“Teachers not Buildings” – Simple but Simplistic

I remember when I first started teaching: Great- they’d brought in a dynamic, well educated, enthusiastic and hard working teacher- just the type the government have said they want.

Problem: – there weren’t enough classrooms. So, instead I took my unruly class to the library or the hall to try and teach there (two years later I’d lost count of how many of that class had been dragged off school premises by the police- one for throwing a desk through a window and kicking a hole in the wall of the porta-cabin that served as a classroom. so not the easiest bunch.) Now, however good a teacher you are, try teaching 30 hyperactive 11 year olds the role of local councils in a library with a tutting librarian or a hall with no desks.

Bring in as many great teachers as you want but give them somewhere to teach too!

Even when I was at school I remember that the archaic state of the buildings meant that one row of desks in my form room was out of use for a while because the plaster from the ceiling kept collapsing during the lessons. Isn’t it a bit of disgrace to be educating the future of our country in these conditions? There are some investments a country really must make and decent schools for its children and young people should be at the top of that list.