Letters: Get your boots off the teachers’ necks

These letters appear in the 3 April edition of The Independent

How much longer can the queue to bully a teacher get? Politicians, Ofsted, human rights zealots ... now parents (“Teachers face storm of bullying – by parents”, 2 April).

Coming from another planet, one might think that education in itself must be an infringement of human rights, with its dangerous assumption that the learner knows less than the teacher. Strange then that the number of things schools are supposed to teach spirals out of control. Whence this conundrum that teachers are bullying and perverse but that schools can heal the ills of society?

I am lucky enough to be a retired teacher but while I was still at it most of the things happening now were in full swing; you just didn’t hear about them. I can certainly remember times when a parent would arrive at the last gasp of year 11 to claim that nobody ever told them that their child was failing and a nuisance to boot, and what was I going to do about it? Where have such attitudes come from?

The only criticism I would have for teachers is their silly decision to use Facebook or any other similar platform, when such places are well known to be the refuge of the scoundrel.

Martin Murray
London SW23

It should be no surprise that “Four in 10 teachers drop out after a year” (Headline, 1 April). This is largely the achievement of Ofsted.

It is not a professional body obtaining its authority from learning and expertise in education. Its continued existence depends upon a devil’s pact between the political parties that the use of target setting, examination results and league tables simplifies political interference in education.

Accordingly, Ofsted does not interest itself in how it may assist teachers in the mental, emotional and social development of their students, but simply in the examination results of a school as a whole.

Ofsted-driven governors, heads and managers therefore organise schools as systems of rewards and punishments offered to teachers and students in exchange for the data that raise a schools position in examination league tables. The relentless target-driven tasks and tests result in the abundant evidence of student and teacher stress and mental illness.

Miles Secker
Heckington, Lincolnshire

Why the surprise at the proportion of trained staff leaving schools so soon after qualifying? It has been common knowledge for several years, but the Government is in denial.May I remind you of the excellent article by Sam Burton relating why he left teaching in The Independent Magazine of 6 September 2014.

Education has been ground into desperation by successive governments for the past 20 years. Warnings are ignored, but the inevitable now approaches. There will soon be no specialist subject teaching because there will be no one qualified to deliver it.

Unless the boots of the Secretary of State and the Chief Inspector are removed from the neck of the teaching profession the future looks very bleak. Those who know are already aware that standards are below what they were 40 years ago, but plausible denial is a politician’s stock in trade.

Education fails when there is no enjoyment.

David Moulson
Scunthorpe

Latest figures which show that four out of 10 teachers quit the profession within their first year are particularly worrying. We’re currently supporting research with the University of Nottingham which has been commissioned by the Department for Education to find out why so many teachers are leaving.

Excessive workload, rapid change and unreasonable demands from managers are some of the glaring problems. Our recent health survey found that 91 per cent of teachers suffered stress, 74 per cent anxiety and 47 per cent depression in the last two years. We often hear of teachers breaking down in class, ruined family relationships and low self-esteem.

These issues seriously need to be addressed so that we can encourage more people to not only stay in the profession but remain passionate about teaching and dedicated to their students’ learning.

Julian Stanley
Chief Executive, Teacher Support Network Group
London N5

Silenced voices from the Middle East

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (30 March) quite rightly admires the courage of those Jews who speak up for the need for justice for both Arabs and Jews in solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. However she bemoans the lack of such voices on the other side.

Perhaps if so many Palestinian and Arab journalists, academics and intellectuals were not so often denied a visa to speak in the UK even when their credentials as moderate and objective commentators are not in doubt, Yasmin and others would have the chance to hear them more often.

Satanay Dorken
London N10

Daniel Feingold (letter, 1 April) poses a false antithesis by distinguishing between Zionists and anti-Zionists.

Many Jews are “Liberal Zionists”. As one of them, I support the nobility of the original principled idealism of Herzl and Weizmann, and regret that it is being trashed by current Israeli right-wing politicians, such as Netanyahu and Lieberman, who are a danger to Israel’s long-term survival.

Philip Goldenberg
Woking, Surrey

If Zionism is a form of nationalism, with Israel as the homeland and state of the Jewish people, then I am a Zionist. I also support a homeland and state for the Palestinian people, according to various UN resolutions, the same body that created Israel.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s either/or analysis seems unaware that these compatible positions are not unusual and certainly not “courageous” for Jews to hold. It’s just that too few listen, a characteristic common to both our tribes.

Andrew Shacknove
Oxford

Blumlein’s radar on the D-Day beaches

You pay tribute to Alan Blumlein and his invention of the H2S radar system that could locate and detect targets from the air regardless of weather conditions (30 March).

Readers may be interested to learn that a naval version of H2S was fitted to 10 motor launches. they were wooden-hulled, petrol-engined patrol craft, part of the Royal Navy’s coastal forces.

These vessels had been prepared to guide the British, Canadian and US assault troops to their designated D-Day beaches. I was a sub-lieutenant RNVR, and navigating officer on one of those launches. My job was to supervise the wireless operator handling the radar.

Alan Blumlein should be accorded his place among the heroes of the Second World War.

John Scase
Exeter

No through trains on a bank holiday

Michael Williams notes that the West Coast Main Line will be closed yet again over a Bank Holiday weekend (Voices, 2 April).

For four whole days we will have no through trains to London, and will be expected to go to St Pancras, changing in Manchester and again in Sheffield. Last Christmas we were asked to go to Leeds and there change for King’s Cross, except that it turned out to be Finsbury Park.

The fact that there are no through trains at all is one of the consequences of privatisation. Some years ago, when it was still BR running the show, and the normal route was closed, I went on a through train from Liverpool to St Pancras, but the present train companies are either unwilling or unable to arrange such a through service.

I think the Office of the Rail Regulator ought to give some serious consideration to this problem. The present situation is unacceptable.

Ian K Watson
Carlisle

Anthony Burgess cult waits to be born

I grew up in Chiswick and on Anthony Burgess’s novels and I so agree with John Walsh (31 March) that he should have his blue plaque.

Since the curmudgeonly Blue Plaque panel patently fails to get the point of Burgess, they need urgent guidance. I reckon his wonderfully lavatorial and sex-riddled Enderby comedies are ripe for the plucking by a new audience prepared by modern-day slatternly e-habits for the excesses offered by prose and protagonist alike and thirsty for the excoriating humour.

A new cult would be born.

And in the face of that the panel wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, would they?

Sue Prickett
London WC1

Is this hardworking enough for you?

I just want George Osborne to know that we desperately aspire to be a hardworking family, and to be confident of his approbation we have decided to stop using the washing machine and the dishwasher.

Patrick Newman
Stevenage, Hertfordshire