[Adapted from a series of tweets on X, 30 November 2024.]
Why you need tutoring in 2025 ...
One size teaching does NOT fit all ...
(On teacher autonomy, and why parents might decide to choose an experienced tutor).
This article in the Times Educational Supplement is actually really important - many experienced teachers are leaving the classroom because of behaviour (and you shouldn’t underestimate the ways in which a whole class can suffer because of one or two very disruptive students), but teacher autonomy - or lack of - is an increasing factor in job dissatisfaction, too.
It's not arrogance to say the teacher IS the lesson.
Think about your own schooling ...
Some teachers (ahem) don't just have great exam results, but high rates of students taking the subject at KS5 (against national trends), and even at degree level ... and, again, it’s not arrrogance to say that those teachers can only be memorable if they are somehow different, or unconventional.
This is how/why we fondly remember some teachers decades after they taught us. And this is why students, I think, instinctively know who the 'good' teachers are - even if they don't much like the subject, or they don’t enjoy being pushed to exceed their own expectations of the subject at the time.
But right now, schools increasingly seem to want to homogeneity of delivery: yes, down to slide stack level, as suggested in the TES article - even when the schools say that isn't the case. I know of colleagues (in the broader sense, beyond school level) who ended up on what is euphemistically called a ‘support plan’ (read ‘compliance plan’) for deviating from an ‘approved’ department plan and resources.
Why would teachers do this appalling thing?
To address some particular issues that particular class had. You might ask how this can possibly, POSSIBLY allow proper 'differentiation', either for students individually or for classes ... you could well, as a parent, ask why or how top set students are being taught exactly the same materials as bottom set students, and vice versa.
'Cynics' (ahem) might also point to a devaluing of the profession. When all you have to do is rock up and read from a prepared script, what's the point in being a subject specialist? And, indeed, as a state school, increasingly run to budget, why have expensive experienced teachers on your payroll when you can save money? In England a brand new teacher will cost a school £18k a year less than a teacher at the top of the scale … if they are going to teach the same thing, using the same resources, you might be tempted to cut corners. I would be tempted, were I running a business - instead of running a school for the benefit of the children .
I don’t want to digress. The main things are differentiation, student experience and progress. Giving the student the best possible start in life. Aren't they?
Again, please don't confuse what I’m saying with a solipsistic, 'me-first' world-view. What I am trying to get across is that a mass exodus of experienced teachers, and homogenous curriculum delivery, 'teaching to the test', is not in the best interests of our young people.
It's odd - we talk endlessly about students as individuals, and are then forced to teach them as if they are exactly the same as their peers.
Words are cheap ...
Why you need tutoring ...
If I looked in my crystal ball, what might easily happen is that parents will increasingly be convinced that state education isn't catering to their child's needs. Some of these, almost inevitably, and especially the ones who might have withdrawn their child from an increasingly expensive private school system, might end up opting for tuition in core subjects. Not dissimilar to the NHS, where in the past fortnight my 81yo mum has had to go private when one of her teeth broke.
You might think that I would be pleased by this public/private development, but I'm saddened ...
I can't think of a teacher / tutor who doesn't put the student first, and this trend towards homogenisation simply doesn't do that. Especially, with no account of students whose parents aren’t financially able to supplement the increasingly basic, 'to the test' offering they get at school.
It's going to deliver an average (dare I say mundane) experience to youngsters who need and DESERVE inspiration. There is no such thing as average, though. I’ll go further - I/we don't teach English: what we teach is how to communicate, and how to understand the way in which others communicate.
In a post-truth, internet age, is there a more important subject than English?
We become teachers to help children. Last time I checked, it's not a means-tested thing.
Yet we are being asked / directed to teach it as if it were of no real consequence, with gatekeepers for style and content, and a curriculum which, I would argue, puts students at a disadvantage in the real world, too.
Which is why I'm going to host some free 'English Surgeries' at our local library (Llanfairfechan) from January 2025.
A student's access to the highest forms of literature, of communication, shouldn't be dependent on their parent's income.
@bphillipsonMP needs to think about this. A recruitment crisis makes headlines, but the elephant in the room is retention ...
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