me cry twice now. Again!
​
Chuckle and marvel all we like, but the truth is that the White Paper will require careful reading and a lot of thought. Governors are meeting on a Saturday soon to talk about it. Autonomy isn’t apathy, but interdependence isn’t compromise and democracy isn’t under-aspiration. Tinkering isn’t strengthening and deregulation isn’t determination. Legislation isn’t a leaping year 9 who tried to behave so he can be allowed to dance. Forgive me if I’ve postponed reading more.
 
CR 24.3.16
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Everything in between

4/5/2014

1 Comment

 
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Michael Kidner, Circle after Image 1959-60
Have you seen our field of jeans? Do potter along if you haven’t. The jeans on poles at the front of our building are part of a brilliant experimental programme called Catalytic Clothing. It’s the brainchild of artist designer Helen Storey and chemist Tony Ryan – people from different worlds in a highly successful art and science collaboration. They’re working with the R&D departments of big laundry brands, exploring how clothing and textiles can be used as a catalytic surface to purify air. Saving the planet while you wander about. Yet another practical use for teenagers.

So we’ve got the Field of Jeans as part of our Catalytic Learning programme. We love the idea of an artist and a scientist working together for public benefit, and we’ve had cross-curricular days, staff and students, to expand our thinking.  Look at it on the website: such fun! Our last day was just before Easter, but the tragedy of contemporary education is that young people have become so focused on exams that many of them were troubled about having an off-timetable day to explore new ideas. ‘Is it on the exam?’ they demand. ‘If not, why do it?’ So we work hard to demonstrate that it’s the things in between the exam questions that matter too.  

It was at this point in composition that I looked at the clock on Tuesday. It was 12:05, and I bethought myself that (a) OFSTED were due sometime after Easter, (b) they always ring immediately after 12:00 and (c) is that the phone? Time has behaved oddly since then and the last 54 hours seems like (a) weeks or (b) seconds. Thank you, but I can’t tell you how it went. Rules are rules.
Anyway, I have had cause to consider the measuring of what we do. Is it reasonable to measure the progress of children and schools?  Yes. Is it reasonable to investigate whether that achievement, behaviour, teaching and leadership are up to scratch? Yes. Does this damage schools?  Probably not: the new schedule, as we winsomely call it, is much more sensible than it has ever been before. Does it give a full picture? Maybe not. As Dougal once said to Father Ted about bishops ‘Ah Ted, they just come in, fumigate the place and then they’re gone.’

Children are both oblivious to and troubled by OFSTED. Generally speaking, adult concerns are tedious and while they are nosey about what’s going on, they get back to the dramas of their own existence sharpish. Suits and clipboards are not crowd-pullers. They’re more likely to be outraged by the sheer impertinence of inspection – who are these people?  What do you mean, they’re seeing if the school’s alright? Of course it is. Young people see themselves as arbiters of quality: who are these amateurs?

One inspector had had a conversation with a couple of young people over a bin. The responses were thoughtful and interesting, one pictures chin-stroking. I think that’s a good way to find out about a school, but the child was unimpressed ‘He talked to me over a bin.  Seriously?’ Another small member was perturbed by the whole experience. Tuesday break he asked me if they’d arrived, and at lunchtime how long they were staying.  When we reconvened Wednesday break he shook his head in disbelief that they were still among us. ‘How long can this go on?’ he despaired. He’d have hated it when they stayed for a week.

But after it was over school life picked up again as if the previous 54 hours hadn’t happened. Last week’s dance showcase had fully 29 acts and the time flew, like the dancers. Despite the suits we had a street hockey launch day with remarkably few bruises. 30 Norwegians came to maths. New teachers have been interviewed and appointed for this expanding school: 4 this week, despite OFSTED. Outdoor ping pong proves popular. Photography and art exams happen.  

Last night, immediately post inspection, our A level creative writing students performed work from their residential week, to a packed studio audience. Their poetry and prose was witty, poised, serious and a balm to the soul. The anthology is called Everything In between, an apt title for the week. We’ve been scrutinised and picked over, our practice laid bare under 4 inspection headings but it’s everything in between that makes us what we are and who we are: Tallis happy, Tallis proud.

