Schools are there to educate not to make profit, argues Secret (Supply) Teacher
Earlier this year Chris Husbands, from the Institute of Education was quoted in an article about profit-making schools. He said that the education system in England already has a degree of for-profit provision in the shape of companies that provide software, textbooks and agencies that provide supply staff and argued that: "It doesn't bother anyone that they're making money out of the education system."
Well, it does bother me. I left a career as a producer precisely because of how depressing I found it making interactive whiteboard products that prioritised easy-to-sell gimmicks, or tie-ins with exam syllabuses that the publisher also owned, over educational worth. I have now found myself supply teaching through a profit-making agency.
I say 'teaching'. As a history teacher, I've 'supervised' maths (text-book work), science (text-book work), French (revision), health and social care (colouring in) and RE (research). I haven't done maths since 1999. Even once I manage to remember the difference between an acute and an obtuse angle, being able to do something yourself and being able to teach it is not the same thing. Nevertheless, after one maths class, a 16 year-old boy who struggled with his times tables, said to me: "I've learnt something today miss. Are you coming back?" I said no, his normal teacher would be back next week, and he explained patiently: "Oh, we don't have a normal teacher miss. One of the maths teachers left last year, and we're bottom set."
One day the agency sent me to be a teaching assistant. I was allocated to two girls by the special educational needs co-ordinator, one of whom seemed distinctly distressed by having a stranger there. The lessons that day, in an impressive learning support unit, were mainly conducted in sign language, which I have never learnt. I can only assume that from the school's point of view I was the cheapest way to meet the 'adult bodies in the room' quota required by health and safety, and that the agency is unaware of (or uninterested in) the different experience needed to teach children with SEN in mainstream classrooms, which I have, and supporting children in units such as this, which I don't.
Another day the agency phoned with a day of year 5 teaching. I explained that I'm a secondary teacher, and was ready to hang up, when I heard the agent trying to convince me that "they're almost the same age". I was pretty desperate for money by then, and this would have been teacher rates, almost twice that of a cover supervisor, but I had never taught the same class for a whole day, and from what I know about primary school routines from being a school governor, they are very different, and very important to keep settled. I have never taught phonics and I last spoke to a nine year-old a very long time ago. That the agent seemed surprised I turned it down, suggests that they are used to placing teachers with students who are "almost the same age".
In one school, I did a year 7 French class, then a year 7 RE class, then year 7 English and was surprised to see most of the same pupils in each one. This couldn't be coincidence, so I asked why all the year 7 teachers were away. It turns out this school had a system whereby an exam class would never have a cover supervisor; there was an order of priority for where the teachers teach, and year 7 came bottom. So, year 7 got me, some of them all day. On another day at that same school I did have an exam class; a GCSE law class. It turns out there's a hierarchy even within exam classes.
Staff room noticeboards are fascinating; they reveal a lot about a school. One consistent feature in school after school is the display of year 11 students: photos of those expected 5 A*-C in one group, and those C-D borderline students who are being targeted for English and maths in another. I spend my lunch breaks scanning the photos for pupils that I have taught that day. More often than not, the children I've met, those allocated a cover supervisor, are children whose photos don't even make it onto the wall.
This sort of prioritising is understandable when a school has to manage its budgets and reach targets, but it's the sort of prioritising that could increase with profit-making schools. In a situation where schools are looking after their budgets and agencies their profits, pupils are not being properly taught. It may only be for a lesson, or for a day, but we only offer a finite number of lessons to children in this country, and that lesson or that day is an opportunity to learn something that those pupils won't be given again.
Sometimes when I leave a school after a day of trying my best to teach pupils I don't know, subjects I don't know, knowing that it could have been worse; at least I am a qualified teacher, which isn't a requirement for cover supervisors, I feel ashamed. I am ashamed of us collectively as adults for letting the next generation down. I dread to think how I would feel if profit-making companies were owning schools, as well as the agencies and publishers/exam boards, and were maximising their profits by doing the bare minimum for the pupils they could get away with letting down; by putting a body in the room of a class that is seen to not count.
This week's Secret Teacher is a history teacher from London.
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