Dark Days Ahead For Teachers

Whatever the outcome of the general election, you don’t need to be an astrologer to foresee that teachers will continue to get a raw deal, says Kevin Harcombe...

The recent solar eclipse took me by surprise. I was ambushed by a parent on the playground who asked peremptorily, “Mr Harcombe, what are you going to do about the eclipse?” This was new. I was more used to, “What’re you going to do about school dinners?” or “What are you going to do about the dog mess on the pavement by the gate?”.

I was pretty sure periodic celestial phenomena were not part of my remit but, as I hardly ever open DfE emails any more, I couldn’t be absolutely sure. They might have piled that on to my role profile along with the general catch-all of ‘solve all society’s ills by including it in the National Curriculum’.

To be honest, I wasn’t even aware that the eclipse was imminent as I’d foolishly been frittering away my precious time reading and signing 300-odd reports instead of scanning the skies like some ancient, wild-bearded astronomer looking for portentous planetary events that, as the superstitious believe, might presage some dramatic national or global event: perhaps an unexpected call from HMQ for me to become Prime Minister following stalemate at the imminent general election, or the entire Ofsted inspectorate being sucked into a black hole and spat out in the time of the dinosaurs. Sorry, I digress.

“Hmm? What would you like the school to do about it?” I countered. This is always a good response because it makes the parent feel included and that her opinions count. It also buys me valuable thinking time without outing me as a complete scientific ignoramus. Plus, I still wasn’t sure whether she was talking about an actual solar eclipse or the local bus service that runs past the school which is also (and, on this occasion, confusingly) called Eclipse. “Well, they’re so rare, the children have never seen one before. I think they should be allowed to stand outside and watch it pass.” Damn. That didn’t help. She could still be talking about the bus. “I agree, but we have to have regard to any health and safety issues, of course.” I had played the health and safety card: the last refuge of the scoundrel headteacher. She knew I was buying time but had become bored, like a cat does with a dying mouse. “The children could wear protective glasses to look at it,” she finally and patronisingly suggested. At least now I was almost certain she wasn’t talking about the bus. Pointing out that it’s never safe to look directly at the sun, even through her eBay-sourced ‘Special NASA eclipse sunglasses’, gave me my usual Pyrrhic victory.

In the end, I gave parents the option of keeping their child at home so they could watch the eclipse together, and take legal responsibility for their own child’s vaporised retina. Many took up the offer to witness the magic of the heavens/have a lie-in, while the rest of the school watched a buffering version of BBC live coverage in the hall as it got very slightly and undramatically overcast outside. Sadly, it was a bit of a damp squib on the south coast and, as portents go, it certainly wasn’t up there with ‘cistern water turning to blood!’ and ‘raining fish in Kent!’ which had allegedly heralded the Great Fire of London. It’s good to know the sensationalist press has such a long and distinguished history of trying to frighten the bejaysus out of its readers.

At the time of writing, the Sunday newspapers are spewing out portentous forecasts of what will happen after the election. They are variously predicting the worst constitutional crisis since the abdication, that Nicola Sturgeon will fund SNP promises by eating live kittens, and reporting the Deputy PM’s assertion that his opponents are ‘frothing bile’. Only one of those was made up by me. The Sunday Express (whose owner, a former porn baron, has donated a million pounds to UKIP) leads with ‘Eleven Days to Save the Nation!’. Irrespective of which cabal has ‘won’ power by the time this article is published, let me offer my own prediction of a post-election education headline – ‘Teachers Continue to Take a Kicking!’. That one is as certain as the next solar eclipse in 2090.

About the author

Kevin Harcombe is a Teaching Award winner and headteacher at Redlands Primary School, Fareham. To read more articles by Kevin, visit the Teach Primary website at teachprimary.com .