School trips are for teachers not the kids

The idea that a class of students needs to visit NYC for an economics trip at 1200 pounds is a bit much when really the products of our global economy are all too apparent to see in our city or in any city really. The student in this article

 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/14/school-trips-new-york-educational-arms-race-parents

would have done just as well to have visited the M&M store in Leicester Square if he wanted to see how an essentially useless economy can be generated around a chocolate with a crispy shell. How does visiting Wall Street really help the student understand how the world works? Perhaps it would have been better to have arranged a trip to the factories in China, Malaysia and India that produce most of our high street clothes. Or perhaps a school trip to an oil field in the South Sudan where oil companies and lawyers squabble over a war torn country to make as much money for us as possible. Or even just a visit to their local Starbucks. This would offer a better education on how the economy works, but I somehow feel the teachers might not have gone for any of those.

The truth is that most school trips remain a jolly for the teachers. Yes, they have to keep an eye out for the safety of their kids but, generally, very little education takes place on these excursions. Perhaps for some students there is something to be learned in being away from home, but at a cost of over a thousand pounds, it is hardly fair to the poorest families.

If state schools and academies intend to ape private schools there will be a lot more of these added extras and some parents simply can't afford to pay it. They should not be made to feel guilty. When I was a kid we had a three day trip to the local coast and explored the history, geography and local economy. I think the total cost was 65 pounds. Even that cost can be prohibitive for some, but at least the school had funds to help.

When education is tied up so closely with business funding, the smell of money is never far away. An academy in Bethnal Green has the mantra: 'we're climbing the mountain to university together'. Perhaps we need to stop everyone focusing on the mountain and look at the rest of the horizon. After all, not everyone wants to climb Everest.

Tuition fees

So according to this article Labour may reduce tuition costs to 6000 pounds. There will still be lots of debt and, while, many may never have to repay, the incentive for those to go to university from working class backgrounds will still be lower than when grants were provided. We are burdening the young unduly with too much debt and not making those who have benefited from a free system twenty years ago get off cheaply whilst making huge sums of money from their property. It is time to share the wealth more equally.


http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/mar/30/labour-cut-student-tuition-fees-6000-a-year

The racism still inbuilt to our educator role models

So there are currently two stories making the rounds. The first was that St Edmunds College at Cambrige was planning a Gone With the Wind ball and the second, equally disturbing, that teacher training courses have accepted far less African and black Caribbean students to train on their courses. Not only are their lower number of applicants but their success rate is lower.

For all the education reforms that are being pushed through at the moment, Michael Gove has not really tackled the issue of who is doing the teaching. Of course, part of the problem is encouraging more applications from African and Caribbean individuals but then to accept, in some cases, ten per cent while accepting a quarter of white applicants does not send out the right message. 

Teachers are powerful role models for students. Other than parents or guardians they are the key example of a working adult. We really should see a greater diversity of teachers. I recently visited a special needs primary school and was overwhelmed that all the teachers were female. Encouraging a greater variety of applications should be a key aim in broadening the experiences of our children. It is more important than questions of exam performance. This kind of inbuilt prejudice in selection does nothing to help such diversity. 

Academy schools

Academy schools were introduced in 2002 by New Labour. Michael Gove has continued to allow and enable state schools to be academised. What are the benefits and problems of this further privatising of the education system?

The first thing to say is that academy status does seem to produce better results at GCSE than when the schools were state run. There is a higher rate of A*-C passes with most achieving the government's minimum benchmark of 53 per cent pass rate. 

There is also an argument that the academy schools offer the chance of a longer school day with better provision for students to undertake extra-curricular activities. I have a teacher friend who has just begun a placement at an academy in East London. The school starts at 8 and there are numerous activities which go on until 530 in the evening. This keeps students from being bored and out on the streets. Their home time coincides much more with the average working day. 

In terms of the problems, however, there are many. Academy schools are heavily oversubscribed and while 30 percent of the students are eligible for free school meals, there are questions over how easy the new school structures and systems are to navigate, especially for the less educated or less pushy parents. 

There is also a problem in only partially introducing academies and that they are heavily concentrated in London. Over 60 per cent of academies are in the capital. The rural population do not have an equal opportunity to access such schools.

Another issue is that they reflect and promote a very narrow view of what education is for. They are still exam results focused and in one academy the school mantra is 'climbing the mountain to university together.' Such a statement is truly an abhorrent realization of the perverted value system we now adhere to. University should not be the single end goal of all students, but in suggesting this is the only way to success we doom some students to failure and we restrict options for other students. Not all students should go to university but neither should they be devalued for not 'climbing' that mountain. The introduction of the EBacc will only add to a narrowing of this sad vector of what subjects and careers we perceive as valuable. Ultimately it engenders the idea that lawyers, bankers and the corporate world is at the heart of what is useful. How can we hope to revitalize industry and other vocations? 

