Thinking of a career in teaching?

Give school teachers some sympathy. Really! They deal with so much crap!

Remember, I have perspective. I did that job.

But I was very naive! No-one told me the truth about teaching before I began. Well, as everyone says I am very helpful, here are ten areas to consider before the interview for that PGCE course.

1. Imagine the worst kid behaviour you can.
Double it. Welcome to your classroom, Monday to Friday.

Sad but true. Schools have plenty of kids who are social-work caseloads, but on an educational course you are specifically not being trained for this, so you'll be caught between a rock and a hard place.

For example, Tinkertop looks cute, but this can hide a foul-mouthed monster. She'll front up to any challenge (like please sit down), then start a fist fight and tell you to fuck off. All in the time you set aside to welcome her to GCSE Macbeth.

Unfortunately, her parents might behave much the same. If you meet them, Tinkertop suddenly makes horrible sense. You will sadly realise your job might not be about dreaming up fun ways to bring Macbeth into the everyday, but is a depressing daily trial of crowd control and form filling.

My advice is pick your school intake according to whether you like social work or teaching.

2. Prepare to suffer for the good kids.
Some great kids go to school. Not only the bright ones. The charming, funny, quirky, a delight-to-be-with ones. These mini people keep you sane. They are probably the reason why teachers stay on teaching. Some kids you know will go on to achieve amazing things with the subject you love. They are your reason to work. They share ideas, are wise in their own ways, and are just utterly brilliant.

But then you realise why they are doing well is because they are working or supported at home. Look at all the disruptions to the day, and the way the hours are divided and timetabled into unproductive short fragments. Kids have to find a sane place to go and recover, or simply go and teach themselves. This is called home.

Kids of all and any ability was one big reason why I wanted to teach. I enjoy their company. That sounds painful and naive but it is true. Unfortunately, this leads to trouble.

3. Face the suspicion that your motives are dishonest.
You really want to work with kids? What are you up to?

Especially if you're a man and the kids are young. Or if you are a good-looking man and the girls are older.

People can't quite believe you want to teach because you see school as a meaningful career. (Unless you are a male in a suit who wants to be a manager. Then it's okay.)

But cast your eyes over the daily newspapers and it's not surprising people suspect you. Every week there's a teacher who's a murderer, deceiver, thief, liar, adulterer, child abuser. You have to get used to that, but be on the safe side. Never touch a child, never ever.

4. Remember, you can't pick your senior management team.
You'll either get a great management team, or a lousy one. If the latter, you will find yourself unsupported in the classroom, no matter how hard your department head works to remedy matters.

You will be powerless to do anything about poor management. Sometimes, when the management is really bad, they will demand you implement change and then set about frustrating your ability to do it.

Then you are doomed, pure and simple. Decisions will be made that you are not a part of; you will be treated as if you are merely another cog in the machine; you will be patronised, ignored, and probably bullied.

If you have a great department team, hurrah! Let's hope none of them leave! They will support you, even against the senior management. However, on the times that your colleagues all meet in the pub after work, then creeps in the fear...

5. Think, how will it read in the Daily Mail?
Teachers in the pub? Oooer. One is nicked for drink driving, smashes up the car, assaults someone?

You can't escape the brush, and say that people make a mess in their lives regardless of what job they do. Teachers hold a special place in the national psyche. The media will be part of your job. Want to do something that is slightly off-beat? Someone will whisper, How will it read in the Daily Mail?

Associated with this, is the miserable realisation that you must daily face representations of yourself which are nothing more than crappy sexist stereotyping.

Take women teachers portrayed in TV and film, where the visual exploration of fantasies and power dynamics are controlled by men. Films of student-teacher sex fantasies do not help you, not one bit. You will be hot, or not.

If you are hot, boys will try and look down your front, and make sexual jokes in your hearing. There will be innuendo, suggestions, and your physical space will be violated on a routine basis.

If you are not hot, you will be given scant respect in the classroom, your teaching ability will be questioned, and those year 11 boys who are being brought up in a culture where a woman's intelligence means not much at all, will simply walk out.

And the Daily Mail will imply that you deserved it, because you are a predator.

6. Plot your exit strategy if you have a weak head teacher.
The direction that a headteacher brings to what is a hierarchical and disciplined system is significant, and the impact in the school culture, enormous.

