I teach, therefore I must suffer: Susan Elkin wonders why teachers make do with, and are perversely proud of, bad conditions

SMALL wonder teachers have such difficulty achieving the professional status of, say, doctors or lawyers when their entrenched attitudes are so determinedly self-deprecatory. A remark made last week at the Eastbourne conference of the National Association of Head Teachers - and the reactions to it - tell a revealing story.

Frank Gallagher, head of a primary school in Leicester, alleged profligate spending by some headteachers on 'administrative toys and luxury furniture'. At this, the august assembly of headteachers angrily shouted 'shame]' and 'sit down]' and let forth a volley of catcalls at such an outrageous suggestion.

But behind bluster, Mr Gallagher and his unruly audience share the same innate, extraordinary belief: that it is somehow shameful or morally wrong for teachers to have decent working conditions.

What nonsense. Why on earth shouldn't schools have tidy furniture and the appropriate 'tools'? No self- respecting doctor, lawyer or office worker would tolerate the squalor and low standard of resourcing that prevails in many schools. Yet teachers, with a streak of something approaching masochism, accept it stoically while intoning: 'We believe in putting the children first.'

Superficially, of course, it is an admirable stance. But can you imagine a doctor saying: 'My surgery will not be repainted or properly furnished and equipped. My grubby lavatory with a cracked basin is fine for me. My needs don't matter. All the money must be spent on the patients'? Of course not. Any more than most town hall workers would tolerate a clapped- out office chair for the sake of giving greater benefits to council-tax payers. And it would be unreasonable to expect otherwise. People need decent conditions in order to serve their patients/clients/customers/pupils properly.

Yet teachers make a great virtue out of physical conditions so miserable and so unprofessional that the standard of work and level of morale is inevitably dragged down. I have been in staffrooms whose furniture Oxfam would refuse. The staff lavatories in some schools would probably be condemned as unfit for use if schools were not excluded from normal industrial safety legislation.

Teachers often take to school unwanted chairs, small tables and bookcases from home, unquestioningly accepting that this is how you improve your classroom or office. In most schools, teachers uncomplainingly make their own refreshment arrangements: chipped, unwashed coffee mugs are commonplace.

On the odd occasion that a head or governing body tries to improve any of this, there are usually outcries of whingeing, puritanical self-denial - a form of hair-shirtism that helps no one. A few years ago I was in a school whose deputy head found that there was enough money left in the training budget for one Baker day to take place in a local hotel with tea, coffee and (quite modest) meals laid on. Her attempt to treat the staff like proper professionals was abortive. They elected to spend their training day at school, muddling about in their usual dotty way with a 20-minute midday break for sandwiches brought from home and dashing off home at 3pm.

They justified this rather childish attitude with disapproving remarks about the immorality of training in a 'luxury' hotel. Another way of looking at it, of course, is that people who do not think of themselves as professionals and act accordingly will never convince anyone else.

Now that governing bodies and headteachers control their own budgets, they are in a position to make choices about these things and there is nothing fundamentally decadent about matching furniture, freshly decorated staffrooms, properly functioning lavatories and up-to-date office equipment. To invest in these things is not to deprive the pupils but is indirectly to contribute in an important way to improving the quality of education.

The other day I visited a grant- maintained establishment, until recently something of a 'sink' school in a remote and rather deprived corner of the Home Counties. It gleamed. The paint was pretty and fresh. Buildings and grounds were immaculate. Staffroom, dining areas, lavatories - like all the teaching areas - were bright and professional. And before any teacher reaches angrily for a pen, that school also has the best school library I have seen anywhere and plenty of books for the classroom needs of every child. The sensible balance has been achieved by intelligent budgeting and a clear understanding that it is essential to get working conditions in the school up to scratch.

Many more publicly-funded schools could take lessons from the independent sector, from industry and from the City Technology Colleges. Taking grant-maintained status is an obvious starting point.

Of course, the children are the raison d'etre of education. At the same time, spending money on improving the school environment is not a frivolity; it is an essential part of the children's entitlement. Yet the condition of many schools speaks unfortunate volumes to prospective parents and visitors about the amateurishness of those who make the budget decisions.

It also implies an alarming willingness to put up with second-rate conditions in education which would not be acceptable anywhere else. In short, teaching has become, and will remain, a second-class profession if the unions do not start to counsel their members constructively about ways of establishing decent chalkface conditions.

The Government's recent White Paper, Competitiveness: Helping business to win, proposes funding for 10 days of management training for new headteachers. Bravo. It should be provided by specialist training organisations from outside education and should focus in part on the management of the school's environment. It is high time the teaching profession was levered out of its self-imposed straitjacket of monastic insularity. What a pity Mr Gallagher and others who are already headteachers have missed it.

The author teaches in the Home Counties.

(Photograph omitted)