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Social media is a black hole of negativity.
People don't typically broadcast positivity, and tend to speak openly more when there is a complaint.
Also humans react more to negativity, which feeds the algorithm for more visibility spread.
This all eventually taints the general perception of things.
Many people criticise the school instead of looking at who is responsible for the underfunding, not just for SEND. It's like blaming the till staff for prices set by a supermarket.
I think that an over emphasis on rules has led to the focus being in the wrong place. I have taught for about 18 years now and I have noticed that uniform has become a real pain in the bum. Students getting instant detention because they forgot a tie or have the wrong shoes. It wasted so much of my time as a tutor, caused animosity with parents and added nothing to education. The rules are tightened up every year and the justification is always that parents have asked for it and the governors have approved it and it is proven to improve results but strangely no-one, when challenged , has every shown me evidence of improvements. Where is this academic paper that shows wearing a tie improves GCSE results?
Minimum uniform, like a polo shirt and trousers would cover the requirements and save a fortune for parents but SLT only look at how pretty the kids look. They all aspire to run Eton but got some shitty secondary out in the provinces instead.
MATs amplify this toxicity. All staff have to toe the line and no kind of variation is allowed.
All of this means good experienced staff leave and the places are run by young, compliant NQTs who are cheap and don't question stupid. They also don't last long because stupid is very stressful.
Couple this with underfunding, pressure to make the data look good, OFSTED and the extended hours of work and everyone is on the edge on insanity.
School should be fun. Secondary school is hell. I only work A level these days and it is a breath of fresh air after 15 years of "where's your tie?"
Yeah uniform is a good example. My view is that it’s a soft-skill that we teach students: how to dress for the environment you’re in / what constitutes smart attire. Therefore, I will always get students to correct / fix up shirts/ties/skirts and frame it in that way. But yes, the unecessary agg of having to enforce hour detentions for having a bracelet on / forgetting to put your blazer on in the corridor can be a time-drain and doesn’t help to build buy-in from parents at all.
Almost no job anybody actually wants requires a uniform unless it's specific PPE. Aside from a few fields if the big boss showed up at work wearing an actual tie that would be almost worrying. Since I left school I only wore a tie for weddings and funerals, and even then most weddings I do no-tie these days, and usually the jacket gets ditched immediately after photos.
If I had a job offer on double my current salary, but I had to show up before 9 wearing a tie, without air conditioning in the office, hotdesking and moving every hour, having to take the bus or cycle across town, and being told off if my shirt got untucked, that would likely be a no from me. Earning money is important, but not being miserable and uncomfortable where I spend most of the day on 5/7 days of the week is also important.
I had this exact conversation so many times with managers. "We're preparing them for work"... no, you're not. And you wouldn't know because you never actually had a real job. And that is part of the problem. A great many senior teachers never did anything but teach, so they have no idea how to prepare kids for work.
School is oppressive. It's designed to be oppressive because it's all about getting the right data to look good, so OSTED gives you a good grade. That's it. Nothing else matters.
I would argue though that whilst ties and shirts aren’t specifically in many jobs’ clothing policy, nearly every job has codes of conduct around dress and work attire. Even in ‘casual’ offices, there would be some things that you are not allowed to wear. Even in life, in supermarkets or restaurants, there are some things you would not be allowed to wear.
The way I see it is that it’s less about saying to a child ‘you need to put your tie in because you’re going to be wearing a tie when you’re older’, more that ‘in some spaces you have to follow codes of dress, and in others you have complete freedom to dress how you please’ and that these are societal norms that everyone follows. This is why I believe these conversations about uniform should be less about being punitive (eg an hour detention for having the wrong coloured socks) and more about having those discussions about different types of environments and how that affects how we dress.
Fellow teacher. I cannot even bring myself to point out if a student has the incorrect uniform. I could not give a fuck. I’ve stopped replying to shitty emails from management about it. “Millie in your form had TWO studs in one ear and you let her leave the room!” Look mate, I’m busy, and Millie had her hair down. I was not studying her ears as I was doing countless other things.
GTF out of secondary. 6th form colleges pay much the same, and the quality of life is so much better. We have 4.5k students, so you can imagine how much our budgets are.
This is giving me PTSD from my last school where the DHT would do spot checks of classes to check uniform. If a student in your class’ uniform was not good you would then be pulled in to a meeting - 3 strikes and you would have a letter on your file 😰 and people wonder why teachers are quitting!
