Why I quit teaching
Nick Butt says he resigned as headmaster of a Norfolk school because of idiotic government bureaucracy Twas on holiday when I read about my resignation as headmaster of St Edmund's. 'Head quits over Labour policies' read the headline. It came as quite a surprise. I knew I had resigned, but didn't think anyone would be interested. Then the story was mentioned on breakfast TV. A national paper took up the tale. Questions were asked in the House, and on Radio Norfolk. I began to wonder whether my obscure act of self-immolation might conceivably be noticed by the government.
'A very brave decision, I was told time and again. It seemed to me. as Margaret Thatcher used to say, that there was no alternative.
The spat between Charles Clarke and the Local Government Association, representing the nation's local education authorities, is very childish. Where are the missing millions? Nobody is going home until we find them. Sooner or later Mr Brown will fork out some more, and the crisis will abate — until this time next year, that is. More contributions will have to go into the ailing pensions fund; there will be national insurance to pay; another pay rise to fund; and on top of that huge quantities will be needed to implement the now notorious Workload Agreement.
Under the terms of this amazing document, schools are henceforward obliged to release teachers to prepare for lessons for at least half a day a week, and teachers are spared from doing 24 named tasks such as collecting dinner money and putting up displays. In fact teachers' contracts will be changed in September to reflect the new code, and as the headmaster I am, or would have been, required to implement it. The cost to my school is £65,000 per annum in additional staff costs, on top of the £98,000 I am short this year. No school will be able to fund the agreement.
In so far as many schools have averted catastrophe this year, it is by dipping into the large balances they had accumulated. There was a junior school in Norfolk last year with a balance of £400,000, and the 400 primary schools had more than £12 million stashed away between them. Next year they will have no balances to draw on, and they will be forced to make painful cuts in staffing. Schools have not done so badly in the past out of this Labour government, and LEAs have very generously passed on much of the money into school bank accounts. Cautious and of course amateur governors have kept the money in interest accounts for a rainy day', so the children have been deprived of their due. Now it has started to rain, and the present spring shower is nothing compared with next year's monsoon.
My dispute with the government is not over the amount of money it is giving to education; it is over the demented way government controls that money. Apart from the 66 funding streams, money is tied to pet projects, and cannot be accessed by the majority of schools. If you happen to be in an education Action Zone, or an Excellence Cluster, you have had wads of money thrown at you. If you happen to be a failing school, you have had good teachers drafted in on high salaries, new buildings, redecoration, and an army of educational consultants to support you. If you happen to be a poorly performing secondary school, you can look forward to three years of the Leadership Incentive Grant, £125,000 up front per annum, plus a £50,000 facilitation grant to help you spend it. Anywhere, indeed, where Tony's beacon has illuminated an 'area of need' you can guarantee money has been swift to follow.
But suppose you are a successful primary school, rubbing along in exceedingly difficult circumstances, passing your Ofsted inspections, but in a black hole as far as ministerial attention is concerned; west Norfolk, for example. The wind comes in from the Arctic, whipping across the fens in winter, and in summer the caravans clog up the by-pass on their way to the coast. You are 55 miles from County Hall, so remote that on more than one occasion the director of education has lost his way when trying to find you. No huge balances here. Recruitment is a Sisyphean nightmare, and people rarely stay. No wonder so many people go off long-term sick with depression. Before Easter I had six of our 12 teachers away on one day, and no possibility of supply. The LEA said it would be 'very disappointed' if I sent the children home. Increasingly the people off with stress, or worse, are the head teachers themselves.
What made me snap? It was a day's required training (there is much that is 'required') for the Educational Visits Coordination (EVC). Invariably that role, like the Child Protection Officer, is taken by the head in a primary school, because the government does not fund it. The EVC is responsible for all school trips, whether or not he actually organises them or goes on them, and must ensure that all the risk assessments are filled out and approved. The North Norfolk coast is deemed a 'high-risk area so your little trip up to Hunstanton with the infants is now seen as an activity akin to white-water rafting or hang-gliding. Every conceivable risk short of the sky falling on your head must be accounted for and covered. This is due in no small measure to the very rare but very public tragedies involving schoolchildren in recent years, and to the fact that last year schools paid out £200 million to litigious parents (Mr Clarke, I have found the missing millions, please give me a house point).
