READ: Anonymous open letter from Scottish teacher goes viral

PA/PA Wire/PA Images Author: Hope Webb Published 2nd Oct 2018

Last updated 3rd Oct 2018

An anonymous open letter from a Scottish teacher, which highlights concerns for the country's education system, has been shared thousands of times online.

The letter, which is addressed to the Education Secretary John Swinney was sent to our newsroom. It has now appeared on an online group where it has been shared across social media and gone viral.

The letter is signed off by 'A Scottish Teacher' and goes into extensive detail about growing workloads, dwindling resources and fear amongst teachers to speak out because of fear of reprimand.

It reads:

"Dear Mr Swinney,

"I am a primary school teacher in a Scottish local authority and I am writing to you regarding my grave concerns about the way teaching in Scotland has become a nearly impossible job to do adequately, far less to the high standard expected of us. I want to highlight to you some of the issues that I know teachers (including myself) face on a daily basis, and why so many teachers currently want to leave our profession. As an SNP voter, I would like to think that perhaps these issues have not been properly highlighted to you. However, my concern is that the SNP and Scottish Government are not tackling the real underlying issues in education but are rather just putting a plaster over a gaping wound with their current policies.

"First of all, let me tell you a bit about myself. I have been teaching in the same local authority for 13 years now and I love my job. I get so much pleasure seeing the children in my class grow over the space of each year and I enjoy making learning fun and exciting for them. I consider my job to be more than just a job. It is a big responsibility and I work extremely hard to achieve the results expected of me, as well as building positive relationships with the children in my care and their parents or carers.

"However, I have felt a growing sense of concern over the last three or four years that the job I love is becoming increasingly impossible to do effectively, for various reasons which I have highlighted below. I am in favour of the pay campaign that the EIS is fighting at the moment, as I think that this is one of the issues that challenges teachers. Nevertheless, I think that the problems in teaching go far beyond a fall in the real level of pay over the past decade.

Firstly, when I started teaching, inclusion was becoming more and more the norm within schools. Now that there are very few specialist schools, teachers are feeling the effects of inclusion on a daily basis. This policy, whilst admirable in its intention, does not work as it is drastically underfunded. In my school, it is fairly common for teachers to be physically assaulted by children whose needs cannot be met due to the inadequate level of funding. It’s even more common for our teachers to be verbally abused. These things are happening not because of the lack of skills or effort on the part of teachers. Nor is it through a lack of support from management. But rather it is through the lack of resources and support from government level.

There are an increasing number of challenging children within our schools, and yet our resources are being continually depleted. We have fewer classroom support worker hours, management are being pulled out of schools more often so cannot help out and the children’s needs are simply not being met. It has reached crisis level. It has become a problem for the children who need extra support as they are not coping in a large class setting. Consequently, the other children’s needs are being neglected as teachers are having to spend the majority of their classroom time dealing with these more challenging children. As a class teacher, you feel like you are being pulled in so many directions because you want to do the best for all your children but it is impossible to raise attainment in your class, whilst having to deal with such challenging behaviour every day. An example of this is with my class last year, where I had to evacuate the children from the classroom on more than one occasion, while one of my children trashed the classroom. I want to emphasise, that I am very experienced in dealing with children like this but, despite my experience, I know that it gets to a point where you can use all the strategies you have been taught and sometimes it just does not work.

Another part of the problem is that these difficulties have produced a blame culture, where the blame is being laid at the feet of teachers. They need more training (true in some cases). They should have done things differently. There should be more strategies in place. It is easy for people to point the finger when they are not working in an extremely challenging situation, they are not worn down from the day to day stress of having to continually deal with these situations with very few resources to deal them. Having spoken to several teachers in different local authorities, I am very aware that this situation is not exclusive to my local authority but is a Scotland wide problem.

One of the most concerning and frustrating issues with the state of the education system is the inability to be able to speak out about the problems we face. Many schools have not had proper training when it comes to logging in violent or verbally threatening incidents, so statistics provided to government will never provide an accurate picture of what is truly going on. The most concerning thing that has happened so far, is that one of my colleagues arranged to meet with yourself, to discuss issues that were of great concern to them. However, this person was ‘warned’ by their manager, that if they went ahead with the meeting, they would be disciplined for this! I find this deeply concerning. We are supposed to live in a democratic society, where we have the freedom to express our views and opinions without fear of repercussions. Clearly this is not so. A situation like this does not sit well with me, thinking that an SNP run government is not allowed to be made aware of what is actually facing teachers on a day to day basis because we have been told to keep our ‘mouths shut’. The very fact that I am having to write to you anonymously, for fear of being pulled up by my local authority, or disciplined, shows a very worrying situation where democracy is clearly not supported.

Finally, with reference to what the SNP have been proposing to do to help teachers, I do not think that it goes anywhere far enough. We have a teaching crisis. This is fact. In all the local authorities that I have teacher friends in, we all talk about how impossible it is to get supply cover if a teacher is off sick. Many schools have vacant posts that cannot be filled. Whilst encouraging new teachers into teaching by providing incentives is a step in the right direction, it is merely a drop in the ocean. It does not solve things long term. The long-term issue is that you have lots of very experienced teachers leaving the job. There are new people coming in who do not have the relevant experience to deal with the kind of behaviours I have mentioned early on in my letter. As there is little support, these teachers are unlikely to last. It is clear that there needs to be a longer-term strategy. Perhaps having a properly funded specialist behaviour support teacher in each school would be part of a possible solution. The children with challenging behaviour need more adult support and smaller class sizes. They would thrive better if they were given this. Then teachers would be able to teach again, rather than be dealing with behaviour as much.

As I mentioned earlier, I am not sure of the extent to which you are aware of how bad things are. When you visit schools, people are most likely to tell you what you want to hear, through fear of repercussions. If you were able canvas teachers directly perhaps through an anonymous survey, then that would show you the real struggles that teachers are having. I sincerely hope that you take the content of this letter very seriously, because I know that I am starting to feel quite disillusioned with the SNP government’s lack of concern for our failing education system at present. I do believe that this is down to a lack understanding of real difficulties schools and teachers face. I hope that this letter highlights some of the frustration that teachers are facing at the moment.

Thank you for taking your time to read this letter, and I sincerely hope that it will make a difference.

Kind regards,

A Scottish teacher"

We took the letter to teaching union EIS Scotland. It's General Secretary Larry Flannagan says: "The teacher has written the letter anonymously because clearly there is a worry over potential repercussions. It is a shame if teachers feel like they can't speak out.

"We want to see teachers able to speak out, cause when they speak out things might happen as a result. When changes do take place that is better for children in our schools cause teachers want to see improvements and make a difference to teaching and learning."

Education Secretary John Swinney said: “Education is our number one priority and I recognise the pressures and challenges facing teachers, such as those highlighted by this individual’s experiences. That is why we have taken action to reduce teacher workloads, clarifying and simplifying the curriculum framework and removing unnecessary bureaucracy.

“We are working closely with local government and headteacher and teacher organisations to empower teachers to improve learning outcomes across our schools and early learning centres.

“We have also taken action to recruit more teachers, investing £88 million in 2017, resulting in 543 more teachers than the previous year – the second year in a row that numbers increased. There are now more primary and secondary teachers than at any time since 2014 and the ratio of pupils to teachers is at its lowest since 2013”.

“No teacher should have to suffer abuse in the workplace and we want all pupils to behave in a respectful manner towards their peers and staff. Our refreshed guidance on preventing and managing schools exclusions, published last year, includes guidance on managing challenging behaviour."