The school has been advertising for a full-time maths teacher since last Easter without success. It even struggles to find agency staff to plug the gaps. A similar school in Kent has resorted to increasing the rate for supply teachers in subjects like maths and science where there are shortages and paying a 1,000 bounty to anyone who can last a term. Other schools have been recruiting in Australia, Malaysia and India. And in January as further signs emerged of a recruitment and retention crisis, the National Union of Teachers threatened industrial action to force schools on to a four-day week.
The Government has undershot its target to recruit 6,000 additional teachers by 18% in secondary schools and by a third in subjects like maths and physics. Dissatisfaction is running high and many young teachers are leaving for better paid jobs in the private sector.
Despite a career structure where secondary teachers can earn up to 30,000 and those in a management role up to 35,000 there are not enough graduates coming into the profession. It takes extraordinary commitment of time and energy to do the job well a 70-hour week is typical. And while teachers enjoy 16 weeks paid holiday a year, many work late into the night and at weekends marking or preparing lessons. Large class sizes and the greater number of disruptive or special needs pupils the result of the Governments policy of inclusion puts pressure on teachers to cater for the widest range of abilities. Lack of resources can make teaching under such conditions nigh on impossible. Work-related stress is about to become a major issue as shown by the recent 250,000 settlement for a primary teacher in Wales whose career was cut short by a nervous breakdown.
Yet many teachers enjoy job satisfaction of a kind undreamed of by office drones. Karen Simpson, acting head of an infants school in the south of England, says: Teaching is the best-kept secret. Theres nothing like the magic of knowing youve taught a child to read.
The most challenging moment of William Atkinsons career came when he had to stand up in front of the assembled pupils and parents of Hammersmith School to introduce himself as their new head teacher. The school was one of the first to be named and shamed in the national press.
Banner headlines in The Mail on Sunday ranted, Is This Britains Worst School?. Pupils had been running riot, and there was a TV crew on hand to record Atkinsons debut.
Atkinson says: I started talking about who I was and what the new school would be trying to deliver. It was a significant moment and it went rather well. They sized me up and I sized them up. I was very reasonable and determined. It was like any teacher taking over a new class.
Atkinson took up the reins in April 1995, 15 months after Hammersmith had been designated a failing school. The school was renamed Phoenix High School but was still in special measures the term given to a school that has failed its Ofsted (office for standards in education) inspection. Serving a large, deprived council estate and with an annual budget of 3.5 million, Phoenix received limited extra funding and visits every term from Her Majestys inspectors (HMI) who were closely monitoring its progress towards meeting targets.
March 1997 was a time for celebration Phoenix came out of special measures. The key to turning the school round was strong leadership, a clear vision of where the school was heading and blind faith. Improving exam results involves strategic planning diverting staff and resources to where they will have an impact several years down the line. Atkinson says: For youngsters in year seven you need to be planning ahead not stuck in the here and now.
There have been many disappointments along the road. New staff arrived with reforming zeal and left just as quickly, drained by the effort of constantly keeping discipline. A highly visible presence, Atkinson has been able to inspire loyalty. His advice is, Dont be too confrontational and dont attempt too much too quickly. Managing a school is like sailing a boat. Your boat wont go in a straight line so you have to tack according to the wind. Sometimes theres a gale blowing and you take your sails down; at other times you have a fair wind and you can make up lost time.
Atkinson knows the name of virtually every pupil in the school and stands at the gates every morning visible to parents and on the watch for pupils he wants to praise or admonish. Coming from the same part of London, he identifies strongly with his pupils and believes he is offering them the chance to gain useful skills, to develop as individuals and as future citizens. Through being an effective disciplinarian and making pupils aware of the negative impact of anti-social behaviour, Atkinson has been able to cut the rate of exclusion 12-fold since joining the school. Today just 28 pupils out of a total of 800 are excluded.
It is a wearing job. Atkinson, who says his role is to manage, inspire, and organise, does his thinking in the car on the way to school. Once you start in the morning things are coming at you all the time. You dont get a chance to reflect, he says.
It takes at least five years to see results. In 1998 the internal SATs (standard assessment tasks) results were the lowest on record. The 2000 results showed a dramatic increase from 7% to 36% of pupils gaining level five and over in English.
But its not just low academic results that makes a failing school, Atkinson believes. Rather it is one that is not offering pupils the best chance. It is one that is underperforming in terms of the ability of its pupils. It is a school that has lost the confidence of its community. There is a direct link between resources and the ability of a school to perform but its not the answer to throw resources at it indiscriminately. The school has to be led well.
Indo Sen, head of maths at Kingsland School, Hackney, which serves a deprived multi-ethnic community, explains that battling to boost childrens achievements makes teaching compelling even when keeping discipline can at times be a struggle. Last year, Kingsland failed its Ofsted inspection and the school is appealing against what it claims is a harsh numbers game that takes no account of pupils prior attainment. In recent years, its GCSE maths results have been climbing steadily from a position of 17% A-Cs. Sen says: Its the resilience and tenacity of our kids working to improve that keeps me going and will keep me going till the end as long as I have the energy.
