Schoolzone reveals the views of those working at the sharp end of education

The Government's not going to like this. A panel of primary school head teachers says that their priorities are very different from the deluge of targets and initiatives that spews out of Whitehall

By Steve McCormack

Published: 17 May 2007

An intriguing insight into the realities of the job of running a primary school has been provided by a Schoolzone focus group consisting of primary head-teachers from different parts of the country. The organisation, which brought together six heads, used video and web conferencing technology simultaneously in the latest of its projects to gather and disseminate the views of senior staff working at the sharp end of education.

The most striking aspect of this wide-ranging discussion was how starkly the day-to-day priorities of these serving heads differ from the policy areas most frequently emphasised by ministers and their advisers at the Department for Education and Skills. It's an eloquent echo of the familiar refrain – articulated year in, year out by all teaching organisations – which criticises the constant stream of new initiatives.

Asked to list which issues kept them awake at night, the heads (from eight different local authorities in England) identified three of their most prominent concerns: budget; worries about vulnerable children; and workload.

In the first category, all six head teachers felt to a greater or lesser extent that they were underfunded in some areas. One head parodied Tony Blair's famous pledge to prioritise education by listing his three chief worries as "budget, budget and budget".

Another quoted the figure of £100 as the sum of money a teacher co-ordinating one of the main subjects (English, science or maths) might have to spend on books and materials for the entire year – a powerful reminder that however many billions have been poured into the education pot nationally, the money filtering through to spend directly on children in classrooms is limited.

The "vulnerable children" heading will probably strike a chord with every teacher. It is widely recognised that just one child with a fragile grip on a stable life can suck in hours of adult time in one week alone – time that cannot be devoted to matters benefiting the school's population as a whole.

The experiences of these heads appear to suggest that the Government's efforts to streamline the way public bodies help vulnerable children, under the "Every Child Matters" slogan, are a long way from bearing real fruit. Most of the heads reported difficulties getting any reliable support from local authorities. "It's often difficult to get help or even to get hold of the right people at the local authority," one said. The consequence, all agreed, was that teachers often had to carry a burden most felt should be borne by full-time social workers. Three of the six heads said that recent increases in migrant or asylum-seeker children had exacerbated this problem.

The final category of general concern shines a light on the overarching pressures felt by head teachers, and goes some way to explaining why primary headship vacancies across the country are becoming increasingly difficult to fill. All six commented on the large number of externally imposed responsibilities and bureaucratic demands, which distracted them from what they regarded as their "real" job: together with the teachers they lead, looking after the children in their school. To counter this, the group agreed that head teachers needed to tell themselves regularly that they were doing a good job.

The point was made most powerfully by a recently appointed head of a Leicestershire school with 235 pupils. "You have to step back every now and then and say to yourself, 'I might not have ticked all the bits of paper on my desk, I didn't jump through all the local authority hoops, but what has happened will benefit my children.'"

This theme was neatly illustrated as the discussion moved on to how maths and English were being taught in the heads' schools. Again, a sharp contrast was shown between the view from Whitehall and the reality on the ground. From last September, all schools are supposed to be teaching the three Rs by following a new "framework for literacy and numeracy," which has taken years and vast expense to put together, and is available on CD or the internet. It incorporates some changes in the way ministers want lessons to be run, requiring, for example, more rigorous use of phonics to help children read, and an earlier emphasis on learning the times-tables.

The framework's virtues have been zealously extolled by policy advisers at the DfES and around the country in local authority education departments.

However, if this group of primary heads is in any way representative, the effort seems largely to have been wasted, as the predominant reaction among these time-poor, hard-pressed school leaders to this weighty and ostensibly important new initiative is indifference.

Out of the six, only one had anything positive to say. "We've been really excited about the framework coming in because we're desperately trying to raise standards," said the head from Oxfordshire. But elsewhere, there was a collective shrug of the shoulders from headteachers apparently satisfied with how maths and English are already being handled by their teachers.

One said there were more burning issues than changing literacy and numeracy teaching, while another told of a staff meeting where it was simply decided " not to touch"' the new framework. But perhaps the most telling observation came from a head with 14 years' experience and now running a school in Somerset. "I don't think we see the framework as either the greatest thing since sliced bread, or a particular threat," he said. " We've got a fairly neutral response to it."

It's a comment that politicians and policy gurus might ponder, the next time they set the ball rolling on another grand initiative.

What is Schoolzone?

Schoolzone was set up a decade ago by a group of enthusiastic teachers and parents in Oxford, just as computers were becoming widespread in classrooms and the internet – still in its relative infancy – was starting to be seen as a potential source of teaching materials. The website ( www.schoolzone.co.uk) began by offering itself to teachers and parents as a source of information and advice about web-based materials that could be used in lessons or at home. Hundreds of teachers were recruited to evaluate new products as they came on the market, passing on their experiences of using them in the classroom.

Schoolzone has always guarded its independence fiercely, never involving itself in selling resources to schools, or establishing links with any organisations that might lead to a conflict of interest.

In recent years, Schoolzone has begun to capitalise on its extensive contacts with teachers and heads across the country by conducting research into numerous areas of school life and developing ideas and content for new teaching resources, no longer confining itself to the electronic sphere. The website now attracts about 20,000 visitors every day.