After a week of internet absence and a lot of wonderful skiing in the
French alps I have reemerged to share some thoughts on what is going on in the world of education. I finally had the time to read the last three TESs on the plane to Germany the day before yesterday and, as always, it looks like education is doomed! Apart from the general primary school inspections, SATS pressure and abolishment, Ofsted devastation, inclusion and SEN, GCSE standards and the private school reform, the lasts week’s news are surprisingly relevant to what I am doing and will indeed closely concern a whole generation of newly qualified teachers.
Chancellor Alistair Darling announced that teachers will have their pay rise capped to 1 percent from September 2011 on. This is below the national inflation rate of 1.9 and I am sure will drive many teachers out of their profession. Ironically, just a few pages later, the TES also announced that 250.000 people who are trained as teachers do not actually work in the classroom. After working in schools for a while now, I know that teachers feel overworked, underappreciated and underpaid anyway- why make it even more difficult for them to stay in their profession? In another counterproductive move, after the TTA has met its recruitment target this year, it was decided a few weeks ago to cut the teacher training bursaries down in September 2010- in my case that would mean £3000 less a year. Now, you may ask: Why do teachers get paid to train if nobody else does? It is precisely because they won’t earn as much as other people and because there are not enough people who want to do it!
This applies especially to my area of teaching- languages. Language graduates are statistically one of the highest earning groups of people, after law and medicine but even before engineering. Every year, fewer and fewer linguists go into teaching and apply for jobs in the economy and industry which pay them three to four times as much as teaching! I have seen teachers get to school at 7am and leave at 5pm with a pile of 30 books to mark and five lessons to plan at home that evening for what I consider to be very little money in comparison. A lot of the PGCE trainees on my course (and mind you it is supposed to be the best in the country as we were told so proudly on our first day) have dropped out a few weeks into their first placement due to the workload. Students in subjects such as arts and music do not get any financial support and after the disaster with this year’s student loans I can frankly understand their option.
Personally, I am much divided between my career choices. Firstly it is very surreal that theoretically I would be able to go back to Germany next summer! By then I will have lived in the UK for six years, going from Boston to Southampton to Cambridge because of driven but ultimately random decisions. I am not sure if the PGCE would really qualify me to teach full time immediately, but there is definitely the chance to work in other positions. However, I do love England and most of my friends are here so it looks like my options are down to getting my NQT year out of the way and trying to get a teaching position which I like (eg teaching German and Film at A-Level), a PHD or maybe some event management work which will correspond to my film festival experience. The PhD applications are sent off now and I won’t have to apply for teaching jobs until spring so at the moment I am waiting for another ideal opportunity to come along.
Another idea which has also emerged recently is having a year abroad and doing some short time teaching work in homeschooling centres or private schools, especially in the states. At the AERO conference last summer I met a lot of people who were very interested in hiring a ‘European Ambassador’ who can teach languages and I might be able to get a working visa through aero if I tried. That would give me a year of flexible teaching and travelling which sounds very tempting. However, at the beginning of the year I decided that my first priority would be my friends so I am trying to convince my friend Holly to come with me and be freeee for a while :-) At the moment it looks like we are going to go to NY together again in June for my conference workshop and then travel down to Mexico city for a month or so.
But even with summer thoughts in my head (and a houseboat trip, Ireland holiday and much more to come in 2010), the reality at the moment is very much ‘home, family and snow’. On Saturday we are off to Switzerland to do some more skiing and that means I will have been in four countries within one week- talk about Carbon footprint! Unfortunately I have the feeling that the experience will pale in comparison the total happiness last week...
Bon Noel!
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