Recent government policy has been aimed not at making the job of teaching more rewarding but at tackling underachievers the 25% of pupils who leave Britains schools unable to read, write or do basic calculations.
Ofsted, set up in 1993 to co-ordinate a regime of inspections for schools in England, has over the years revealed a submerged iceberg of underperforming schools and a profession in crisis, no doubt prompting the new HMCI Mike Tomlinsons much-quoted remark that he did not give a monkeys toss about teachers, children were his number one concern.
Over the past 10 years, teaching has changed out of all recognition. The Tory education reforms started with the national curriculum and moved on quickly to exam league tables, the delegation of school budgets, parental choice, grant maintained schools and the setting up of private-sector-sponsored city technology colleges. Labour has concentrated on raising standards and extending education action zones where private sector money helps tackle failing schools in designated inner-city areas.
The latest and most far-reaching initiative, the national literacy and numeracy strategy, makes the systematic teaching of maths and reading compulsory in primary schools and is already making a significant impact in raising standards. The downside is that teachers feel their professional independence is undermined. Change has left many cynical and disillusioned.
Emma, [a fictitious name for a newly qualified teacher who wishes to remain anonymous], describes the reality of looking after a class of 25 children. Im left alone with the kids all day with only a short break at lunchtime. I seem to spend more time sorting out playground disputes than teaching. The most I can spend with each child individually is a couple of minutes. The head has twice watched me teach because thats the new rules but, apart from that, I could be teaching the same lesson over and over again. The literacy hour means we no longer teach music or art forget encouraging creativity or imagination.
By submitting a record of their skills and professional development, experienced classroom teachers will soon be able to earn an extra 2,000 in recognition of their competence. The move has been strongly resisted by teacher unions but is being pushed by the Government which sees rewarding talent as the only way to persuade good teachers to stay. It links in with the new leadership grades for heads and deputies and the NPQH the national professional qualification for headship.
A leading management consultant recommended that the superheads appointed to turn round failing schools should be given salaries of at least 120,000. The pay review is long overdue but hardly generous once you factor in the high burn-out rate and the fact that superheads are on three-year contracts.
The plan of action to rescue the failing Phoenix School explains why a head teachers job is like no other. It included target-setting for heads of department and year heads, in-service training to make staff more effective and targeting resources. The hardest management tasks of all were the most mundane implementing a consistent behaviour policy, following up on all absences and lateness, making sure all work is properly marked, checking teachers schemes of work and communicating efficiently with parents. A successful head also has to be a visible figurehead a chief executive, PR manager and HR director rolled into one.
Atkinson met Lenny Henry briefly when the actor was researching for the head-teacher role in the BBCs Hope and Glory. Atkinson found the series superficial but there is a telling scene in it when the head teacher, who has just succeeded in turning the school round, returns to his office to find a pile of paper two foot high. He is told by his secretary, These are all the directives you missed while you were out there running the school.
The management consultancy, Hay McBer, carried out a survey recently comparing head teachers with CEOs of private companies. It discovered that the heads job was far harder than people from the private sector realised and that very few CEOs would be able to hack it. Russell Hobby of Hay McBer says: Business leaders were very good at continuous improvement and communicating a vision of excellence. But successful heads are good at working within constraints developing individuals and working with their strengths and weaknesses. Industry needs a lot of what schools have to offer.
And it is not just heads but teachers who are finding their skills are transferable. Matthew Kay, a West Sussex primary school teacher who quit a promising classroom career to become an online recruitment consultant with PeopleBank, has no regrets. I initially took a pay cut but, 18 months on, the money is now considerably better. I have been promoted a couple of times and Im working long hours. But, unlike teaching, the weekends are my own.
To change career, Kay researched the market exhaustively and approached the company so many times that in the end they gave in and gave him an interview. He says: They reckoned if I chased them this hard then Id be a valuable asset in selling the company. Teachers are generally highly organised with a very good work ethic.
The decision to become a teacher is often based on high ideals. Emma made her decision during a gap year from university working as a VSO forestry worker in Ghana. She asked to visit the local school. When she arrived the teacher introduced her to the class and then left her to it. I stood there as dumb as a dodo and, do you know what? I pulled it off. I gave an impromptu lesson on colonialism. I left thinking I was born to teach. I got a real buzz out of it.
Back in England Emma completed her psychology degree and enrolled for a one-year, post-grad teaching course. But her first year in a London primary school has left her bitterly disillusioned. As a newly qualified teacher, she should be given extra support but her colleagues are too preoccupied by form-filling, planning lessons and creating wall displays to discuss teaching with her.
Emma does not see herself staying in teaching for more than five years. This is a stressful job and I dont get the support or the resources to do it properly. Id never ever go for promotion because I can see that the head teacher has four times the workload, four times the stress and is underpaid. Ive got friends in other careers who earn a lot more money than me and whove got a life.
