Issue 5, June 2002 (Back to Contents)

Andrew Reekes, Director of Studies, on what it is to teach.

Andrew Reekes

'Teachers teach' wrote Chris Woodhead pithily in a recent article and it would seem to be a statement of the blindingly obvious. Not so. For the educational establishment it is a heresy. Teachers are 'learning facilitators', contributing to (that regrettably modish word) 'learnacy', and classrooms are to give place to 'learning platforms' in Estelle Morris's vision (if one can so dignify it) of computer labs, wired to the internet, supervised by a new breed of teacher/technicians. Actually, the assault on the traditional notion of the teacher started in earnest in the 1960s; teacher training courses propagated child-centred learning and group work, with children empowered to discover information themselves at their own pace and level. It was part of a prevailing orthodoxy which embraced mixed ability teaching, abolished streaming and even separate subject setting, and which loathed the idea of hierarchies, with the implication that some (teachers) know what others (children) have yet to learn.

So influential has been this paradigm that it penetrates even the thinking of some in the independent school world. A spokesman for ISI, the Independent Schools Inspectorate body which visited Radley recently, commented on its annual survey of inspections, deploring the fact that the reports revealed teacher-centred teaching to be so prevalent. Why he should find the need to apologise is indeed mystifying. It is very unlikely that the sort of teaching inspectors saw was that hoary old caricature beloved of critics of whole class teaching, 'dictated notes'. In none of the schools I have inspected have I ever seen such a lesson. But a mistrust of good whole class, teacher-led teaching is now deeply embedded in a whole generation, and that orthodoxy needs to be challenged, for the best teachers teach.

What does the observer of a lesson see in many good independent schools? A relationship, firstly, where teachers expect to impart knowledge, and skills, and pupils expect to learn from the teacher. The best lessons have a clear plan and structure, they have variety, and at their centre they have a conductor orchestrating the different elements. There will be exposition, there may well be chalk (more likely whiteboard or laptop) and talk, and - above all - there will be a skilful building of understanding. In many lessons this will be achieved by judicious use of question and answer; here the skill is in allowing pupils to offer hypotheses, test them, dispense with the unsustainable and use the sensible to build an understanding of topics and concepts. Good teaching is framing open questions which allows pupils to answer according to their levels of ability, so called 'differentiation'. In scores of lesson observations at Radley I have seen how dons vary questions to take account of the abilities of different individuals in the subject.

But good teaching is more than this. Boys especially respond to the enthusiasm and inspiration of a teacher who loves the subject. I am struck by how often those newspaper weekend supplement end-pieces on 'My memorable teacher' talk of the way infectious love for a particular subject wrought a Damascene conversion in the writer. Great teachers inspire, and no teacher/technician supervising individual project work in a battery of computers has the chance really to inspire. Some of the very best History lessons I've seen have been good old fashioned story-telling by teachers steeped in the period, gifted at recalling just that anecdote which illustrates and enlivens, and through the story, setting a scene, catching a class. The lack of variety in the lesson and the fact that pupils are listening not debating render it, theoretically, of limited value. But in truth it is the essence of good teaching, as is energy, for it is also true that boys need driving, need goals and they respond when a lot is demanded of them in class; the best boys' schools have close-monitoring, lively exposition, and a healthy sense of progressing to a defined goal. The quality of the classroom teacher has to be high.

So, my thesis is that political correctness in education has made goal-orientated, teacher-centred teaching a matter for apology even among independent school spokesmen. And yet independent schools should be celebrating the talents of thousands of their teachers, for a great opportunity now beckons. There can be little doubt that this government's strategy of increasing numbers of classroom assistants, and extolling the benefits of virtual learning and of learning facilitators, is driven by teacher shortage. It looks distinctly possible that maintained schools will faute de mieux see a diminution of specialist subject teachers, an increase in the use of on-line teaching packages, and a corresponding steady rise of overall pupil: teacher ratios. This administration's modish faith that simply providing on-line resources for children via National Grid for Learning packages will promote learning is doomed to disappointment. Internet knowledge unmediated, unshaped, uncategorised will not lead to disciplined learning; intranet packages which have distilled and shaped information will pall without the individual mediation of a teacher who locates the pupil's misapprehension and difficulties, works out other ways of explaining the issue, and - above all - infects the hitherto unmotivated with a passion for the subject.

What will distinguish independent schools will increasingly be their teachers. And it is not only in the realm of top quality subject-specific classroom teaching, authoritative and demanding; in terms of developing the pupil's personal and moral dimension, our teachers obviously play a crucial role. If government policy continues to play down the central role of a classroom teacher in developing academic attributes and knowledge, and in the sense of teaching discipline and behaviour, developing the right instincts and attitudes to others, then the contrast between independent and maintained sectors will be heightened.

At Radley we have just endured our own inspection. The Inspectors certainly recognized, in verbal comments to us, that at the heart of the place lay "outstanding teaching", "highly motivated boys" wanting to learn all they could, "extraordinary exam results and many "superb young men". It is the Common Room, above all, which sets the tone, makes the demands, raises the expectations, and inspires the boys, and - in the classroom - its members are reactionary enough to have the confidence to teach in the sure belief that they know and boys learn.

Andrew Reekes