I think there was a change during/because of lockdown and the changes that followed. Parents realised a bunch of things about what teaching actually entails (including that it is fucking difficult and technical). For good or bad, they've now got opinions based on more than zero experience.
But we also started to question some of the longheld beliefs about the school system, such as the necessity of every single school day, or whether a class of dozens is a good place to learn, or what parents evening should look like, or which subjects are important, or what uniform standards there should be, and so on.
I have children in KS2, KS3 and KS4. My considered opinion about the English school system is that it is criminally underfunded, particularly for SEND, that you couldn't pay me enough to be a teacher, and that there is simply too much variation between schools usually caused by poor management. *Some* schools are great - so it should be possible for *all* schools to be great, if as a society we invested emotionally and financially in the system as a whole.
The thing about Tik Tok and similar apps is that once you start engaging with a type of content, it starts feeding you more and more of it. It gives you a distorted view of things by design, so it's not a good way to judge public opinion.
I’ve worked in non-teaching roles in a few schools and I can understand some of the attitudes people have. One school had kids line up over and over until the line was perfectly straight. This would go on and on, any slight angle would be wrong.
At another school, kids couldn’t speak in the lunch hall at all and were not allowed to bring in their own water bottles. Hair was inspected for colourful bobbles and children were regularly threatened about attendance, with the head turning up at doors.
Yes some parents are a pain and their child can do no wrong but there is also a fair amount of tedious and petty rules that are there for power trips. Far more so than I can recall in the 00s
The only detentions I thought were stupid at my school was a lunch detention for being even 1 minute late for form time. No warning on the first offence just straight up detention. So if I missed my school bus that was it.
Personally I thought my school was quite good, I was lucky to go to a grammar school.
Especially my chemistry teacher, I’ve never met a man so dedicated to ensuring every kid got a good grade, he’s the reason I went from failing to excelling so I’ll never forget him.
But overall I have nothing but respect for teachers, you work all day. Then at night making PowerPoints and interesting ways to teach whilst having inevitable little shits in your class and not getting paid nearly enough. It’s no wonder my sister quit being a teacher.
That’s so nice to hear that your chemistry teacher was such an inspiration!
The example you have given is a great example of one of the issues schools face. If I was in charge of a school in a dream scenario, I would love to say I would, in situations like that, wipe off the detention. As you sad, a first offence and a genuine mistake is sometimes unavoidable. The issue is, schools don’t have the admin staff to deal with that. Taking in the names from the late gate, cross-referencing it against a list of of past-offenders, checking validity of excuses such as buses being delayed by calling the bus company, then dealing with parent complaints from kids who were 2 mins late who are annoyed that kids who were 1 min late got let off.
What this means is schools either A) just have to draw the line somewhere and as a result the odd innocent good kid gets a perhaps disproportionate consequence or B) have no rule about something at all.
What this means is schools can very rearely sufficiently staff things to have any nuance /flex which of course leads to parent/student frustration.
You will only ever see ranting online. You’ll only ever hear from the parents that think their child shouldn’t have to comply with uniform rules, or do their homework, or are in complete denial that their kid is a bully or otherwise badly behaved. If they think you are right they’ll just quietly accept it.
The only real sentiment I can see shifting in real life is there does seem to be a lot of bitterness about fines for taking kids out of school for holidays. When I was in school it was very very rare for any of the kids to have holidays in term time, now almost everyone wants to be able to.
However, my experience of term time holidays as a kid is probably skewed because I went to a private school so parents sending their kids there (a) obviously put a great deal of value in school/education, (b) are being charged a lot for the kids to go to that school so actually want them there when they are paying so much for it and (c) had money so could afford school holiday prices for holidays.
The fines is a really interesting one. The parents speaking about the silliness of fines forget the very reason they exist - to incentivise keeping kids in schools and protecting vulnerable kids.
I think only those who work in the public sector truly understand the shocking frequency of child abuse/neglect. For many children, school is the one place they get to be a child, get a hot meal and have people monitoring their well-being. If schools did not enforce attendance, many children would simply disappear out of the system. (If you want to read more on this, google ‘missing children post-covid’. Thousands of children have literally disappeared over lockdowns and never came back to school, with schools/authorities not knowing where they are). Disproportionally this affects girls from deprived backgrounds, as there is often lots of pressure on them to support in caring for younger siblings. People tend to forget that cuts to children’s services and health visitors means that schools are sometimes the only people keeping an eye on vulnerable children. I know at most schools, a few days of unauthorised absence without contact means we will often do a wellbeing check - and some of the things that you encounter in these can be heartbreaking.
