Ann Mroz at the Summit: “The profession lacks confidence to stand up for itself.”
Tes Editor Anne Mroz told delegates that major changes in teaching are underway, but the Government is only engaging with a favoured few and “the profession lacks confidence to stand up for itself.”
Using debates over the use of phonics as an illustrative example, she said the Government tends to treat dissenting opinions from school leaders not as the sign of an active, involved profession, but as unacceptable defiance that needs to be stamped out.
Calling on Ministers to get out of the Westminster bubble more, she said: “If Westminster wants to know how good schools are they should come here.”
She went on to talk about scripted lessons, which some MATs are now rolling across all their schools. There are a range of opinions on this, with proponents saying it lends consistency to teaching and critics saying teachers risk being reduced to robots.
However, she said that regardless of its actual merits or otherwise, it seems to have already been accepted by the profession with little debate.
Calling on heads to stand up for themselves more, Ms Mroz said she was being a critical friend. She said that the profession was exceptionally good at standing up for others, but was “useless” at standing up for itself.
She highlighted the need to have a more confident profession which had robust input on the debate and involving a wide range of professional opinions. She said it shouldn’t accept fundamental changes in the practice of education without discussion.
Concluding her speech, she said the entire landscape of teaching is changing but only a favoured few who share the Government’s own perspective are taking part. Headteachers now fully expect to be ignored by Ministers and seem resigned to their fates, whereas if Heads were better at standing up for themselves the Government would be less keen to make ill-considered changes in the first place.