I watched this four-part series over the last couple of days. I won’t say anything else to prevent spoiling it. The acting is incredible (Stephen Graham, Owen Cooper and Erin Doherty were mindblowingly good) and the one-shot filming (every episode being filmed in one single scene) must have been really challenging.
I did find its depiction of modern education depressing, though I was not surprised. I think school education nowadays is often chaotic for everyone concerned.
My first time teaching was at a then-called ‘black school’ during my first year in university. It was in a township, and despite very deprived conditions, the students were so eager to learn. It was their way out of poverty.
My own mother never finished school and my father completed 12 years but was unable to go to university because he became a young father. Their big dream was for me to go to university. I was the first person in my family to go to university, and the first to obtain a degree.
I taught at a university for many years, and now I teach adult professionals needing English for work. It is clear from my experience that bad teachers scar people for life, and that every student I have had remembers a good teacher. Good and bad teachers can change lives. I had a great English teacher but a scary, bad Maths teacher. I have never forgotten either of them. I sometimes wonder if I would have been better at Mathematics if I had had a better teacher. The one I had was a nun so she probably had no choice of profession (nuns in South Africa were usually nurses or teachers). She was very impatient and quick to punish, so I was scared to ask questions.
I was generally very good at school (except Maths). I was a voracious reader lucky to have a good memory and great curiosity. I used to be in the top three of all subjects except mathematics, and usually top in languages. My father taught me to read at four. At university, on the other hand, I was – at best – average. Mainly because I had been taught by rote in school and had not been taught critical thinking. Just repeating what you had learned did not go over well at tertiary level. That was really a turning point for me. Critical thinking and further reading is what I love about teaching now. My students improve in leaps and bounds in English because they are interested in the topic and want to research further in order to disagree or learn more.
Having said that though, I would never teach in a Swedish school. Ever. Education is free in Sweden – both school and university. Swedish universities are among the best in the world. But the schools are another story. Overall (obviously it differs between school), there is no discipline or possibility of disciplinary measures, classes are getting bigger and more multicultural, and the status of teachers is low. Different levels of Swedish language skill can mean students can get lost along the way. In addition, extreme views of religion, race and women in today’s world can cause friction. Radicalisation happens. There is no peaceful study environment. There is bullying. Pupils with social problems in their home and community naturally bring it to school with them. Social media, influencers, unrealistic body ideals, disinformation, misinformation, TikTok challenges, drugs, incel culture, and gang issues are all brought from the outside to within the schools. Extreme radicalisation is happening more often in the schoolyard. At pre-school level, some boys are being tasked by their families to report back on what their sisters and cousins are eating, who they are playing with and if they are ever in a position of showing skin.
Teachers have mountains of paperwork. They are blamed by parents for pupils not doing well. They have to be social workers, babysitters and parents, in addition to teaching. There is not enough support for neurodiverse pupils in mainstream classrooms. Good teachers leave ‘bad schools’ to either go to good schools (who need them less), or into another profession. Many people who are not natural teachers go into the profession because they do not realise how hard it is, and because it tends to be a profession where there are always vacancies to study and to work. For-profit schools in the system means that schools perhaps do not invest as much as they should in support structures for pupils and teachers.
I read this Guardian article (and several follow-ups) last year, and I was not surprised.
One in four children starting school in England and Wales are not toilet-trained, according to teachers who now spend a third of their day supporting pupils who are not school-ready, a report has found. Kindred polled 1,000 primary school staff, half of whom said problems with school-readiness have got worse in the last 18 months, with schools doing more of the work to prepare children that parents would once have done.
Nearly half (46%) of pupils are unable to sit still, 38% struggle to play or share with others, more than a third (37%) cannot dress themselves, 29% cannot eat or drink independently and more than a quarter (28%) are using books incorrectly, swiping or tapping as though they were using a tablet, according to the survey.
As a consequence, school staff are on average diverting 2.5 hours a day away from teaching and towards supporting children who are not school-ready, which has a knock-on effect on pupils who lose around a third of learning time each day.<
Schools say the additional pressures are also affecting staff retention. Almost half (47%) of teachers who took part in the survey said they are considering leaving their role and nearly a quarter (23%) plan on doing so in the next year.
“I feel like we’re not teaching as much in the first year now as we used to,” one teacher told researchers. “It’s more babysitting … teaching them basic skills … It’s like being the parent for them.”
The report exposes a sharp divide in parental and teacher views. A parallel poll of 1,000 parents of reception-age children found the overwhelming majority (91%) think their child was school-ready. Only 50% of parents think they are solely responsible for toilet-training their child, while one in five parents think children do not need to be toilet-trained before starting reception.
A similar study showed that it was not families with low education/information or social problems that were the sole culprits in this. It was also families with two working parents who perhaps had no time to do as much as they traditionally would have.