Whilst for the majority of parents who’s child’s absence is for good reason - a holiday or a family event (that no teacher who’ll begrudge) - for the handful of kids per year who are vulnerable, that ability to keep parents accountable for attendance is a lifeline!
I agree. I feel like in the vast majority of cases where parents want to take their kids on holiday it should be fine to do so, the problem is the minority. I didn’t even think of the vulnerable or vanishing kids, but more like the ones that might need help catching up after a week, that’s time the teacher has to spend helping them rather than teaching the whole class, which if every kid in the class is taken out for a week could really add up. It should be ok if it’s not going to harm their education and they can catch up, but you can’t say it’s ok for the kids at the top of the class but not those at the bottom.
Yes exactly. Whilst schools and individual teachers are held so accountable for results, when students have days off teachers will inevitably have to give up their time (either from the rest of the class in lesson or unpaid afterschool/lunch) to catch those students up, or face consequences from management.
Unfortunately a lot of parents don’t give a shit, simple as that. My daughter’s school about 10 years ago now fell into special measures. The new academy trust held a meeting in the sports hall to address the issue and what they’re planning to do etc. About 25 sets of parents turned up, the rest couldn’t be bothered.
Yes and I agree people are blaming schools and teachers, instead of the government causing all the problems. I used to teach and a lot of the issues I faced could be explained by either too much bureaucracy or not enough funds for proper resources. A lack of special needs provisions was a big issue too. If I could have fixed all those issues with a click of my fingers then I would have, for both my sake and the kids' sake. I just did not have that power, so I was a lightning rod for frustration. I always told the parents that I hated it too and wish it was not this way, however sympathy only goes so far to assuage their anger.
It's impossible to have respect for schools or school management who produce and enforce ridiculous uniform rules. And I say that as someone who is 100% in favour of school uniform. But telling kids what haircuts they can have is a shocking overreach. Making parents buy expensive items from "approved" retailers stinks of backhanders and fraud. And don't even get me started on the whole privatisation of schooling by stealth with this Academy bollocks going on down in England. Why on earth are they letting businesses teach their kids? Do people really not think that it's privatisation just because they don't pay school fees?
Individual teachers may be absolutely fantastic, but they're probably also the ones most likely to quit through burnout, and maybe even head abroad where they'll be appreciated and not forced to discipline children for having a stupid haircut with a stupid name. Meet Me At McDonald's? Whatever, lads, you're not hurting anyone.
A businessman in nw England was boasting during a tv interview about putting millions of his own money into the pupils education at his state school, the interviewer showed him a false invoice for £300,000 he said he’d paid for a dangerous wall in the gym to be replaced, no work was actually done, the invoice was from his own bogus ‘company’ and he was reimbursed with no checks. Interviewer went on to show many such false claims including for urgently needed replacement fire doors, again invoiced and reimbursed for work not carried out. While this sort of corruption is not only ignored but seemingly encouraged by the government the state education system in the country will suffer. It’s not the teachers fault.
This happened to a school I worked in once too - there was even a panorama on it. A businessman set up a private company an charged the school extortionate amounts for faulty work, building a sports block, and hosted training in the school and charged the school millions. He did a runner with the money and left the school penniless and with an unsafe building. Say what you want about nationalised services, but I don’t understand why there isn’t a nationalised contracting firm who does building work for public infrastructure - could prevent these types of fraud!
Teachers have an impossible job and I really feel for.
The problem with the education system in the UK is not so much the standard of the teachers themselves, it’s the general attitude to education.
It’s a badge of honor for much of the society to be a moron and yes, compared to most other European countries, the average Brit is a moron.
The poor outcomes of the British education system are rooted in deep issues with the society as a whole. Not the quality or dedication of the teachers.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Social media is a black hole of negativity. People don't typically broadcast positivity, and tend to speak openly more when there is a complaint. Also humans react more to negativity, which feeds the algorithm for more visibility spread. This all eventually taints the general perception of things.
Yes - you’re probably right. Also the more people comment on those posts, the more inclined that poster is to post again to generate traffic.
