An Open Letter to the Chief of Ofsted and the Education Secretary

Dear Sir archangel Wilshaw and Nicola Morgan MP,

This year, I even have watched several of my antecedently buoyant shut friends sink into a pit of self-loathing and misery. This year, I even have witnessed several of my folks estrange from any quite comfort within the profession that after anchored, enthused and consummated them. I am, of course, not talking of my biological folks however my guardians of English Literature, History, Philosophy and Spanish. My AS Level academics, and therefore the wider college community, a limp and dying reef, saturated with desperation, disconsolateness and dejection.

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Mr Wilshaw, on ordinal Gregorian calendar month you aforementioned that you just 'take reports of low morale amongst academics with a barrel of salt' and you seemed to blame it entirely on 'bad pay'. I perceive. after you receive a £200,000 earnings it's in all probability terribly simple to suppose that every one those that add education area unit motivated  by cash. you're one in all Britain's highest paid public sector staff and however what's it that you just do for us? you've got created a culture of worry inside colleges across the country, putting significant blame on academics for failures within the education system and have refused to face up against governmental reforms that have compromised the standard of lifetime of students and academics alike. OFSTED claims to be 'raising standards' and 'improving lives', however i can not facilitate however feel you're instead raising standards and burdening lives. With recent reforms to examination ways, the info and therefore the independence of colleges, the full culture of education has been reformed to 1 that reduces bright kinsmen to marks, grades and marginal gains. academics and students alike area unit forced to figure into the first hours of the morning to hit deadlines. Allocating time for a 'social' life is effectively allocating a amount of your time whereby you may attempt to relax however feel irresistibly guilty that you just aren't Sat at a table finishing one in all twenty around tasks that area unit on your 'to-do list'.

Mrs Morgan, I beg you to do and perceive the realities of education reforms being pushed through by your government. Take the instance of work. attributable to bigger stress on linear examination, we tend to pay the primary eighteen years of our lives learning 'exam technique' instead of a way to turn out sensible quality add time for deadlines, as we tend to area unit possibly attending to be needed to try and do therefore in our professions.

No leading lecturers, business leaders and/or researchers area unit expected to jot down essays and reports in thirty seven minutes. Yet. this can be the length of your time during which I even have to thematically analyse the full of Elizabeth I's reign. I even have forty five minutes to check and distinction 2 two hundred page books and half-hour to clarify and appraise philosophical arguments that stretch back thousands of years. Strenuous test conditions aren't a mirrored image of the geographic point or any facet of life outside of faculty. If the education system doesn't prepare America for a career then what's its purpose? furthermore, the academisation of our colleges has effectively forced them to perform like businesses, instead of as a public service. My college recently had to scrap one in all 2 (constantly oversubscribed) college counsellors to use a business manager. The shrinking pastoral care and over-emphasis on exams in our education system is tributary to increasing psychological state problems amongst students and academics alike.

A few years agone, I found it not possible to handle assessment things however i used to be lucky to possess a tutor United Nations agency helped American state get over that place and push American state to attain 2 A*s in English GCSEs. She recently left the teaching profession as a result of she couldn't bear to place America through a system that she wholeheartedly disagreed with, one that fosters low self worth. The recent stress on science over arts has created a divide between 2 area unitas of study that job best after they are combined and compliment each other. inventive students feel undervalued and unable to succeed, whereas those that take STEM subjects area unit created to feel like it's futile to pursue the humanities in the slightest degree.

If academics were to strike, several people students would get on the line with them, no matter any hours lost within the schoolroom. Time spent doing assignment will terribly simply desire time wasted anyway - it's exhausting to feel any satisfaction once all you receive out of years of tears and graft may be a few letters on a bit of paper. we tend to area unit conditioned to believe that something but Associate in Nursing A or B may be a failure. It does not desire you are living throughout it slow within the education system, just existing to realize a couple of marks here and there. however do i do know that it's worse currently than it's ever been before? I bear in mind grade school as a happy discovery of the globe however my primary-school age younger brother recently cried to American state as a result of being within the schoolroom created him feel inadequate.

Mr Wilshaw and adult males Morgan, I sincerely hope that you just don't rest simple at the hours of darkness once the servants of your system lie drudging and panicking over what further employment tomorrow might bring.

Regards,

Ella MarshallA grade student United Nations agency has had enough