Greetings Noble Sir

by Nigel Flaxton

  As students our first introduction to teachers’ unions came at College when we were addressed by representatives of the two main ones - the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Schoolmasters. As we saw it the great difference between them was that the former admitted both men and women but the latter did not. No doubt there were other matters of policy they were concerned with, but the great majority of our year group decided we preferred to be with both men and women, so we joined the NUT. As far as we knew every teacher was in a Union so it seemed sensible to follow suit.

  The first occasion to evince a show of militancy came in the mid-fifties when the government decreed that teachers’ superannuation payments would rise from 5 to 6% of salary. Large meetings were held and everyone became strongly opposed to the change. I felt that it would be much better to campaign for better pay all round rather than threaten to strike over what everyone really knew was a fait accompli. So at the meeting I attended I voted against strike action over the raised superannuation payment. It so happened that I was sitting in the front row. After I raised my almost solitary arm a loud voice behind me yelled,

  ‘Make that man stand up and show himself to his colleagues - he’s a blackleg!’

  I recognised the voice as that of a Headteacher of a school near to the Ashtree. I certainly did not stand up, though I would have welcomed the opportunity to point out the true meaning of the word ‘blackleg’. But the NUT in those days was dominated by headteachers. Nevertheless the incident made me question whether I would ever go on strike. I decided that probably I would not. Over another matter I did write a letter of resignation, as requested by the city’s branch of the NUT, as did all its members, to threaten our employers. The gesture was useless, however, as both sides knew it would not be acted upon.

  Subsequently I left the NUT and joined the NAS, but only because they offered their members an excellent home insurance deal. Later still I joined the National Association of Headteachers, but found secondary heads were in a minority, so I joined the Head Masters Association. There was an equivalent organisation for Head Mistresses so I didn’t feel too bad about joining an all-male affair. Not long afterwards the men and women decided to get together so the Secondary Heads Association (SHA) came into being. I collected the job of Convenor for the County one day when my colleagues were dividing up various jobs. It was in no sense because they felt I was particularly a ‘Union’ man. SHA is now ASCL - the Association of School and College Leaders. I am now a Life Member, an honour given by virtue of age only!

  A group of SHA members decided there was an opportunity to visit the European Parliament in Strasbourg. We qualified for a grant which reduced our travel and accommodation costs. Most wives accompanied us, as did Rocky. We enjoyed an excellent explanatory talk by one of the officials but our visit to the Chamber was badly timed because members were just voting electronically upon a range of issues which had been debated. The procedure was very protracted and I was left wondering how much previous debate there had been. We also learnt that because there had been no agreement about a permanent location for the Parliament it met in rotation, the other bases being Luxembourg and Brussels. Because it was necessary to keep all officials in each base thoroughly informed, verbatim typed records of every meeting were taken daily by road to the other two sites. We were each required to write an answer to a question they supplied. These perforce were handwritten; I wondered who read them and whether they were typed and triplicated immediately for dispatch.

  A very recent news item carries the information that possibly Strasbourg will be dropped as a venue for the Parliament, thus reducing costs very considerably. No doubt a final decision will not be made quickly; France will not enjoy the loss of its location in the triple base.

  . We also visited an excellent vineyard in the Mosel Valley and bought some of its produce. Unusually I kept two bottles for a considerable period and was delighted when finally they were opened.

  A couple of years later the group decided to arrange another visit, this time to Brussels. We were surprised, and rather embarrassed, when the official detailed to speak to us about the workings of the European Parliament appeared. He was the person who had performed the same duty in Strasbourg! He gave no indication of recognition and we were unable to decide whether he had forgotten us or was a good actor.

  My personal decision about striking or not was tested occasionally when as a member of SHA I found most of my staff taking such action.. Was I prepared to counteract their action in any way, or should I join them? Usually I fell back on the advice given by SHA that members should not lessen the effects of other union strikes. On one occasion that proved impossible, however, due to the fact that so many of the Upper School students travelled by coach. A politician irritatingly disparaged teachers by saying they worked for only five hours a day. Unions responded by instructing members to do just that, which meant afternoon sessions were considerably shortened - our school day always began at 8.30. In towns students could be sent home early. I had no power to call our coaches early, so I faced having many hundreds of students unoccupied in buildings without teachers. Obviously there were safety considerations. I compromised by sending them all to the large playground which doubled as tennis courts and supervising them personally, praying for fine weather and no emergencies. Fortunately I received a favourable answer. Finally the LEA agreed to alter the transport timetable and the firms involved were happy to agree because most coaches were free in the early afternoons. Gradually the action stopped as the cause of it withdrew his comments. I did not feel my staff relationship was damaged, but I did feel that my view of strike action was strengthened. In most walks of life a large number of people are inconvenienced through no fault of their own. Surely intelligent people can invent better ways of hitting those who really cause the problem? Of course that is likely to take more effort to achieve and so calls for more time and ingenuity to put into operation. However I am more inclined to go along with such ideas rather than just walking out.

