Shan Oakes

I sent this to the BBC 'send us a story' site today:

The Greens take issue with the Tories’ elitist approach to teaching and learning. Tories, typically, would assume that a good teacher is a commodity: they can be ‘made’ and ‘bought’.

The Greens have a different view. We would say that a good teacher is someone who likes and can communicate with children, and this quality cannot be measured by academic means. A good teacher is not necessarily someone who is ‘academic’.

The assumption that more pay will attract ‘the best’ teachers is also at fault - but this is the attitude we would expect from the Tories. A committed teacher will not be ‘bought’.

What the Tories, and the other ‘grey’ parties fail to understand, is that the aims of ‘education’ need a fundamental rethink. It’s not ‘bad’ or ‘good’ teachers that are the issue, but outdated assumptions underpinning our education system. The Greens advocate education which develops the whole child: learning to be, to do, to know and to live together (as recommended by UNESCO), rather than the ‘jumping through hoops’ style of education which we have all become used to and which causes such havoc.