If they are crap, they might issue sudden directives about attainment with no infrastructure to support them. The senior management won't help because they're looking to protect themselves upwards, not downwards.

The result is, you might feel adrift and alone. And when you face Kirk with a hammer, that is a very lonely place indeed.

7. Prepare to watch your educational aspirations shrivel.
The saddest experience for me. Yes, I am a weedy theoriser / philosopher, I confess.

I also came to realise that if you are to develop any ideas within a school you must have a welcoming environment and a supportive team. Then you can genuinely innovate, challenge the way things are seen, introduce new ways of doing things, try out creative approaches, or basically have any vision at all.

Failure of some of those ideas must be part of the package. But failure is not the measure by which schools want to be judged. If your feeble head teacher is terrified of parents and the Daily Mail, you're stuffed. At best, even the most timid of your ideas will invite scorn. Sadly you might conclude that schools are anti-intellectual places geared to mediocrity.

8. Watch good colleagues leave in joy.
Some teachers in the staffroom you might adore because they are intelligent people who are fantastic fun. They provide balance, perspective, rationality.

Then you discover they are leaving. They believe their talents can be put to better use elsewhere. They go on to have great careers in office administration, and still claim that leaving the classroom is the best thing they ever did. Dispiriting.

9. Be aware how everyone pulls rank.
Schools are places designed to divide, order, rank, and create hierarchies. They are also places of judgement. This applies to kids and teachers. You will be placed in a category, given an identity and a label, then measured, ranked, and treated accordingly, like it or not.

Develop strategies from the start. My advice is make friends with cleaners and office staff. If you are attentive to the cleaners, they talk about how lovely you are to the infrastructure staff and that filters up, so slowly you build a reputation as a good classroom teacher who likes order. Any school loves an image like that.

Similarly, whatever paperwork the office gives you, deal with it immediately and hand it back, even if you fill it in wrong. The secretary will fill it in for you. You will be first to get that paperwork in on time and enjoy a reputation for being conscientious when really you are nothing of the sort. You are a manipulator. It's also called surviving.

10. Know that your own professional newspaper can happily treat you like an idiot.
As a teacher, I read the TES many times. Obviously it has self-serving views and advertisers to protect.

But the TES is not really useful if you are any thinker; they appear to cling to the same worn-out agenda that you might be fighting against. Indeed, their views can seem stuck with old interests and oft-repeated ideas. They can appear as if they are worshipping monoliths in the past.

Admittedly, these days - from the other side - I can laugh and know that of course the TES distorts events; of course it employs Sun journalists to hopefully whip up a bit of interest in its tired old pages.

Maybe it shows what they really think of their readers. I can believe they think their readers are not capable of much independent thought if they're teaching. You are, after all, cogs-in-the-machine and classroom fodder who must keep an eye to how your actions can be judged in the media.

But the TES I suppose knows this simple idea: you have to be kept in ignorance.

If you knew the truth, you probably wouldn't want a career in teaching.

'How can there be a law that allows these sad, grey children to be kept at home?'

Today finds me oscillating. One minute laughing with pleasure and the next, ripping the heads off puppies.

Thanks to the TES. Or, more accurately, thanks to Dickens and Tiny Tim.

Okay, you don't know what I'm on.

It starts with an article in the Times Educational Supplement.

The TES is a newspaper wot celebrates school. It is writ for people who maybe are not much interested in life past the walls of any institutionalised system; it is not writ for visionary world edukators like wot Grit is.

So I accept I am not the target audience, not for this.

The comedy-loving TES bit of me adored it. I thought it was brilliantly written. Dickens was a tutor here, was he not? I especially like the way the drama built up, and up, reaching rhetorical magnificence with It is we.

Then, breathtaking, the brave and noble souls, those precious few, crossing the boundaries for the unsanctionable offence, revealing the unwritten law, the moment of truth, the reason for all, love.

Once you lay aside the brilliant emotional writing, it's arse. If Jamie has a social worker, then he is already under a regime of protection which, I guess, the care industry would argue comes with certain securities, stabilities, and attentions to his and his family's needs.

Well, social care for children may or may not work as we all would like; and whether it actually protects the Jamies of this world or not, would need us to inquire into social work proceedings.

