Am I alone in looking at the comments that the DfE posts – whether online, in response to news articles or its daily coronavirus updates, diligently sent to schools and nurseries – and not knowing whether they are actually written with an element of comedic intent?
The sage advice, enlightening teachers and other education professionals of their deeply considered solutions (to problems that don’t necessarily exist), can seem vacuous and patronising.
Take the recent justification for the baseline testing (which more than 80 per cent of Reception teachers feel is a useless waste of their time) – that it will allow children to have ‘valuable one-to-one time with their teacher at an early stage’. Wow, why in all the years of teaching a Reception class did I never think that spending time with children would be important? How helpful to be told this, and of course this wisdom will revolutionise teaching and more than makes up for the irrelevance of years of training and experience!
Another gem arrived on 11 October (the one that brought our attention to World Mental Health Day on the 10th). This one demonstrated the importance of resuming wraparound care for schools: ‘Wraparound childcare is also important for removing barriers for, and supporting, parents to work.’ Ah, that must be why there is so much centralised support for provision for working parents.
The desire to tell others what to do does not display stratospheric intelligence (like, for example, blasting a pensioner into space), but the assumption that cheap, anodyne and anonymous soundbites are more valid than the opinions of those actually doing the job does grate a bit.
I now judge from the walk and not the talk. A smiling politician speaking in a reassuring and calm timbre does little for me. Take the ‘First 1000 Days’ initiative. A good example of saying lots and doing nothing. Just as well the numbers of health visitors are dropping boulder-fast. Just like the ongoing cuts to local authorities, resulting in their almost total withdrawal of universal services.
I think one of the most telling events of the past 18 months (and there are a good few to choose from) is that when politicians told us there was plenty of fuel and not to panic, the population did the opposite and bulk-bought petrol. Why? Because it simply demonstrates that we no longer believe what we are told.
