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Teaching: the last profession standing?
By Neil Munro, Managing Editor, TESS
What a summer it has been - and I'm not talking about the weather. Hard on the heels of errant priests, mendacious bankers, fraudulent MPs and cheating footballers, we now have corrupt coppers, dodgy hacks and evasive media moguls. In the company of such serial failures, are teachers the last profession left standing - with any standing?
Critics who see the world through the prism of the Daily Mail, and its partners in grime the Taxpayers' Alliance, will be in no doubt that the F-word should apply to failing schools and failing teachers too. Others are not blessed with the same fundamentalist certainties.
The recent public sector strikes in England, protesting against pensions reform, brought some of these issues to the fore as teaching unions had to fend off the usual criticisms about "damaging children's education" and inconveniencing parents. Some prominent commentators rushed to judgment, suggesting that the only professions which now command public respect are those which eschew strikes - the police, firefighters, nurses and doctors.
Fortunately for those who find life interesting because it is complex, things are not so simple. A survey conducted in 2008 by the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations in England, in partnership with the TES, found that a remarkable 61 per cent of parents reported that a one-day strike that year by members of the National Union of Teachers had not changed their positive view of teachers - despite the inconvenience it caused for families.
David Butler, then chief executive of the parent confederation, commented: "The survey is very explicit about parents' perception of the quality of teaching today and how much better this is than when they themselves were at school."
It is rather notable, I have increasingly thought, that a profession which faces more public awareness than any other because "everyone's been to school", which deals with thousands of pupils and millions of parents every day, which has been challenged by parental rights, which has to respond to the views of young people, which has suffered from an overdose of initiative-itis and which has to function with many dysfunctional clients should be in the reasonable shape it is.
Parents may harbour uncertainties about the effectiveness of schools in the round, but these appear to lessen when it comes to their experience of those who teach their own children.
Of course, we know all about the problems - uneven school standards, under-funding, unemployment, underperforming teachers, unfulfilled potential. And we know that exam results are no longer enough; I see Labour's education spokesperson in England, Andy Burnham, now proclaims that 21st century success will be achieved by young people who are "resourceful, adaptable, self-confident, creative and self-managing". Four capacities anyone?
We also have to recognise the fault-line between expenditure and performance - but not just in Scotland. Last year's McKinsey report, How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better, estimated that most OECD countries doubled and even tripled their spending on education between 1970 and 1994 - yet student performance had largely either stagnated or regressed. On a five-point scale from 'poor' to 'excellent', McKinsey rates only Finland as 'excellent'; Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong are merely 'great'.
Despite these epic difficulties, however, many other professions would kill to share the public approbation of teachers. Cherish it!