Children would not be helped by denying them and their parents the option of learning outside the school system. Would bullied children, school-refusing children, all be 'helped' by forcing them daily into a place they feared?

Anyway, I read this story to my own 'sad, grey children', Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, who, as every fule no, are home edukated.

Their response was a shocked silence. Then Squirrel said, Jamie? He was lucky. We're not allowed a puppy.

'School is somewhere that every child needs to be every day'

This made headlines, didn't it? It changed flavour over here. Children missing an education; the abuse; calls for a national database.

Well, I'm sure it's the start. Of something.

It's such a catchy beginning, too. 12,000. People love factoids don't they? Especially ones that are easy to remember. They're best if they come with emotion, a sense of urgency, or a note of alarm.

Anyway, I see this figure everywhere now, and the more it's repeated, the truer it is.

I bet the TES is not unhappy with the repetition. It helps advertisers feel safe to know their ad budget is in a paper with clout.

But I can't help but wonder about this story.

Apart from the stats, check the language. Interchanging school and education as if there is no difference? Is that deliberate? Or incompetent? Maybe education writers at the TES haven't read any education law. That doesn't reflect well on the TES. Surely, can't be that. But if it's deliberate, maybe the author is under a brief to deliver a particular impression, even if it's wrong. That every child must be in school, and this is the law.

Then get some of the 'charity' quotations too! Complete tripe! Take this one. 'School is somewhere that every child needs to be every day' says Martin Narey.

So Martin, you must include Saturday, Sunday, every public holiday, every school holiday and maybe all children too, from hour zero, thanks to the nappy curriculum. That sounds like prison too! But I think that's well beyond the legal requirement of even a dutiful and law-abiding school-choosing parent, isn't it?

You might think I'm taking what he said to ridiculous limits, and of course he didn't mean it like that, he just said it like that. But I assume he did say it; the writer chose to report it. Even if it's complete nonsense.

But how am I to understand him now, after he said that? Should I not take him seriously? Perhaps I should imagine he's just a big delusional joker with a loose mouth that flaps about in the wind.

So the education writer didn't do him any favours. Made him look a bit foolish, maybe. But still, she reported these words, unchallenged, and uncritical. I wonder why she didn't ignore them, and pursue more accurate words, ones that more sensitively addressed and identified the issues that I'm sure are in this story too.

It's true, I would have preferred to read an article that took more care over statistics, used more sensitive language, and relied on better quotes.

I'd like to have seen a recognition that education is compulsory; school is not. That most schools require attendance Monday-Friday, but flexischooling may not. That alternative provision for children of different abilities, needs, ages and aptitudes does not necessarily take place on school premises. That Children Missing Education statistics should not include home educated children. That some children, registered at school, are not deregistered promptly by parents. That some schools may be slow at deregistration procedures. That some areas probably need a shake up in placing traveller children and the families of casual migrant workers. That some children do 'disappear' from school, but probably not 12,000. That local councils have a suspicion they find difficult to voice about some families within ethnic minorities who persist in forced marriages, or who regard the education of female children more problematic than the male.

I didn't get those ideas from this article. Just a big blast of moral panic. And the 12,000 who should all be in school.

But there's more that worries at me here; more than easy stats, misleading words, and crap quotes. What I really want to know is, what happened to bring this article about? What's the background?

I'm suspicious, because the TES is as good a place to start as any.

Maybe there are various interests - commercial, charity-business, political, corporate, undesirable individual - right now coalescing behind the scenes; people who would benefit from a little moral panic.

Perhaps some social alarm would make it easier to introduce a compulsory, national registration system, one for all children, regardless of who they are, whether they are schooled, educated otherwise, home educated, moved house, or packed off for a forced marriage. Parents, by law, would be obliged to front up information about the kids.

You can almost hear it now. We simply need to know. We are concerned about the twelve thousand disappeared. This will help us identify children who are genuinely missing. If we know where all children are registered as receiving education, then it is easier to identify when children are not where they should be. This register is simply to help us focus our support on the children who need it most.

Then the TES article might make sense. It might have a specific intent to scream some scary figures, yell some thoughtless quotes, plough ahead with mishmashed information, ignore the law, and whip up a little social anxiety.

I can't decide. Whether the TES team hears whispers in government, and this article is a tiny particle kick-starting a sinister scheme of things. Or whether it's just another badly written article from someone who's not sure of the law and doesn't choose their soundbites well.

