The best thing about the TES website for most of my career and for this website for however long it has been going is it does make me feel like I’m not alone and that gives me strength to keep going and also to not blame myself for all the craziness.

I ran a website for pgce students for a couple of years just because I thought I’d get to them before the loonies in the teacher training system did and show them there was an alternative way of looking at things before they were brain washed, but it was too much work and I was burning myself out so I gave it up.

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Another thought on the subject is that the sort of person who is likely to take enough of an interest in their kids’ education to have got them into a decent school, may well presume that the status quo at the school their kids attend is general, with hellholes being few and extreme cases. The parents of kids at hellholes, although they might not like what they’ve got, are nonetheless stuck with it and often don’t feel empowered enough to complain.

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As long as even one teacher realises “I am not alone” and decides to express their opinion publicly then my blog will have done some good. I also want to encourage people committed to change to start rising up the ranks (rather than giving up before they are 30) and running schools. Box of chocolates to the first person who uses one of my blog posts in INSET training (but you will have to prove it).

Compare that with the carefully-planned, time-consumingly-resourced and earnest efforts of teachers at Hell High, who have been told they will do practicals/group work in x% of their lessons, and invariably watch that time and effort go to shit. They KNOW what the problem is but more importantly they know WHOSE the problem is: theirs. Until is becomes the problem of someone who has the power to change things, that’s exactly where it will stay.

I think many teachers who recognise similar situations in their own careers resent or fear your bitter despair. It makes them sound as if they are whistling in the dark, pissing in the rain. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Wasting their time. Fooling no-one but themselves that anything they do will “make a difference” and affirm their identity.