WHY are experienced teachers, and especially mothers with young children, deserting their profession in droves? Why are the targets for recruiting new teachers, and especially in science and maths, being missed by a mile year after year?

The answer can be summed up in two words: government policy.

I used to think it was the solution, but now consider it to be the central cause of this crisis.

It has become, not the bandage, but the wound.

Young mothers, for example, find responding to the ever- changing, ever-increasing demands of government incompatible with raising a family so they quit.

Ever since 1988, governments of the right and left have increased the workload and resulting stress on teachers. This, rather than pay, has been and remains their main grievance.

Politicians now decide not only what to teach, but how and when. Ministers, for example, have decided how children should be taught to read, what books should be read in English and what periods to study in History.

They have also dropped the creative arts – music, drama, art and design technology – from the curriculum and so turned thousands of young people away from pursuing their learning.

We still don’t have a prestigious vocational route for the 50 per cent of each generation who don’t go to university. More generally, in what amounts to a national disgrace, further education, adult education and lifelong learning have been shamefully neglected and seriously underfunded; and youth services have been cut by 75 per cent since 2010.

In 2019, it was estimated that ministers had amassed more than 2,000 new powers; and with every Act of Parliament involving education since, they have extended their iron grip on all the key aspects of teaching and learning.

There have been 11 Secretaries of State for Education in the last 14 years and each one has launched ill-considered initiatives without consulting teachers (eg T-levels were introduced without safeguarding the interests of students on BTec courses).

This has led to constant turbulence, ministerial hyper-activity, persistent re-structuring and relentless demands for data from teachers who are thus diverted from dealing with their students. The frenetic pace of change (policies are always “turbocharged”) has damaged the need of educational institutions for stability and continuity.

The time has surely come, with a newly elected government which claims it wants to disperse power more widely, for a major redistribution of power.

Teachers, their unions, subject specialists, researchers (and, yes, politicians) should actively participate as equal partners in all key decisions affecting education like the current reform of the curriculum. Ministers must, however, lose their veto over decisions which have such far reaching consequences.

To protect themselves from the absurd and often devastating judgements of Ofsted, senior staff have had to transform themselves into internal inspectors who repeatedly evaluate the work of their junior colleagues in an attempt to avoid the school or college being assessed as ‘inadequate’. That verdict led to an able and successful headteacher killing herself. Stress is an inadequate word to express the agony she must have suffered. Government must now intervene to reform Ofsted more fundamentally than just dropping the one word judgements.

  • Frank Coffield is Emeritus Professor of Education at University College London and was previously Professor of Education at Durham and Newcastle universities. He addresses the themes in this article more fully in his new book, The Creative Art of Troublemaking in Education, which is published this month by Routledge and which is launched today (Saturday, October 26) at Brancepeth Village Hall (DH7 8DD) between 2pm and 3pm, when there will be nibbles and live music. All are welcome.