This is the correct answer.
Many people criticise the school instead of looking at who is responsible for the underfunding, not just for SEND. It's like blaming the till staff for prices set by a supermarket.
This is a good analogy!
The British opinion of everything has always been that everything is shit. Even shit is shit compared to old shit.
I think that an over emphasis on rules has led to the focus being in the wrong place. I have taught for about 18 years now and I have noticed that uniform has become a real pain in the bum. Students getting instant detention because they forgot a tie or have the wrong shoes. It wasted so much of my time as a tutor, caused animosity with parents and added nothing to education. The rules are tightened up every year and the justification is always that parents have asked for it and the governors have approved it and it is proven to improve results but strangely no-one, when challenged , has every shown me evidence of improvements. Where is this academic paper that shows wearing a tie improves GCSE results? Minimum uniform, like a polo shirt and trousers would cover the requirements and save a fortune for parents but SLT only look at how pretty the kids look. They all aspire to run Eton but got some shitty secondary out in the provinces instead. MATs amplify this toxicity. All staff have to toe the line and no kind of variation is allowed. All of this means good experienced staff leave and the places are run by young, compliant NQTs who are cheap and don't question stupid. They also don't last long because stupid is very stressful. Couple this with underfunding, pressure to make the data look good, OFSTED and the extended hours of work and everyone is on the edge on insanity. School should be fun. Secondary school is hell. I only work A level these days and it is a breath of fresh air after 15 years of "where's your tie?"
Yeah uniform is a good example. My view is that it’s a soft-skill that we teach students: how to dress for the environment you’re in / what constitutes smart attire. Therefore, I will always get students to correct / fix up shirts/ties/skirts and frame it in that way. But yes, the unecessary agg of having to enforce hour detentions for having a bracelet on / forgetting to put your blazer on in the corridor can be a time-drain and doesn’t help to build buy-in from parents at all.
Almost no job anybody actually wants requires a uniform unless it's specific PPE. Aside from a few fields if the big boss showed up at work wearing an actual tie that would be almost worrying. Since I left school I only wore a tie for weddings and funerals, and even then most weddings I do no-tie these days, and usually the jacket gets ditched immediately after photos. If I had a job offer on double my current salary, but I had to show up before 9 wearing a tie, without air conditioning in the office, hotdesking and moving every hour, having to take the bus or cycle across town, and being told off if my shirt got untucked, that would likely be a no from me. Earning money is important, but not being miserable and uncomfortable where I spend most of the day on 5/7 days of the week is also important.
I had this exact conversation so many times with managers. "We're preparing them for work"... no, you're not. And you wouldn't know because you never actually had a real job. And that is part of the problem. A great many senior teachers never did anything but teach, so they have no idea how to prepare kids for work. School is oppressive. It's designed to be oppressive because it's all about getting the right data to look good, so OSTED gives you a good grade. That's it. Nothing else matters.
I don't think I have ever seen someone wear a tie in the workplace. Not even the CEO though he does usually wear a shirt. Most of us wear full casual.
I would argue though that whilst ties and shirts aren’t specifically in many jobs’ clothing policy, nearly every job has codes of conduct around dress and work attire. Even in ‘casual’ offices, there would be some things that you are not allowed to wear. Even in life, in supermarkets or restaurants, there are some things you would not be allowed to wear. The way I see it is that it’s less about saying to a child ‘you need to put your tie in because you’re going to be wearing a tie when you’re older’, more that ‘in some spaces you have to follow codes of dress, and in others you have complete freedom to dress how you please’ and that these are societal norms that everyone follows. This is why I believe these conversations about uniform should be less about being punitive (eg an hour detention for having the wrong coloured socks) and more about having those discussions about different types of environments and how that affects how we dress.
Nobody wears ties to work anymore unless they're a lawyer or something.
Fellow teacher. I cannot even bring myself to point out if a student has the incorrect uniform. I could not give a fuck. I’ve stopped replying to shitty emails from management about it. “Millie in your form had TWO studs in one ear and you let her leave the room!” Look mate, I’m busy, and Millie had her hair down. I was not studying her ears as I was doing countless other things.
GTF out of secondary. 6th form colleges pay much the same, and the quality of life is so much better. We have 4.5k students, so you can imagine how much our budgets are.