  I collected another job in the share-out organised by my colleagues - that of Chair of the Leavers’ Service Committee. .The idea of the annual event came from the Chief Education Officer and I was happy to be involved. The Service was held in the central Church in the town; choirs were trained by a Head of Music and various fairly well known individuals invited each year as Guest Speakers. Probably the best known was Terry Waite who was an excellent conversationalist at dinner the night before the Service. This was before he was taken hostage and therefore so often in the news headlines. Each year we selected a particular theme, once choosing ‘To Boldly Go’. I suppose concern over the split infinitive was inevitable!

  The Service didn’t survive long after the Chief and I retired. No doubt its demise was due to the expenditure involved.

  Chapter 43

  I am eternally grateful to Rocky and our two sons, Gareth and David, for accepting so willingly our various changes of locality as I gained promotion. They were absolutely brilliant. They also accepted the time I spent studying for a degree which, at last, I undertook whilst I was Warden of the Village College in Cambridgeshire. Again Rocky sparked this off because she spotted a news item in the ‘Telegraph’ that a course in the Sociology of Education was being developed at Enfield College of Technology under the auspices of the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). I applied, was interviewed and accepted with exactly the same time commitment as announced for the BA Ordinary course so many years earlier - one afternoon and two evenings a week. On this occasion my request for release for the afternoon session was willingly granted by the Chief Education Officer and my Deputy was happy to be in charge. It began in February and was due to last a further two and a half years. I found it very stimulating, further enhanced when I was granted a reader’s admission to Cambridge University Library. This meant I could access any book or periodical on any reading list.

  I soon became acquain
ted with a lecturer from a College of Education who was also on the course. In the July following its inception it was decided to reorganise it to run for three years from that date - two for Part One and one for Part Two. My friend and I were not keen on the extra time this entailed, so we quietly undertook a strategy to circumvent this. Four lectures were held each week for two parallel groups reading for Part One, so she went to two and I went to the others. We took full notes with carbon sheets in our notebooks, exchanged these weekly and attended lectures in turn, so we each attended fortnightly. Neither of us could have managed this without our easy availability of books. The Chief also gave me a term’s sabbatical to write a thesis as required for one of the nine sections of the honours course.

  One hidden difficulty was manifested when the CNAA validated each course. Concerned to maintain high standards the tutors tended to overdo things and a friend who had a London University Psychology degree said our course - one of the nine - was nearly as full as his total course! But my companion and I had to admit to our ploy after successfully sitting finals. We got away with paying an extra fee. Now, of course, the CNAA does not exist and all such colleges and polytechnics are universities and award their own degrees. Enfield College is now Middlesex University.

  Having completed one I wondered about a Master’s degree and enrolled with Nottingham University for an M.Phil. I decided to research problems newly qualified teachers faced in their probationary year as I mentioned in a previous chapter and interviewed a hundred teachers and their headteachers. Nearly everyone allowed me to tape record the interviews so I had plenty of evidence. I also sent out follow up questionnaires. I then faced the work of turning what I had into data and drawing conclusions. However, as seemed to be a pattern in my life, before I could set about my thesis I was appointed to my Upper School and faced the work of developing it from scratch. Naively I thought I would have some spare time before things got very busy. I didn’t. Reluctantly, after a while, I had to withdraw my registration; My tutor kindly said he regretted that because he felt I would have been successful.

  I suppose that comment stuck in my mind when, years later, I heard that a one-off one year course leading to an M.Phil. was being offered by Cambridge University. Tentatively I applied and enjoyed a highly stimulating interview with two possible tutors. I was accepted by a College because internal membership was required. Then two events occurred which sabotaged this attempt. The first was that the CEO would not release me for a full year until the following year. Then my father died and I was taken up with the unavoidable problems that produced. So I gave up thoughts of a second degree. It would, of course, have been entirely for personal interest.

  After twelve years in my third headship I reached the fortieth year since qualification. I had assumed I would follow the usual practice of retiring but undertaking some part time teaching because I felt well able to do so. But as I mentioned earlier other opportunities presented themselves as education changed in many ways. At first it was arrangements for GRIST (Grant Related In-Service Training, another wonderful acronym), but then I joined SIMS (Schools Information Management Systems). Here I was to spend eleven years but only on three, later two, days per week. I gave telephone help to schools using timetable software. Calls were logged as they came in and once I saw a very surprising juxtaposition - one from my former Grammar School followed by one from the School whose premises we shared in Stroud at the beginning of the wartime evacuation period.

  I was well looked after by many young people who were brilliant with computers which I most certainly am not. For my part, though, I could offer some knowledge of schools, staffing and timetables so there was a happy partnership. But as my birthdays came round at seemingly greater speed I decided it was time to bid farewell. I had been involved with education of one kind or another for fifty-eight years.

  Noble Sir? I hardly think so! Fortunate? Most certainly. I once listened to a Professor of Education telling us that people of my generation in teaching had everything going for them during the years of expansion, so much so that provided we did nothing foolish if we wanted promotion we were ‘hoovered up into senior posts’. I can accept that. I am sure that is why I found my whole career very satisfying and enjoyable. Very rarely did I get out of bed dreading the day ahead.

