When I was at school, which seems like aeons ago now, I could be quite loud at times but because I was fairly bright and did my homework, my teachers didn’t really tell me off.
Class 11B on ‘work experience’, which they quickly, cruelly, realised was more permanent, circa 1951
Thank God it wasn’t the 1950s, when 0.00001 per cent of the teenage population took O Levels and 1 per cent of those passed as the rest ploughed fields or set about hitting machinery with a spanner: oh, what halcyon days, I can hear the Tories yawn on. Either GCSEs were easy, we were taught well or we were fairly intelligent, perhaps all three: it was all ok in the end.
School was fun. I did my work – and if you didn’t want to they didn’t really pressure you: by 16 it’s your choice – and I got a clutch of semi-satisfactory GCSEs. Then I went to sixth form college and spent most of my time pottering about, mostly reading or talking in the library, and got into the LSE.
So my education wasn’t too fraught. Whatever happened, happened. My parents might have put occasional pressure on me to do my homework rather than playing on the computer, but that was about it. Doing subjects, at least at A Level, that I was interested in meant that everything was relatively straightforward – and that I didn’t need to constantly harass my teachers.
Now, however many years on, everything about the current Government’s education policy is driven by elitism. Everything. Free schools require parents to be elitist enough to want to create their own schools because they presumably perceive A Comprehensive School down the road is not good enough for Horace, Maurice and Boris. Education standards are in the process of being cranked up to such an elitist level so that independent schools or (what are perceived the) top grammar schools don’t leave the A Level system, even if Eton and other places are using alternative examinations already.
There are a few things that this Government really must start to realise. Of course, it’s difficult, since most of the following things highlighted next probably refer to 80, 90, if not more than 90 per cent of the Cabinet, but they can at least try. Firstly, not everyone can fit into a grammar school or an independent school: comprehensive schools are required. Second, not everyone, can fit into Oxbridge or a Russell Group university. Third, some people might not even want to go to Oxbridge or a Russell Group university.
Some do, obviously; some have a vision that Oxbridge is like some educational Utopia. Some don’t really mind – I was ready to go elsewhere if I got turned down by LSE. Some obviously don’t care too much and have their eyes firmly set on whether their university town has a Hooters or an equivalent. (However distasteful I find that, I don’t think that should be a reason to deprive people of a university education – and there are plenty of people like that at the esteemed LSE, I can assure you.)
And so it’s with interest that I logged into Twitter today to find out that (a very select sample of) the internet seems to have gone mad over a piece written by Jonny Griffiths, a Maths teacher at Paston College in North Walsham, Norfolk in the TES.
Since my Dad’s a teacher, I can recognise how Griffiths feels. My Dad’s always happy to help people out – always – but it can get draining for him when he’s been asked by the same student eighteen times in one week whether he’s definitely going to get an A, when someone’s seeking not your expertise but your opinion which you’ve already given.
Griffiths writes of his encounter with ‘Michael’ after the learning day has finished. (Presumably Michael’s not the pupil’s name, otherwise the teacher’ll no doubt be up for a disciplinary meeting pretty soon.) He’s so driven that it’s quickly become tedious for Griffiths to hear his sob stories about how he wrote this and that in the wrong place in January’s AS Level exam. ‘Michael’ talks of how he ‘only just got an A’ in his exams, how that’s clearly unsatisfactory and how his ‘heart’ is so ‘set on’ achieving an A, he’s covered his bedroom wall with Post-It notes. This is clearly a student so keen to go to his university of choice – Cambridge – that he will ask anyone at any time about it.
But Iain Martin and others have set about Griffiths, labelling him a lazy teacher for daring to suggest that ‘Michael’ should enjoy being 17 and stop fretting about his prospects of further education, when clearly there is no real need to worry; they suggest that the teacher is flattening his student’s aspirations.
What would they prefer? The student to be totally on edge about his future at Cambridge, something that might not happen if he has a bad exam? Or be like Michael Heseltine, his future written down on a napkin: Cambridge don by 26, Nobel Prize winner by 28… and be distraught when he only ends up going to Durham?
Griffiths writes that he told ‘Michael’ that it would surely be better to go to Bangor with three Cs at A Level and be happy than go to Cambridge with three As and hate it. Griffiths is charged with damaging his student’s prospects in the future again: Bangor is, for some reason, deemed sub-standard, not good enough for the pupils that should, because they have Post-It notes around their room and are fretful, be off to Oxbridge.
There is nothing in the piece that suggests that, as Martin says, Griffiths acts with ‘smug shamelessness’. What’s shameless about wanting someone to calm down about their future prospects when they seem to be too het up or reassuring them about their forthcoming exams? Nothing.