When local authorities run schools they have to make provision for the disabled and those with very special learning needs. There is no guarantee that these will be provided by the academy. The transition also breaks the links with other local authority services.

The constant changes to the way the school is governed also creates extra work for teachers. And in this final point, the government has strong-armed many schools into becoming academies with little or no consultation with teachers and staff. In fact every teaching union remains in opposition to the academy schools programme. Nevertheless Gove continues to push ahead with little consideration for those who will have to live with his decisions. 

A few positives...

Ok, I know the last few posts may have painted a somewhat negative picture of tutorial agencies and the business generally, so here are a few positives just to play devil's advocate. 

There is perhaps something to be said for parents from low income backgrounds who have saved and taken time to invest in a few extra sessions for their kid. I have taught a few of these students over the years and while they represent a minority of those I have tutored, they have certainly benefited from one-to-one guidance. No matter how gifted the teacher, you can do a lot more specific and student-centred learning when it is just one or two kids. 

I have also found these students to be among the best motivated and they understand the value of education. 

As someone whose politics is left of centre, there is perhaps a positive in exposing the students to views they perhaps don't normally get to hear. I recently had a student who was looking at countries recovering from war and I laid into oil companies who went straight into Iraq, only to find out that the student's daddy was a lawyer for the said oil firm and was often on little jaunts to Iraq. However, the downside is that I suddenly realised where my salary was coming from. Ok, so not so positive. At least the student has no desire to do law and I think I've convinced them to do something useless like art history or classical art instead. 

Students who engage with learning are fun to teach. It is exciting to watch anyone begin to take an interest in a new subject and question the world around them. 

That is really all there is to say. The negatives would take much longer to discuss. 

man charged as 'radioactive paedophile' who runs tutorial agency

When you start out tutoring you usually do it through an agency. There are dozens of these to choose from and some of them make hundreds of thousands and often millions of pounds a year from desperate parents who want their child to do be a winner in the education system.

There remains very little, if any, regulation of this industry. More often than not they are set up by former tutors who have no teaching experience and can see a way to make a buck from getting other younger graduates to teach on their behalf. One agency I worked for was involved in quite a major scandal too. Here are the details in brief and I will name no names. You can find further news stories about it on the net if you're interested. 

The first I knew about the scandal was when I received an email from a newspaper journalist asking me if I could talk about the agency. I quickly found out that the owner of the business was on the run from the police. He had been due to appear in court on charges of child pornography no less. However, what made the case particularly interesting was that the judge issued a warning that he was potentially dangerous to approach because he might be radioactive. Yes, radioactive. When he jumped bail he was having treatment for a thyroid problem and for six weeks after the treatment, he was hazardous to approach. I mean you couldn't make this sort of thing up. I have this image of a glow in the dark child catcher wandering the city by night.

Another incident at the same firm involved me going into their dank basement with no windows to do some photocopying to find a child sitting by himself.

'Do you want me to photocopy those for you?' the kid said.
'You should get on with your work,' I replied.
'I've done it all.'
'Where's your tutor?' I asked.
'He's upstairs talking with one of the other teachers. He told me to get on with this.'
'What is it you're doing?'
'Geography, but I finished ten minutes ago already.'
'I see.'
'So can I do your photocopying?'
'I'll find your teacher.'

This poor kid had been left for perhaps half an hour by himself, while the agency was charging his parents sixty or seventy pounds an hour. Of course, there are good tutors. If there weren't the industry would fall apart, but there are a lot of tutors who have no qualifications and perhaps teach subjects wildly different from their degrees. There is no regulation and there needs to be. There should be some equivalent form of PGCE or teacher training. Some parents are savvy about who they employ and sit in on a few lessons, but some have no idea. Better regulation would help both the students and the tutors feel protected. 

Confessional Courtesies

So, here is the first of many posts that aim to chart my experiences in the world of private tutoring, although I hope to discuss many topics related to education. For obvious reasons I have changed the names of those involved and I am writing under a pseudonym, but pretty much everything that follows has happened. I’d love this to be a safe space for people to discuss and talk openly about what is going on with education in this country. I feel I have been part of a largely unregulated industry that very occasionally does good, but more often than not has aided the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. I grew up in rural Suffolk, attended a state comprehensive and had no extra help other than what I received at school. My education was pretty good but all schools are different and there have been moments in the last six or seven years when it has felt like I’ve been shitting on my fifteen-year-old self by helping those who really don’t deserve it. However, although I have seen amazing levels of privilege I have also been privy to levels of neglect and maltreatment that have shocked me. I have begun to move away from tutoring and into running workshops and following my first love writing and performing. This is really a record of some of the things I have experienced and seen and you can make of it what you will.