Bernadette Hunter: There is more to school life than the things you can measure

SCHOOLS should be places of enjoyment and pleasure in learning. But many seem to have lost their sense of humour, buried under piles of data and spread sheets.

Let’s make sure that our staff and children are not brow-beaten and bowed down under the weight of paperwork and targets.

We need to model optimism and positivity and make sure our schools remain beacons of hope in the current gloomy educational landscape. If we don’t see the promise of each day and share it in our schools, who will?

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School leaders are also courageous. They speak out on behalf of injustice and they are not afraid to say when things are wrong in the system.

Perhaps headteachers don’t always feel strong but every day they have to deal with a torrent of initiatives and changes which rather resembles wrestling with an octopus. And they do it because of the moral imperative of school leadership – learners. We know our responsibility to the life outcomes of children and that’s what gives us the strength to fight the octopus.

I know the teaching profession is tired of constant, ideologically-driven change. We always seem to be saying that this is the worst we have ever known it but this time it is undeniably the truth.

In the past few years, the whole system has seemed to be being dismantled before our eyes and fragmentation and division are everywhere. There is continual denigration of our professionalism and a worrying creeping privatisation of education.

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We seem to have a Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove) who doesn’t seem to be for education at all. The negative rhetoric and language that we hear from the government and from Ofsted have caused great damage to our morale. Sticks and stones may break our bones and contrary to the saying, words have the power to inflict great hurt.

So I have a message for the DfE and for Ofsted. I challenge them to start choosing their words more carefully and think about the impact their continual criticism has on the profession.

I’d like to remind them of the fable of the wind and the sun, both trying to persuade a man in the street to remove his coat. The cold gale and stormy winds, only made him pull it defensively more tightly round him, while the warmth of the sun encouraged him to take off his jacket, proving the sun the winner. Throwing a storm of cold criticism at us is unlikely to move us; whereas warm words, deserved and judicious praise and honest respect are far more likely to engage and motivate.

And I have a message for headteachers. We need to stop feeling powerless. Let’s start seeing unprecedented change as an opportunity instead of a threat.

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We do not have to stand by and let the system be fragmented and divided.

We are the professionals and we know what is right for our schools, for our children and for our staff.

If we don’t speak out positively about the change we want to see, who will? We need to be ambitious and confident, ready to deal with the pressures ahead. We need to show courage and resilience and work together to be stronger.

I’d now like to turn to the thorny problem of accountability. School leaders are fully aware that we need to be accountable to the public and to the government. We are public servants and we understand that we should be judged on how our schools have served their children and young people.

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But let’s be treated fairly. We need a stable inspection system that doesn’t keep moving the bar every few months, that doesn’t use adversarial and punitive language in its reports, that doesn’t strike fear and dread into every conversation where it is mentioned. How have we come to a situation where we have allowed a system that is based on fear and intimidation into places of learning? The current inspection system is paralysing schools and preventing genuine improvement and it has become a political tool with the outcomes linked to the threat of academisation.

We also need to start a debate about what makes a good school. It’s not just the narrow range of data-driven criteria that Ofsted uses.

The education of a child is not just about Level 4 Sats and five A*s to Cs at GCSE level. Of course academic achievement is important, but good schools do so much more.

They develop confident, successful learners and foster critical life skills, important attributes for employment and happiness in later life.

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Good schools provide children with opportunities to develop in the arts, sports, environmental awareness, and service to their local community. We need to start talking more strongly about what we value for our learners as a society, not just focusing on what we can measure most easily.