While Martin is right to say that there is an increased share of privately educated students taking up (what are perceived to be) top positions in Britain like they haven’t done since grammar schools were introduced across the country in the 1950s and 1960s, the reason for that isn’t poor standards in comprehensive schools. Far from it, it’s because quality is seen to be so entrenched in the universities which Martin holds with such regard.
Why, for example, shouldn’t the Prime Minister – (forget, temporarily, the fact that he is an Old Etonian, but rather that he went to Oxford) – have gone to Bangor University or have done a BTEC? There’s the social mobility problem right there. The more people from independent schools who go to Oxbridge, Russell Group universities and leave others places at what Martin would no doubt class lesser universities, the more unequal British society gets. As a Maths teacher in a sixth form college in Norfolk who no doubt knows this and that there’s not much he can do about it safe of teaching tens of teenagers a year and is bored of hearing the same rubbish from one student over and over again, that’s certainly not Jonny Griffiths’ fault.
I would support the teacher’s right to defer any conversation with this pupil until the next academic day. I would not support the way that he dealt with this overly needy pupil, as it is clear that if what he was seeking was affirmation, then he is likely to have picked up on the liberating flippancy of the response that he got and may in future act accordingly. Defend the man for the right reasons, if defend him you must, but his response was highly inappropriate and potentially harmful.
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“The more people who go to independent schools who go to Oxbridge, Russell Group universities and leave others places at what Martin would no doubt class lesser universities, the more unequal British society gets.”
The utter fallacy of your and Jonny Griffiths’ position is encapsulated right there.
We should aspire and work to get more kids of less fortunate backgrounds to Oxbridge etc – the problem is not that some kids are achieving but that others are not.
You prize equality even if that means flattening the best down to a lower level – and it’s worse-off kids who lose out,
Middle class to$$er. My father left school at 14 to join the Army and I went to 13 schools. Luckily the secondaries were grammar schools mostly self-taught as I perpetually caught up.
I got a 1st and PhD at Imperial, should have gone to Cambridge to have done Physics, but had to leave that school, One of my acquaintances was Sir William Penney who had worked on the Manhattan project to stop my father from being killed as a planned beachmaster in the invasion of Japan.
No atom bomb, no me……
Like me, Bill Penney was son of an RSM given a chance by aspiring teachers who wanted the best for their students. You lot need drowning at birth.
But Michael wants to get an A. Michael wants to go to Cambridge. Michael doesn’t want to get Cs or go to Bangor.
There’s nothing morally wrong with getting a C or with going to Bangor but there is something obviously wrong with telling someone who wants to do better academically that they shouldn’t bother. Why turn up at all? Why be OK with getting the answer wrong when you know you are capable of getting it right?
Jonny obviously knows best, better than the child in front of him asking for help, reassurance, encouragement, some teaching, what’s best for Michael. Luckily he’s at a sixth form college, otherwise Michael might have met Jonny ahead of his GCSEs and been told that drinking cider in a field is a better way to spend the summer than fretting over GCSEs when there aren’t any jobs out there anyway.
Now, if somewhere along the line Jonny had said that Michael really isn’t that bright and that scraping an A is something which would come at too high a cost that’s a different matter. No-one gains from being hothoused into unhappiness. Maybe the wry smile from Michael comes because he doesn’t realise, despite Jonny having tried and tried to get it to sink in, that there’s a difference between plus or minus 2 and 2. But that would be a different story, not a story about telling a hard-working, able and keen child to settle for lower grades and less demanding courses, but helping a weaker child to stop themselves getting hurt by aspiring way beyond what they could possibly achieve.
Jonny’s like my old teacher Mr Brown who, during sports day, as I was coming round the final bend of the 1500m in the lead shouted at me to slow down for heavens sake so that I can guarantee third place rather than risk collapsing and losing (thinking of me as a gangly weakling in his A set Biology class rather than as a member of the Ist VIII rowing crew who ran 5 miles a day).
This is such a flawed piece. People complain about the dominance of Eton in our society and then are opposed to the very types of school and education (driven, free schools etc) that will allow students to compete. You either want social mobility or you don’t. Oxbridge was far more dominated by state schools in the era of the grammar than they are now dominated by private schools. Low social mobility in this country is precisely down to the view that universities are equal in standard that is prevalent in lots of comprehensives but zero private schools (and the two types of student are competing for the same university places, that is just fact). If businesses like Oxbridge and Russell Group graduates it is probably because they find them better workers (having had to work harder as a result of going to a more difficult and prestigious institution). You can’t claim standards are equal when they are patently not. I had a friend who went to Leeds Met who one term had no essays and an open book exam and a friend who went to Oxford who had 20 essays in an 8 week term. Claiming there is no difference or that they both offer perfectly good opportunities is deluded. Some people aren’t good enough to go to oxbridge, yes, but by encouraging academic ambition you drive up standards across the board, including at universities like Bangor.
