Frank Chalk - Its Your Time Youre Wasting: A Teachers Tales of Classroom Hell

ITS YOUR TIME YOURE WASTING

A Teachers Tales Of Classroom Hell

Frank Chalk

Monday Books

FRANK CHALK 2006

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Monday Books

Reprinted and revised five times

This edition published 2011 by Monday Books

The right of Frank Chalk to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted underUK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780955285400

Typeset by Avon Dataset and Andrew Searle

Printed and bound by Cox and Wyman

www.mondaybooks.com

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Under Tony Blair, and then Gordon Brown, Labour invested more money than ever before in our schools and the results are there for all to see

- Rt Hon Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, speaking before the 2010 British General Election

Schoolchildren in the UK fell in an international league table charting standards in reading, maths and science, it emerged today.

Figures published by the respected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed the UK fell from 17th to 25th for reading and from 24th to 28th for maths. In science, pupils dropped from 14th when results were last published in 2007 to 16th this year.

The results will cast a major shadow over Labours education record and spark claims that a 30 billion rise in spending under the last Government failed to produce decent results.

Andreas Schleicher, from the OECDs education directorate, said overall scores achieved by UK pupils were stagnant at best, whereas many other countries have seen quite significant improvements.

The Daily Telegraph, December 6, 2010

The results are based on tests of 15-year-olds carried out in 2009, and follow a disastrous [earlier] set of results for Britain in 2007, when the country was downgraded in literacy, maths and science.

The Guardian, December 6, 2010

FOREWORD

MY NAME is Frank Chalk and this is the story of a year in my working life as a teacher atwell, lets call it St. Judes School, Downtown, UK , to spare any blushes.

St Judes is a pretty poor school not the worst, by any means, but at the lower end of what our old friend the socialist millionaire Alastair Campbell famously called bog-standard comprehensives with a working-class catchment area in a middling-sized city. As such, its typical of a huge number of schools in Britain , which is quite a horrifying thought.

I used to be a full-time maths teacher, but after a few years of that I swapped to supply teaching. In case you are unfamiliar with the modern education system if, for example, you're an ex-pupil of ours a supply teacher is someone who fills in for absent full-timers across a range of subjects. In all, Ive got around 10 years in the classroom under my belt, in several schools in two cities.

Im a normal bloke from an average background in a small northern town. My mum worked part-time as a teacher and my father worked as a project estimator for a local company. I attended my local comprehensive school and went to university, back in the days when you didnt leave with 20,000-worth of debts but they did expect you to learn something worthwhile (I read Maths).

Im 43 years old and married. I love outdoor stuff, like skiing, mountain-biking and walking in the countryside.

Obviously, my real name isnt Frank Chalk. Again, Ive tried to save a few blushes my wife is a teacher, too, as are some of my friends, and they do feature occasionally in some of the stories in these pages; it wouldnt do to embarrass them. I have also altered the names and other details of the staff who feature and swapped a few of the kids names around, for obvious reasons.

However, the characters I describe are real and so are the events: for the avoidance of doubt, every single one of the stories contained within this book is completely and utterly true. It all happened to me and I have deliberately and carefully avoided exaggeration. Ive even kept in about 5% of the bad language (though I have used asterisks; if you cant work out what the words are, ask a teenager). I hate swearing but you cant reflect the atmosphere of a modern comprehensive school without it, Im afraid.

If youre around 30, parts of this book will make your hair curl.

If youre around 40, theyll make your hair fall out.

If youre 50 or older well, to be honest, I wouldnt recommend you read this book without paramedics standing by, defibrillator and oxygen tank at the ready. School isnt like it was in your day. (Or mine.)

All that said, Im quite sure that there are teachers out there who could tell even more shocking tales. I know that many of them share my despair, though they mostly keep quiet about it. It doesnt do to rock the boat too much.

Some people have got or pretended to get the impression from reading this book that I somehow dont like kids, and that Im flippant about their futures. This accusation has been levelled at me a number of times since the first edition was published.

Its rubbish I do care, very much, about our youngsters. Indeed, this book was born out of my frustration, even despair, at seeing the majority of those whove passed through my classroom let down, day in, day out.

They are let down by their parents, who spend more time watching TV than talking to their children, who serve them reheated junk food instead of fresh meat and vegetables and who fail utterly to encourage them to get the most out of their school days (some actively encourage them to achieve as little as possible, for reasons I can only guess at). Theyre let down by their junior schools and, as youll see, later let down by us at secondary school. And theyre let down by the system.

Tony Blair famously dedicated his Prime Ministerial life to education, education, education. In 13 years, Labour threw billions of pounds at our schools, and bragged endlessly about the nirvana they had wrought in our classrooms. Unfortunately, they were lying. Much of the money was wasted on bureaucracy and interactive whiteboards, and while exam grades improved inexorably, to the point where almost everyone now seems to leave with four A* grades at A level, the independent OECD figures above show that the truth was very different to the spin.

The criminally irresponsible mindset of many of Blairs fellow-travellers was illustrated by his hilariously stupid deputy, John Prescott, when he said that the trouble with setting up good schools was everyone would want to send their kids to them.

But snake oil-selling charlatan that he was I dont entirely blame Blair, or New Labour, or the hapless succession of deluded, untruthful and blundering ministerial ideologues who filled the Education Secretarys chair along the way.

The rot set in many years ago, and a succession of governments, of both political hues, are responsible. So, too, are the hordes of politically-correct educationalists and right-on teachers whose trendy theories and experiments, applied to what was once the finest education system in the world, have conspired to smash the hopes and dreams of millions of kids, to the point where many no longer even have serious hopes or dreams.

I went into the profession, initially, to put something back. I thought I could make a difference, too. Perhaps I was nave. Ive spent years telling my non-teaching friends about what goes on in the mad, mad world of the state education system, but perhaps unsurprisingly, given the constant diet of lies and distortions about ever-improving exam results, huge investment and shiny new computers in every classroom which were all now fed they assume Im making it all up. Sadly, Im not.