I don't recognise a profession 'in crisis'

Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT (which I belonged to when I first started teaching), was quoted in the press this morning as saying the teaching profession is now in crisis. 

I just don't recognise this as a valid picture of how things are.  I have visited about ten schools over the past four or five weeks (I'm off to The Sixth Form College at Farnborough this afternoon) - a mixture of primary and secondary (will be going to a couple of specials soon) - and I've observed a vibrant, ambitious, confident profession at work.

Last Friday I was in a teaching school and visited five lessons - all brilliantly constructed by impressive professionals.  I'm a former teacher, head and inspector myself, so I recognised the brilliance of what I was seeing.  Students were working really hard to find information, demonstrate knowledge and understanding.  In a yr 9 Biology lesson, students watched a David Attenborough YouTube clip showing different types of plants and their properties.  They had to produce a table with three columns headed air, climber and carnivorous – and note the different plant properties.  Something similar was done brilliantly in a yr 10 Spanish lesson where students had grids on which they plotted their ‘battleship’ locations, as per the popular game.  When the challenger chose the occupied cell, the owner had to give the appropriate ending to the verb in question.  Students had lists of the endings with them for different types of verbs in the imperfect and preterite.  The depth of thinking that each student had to conduct in order to find the answer was seriously impressive.

And the level of experience and age of the teachers I saw ranged from mid twenties to mid fifties.  There was no sense of the more mature teacher having lost any energy or creativity.... in fact, I'd say she was the most creative and dynamic of the lot. 

It is becoming much harder to get into the teaching profession. Great.

Any teacher who is not consistently demonstrating a good or outstanding level of competence is given lots of attention in order to raise his or her standard.  Excellent.

Heads are under huge pressure to monitor and develop the standards of teaching in their schools.  Superb.

It's what the nation wants - and needs.

And the profession doesn't suffer from this...in the longer term.  I reckon that within five years England's teachers will be at the forefront of their profession, world wide.  But to get there, we'll have to go through the inevitable pain brought about by whirlwind change.

But the journey has got to be worth it, surely?