The Quality of Working Life in the Education Sector

1. The Quality of Working Life in the Education Sector Dr Linda Evans CERIC & School of Education, University of Leeds Compass Yorkshire & Humber Regional Conference, Nov. 3rd 2007 Compass/CERIC workshop: Improving the Quality of Working Life

2. “We need more research into what brings wellbeing at work. Happiness research is a relatively new field and will continue to provide insights as it grows. There are already useful insights from the work on ‘flow’, which suggests that we gain satisfaction in our work to the extent that it is challenging but at a level at which we have the skills to meet that challenge.” Compass (2006) A New Political Economy: Compass Programme for Renewal wellbeing Happiness satisfaction challenging

3. Challenges Satisfaction Happiness Wellbeing Teachers’ Working Lives

4. school governors? salary? pupils? parents? What affects the quality of teachers’ working lives? physical environment? colleagues? government?

5. Teachers talking She’s a bully … and she can be very unco-operative They’re not very bright – haven’t got a brain between them He’s thick. … No matter how many times I tell him, he just doesn’t get it, and I find that really, really frustrating! He’s stupid! …He’s one of the most unintelligent men I know.

6. What are headteachers doing wrong? She doesn’t give a shit! She’s not concerned. If she goes into someone’s class, she doesn’t teach, she just sits and goes through a box of files. And, I thought she was strict, but once she took my class and while I was in the hall with the advisers and teachers from different schools I could see my kids running around and jumping over chairs, and all sorts of things ...and I thought she must have gone back to her office, but when I went back to the classroom she was just sat at the desk and she showed no interest in the education of the children and the activities they were doing. ... I just think the place is how a school should not be. I’ve been on courses and they’ve offered models of leadership and management and everybody there slags off their head ... but, it’s just marginal things with them. Here, it’s just everything - the whole thing! The school ... everything is wrong ... but it looks right from the outside. It’s just a model of how not to be, as far as I’m concerned. We’ve a male head and a male deputy, both of whom are feckless. The local authority is running an assessment meeting in a fortnight for all heads of primary schools and he’s not going! And so the deputy said, ‘Well, if he’s not going, I’m not going’, so at the moment we’ve got nobody going. So, I mean, one teacher is absolutely frantic because she’s getting no support, and she keeps going to these meetings, coming back, trying to get what she’s trying to do across, and she gets nowhere because the head pulls out his diary and says, ‘We’ve got to arrange the May fair’ or ‘We’ve got more important things to do.’ … He doesn’t know what we’re doing … we’re working in a vacuum. My secondment gave me the opportunity to work at ... shall we say, what I felt was stretching myself intellectually. It allowed me to, I suppose, develop professionally outside of whatever restraint was being put on it either by the school - the attitude of those in management positions ... the expectations of those who were determining what was the ‘norm’ there ... but, I’ll be honest with you, I am absolutely dreading - well, I shan’t go back to Rockville. I shan’t go back after this secondment. I shall have to look for a different sort of work. I can’t go back there, and I can’t, any more, tolerate a shoddy performance! He’s never set me any challenges, and he’s never once noticed what I’ve done, and I’ve never once had any feedback. And I said to him, in one of my really bad moments, I said, ‘I could be teaching them Swahili, hanging by their heels from the light fitting, and you wouldn’t know!’ He doesn’t collect in any planning books, he doesn’t know what people are teaching! He hasn’t a clue! I get very frustrated seeing heads making a hash of things. And I know that sounds arrogant, because I know the job’s awful, in lots of ways. But, I’m disappointed - I’m very disappointed – I’m disappointed with the whole set-up. … I’m afraid I’ve just reached the stage where ... I’m struggling to keep going. It’s so frustrating – unbelievably frustrating. He never gives any instructions or anything, which adds to my stress. I do know quite clearly that the stress I’m under is caused by inadequate leadership … inadequate management of the school. He lacks depth in educational development - in the development that should be going on in the school - so he’s ... he’s inadequate. He doesn’t want to know! He’s not interested! He’s got no kind of educational vision or educational philosophy, so we’ve nothing in place … no educational policy – nothing. Absolutely nothing! What would help you cope better with your job? A new head, who knew what was going on!

7. Are all headteachers doing it wrong? He would bring in Mars bars and say, ‘I think we all deserve this’…and sometimes he’d say, ‘I’ll take the kids this morning – you get on with some work’, and he’d keep them for a good hour, or so. We were just like one big happy family. I mean, I think we were too friendly, really; he needed slightly more distance…but, of course, it was too late by then; we were already friendly, and he couldn’t go back. But, you worked every bit as hard for somebody like him … every bit as hard. Well, at one school we had a head who was a very good motivator and was very free with his praise…and he would come into your room and say, ‘Oh, it looks lovely in here; oh, you are working hard!’ It was the praise business…and he worked hard himself - you knew where you stood with him. But he was a good motivator, and I think it was just that one little word of thanks every now and again that did it. She had a very strong educational vision. Now, up until that time - I mean, I’m a much slower learner - I was piecing together my educational philosophy and, a lot of the time, just, y’know, struggling to get by... . And she really just turned me round like nobody else ever has done. She was very, very challenging on a direct level. She worked with staff in the way that she worked with children. She had - I don’t know what it is about her - but she made you want to do your best - and not just for her, but for yourself. You weren’t working for her - you weren’t working to please her...but she suddenly made you realise what was possible...and you, kind of, raised your game all the time.

8. So what does affect the quality of teachers’ working lives? • Leadership and management? • Six things that matter to teachers: • equity and justice • pedagogy • organisational efficiency • interpersonal relations • collegiality • self-conception and self-image • Work contexts

9. School leaders and work contexts ‘As headteacher, you have the power to change things. You have responsibility for the ethos of the whole school and every decision you take will impact on everything in school.’ National College for School Leadership (NCSL) website

10. How may we improve the quality of teachers’ working lives? • Get rid of headteachers? • Reduce headteachers’ authority? • democratise leadership & management • new models of leadership & management • headship collective • ‘Teacher-centred’ leadership? • Give a voice to ‘the led’

11. To consider: In the wider context, beyond education: • How much do managers and leaders affect the quality of working lives? • How effective are mechanisms for quality control of managers and leaders? • Is it a question of swings and roundabouts? • How many employees leave their managers and leaders, rather than their jobs?