Do Your Best

How do we recognise and develop high professional standards in teaching? More pay and a club motto alone do not go far enough, says Mick Waters...

Professionalism is making a comeback. Both Conservative and Labour politicians have stressed it as the way forward for schooling.

Nicky Morgan, who began quietly as Secretary of State for Education, has now, like all national politicians, announced her ‘silver bullet’ – the solution to the nation’s schooling problems that her predecessors never discovered. This secretary of state has the idea of sending the best teachers to the poorest schools.

It’s a suggestion that calls to mind Mission Impossible: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is in a special measures school, year 6, with low SAT scores… in a market town, on the coast, and they can’t do the column method for subtraction!”

Now, the idea of moving teachers might have merit if we can accept that some of our best teachers are already in some of our most needy schools and some of our best schools are good because of the best teachers. About 15 years ago, the government in Cuba decided to put their very best teachers of young children in the areas where literacy was worst. Illiteracy in primary schools was virtually eradicated very quickly. Shuffling the deck, however, will not address the wider issue of professional development.

Building the professional standing and quality of teachers is one of the four key planks of school improvement used by most governments across the world, along with a national curriculum, testing and examinations, and school inspection. But in this country, the over-emphasis on league tables and inspection within a high stakes accountability system has reduced the focus upon professional development for teachers.

When Estelle Morris was an education minister, she produced a green paper that focused upon the professional quality of teachers, including pay spines and the notion of a threshold, better professional development opportunities, the introduction of Advanced Skills Teachers (ASTs), and better staffroom facilities.

The AST development was intended to persuade gifted teachers to ‘remain near the classroom’ rather than have to seek roles in management for career progression and better pay. The Coalition initially supported this and promoted the notion of Specialist Leaders in Education (SLEs) to work alongside their National Leaders in Education (NLEs) programme. But none of the parties can seem to achieve the correct balance between better pay, quality professional development, and professional recognition, and instead lurch between the three elements.

Michael Gove chose to see professionalism in terms of teachers’ pay linked to results. However, there will always be a problem in getting good teachers to move to a school with low results in a special measures category. High pay is an incentive, but has to be balanced against the potential risk from career-threatening scrutiny and pupil results, never mind the stress of termly visits from Ofsted to check on progress.

There has long been a need to attract good teachers to the least attractive schools. In the late 1960s, teachers were paid a social priority allowance if they were prepared to work in some of the most challenging areas. Those teachers were recognised as ‘having something special’ in their willingness to take on a significant challenge. Nicky Morgan’s proposal to move the best teachers to the worst schools is very similar. Many teachers would respond to being asked to do a significant professional task and would welcome additional pay for doing so. Most, though, would value professional recognition and acknowledgement almost as much, though it has to be meaningful.

Tristram Hunt, the current labour spokesperson on Education, has picked up professionalism and suggested teachers should have an educational version of the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath. He has been to Singapore and seen it there and so it has become his silver bullet. Given that politicians of all parties have, for years, deliberately – or otherwise – reduced professionalism with their policies of ‘instant solution’, it is doubtful that an oath will make the necessary impact.

How would it go? “I solemnly promise that I will arrive on time, be prepared, and use my whiteboard interactively.” Of course not; it would be much more ‘professional’. “I solemnly promise to offer a dynamic introduction, never forget my plenary, and always mark work with indications of how to improve.”

Such detail is as demeaning as telling people how they should teach in the first place so the oath would be much more general. The head would gather staff at morning briefing and would implore them to “Do Your Best!”

“We will do our best,” staff would respond.

“DYB, DYB, DYB.”

“DOB, DOB, DOB.”

After a good oath, teachers could do any mission. Be ready to be moved – that’s what we mean by being prepared! DYB.

About the author

Mick Waters is Professor of Education at Wolverhampton University. His recent book, Thinking Allowed on Schooling, addresses these issues further.