Occasionally I let Seager write a blog post … ok I’ll be honest I think I’ve let him write one post in the last 4 years and this is why I’m happy to let him double his blog post count this evening with the below contribution. I don’t want to steal his thunder so I’ll let him tell you about his recent travels …

After reading the recent education white papers published in March entitled ‘Educational Excellent Everywhere’ (link  here ) I sent quite a few lengthy emails to every email address I could find for the Department for Education expressing my thoughts.  I have summarised those thoughts in these three quick bullet points:

• Recruitment of teachers is clearly an issue – particularly when schools have to pay thousands of pounds to advertise.
• Why are we not using and celebrating the excellence that we have in this country BEFORE looking elsewhere like Shanghai?
• The excessive workload as a teacher that I particularly struggle with is dealing and reacting to the constant changes in education at the minute.

Overall, I cannot agree more with the general message that comes from this document – the desire and determination to get the best for all children regardless of location. A clearly ambitious project with some great ideas being looked at.

In addition to the emails to the Department for Education, I also contacted my local MP, Conservative MP Karen Lumley to share my thoughts.  I received some ‘thank you for contacting us’ reply from the Department for Education but the reply from Karen was a little different.  Karen replied and suggested that I join her for a meeting with Minister of State for Schools Nick Gibb to discuss the points further.  At this point I was a little excited – my chance to share my thoughts and ideas with one of the big decision makers who has such an impact on what my job looks like.  Karen arranged for us to visit Nick in London on Monday 11th April in the offices of the Department for Education.

On Friday 8th April, I received an email from Karen’s office explaining that the meeting had been cancelled.  I had already booked the £10.50 off peak train to get to London which was non refundable…I was gutted! (for some reason, Mel keeps telling me that I’m tight!?).  Although there was no offer of a refund, I was offered an alternate date of Tuesday 26th April.  Once bitten, twice shy – I didn’t book the train ticket until the night before… just in case I was stood up again!

I wasn’t stood up – it was go go go.  I headed down to London nice and early ready to meet Karen in the Department around 9.30am ready for the 10am meeting.  I had never met Karen before, and as a voter of another political party I was worried that we may not share the same views on education.  I have to say that Karen was BRILLIANT!  Firstly she made me feel really welcome and had such a passion to develop and support the education system (particularly in my town of Redditch) that she made me feel instantly at ease.

We were promptly called up to Nick’s office for 10am and in the room was myself, Karen, Nick Gibb and 2 gentlemen from Nick’s office.  We kicked off straight away with the issue of recruitment.  In 2014 the team behind JustMaths also set up www.schoolscanner.com – a completely free place for schools to advertise their vacancies.  We set this webpage up purely because we couldn’t believe the ridiculous money being spent by schools on job adverts.  In the white papers it says the Government are aiming to set up free web tools to help schools recruit.  My first message was ‘we already have created what you are planning’! As much as the idea of schoolscanner is great – breaking the ‘norm’ of how schools advertise is IMPOSSIBLE! Nick Gibb and his team get this and really do want to support schools in keeping the budgets in-house to be spent on the kids – not going to big companies for simply advertising jobs.  I have been promised further discussions in May/June on how schoolscanner and other free advertising forums could work alongside what they are planning – watch this space!

Secondly we discussed the retention of good teachers.  I made my thoughts clear on this – I simply said that we need to promote the excellence we have here before seeking ideas from abroad.  Nick is clearly a big advocate of the Shanghai model – I did try to cheekily get myself on his next Shanghai trip…I’m desperate to see the equivalent of a C/D (4/5!) borderline group being taught in their own environment!  Nick’s current Shanghai focus is on Primary – so I’m not jetting off anytime soon.  We have so many great teachers that are not only excellent role models for our children but are also run ragged trying to keep up with the constant changes.  It wouldn’t take much to make our teachers feel valued – it seems like it’s all negative in education at the moment and this needs to change.  I think my points were clear and the message was heard.

Amongst other things – we discussed Maths Hubs and how at our previous school, myself and Mel applied to be a Hub and despite being the ‘Most improved school in England’, running our own local collaborative network supporting other schools, we were unsuccessful in our bid.  I said how I’d love our current school to be a Maths Hub – at this point he jotted the school’s name down on his notes.  I’m not holding my breath – but you never know!

Finally we discussed the workload for teachers.  My message was that as an experienced teacher, planning and preparation is not what I class as being excessive – it’s huge but I can manage this (I did make it clear that although it’s ok for me – it is a massive issue for those earlier in their careers), but what I class as excessive is the constant changes in education that I am having to deal with, react to and prepare for.  He got and understood this message loud and clear.

In short, over the hour-long meeting I hope I sent a message that as a teacher I’d much rather be working with the Government, helping with the changes (slowly!) and supporting the excellent teachers that we have – making us feel valued and promoting the excellence. I sincerely hope that this was not the first and only time that I spend time with the Department for Education.  I will of course keep you posted on how this evolves.  Over and out.

MEL: On reflection it is obvious that Seager is much more diplomatic than I am – at times the difference is so very stark and it is no surprise  that the good cop/bad cop routine we have developed is becoming second nature. Scary really …

… and my MESSAGE TO SEAGER is -> Now bog off …