The targets that you make me set at the end of key stage 3, GCSE and A-level are unrealistic. Children of average ability are expected to reach the highest levels. As a result, you force me to transfer that pressure to students. When their work doesn’t reach the grade, I have to ask them to redo it or consider some sort of intervention. It is unfair for children to feel inadequate, labelled as underachieving and “not on target” because the target they have been set is unachievable.
I told you all this and said that I felt under stress as a result. You shrugged, as if to suggest that this is just the way things are. Perhaps I should have been more truthful with you and told you that I have a constant headache, that I no longer sleep through the night, and that last year, after a particularly severe migraine, I went to the doctor who put me on antidepressants. But it’s not just the teachers who are suffering. I fear the mental health of our students is at risk because we have become a school driven by data. The number of children showing signs of depression and anxiety are increasing, with many citing exam pressure as the cause.
Perfect displays and a tidy classroom are more important to you than the wellbeing of your students. You often do things to appear successful to parents, governors and local authority advisors – without considering our happiness. I watch you lead visitors around the school, smiling and greeting staff. I smile back, but inside I am seething.
The senior management team, led by you, constantly tells me about the importance of reaching deadlines. We are berated if we present data, reports, self-assessment documents and curriculum plans late – yet you personally don’t meet deadlines.
Last year, you observed one of my lessons. I spent hours planning it (too long probably), but I wanted to impress you. After the lesson, you had to rush off to a meeting. When I shyly approached you for feedback a month later, you told me that you had forgotten. I was grateful for your honesty, and for the promise that I would receive it, but it’s now six months on and I still haven’t heard what you thought of the lesson. I don’t feel like I can ask again.
You used to be a good communicator, often calling into my classroom to pass on messages, but now you are rarely at school. You don’t respond to emails, our timetabled meetings are often cancelled, or you simply don’t turn up. It’s unsettling.
Perhaps most concerning is that the students have picked up on the lack of organisation, and as a result, discipline is slipping. Lessons are getting disrupted; break and dinner times are chaotic, and even our youngest children are answering staff back. Teachers, including myself, have raised these issues in staff meetings but you haven’t responded.
I want to believe in you, but I am losing respect. I’m sure you agree that the targets we work to are unrealistic. I want you to make brave decisions, rather than hiding away in your office. We are caught up in the cogs of a faulty machine and it’s costing us the mental health of staff and, more importantly, our students.
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