This is giving me PTSD from my last school where the DHT would do spot checks of classes to check uniform. If a student in your class’ uniform was not good you would then be pulled in to a meeting - 3 strikes and you would have a letter on your file 😰 and people wonder why teachers are quitting!
I think there was a change during/because of lockdown and the changes that followed. Parents realised a bunch of things about what teaching actually entails (including that it is fucking difficult and technical). For good or bad, they've now got opinions based on more than zero experience. But we also started to question some of the longheld beliefs about the school system, such as the necessity of every single school day, or whether a class of dozens is a good place to learn, or what parents evening should look like, or which subjects are important, or what uniform standards there should be, and so on. I have children in KS2, KS3 and KS4. My considered opinion about the English school system is that it is criminally underfunded, particularly for SEND, that you couldn't pay me enough to be a teacher, and that there is simply too much variation between schools usually caused by poor management. *Some* schools are great - so it should be possible for *all* schools to be great, if as a society we invested emotionally and financially in the system as a whole.
The thing about Tik Tok and similar apps is that once you start engaging with a type of content, it starts feeding you more and more of it. It gives you a distorted view of things by design, so it's not a good way to judge public opinion.
You’re right. This is why I was keen to come to Reddit as I couldn’t ascertain if I was just stuck in this doom-loop or if things really are that bad!
I’ve worked in non-teaching roles in a few schools and I can understand some of the attitudes people have. One school had kids line up over and over until the line was perfectly straight. This would go on and on, any slight angle would be wrong. At another school, kids couldn’t speak in the lunch hall at all and were not allowed to bring in their own water bottles. Hair was inspected for colourful bobbles and children were regularly threatened about attendance, with the head turning up at doors. Yes some parents are a pain and their child can do no wrong but there is also a fair amount of tedious and petty rules that are there for power trips. Far more so than I can recall in the 00s
The only detentions I thought were stupid at my school was a lunch detention for being even 1 minute late for form time. No warning on the first offence just straight up detention. So if I missed my school bus that was it. Personally I thought my school was quite good, I was lucky to go to a grammar school. Especially my chemistry teacher, I’ve never met a man so dedicated to ensuring every kid got a good grade, he’s the reason I went from failing to excelling so I’ll never forget him. But overall I have nothing but respect for teachers, you work all day. Then at night making PowerPoints and interesting ways to teach whilst having inevitable little shits in your class and not getting paid nearly enough. It’s no wonder my sister quit being a teacher.
That’s so nice to hear that your chemistry teacher was such an inspiration! The example you have given is a great example of one of the issues schools face. If I was in charge of a school in a dream scenario, I would love to say I would, in situations like that, wipe off the detention. As you sad, a first offence and a genuine mistake is sometimes unavoidable. The issue is, schools don’t have the admin staff to deal with that. Taking in the names from the late gate, cross-referencing it against a list of of past-offenders, checking validity of excuses such as buses being delayed by calling the bus company, then dealing with parent complaints from kids who were 2 mins late who are annoyed that kids who were 1 min late got let off. What this means is schools either A) just have to draw the line somewhere and as a result the odd innocent good kid gets a perhaps disproportionate consequence or B) have no rule about something at all. What this means is schools can very rearely sufficiently staff things to have any nuance /flex which of course leads to parent/student frustration.
You will only ever see ranting online. You’ll only ever hear from the parents that think their child shouldn’t have to comply with uniform rules, or do their homework, or are in complete denial that their kid is a bully or otherwise badly behaved. If they think you are right they’ll just quietly accept it. The only real sentiment I can see shifting in real life is there does seem to be a lot of bitterness about fines for taking kids out of school for holidays. When I was in school it was very very rare for any of the kids to have holidays in term time, now almost everyone wants to be able to. However, my experience of term time holidays as a kid is probably skewed because I went to a private school so parents sending their kids there (a) obviously put a great deal of value in school/education, (b) are being charged a lot for the kids to go to that school so actually want them there when they are paying so much for it and (c) had money so could afford school holiday prices for holidays.