Oh, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm just old, and I look at the world with a brutal eye.

But if I was Martin Narey, I'd ask for a favourable full page to redress the damage. Maybe an interview with me as Important Person. I'd ask for a different journalist and then I'd check the quotes, in case anyone took me for a complete idiot, all over again.

The TES is nearly my favourite comedy newspaper

Gawd bless the TES. They cheer me up something statistically enormous in these wasteland days.

Here's Kerra Maddern, gone behind the boiler to receive the arsefacts from the Ministry of Truth and Trust, manufactured by Ed Balls.

Kerra, bless her, has carefully copied out the wrods in the Ministry of Truth and Trust press release and writ them down in proper TES style.

The TES then sends them off by invisible fairy mail to the printers, who make all that magic ink-printery stuff happen.

So here it is. The latest truth in the TES. And it is TRUE, every bit of what the DCSF/TES writ. Almost as true, but not quite as true, as Grit's astonishing facts, which she has carefully collated by means of a statistically accurate truth machine with knobs on:

83% of all women in the UK yesterday went out of the house wearing NON-MATCHING UNDERWEAR. I myself wore white bra and black knickers. 100% class.

21% of all babies are born smoking a pipe.

6% of agricultural farm labourers around the world working for less than US$1 a day are killed annually by donkeys. 32% of those donkeys fall out of aeroplanes. 1.9% of donkeys are pushed.

33.56% of wombats drink vodka between the hours of 2am and 3.55pm. You're amazed. You thought the figure was lower, didn't you? Well that just shows how good wombats are at hiding their addictions. They just do it secretly in burrows and you don't see them. 56% also have better sex with viagra.

Less than 0.1% of anything the TES prints is true, but it is 98% amusing.

Now go and read something serious, for goodness sake.

Thank you Richard Vaughan! Grit's new job is PROSTITUTE!

Hey, Richard! Writer of the article on HOME EDUCATION for the TES! Yes, you! You wrote the article published 12 June!

Richard, you might have saved us.

Since I gave up a full time job to HOME EDUCATE my children, I've become used to making decisions, like, do I buy new boots at John Lewis for £180? Or do I buy used shoes at the RSPCA charity shop for £3? Well, sometimes there's no real choice, because my kids need books, resources, outings, computer stuff and art materials. And tell me about the cost of those acrylics!

Well you obviously appreciate that home educators don't usually receive money from the state just because they've chosen a different way of education from you. Not a bit. Usually, it's a big hit on our time, commitment, energy, and pockets.

Which is why your suggestion is just tickety-boo! It could be a nice little earner, no? Don't be SHY! It was you, wasn't it Richard, who conflated the article on HOME EDUCATION with this paragraph on PROSTITUTION?

The Department for Children, Schools and Families has issued new guidance with the Home Office to safeguard children from sexual exploitation and prostitution. It revises guidelines published in 2000 in a report, Safeguarding Children involved in Prostitution. Delyth Morgan called all frontline professionals to work together to identify children at risk of sexual exploitation and take the 'best steps to keep them safe from harm'.

Of course you know that home education often means learning things together with our children. So if my child is now living in a world where HOME EDUCATION and PROSTITUTION can be dealt with as if they are pretty much one and the same thing, of course they should know about it.

Well, I'm their teacher! I'll find out first!

Now bear with me Richard, because I'm new to this game, and I may not have all the lingo just yet. I've done my advertising on the back lanes.


And I've had a little rummage in the wardrobe and come up with this. Do you think it will help?


Look a bit closer, Richard. Something might tickle your fancy.


Sorry, I don't have all the face mask stuff yet. I found these eye patch things that Dig bought back from an aeroplane.


Ohh la la, Richard!


And when we are very naughty, Richard, I could read to you about THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH.


And then we could get down to some serious work. Again, you'll have to forgive me. It's just what we've got in the cleaning cupboard right now.

Well, Richard. Big Boy. Thanks for suggesting this angle. Me, I would NEVER have THOUGHT that HOME EDUCATION AND PROSTITUTION BELONG TOGETHER.

I should give you a discount.*

*But sadly, due to irritating ideas about accuracy, decency and fairness in this country, I've been forced to accompany the opening of my new business with a letter to the Press Complaints Commission.