  But I know there are teachers who find the work very stressful indeed. One source of such a problem lies in the deceptively simple task of keeping control of a class. I can give two examples of lack of control. Near the Church I frequented in my home city were two secondary schools, one for boys and the other for girls. The buildings were some two hundred metres apart, the space between occupied by quite large houses. If I was at Church for any reason during a schoolday the non-stop noise from the boys’ school was loud and insistent. The girls’ school, however, was very quiet. Working in the former would have been awful, I feel,

  One of the activities I first took up in my semi-retirement state was to help schools monitor real learning time in classes, so I shadowed certain students during part of each day. In one class in one school I sat incognito at the back of a class that called out, shouted to one another, walked around and generally made themselves total nuisances. The young teacher ignored the mayhem and spoke quietly to one or two students who gave her some attention in the first row of desks. This continued for the forty minutes of the lesson, at the end of which the students rushed out, then walked normally along the corridor behaving quite properly. Usually I would not mention what I had seen in a class to the Head, because I wanted anonymity for the exercise, but on this occasion I broke my rule. I was relieved to hear that the young lady had already decided to give up teaching and was leaving shortly.

  That begs the question as to why she had trained in the first place. A single job interview cannot easily recognise which candidates will have good class control and which will not. Today there is more opportunity for some people to enter the profession by completely training in schools. This certainly gives both the school and the prospective teacher every opportunity to assess ability to exercise control. The skill is one of those hard to define and even harder to teach, but if you don’t possess the ability to bring a noisy class under control very quickly, you will not enjoy teaching.

  Of course classes are often noisy for very good reasons. Practical lessons in workshops, Drama lessons, discussion groups, PE lessons, etc., and many others, will all result in noise but it should be purposeful and able to be silenced when necessary for further teaching and explanation. The mistake often made is for the teacher to talk too quickly over declining noise and discussion. The trick is to wait for silence before you start speaking again. But that requires you to get silence quickly in the first instance.

  Occasionally I taught Drama. If you are encouraging youngsters to perform actions creatively they will be noisy! Once I attended a course on Drama in the Secondary School at Swansea University where, in addition to the section on Dance I described earlier, a very personable lecturer gave us many insights into Drama teaching, In the matter of control she used the concept of the freeze signal which she said needed to be loud enough for everyone to hear and for everyone to be trained to respond accordingly. She then, in my opinion, ruined the idea by suggesting hitting a tambourine. I decided not to emulate excellent members of the Salvation Army and looked for an alternative. Surprisingly I found I could clap my hands very loudly in a particular way. On the rare occasions my decibels were insufficient I could yell Oi at the top of my voice both loudly and unusually. Used sparingly it was effective. Mentally I thanked my efforts on the RAF Sergeants’ Course. We had used the signal with a whistle on playground duty so many years before at Dayton Road; the first sound meant ‘everyone stand still, in silence’ and a second blast indicated everyone should move into lines for classrooms with no talking..

  I enjoyed acting as well as teaching Drama. Rocky joined me in the amateur society I had been in since I was in my late teens and s
he really excelled. The society produced two plays each year, usually comedies, though once we staged ‘Duet for Two Hands’ by Mary Hayley Bell. The character I played, Stephen Cass, has to play two pieces of music on a baby grand piano, one of which accompanies another character singing in Norwegian. At one point a ‘ghostly’ piano is heard off stage and off-key. Our stage was small, so if I was to mime playing a third piano, correctly tuned, would be necessary. So I wondered whether I could play for real. Years before, ,aged six, I had given in to my father’s exhortations to have piano lessons. He did not play himself but, a stickler for punctuality and regularity he insisted I did half an hour’s practice each evening - not the best way to encourage enjoyment of learning. I was not taught any interesting modern tunes, only pieces I had never heard as well as hymn tunes. So when I was evacuated I was able to drop the lessons.

  I asked a Head of Music to annotate the ‘Duet’ scores with fingering and then I practised with far greater enthusiasm until I mastered playing, despite the fact that Stephen Cass wears gloves. Friends who were pianists said I performed competently, so we managed with two instruments. After the final performance, of course, I stopped playing, then, after about a year, someone asked whether I could still play the pieces. I then realised I had no residual knowledge whatsoever. The skill had completely disappeared.

  Later, in another society, Rocky played the central character in ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’. This also requires on-stage piano playing - something she had never done. We used a piano with a dummy keyboard, angled so this was not visible to the audience, and Rocky mimed to a record. I was in the audience with the County Adviser for Drama next to me. Well into her performance he whispered that it was refreshing to see someone actually playing rather than miming. Praise indeed!

  Near Christmas one year the group put on a medley of items, including me acting as Scrooge facing a projection of Marley’s ghost. I recorded Marley’s words, so on stage I was effectively taking both parts. I was dressed with the appropriate nightcap and made up to look pinched and miserly. The local paper took shots of various performances and I appeared on the front page alongside a smiling Father Christmas from a department store under the headline, ‘The Faces of Christmas’.