The King’s High School

Last week was my last at The King’s High, one of Edinburgh’s most renowned comprehensive secondary schools. I worked for eight months as a ‘Classroom Assistant’, and I feel that while it was a welcome step onto the educational ladder it was often a complete waste of my time.

The problems begin with the very name ‘Classroom Assistant’, for this is nothing more than a piece of deceptive policy jargon. A better description would be ‘Departmental Assistant’ since very little of my time was actually spent working within the classroom. In fact I did so on only four occasions. In practice I spent one half of my week acting as an ICT technician and the other half working as a PA for a volatile Principal Teacher. Monotonous data entry and photocopying became my primary roles. Accordingly I felt horrendously under utilised and I have to wonder what they were thinking when they hired a young postgraduate into a role usually performed by a fifty-something house wife.

In fairness it wasn’t all bad. I was involved in a mentoring scheme and a good number of field trips. Simply by mixing with teachers I was able to gain an insight into the profession. Additionally the nature of my work has, albeit unintentionally, provided me with some valuable ‘office experience’, something that employers seem to irrationally cherish far beyond any real demonstration of competence. Perhaps most importantly however it got me out of retail. While thoroughly enjoying Starbucks there was always that nagging feeling that it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing, working at a school did at least provide some peace of mind in that respect.

As my first job within the public sector it also quite an interesting experience. Extremely low productivity and a complete disregard for attendance rates were endemic. Before I could even start I had to wait for six weeks while the council processed my ‘Disclosure Scotland’ application to ensure I wasn’t a paedophile. I’ve since been told that the delay was longer than usual because I was caught up in the pre-Christmas rush of Santa Claus’s and elves. Once at work I was met with staff that struggled to log onto their computers, let alone operate them, and much of my time was spent showing older teachers how to open their emails. From what I saw of the council’s working environment it reminded me of that old joke about life in the Soviet Union, ‘You pretend to work, we pretend to pay you’. In fairness this work ethic did not apply to the teachers who were working ridiculously long hours and under considerable pressures. This was especially true of those in their provisional year who were required to produce mountains of support documentation for every lesson they took.

Much of my time was taken up navigating the schools chaotic relationship with the local council. There were an unwieldy number of budgetary sources, a massively expensive procurement system and a privatised janitor service that rigidly stuck to the letter of its contractual commitments – and never anything more. The Oracle software used by Edinburgh City Council costs the King’s High £12k a year simply to access it, but given it’s restrictive ‘preferred buyer’ contracts I estimate that it costs the school an additional £1K a year in over priced goods, not to mention the fact that it basically requires one full time member of staff to operate the damn thing (on a wage of £8-10K). Give a couple of S6 Computing students a weekend and they’ll happily produce something more reliable, user friendly and cost effective. Away from this travesty the very use of classroom assistants has to be questioned. Pay one person a real wage and provide them with real working hours and they could easily perform the role of three or four classroom assistants as they currently operate.

Teaching wise I was surprised by a number of things. Firstly the uniform standards were appalling. This was one of the most respectable schools in Edinburgh yet it felt like walking into a seedy nightclub. Hot pants, low cut tops and the wearing of jeans were all common place. Rather than a punishable offence this behaviour was rarely mentioned. Secondly there were some pretty low levels of discipline. Pupils had little respect for teachers and classrooms would often resemble war zones more than a place of learning. Of course it was always a small minority of students that would take up the vast majority of the teacher’s time. Many of them I might add shouldn’t really have been at a ‘regular’ school at all and it is now clear to me how important special schools are to a healthy educational system. As it was there were no less than three separate organisations that sought to provide specialist care ‘in-house’. There was Pupil Guidance (approx. 4 part time members of staff and 1 full time), Learning Support (around 7 full time members of staff) and Behaviour Guidance (1 full time member of staff) – a system of safety nets that I don’t remember existing when I was at school.

There are a few more (chauvinistic) observations I feel should be made. Firstly there was the study of English. Given that we are facing a generation of people that can’t spell or successful construct a sentence (as my own blog testifies) why is it that the teaching of English still focuses almost entirely on ‘emotions’ and ‘feelings’ as portrayed in fluffy feminist poetry? The teachers themselves admit that ‘writing and reading skills’ are way down the agenda. History seemed to be obsessed with Scottish independence and of course never once touched upon the history of Empire (and Scotland’s enthusiastic role in it). I should also quickly mention the nightmarish Scottish document ‘Curriculum for Excellence’. A doctrine that allows most Scottish educationalists to hold their heads up high, confident that their system is far superior to the dastardly alternative south of the boarder. Yet the document rivals the works of Foucault in its ability to gobble up syllables and buzz words without once actually saying anything of relevance. Lastly I should mention the inability of schools to shift bad teachers. On many occasions departmental PTs would bemoan long time serving members of staff for their almost complete inability to teach effectively. Yet there was nothing they could do about it. It is in some respects this ‘glut’ of poor teachers, many of whom were simply gifted their jobs straight from university, that are denying opportunities to thousands of young, enthusiastic and better trained professionals.

This is not to say that there wasn’t anything of merit at The King’s High. Far from it. There were many brilliant teachers with incredibly high levels of dedication who had earned the pupils respect. For me it was also reassuring to meet so many teachers who had made it through to retirement age with their sense of humour still intact – something I feared was impossible.

Overall it has been a worthwhile experience if unlike like the one I originally hoped it would be. I have same fantastic memories from The King’s High and I made some brilliant friends. In some respects I’ve come quite a long way in these last eight months. It’s been a positive experience and one which I hope will act as an important building block in my first career.

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