The fines is a really interesting one. The parents speaking about the silliness of fines forget the very reason they exist - to incentivise keeping kids in schools and protecting vulnerable kids. I think only those who work in the public sector truly understand the shocking frequency of child abuse/neglect. For many children, school is the one place they get to be a child, get a hot meal and have people monitoring their well-being. If schools did not enforce attendance, many children would simply disappear out of the system. (If you want to read more on this, google ‘missing children post-covid’. Thousands of children have literally disappeared over lockdowns and never came back to school, with schools/authorities not knowing where they are). Disproportionally this affects girls from deprived backgrounds, as there is often lots of pressure on them to support in caring for younger siblings. People tend to forget that cuts to children’s services and health visitors means that schools are sometimes the only people keeping an eye on vulnerable children. I know at most schools, a few days of unauthorised absence without contact means we will often do a wellbeing check - and some of the things that you encounter in these can be heartbreaking. Whilst for the majority of parents who’s child’s absence is for good reason - a holiday or a family event (that no teacher who’ll begrudge) - for the handful of kids per year who are vulnerable, that ability to keep parents accountable for attendance is a lifeline!
I agree. I feel like in the vast majority of cases where parents want to take their kids on holiday it should be fine to do so, the problem is the minority. I didn’t even think of the vulnerable or vanishing kids, but more like the ones that might need help catching up after a week, that’s time the teacher has to spend helping them rather than teaching the whole class, which if every kid in the class is taken out for a week could really add up. It should be ok if it’s not going to harm their education and they can catch up, but you can’t say it’s ok for the kids at the top of the class but not those at the bottom.
Yes exactly. Whilst schools and individual teachers are held so accountable for results, when students have days off teachers will inevitably have to give up their time (either from the rest of the class in lesson or unpaid afterschool/lunch) to catch those students up, or face consequences from management.
I think very few of the people criticising the British education system are blaming the teachers to any extent
Unfortunately a lot of parents don’t give a shit, simple as that. My daughter’s school about 10 years ago now fell into special measures. The new academy trust held a meeting in the sports hall to address the issue and what they’re planning to do etc. About 25 sets of parents turned up, the rest couldn’t be bothered.
Yes and I agree people are blaming schools and teachers, instead of the government causing all the problems. I used to teach and a lot of the issues I faced could be explained by either too much bureaucracy or not enough funds for proper resources. A lack of special needs provisions was a big issue too. If I could have fixed all those issues with a click of my fingers then I would have, for both my sake and the kids' sake. I just did not have that power, so I was a lightning rod for frustration. I always told the parents that I hated it too and wish it was not this way, however sympathy only goes so far to assuage their anger.
It's impossible to have respect for schools or school management who produce and enforce ridiculous uniform rules. And I say that as someone who is 100% in favour of school uniform. But telling kids what haircuts they can have is a shocking overreach. Making parents buy expensive items from "approved" retailers stinks of backhanders and fraud. And don't even get me started on the whole privatisation of schooling by stealth with this Academy bollocks going on down in England. Why on earth are they letting businesses teach their kids? Do people really not think that it's privatisation just because they don't pay school fees? Individual teachers may be absolutely fantastic, but they're probably also the ones most likely to quit through burnout, and maybe even head abroad where they'll be appreciated and not forced to discipline children for having a stupid haircut with a stupid name. Meet Me At McDonald's? Whatever, lads, you're not hurting anyone.
A businessman in nw England was boasting during a tv interview about putting millions of his own money into the pupils education at his state school, the interviewer showed him a false invoice for £300,000 he said he’d paid for a dangerous wall in the gym to be replaced, no work was actually done, the invoice was from his own bogus ‘company’ and he was reimbursed with no checks. Interviewer went on to show many such false claims including for urgently needed replacement fire doors, again invoiced and reimbursed for work not carried out. While this sort of corruption is not only ignored but seemingly encouraged by the government the state education system in the country will suffer. It’s not the teachers fault.
This happened to a school I worked in once too - there was even a panorama on it. A businessman set up a private company an charged the school extortionate amounts for faulty work, building a sports block, and hosted training in the school and charged the school millions. He did a runner with the money and left the school penniless and with an unsafe building. Say what you want about nationalised services, but I don’t understand why there isn’t a nationalised contracting firm who does building work for public infrastructure - could prevent these types of fraud!
Teachers have an impossible job and I really feel for. The problem with the education system in the UK is not so much the standard of the teachers themselves, it’s the general attitude to education. It’s a badge of honor for much of the society to be a moron and yes, compared to most other European countries, the average Brit is a moron. The poor outcomes of the British education system are rooted in deep issues with the society as a whole. Not the quality or dedication of the teachers.