CR 2.5.14    

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Cicero's Gift

2/3/2014

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Cicero said: ‘What greater and better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and to instruct our young?’
Picture
Vincenzo Foppa, The Young Cicero Reading, c.1464
The September teacher recruitment season is underway and Heads are competing in the trade papers for the prize of Most Risible Claim Made for the Greater Good.  Schools are not merely outstanding but exceptional, innovative or (suddenly) traditional; scrubbed and comely children grin to order from photographs artily taken in gorgeous new buildings and tidy sixth-formers pose with dapper Head Teachers under the loveliest of trees.  Inspection reports are filleted and dramatic assertions made about career progression.  Who wouldn’t want to be a teacher?

I know about recruitment.  I’ve been interviewed in schools where I’ve been stuffed with rich foods and allowed to wander freely, or where we got a jug of water and couldn’t go to the loo without a minder; in town halls or over the phone miles away from the school; after journeys of hundreds of miles or 50 yards from my own classroom; with panels clued up and challenging or sleepy and tetchy. 
 I kid myself that we make recruitment reasonably humane.  If candidates can only persuade us that they have a glittering eye and a brilliant mind, combine the gutsiness of Julie Walters and the steel of Daniel Craig, that they won’t vanish without trace in the first term or deflate under pressure in the first year, the job’s theirs.  Who wouldn’t want to be a teacher?

If you’ve got a good degree and you want to be a maths or science teacher there are bursaries up to £25k.  Our schools are good and the work rewarding  - but there were 81 September science posts advertised in a single week for schools in London alone. The people I work with are a pleasant and urbane bunch, educated, effective and Oscar-quality actors every one. They can hold a crowd in the palm of the hand and make it look effortless.  Our science department are particularly chirpy. So why are science teachers hard to find?  Is it that scientists (unlike historians or artists?) all get better paid work elsewhere?  Or that no-one short of a hedge fund can live in London?    Or does a combination of Educating Essex, Yorkshire or Waterloo Road by Tough Young Teachers just make the job look too damn scary?  Who’d want to be that teacher?

It’s not too much to say that we have a national crisis of understanding about teaching.  Teachers are too diffident about why we do what we do, and politicians use us shamelessly. Nationally, we don’t care enough about young people to be idealistic and articulate about the formation of our young.  The best education systems in the world really value education and teaching. Training posts are extremely competitive and involve postgraduate theoretical pedagogy as an essential adjunct to excellent subject knowledge.  PISA winners don’t scorn education’s thinkers as The Enemy Within and they keep politics out of our children’s futures.  Most of all, they don’t denigrate teachers in public discourse with fatuous misquotings: ‘those who can, do…’ 

So this recruitment season let’s talk up Cicero’s gift, starting with these 10 things.

  1. Children and young people deserve the best a nation can give them
  2. Knowledge is worthwhile in itself and teachers share it on behalf of society
  3. Children need teachers so they may understand and change the world
  4. Powerful knowledge liberates children from their daily experience
  5. Shared and powerful knowledge enables children to grow into useful citizens 
  6. Shared knowledge is a foundation for a just and sustainable democracy
  7. It is fair and just that all children should have access to transforming education
  8. The teacher’s authority to do this is given and valued by society
  9. Society trusts teachers to model our shared values
  10. We need the best possible teachers to achieve all this for all our children.

If you’re not already a teacher, why not think about becoming one?  Look at the Department for Education’s website and the range of routes you can take, not all of which involve penury. Ask if you can shadow a teacher in a school you know, or come to us.  Come and talk to some young people.  They’ll blow your socks off. 

If you like the sound of any of this you know where to find me. We’ll have very few vacancies this year, but we can help you look.  Who wouldn’t want to be a teacher?

CR

26.2.14

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    MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

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Thomas Tallis School, Kidbrooke Park Road, London SE3 9PX
T: +44 (0)208 856 0115   F: +44 (0)208 331 3004   E: headteacher@thomastallis.org.uk
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