What price experience?

Writtien in April 2021

Following my Performance Management meeting in the autumn term, I found myself feeling a little adrift. The meeting itself had gone very well and I was happy with the targets I had agreed, yet I somehow felt something was not quite right. Afterwards, I listened to and enthused with younger colleagues who had, in their meetings, been discussing professional pathways, and hopes and plans of future promotion. While I felt excited for them, I realised what was bothering me: I am now, most probably, in the final decade of my teaching career and so what lies ahead for me? 

In the past, I have been part of a leadership team (as an ALNCo) and have worked as a regional Teacher Adviser but more recently, I have relished being 'just' a classroom teacher again. The classroom, for me, is the beating heart of the job and nothing else comes close to the sense of privilege there is in helping to shape young minds and lives. 

Even so, the drive and expectation to achieve promotion is strong among younger teachers, and this can mean a move, gradual or sudden, away from the classroom. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with this, and vision and ambition are to be admired, for sure. I can also appreciate the need for some to seek promotion in order to earn more, as teachers' salaries have reduced in real terms over the past decade or longer, to the point where some are really struggling. 

There are some members of the profession for whom a direct route to school leadership is absolutely the right one and I have been fortunate to have worked with some such colleagues whose talents are clearly very well applied. However, this isn't, nor can it be, the right journey for every teacher. 

When the Upper Pay Scale (UPS) was introduced in 2000, it certainly provided a much needed way to recognise and reward experienced teachers for continued development, including taking on aspects of leadership responsibility. TLRs too, (in place of Management Points) allowed Head teachers to appoint middle leaders with whole-school responsibilities. Since then though, with years of austerity causing crippling reductions to school budgets, many schools (primary in particular) are unable to afford to appoint UPS teachers to vacant positions and the number of available TLR posts has been drastically reduced. Furthermore, there is often a suspicion that there must be a negative reason why an experienced teacher has not sought and gained promotion. All of these factors can lead to a sense of 'being stuck', and the balance of energetic youth and sage experience that made the staff team I joined in 1991 such a rich source of support, wisdom and inspiration, might soon not be there for many new entrants to the profession. 

I am not suggesting that there aren't teachers with decades of service who have failed to continue to develop throughout their careers. However, there are also very many who have, and whose contributions and wider perspectives, may be overlooked.

To make a career as a classroom teacher more attractive and more highly valued: school budgets need to increase substantially to enable Headteachers and Governing Bodies to recruit and retain the right teachers for their settings, regardless of which point on the salary scale those teachers are on; schools need to build on the culture of continuous professional development for all staff that has emerged over recent years, especially in Wales, and use their experienced staff to provide, as well as take part in, some of this; most of all there needs to be a career pathway that allows for further progression for classroom teachers, beyond UPS3, that is different from the current TLR or leadership options - one that recognises continuing professional learning, increasing curriculum specialism or expertise in classroom practice.