Hunt’s ‘duty’ too far for teachers
GOOD teachers are the very foundation of what we go on to do with our lives. As are bad teachers.
Either way they are equally as important as parents in our children’s vital formative years.
Sometimes they can save kids from bad parenting; sometimes they can deliver a negative, cutting comment that can damage who we are for ever.
Sometimes they are the water, the brain food in the vase of a young flower that goes on to blossom and bloom.
Sadly, over the decades, the time to nurture has been taken away from them in the hysterical, teach-to-the-test-test-test race to the top of league tables.
They are overworked, underpaid and since the days of the hideous Michael Gove – who reckoned any old chancer could walk into a classroom and teach – they have been grossly undervalued by this Government.
Since 2010, they have been subjected to continuous pay freezes and caps, resulting in a 15% pay cut overall.
On Wednesday night the Tories cheered as they won the vote to keep the 1% pay cap on public sector wages. What an incentive, huh? Good teachers change lives. Good teachers who are consistently underappreciated, have the stuffing kicked out of them and become I Couldn’t Give a F*** teachers, and go somewhere where they’ll be appreciated.
They would be paid, and be valued a whole lot more – as well as enjoy long hot summers in the South of France – by becoming nannies for bankers’ kids, for instance. They generally don’t because they want to contribute to society.
On Tuesday, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt outlined plans for educators to add another string to their bow, another duty to the long list of duties, when he presented his thoughts on teachers being trained ‘to help them identify and respond to early signs of mental health issues in children’. It involves receiving ‘practical advice on how to deal with issues such as depression and anxiety, suicide and psychosis, self-harm and eating disorders’.
Good idea. But when the hell are they supposed to fit all of this into their crammed-to-bursting schedules? Does Jeremy Hunt even know what psychosis is? How severe it can be? How frightening? How uncontrollable? How preposterous it is to expect teachers to deal with it? They’re already, increasingly coping with children who need pastoral care as much as they need education, but surely a dedicated mental health professional in each school would be the answer.
Having long-standing personal experience of dealing with school in relation to mental health issues, I know they just haven’t, as much as they try, got the capacity, nor the time, nor the expertise to deal with psychiatric disorders.
During the years we were dealing with our problem, our local education authority threatened prosecution in relation to absence from school, despite us having presented medical notes.
With the world as worrying as it is at the moment, the problem is only going to get worse.
So, instead of dumping on salarycapped teachers, Mr Hunt needs to get his own house in order. After being countlessly reorganised and rebranded, local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are on their knees, with waiting lists growing exponentially.
It’s a good idea to try to pinpoint and deal with mental health problems at school, but teachers simply can’t do that.
If Mr Hunt is as serious about dealing with soaring mental health illness figures as he purports to be, a readily available mental health professional in each school would be an excellent start.
To expect teachers to do it for him is not an alternative.
They haven’t expertise or time to deal with mental health issues