We were shown a slide of a group of children beside a river downstream from a waterfall. They were sitting or standing near the water's edge, barefoot. We were asked to identify all the risks in the picture, and how this activity might be conducted safely. It was a sedate shallow river with many stones in the bed and crystal-clear water. They seemed to be happy. Appearances were deceptive. These children should have been fearing for their lives. First of all the waterfall was a real and present danger. They should not be shown waterfalls lest they were tempted to fall down them. The rocks were sharp and slippery, and that water was teeming with leptospirosis; their feet should have been shod. And what were they doing so far from a main road? A suitably qualified wilderness expert should have been in attendance. Perhaps, our tutor grudgingly permitted, once all cuts and abrasions had been plastered over, they might be permitted to kneel at the water's edge in a stationary position. But that was all. Have fun? Dear, oh dear! I recalled a trip last year to the Dales, and a similar waterfall and river. How our children loved splashing about between the rocks and letting the water slip through their hands, getting wet and dirty and jumping from stone to stone, No more. As EVC I am required to put a stop to all that. I have just handed my deputy a stash of 30 full-page risk assessments to fill in for a trip to Derbyshire. They will then have to be approved by the governors and by the LEA before the trip is allowed to take place. In the meantime the hostel where they are staying will have to fill in a 16-page questionnaire covering every aspect of health and safety, which will also have to be approved by the LEA. Except I have resigned.
It is not just the bureaucracy generated by the new school-visits legislation. Much of my time is taken up writing bids, except I don't have that much time, because I have to devote so much time to dealing with staff absence and recruitment and retention, In some schools, where they are not under the same pressure (usually those serving prosperous areas) they have people who will write the bids.
The irony is that the very schools the government intended would benefit from the relief are too preoccupied to bid for it, and the schools which are not so afflicted take the money instead. Why couldn't the government simply give me the money and save me writing the bid? I have written bids for behaviourmanagement money, for sports-facilities money, for a nurture group, for literacy support, for after-school clubs, for our playgroup. for administrative staff and for building projects. Often my bids are successful, so then I have to write reports proving I have satisfied the requirements of the funding, because there are always requirements. After a year the money dries up, and then I have to prove `sustainability' and write an 'exit programme'. It is incredible how many projects I have sustained without any money. My bidding days are over, because now I have resigned.
It isn't just the 'papersomeness' (to quote the latest buzzword) of my job. It is the accountability, Fair enough, somebody needs to check on my competency and make sure that I am not financing my own extravagant lifestyle with school funds. But with so many stakeholders I can build my own stockade. I am accountable to the parents, who can blame me for anything and everything that goes wrong in their lives, because I am an easy target and expected to be accessible. I am accountable to governors, who have immense responsibilities but are not required to undergo any training whatsoever to equip them to discharge them. I am accountable to the LEA in County Hall, who seem to think they can dictate how I spend my time. I am accountable to the editor of the local newspaper, to all the solicitors in the town, to the consultants in the local hospital, to the police, to social services, and to the people who live nearby, all of whom have told me in no uncertain terms how to do my job. I am accountable to Mr Clarke. I am accountable to Ofsted, who come every two years on average and settle in for a week. The only people it appears I am not accountable to, whose lives I am directly affecting day in day out, are the pupils themselves. Yet it is they who are suffering from the actions of everybody else. So from now on I will be accountable only to myself, to my wife, and to God, because I have resigned.
As I reflect on my 15 minutes of fame I am saddened for the future of schools in this country. Nobody trusts head teachers enough to let them run their own schools free of local authority control, and the dead hand of central government. If all the money spent on spin and directives had simply been put into schools' budgets, and heads been free to spend the money as they saw fit so long as they actually did spend it, then we would not have had the present problems. And I might still be doing the job I used to love.
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