Over the last few weeks I have heard or read spokespeople or articles from Department for Education and Government state “We have spoken to teachers” only for Edu-Twitter and other teacher forums to promptly point out that nobody “they” know are involved in such conversations and there lies the problem.
The problem isn’t that “nobody” knows which colleagues are being consulted, they may well know them – it may just be that that the colleagues in question don’t want to publicly announce they were consulted. Equally the fact that the people consulted aren’t on Twitter speaks of the relatively low number of teachers who use the platform rather than anything awry. But for the teaching profession to know when these conversations took place, which questions were asked and how these questions were responded to would be helpful.
It is helpful to note that Teachers are not the “angry mob” or inert mass as often depicted by newspaperas. Nor are civil servants all Machiavellian Sir Humphrey types. The civil servants I have met are extremely bright and open minded folk trying to arrive at a solution at the direction of their minister.
At these difficult times would it be possible to have a genuine conversation with the profession and make it ongoing. First meetings are tough but they do become very productive very quickly. So many online tools make this possible – Zoom for one!
Maybe then a profession that has not stopped working during this pandemic, despite what certain “shock and awe” commentators would have the the general public believe, can work towards viable solutions rather than have unworkable, hastily drafted, ideas dropped onto them.
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