Overseas readers may be forgiven for not knowing, but in these islands we have become a little exercised by the tragic death of Head Teacher Ruth Perry who took her own life after an OFSTED inspection went against her school[1] (OFSTED is the body charged with maintaining standards in our schools) Now, there are OFSTED inspections a-plenty, and not everyone inspected shares Ruth’s tragedy. But for us, the whole affair is the tip of an iceberg.
Because the lives of teachers, both State and Private sector is a frazzle of overwork. Not just inspections; but lesson preparation, form filling, marking, tutorials, staff meetings, behaviour issues, angry parents, pushy parents, sports, nativity plays, out-of- hours clubs, indifferent parents, indifferent buildings, and far below indifferent IT. As well as endless directives from Government, local Government, Health and Safety.,,,and the rest. For most, it’s a 24/ 7 job; they don’t even get Sundays, and the profession is leaching staff because they are burned out and finished. And it’s not just teachers-ask any professional. Police Officers, Social Workers, Health Care Professionals will all say the same. Because for more than forty years, English management philosophy has been: keep costs low; invest as little as possible; and whip, whip, whip until the staff have nothing left to give.
Now our rulers are complaining about a ghost army of workers in their fifties who have dropped out of the workplace altogether. Thereby occasioning the need for large numbers of immigrants to fill the vacant posts. And these same rulers grumble and look to force these supposed missing millions back to the sweatshops, whatever their state of health. Which makes us beg the question; why have they gone missing in the first place? Why was work so obnoxious that they would be so keen to avoid it? Did it really require such an awful event to bring it to light?
#ruth perry #ofsted #teaching #long hours culture #overwork #investment
Learning, Science and Society 