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"There's no time to know my students, that realisation broke my heart."


Most of my teaching career has been spent in Key Stage 1 with a brief flirtation with Key Stage 2 and a recent (hopefully permanent) move to Early Years Foundation Stage. 

In the 14 years I have been a teacher, teaching has changed in many, many ways but what worries me the most is the move from child centre approaches to a data driven approach. 

I hold Michael Gove mostly responsible for this. 

His scribbled on the back of an envelope one night curriculum has striped the fun out of primary school. Gone are the days when Year 1 were allowed to play in the home corner. Wonderful, bright, well thought out provision areas have been replaced by tables and chair and hours and hours of dull intervention groups to prepare children for the evils of the Phonics Screening and the following years SATs.

In my final year of teaching in year 1 I was stressed. I was stressed because of my work load, I was stressed because my class size was increasing and I had less and less time for each individual pupil and I was stressed because despite my best efforts most of my children were not going to meet the Age Related Expectations for the end of the year. This was the usual stress I feel every year but something was different, I felt something far worse than stress. I felt what I have come to describe as a pedagogical conflict.


I sat in my classroom after the children had left, marking work and preparing for the next day and I felt sad. 

I love children. 

I love spending my day watching their wonderful imaginations develop and grow. 

I do not love teaching them things they are simple not ready for to tick a box to move them one step further along the whole school tracker. 

I do not love saying to them ‘That’s lovely, you can tell me all about your new puppy later,’ knowing full well I have no time between the 9 lessons I have planned to day to listen to news like this. 

I knew the children in this class inside out and back to front when it came to Maths, English and Phonics but I didn’t know their interests, the names of their pets, I didn’t have time. That realisation broke my heart. 

These children that I had to convert into numbers every half term were becoming numbers to me. I sat there looking at my planning for the next day. It followed all the whole school policies and ensured that if I had a drop-in or Learning Walk the next day my career would be safe for now but I wasn’t looking forward to teaching it. 

How could I expect the children to be enthusiastic learners when I was no longer an enthusiastic teacher?

From Lou, a Primary School teacher in the North East

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