By aiming high and having a policy of getting as many students as possible into the top institutions schools drag up the other students. That is empirical fact. If you have 20 oxbridge applicants in a school, and 60 russell group applicants, all the oxbridge applicants are likely to reach the standard required of the russell group at least and the 60 students will all be close to the standard gain as a result even if they don’t get into the russell group. Aiming low results in low achievement.
“It can get draining…” Ok i’m sure its annoying but surely this is part of the job of being a teacher? Aren’t you supposed to want to achieve the very best for your students? Crying blue murder just because Eton dominates while at the same time perpetuating the system that allows it to do so. We had social mobility in this country. How sad but ironic that it should have been eliminated by its most avid supporters.
I found that enjoying my teenage years was perfectly possible in addition to putting in the work necessary to get into a decent university. We should stop pretending it is patronising to expect people to work hard.
Jonny Griffiths invites you to visit http://www.jg-tes.co.uk
Jonny Griffiths is an embarrassment to his profession. If I did my job as badly as he does his people would die very quickly. He just ruins lives.
So you “pottered about” and still got into LSE. That’s great, but these days, because A grades are so easy to get and so many people get them, Michael needs to achieve really good As to distinguish himself from other lesser candidates and gain a place at the university of his choice. Surely any teacher worthy of the name should be encouraging pupils’ aspirations, it’s as simple as that. Michael doesn’t have the might of a public school behind him, he is just asking for a bit of encouragement and trying to aim high. If johnny griffiths is a real teacher, which i sincerely hope he is not, then he is failing his pupils.
Having read his response, the point jonny griffiths was trying to make didn’t come across clearly in his original TES article, and it has been hijacked by both sides of the political blogosphere. My comment above still stands, though, as a reply to what Nathan Briant makes of the education system.
Writing as someone who failed the 11+, but went to a good Secondary Modern School, Glendale in Wooler, Northumberland, I found this teacher’s attitude so depressing.
Here we have a young lad, mustard keen to do his utmost best so achieve a place at a top University and his teacher, his mentor, his accademic supporter, is telling him, “Why bother?” That such people with such attitudes are encouraged to take up a career in teaching speaks volumes of what is wrong in our country’s education system.
The lad is 17 years old and at a 6th Form College. This suggests to me that his Comprehensive Secondary School was not adequate enough to have a 6th Form of it’s own and I would interpolate from that, that he is possibly one of those potential high fliers who were failed by their teachers and is now trying to rectify their failure.
…and theres the rub in the final paragraph; “The more people from independent schools who go to Oxbridge, Russell Group universities and leave others places at what Martin would no doubt class lesser universities, the more unequal British society gets”….apparently the maths teacher knows this. What on earth has teaching to do with making society ‘equal’; a teachers job is to teach and get the best out of Children. People, and children especially, respond best to encouragement
It’s precisely this attitude that typifies what is so wrong with British education. You define elitism as a dirty word – as though it’s a terrible idea that the most intelligent students should be taught at the best universities.
And you might write ‘best’ universities by trying to equate Bangor with Cambridge, in order to try and reduce all institutions to suit your relativist views, but compare the research and innovation coming out of Bangor with Cambridge. Their position in the world is a matter of fact, not merely vacuous prestige.
17 Year olds need all the encouragement they can get to work hard, and denigrating those who are self-motivated is, despite your weak protestations, smug, horrible and pathetic.
How dare that teenager want to do well, go to the best university he can, and set his sights on it – doesn’t he know that by doing better than the lazy ones he’s damaging social mobility!
If “elitism” is looked upon as being a dirty word, then we are going to continually fail to encourage and make the most of our best young minds. As a country facing stiff competition from overseas, can we afford to cripple our best minds for the sake of Left Wing political sensibilities?
The most Shocking aspect of this is that the teacher concerned is not ashamed.
Charlotte Iserbyt on the destruction of the Western Education system.
The most shocking aspect of this is that the teacher is still employed.
Professional Standards for for Qualified Teacher Status in the UK
Section one – Relationships –
Q1. Have high expectations of young people.
Q2. Demonstrate values and behaviour
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