I absolutely loathe admin. Utterly and completely. If someone gives me a piece of paper, it gets thrown on a pile. I ignore it until I realise I have a deadline the very next day, and then I deal with it.
I've been that way my whole life – I've even put off learning to drive for years and years because I can't bear the thought of filling in the application form. Hideous.
So when I was considering my options post-university, it was clear that an office job was not on the cards for me. Delightedly then, I rushed towards teaching – after all, it's all about interacting with people, isn't it? Real, live humans, both young and young-at-heart. I was passionate about teaching and passionate about my subject – in that order.
When it came to dealing with paperwork as a young teacher, I followed my mother's advice. "Just make sure you get the stuff done that other people need in order to do their jobs, and the rest will follow," she said.
Sage advice, and so that was how I managed.
Everything was going swimmingly, and even when I got that coveted promotion and landed my dream job of head of department at the tender age of 26. I still managed to get everything done, albeit in my own chaotic manner. I was leading a brilliant team of teachers who, like me, believed that the time we spend with the children is more important than a thousand ticked boxes.
It was all going well until about 18 months ago. That, to me, was when everything changed in education. It went crazy. Free periods were no longer about spending time on my classes and the future of our department. After school time stopped being about giving children extra help and running extra-curricular clubs that would nourish their passion for my subject.
Suddenly, those things were no longer important. What was important now was data. Six times a year we were required to fill out little boxes about every single child we taught. Not meaningful comments designed to help children progress, just grades and numbers in boxes.
The columns swam in front of my tired, admin-hating eyes. Instead of being trusted to manage our departments' assessment programme, we had to do "work sampling" every half term, as though our colleagues were not trusted professionals. It felt like sneaking. And worst of all, we were expected to produce formal exams for every single year group at the end of every term. Every term! That's seven meaningful exam papers every term in a practical subject that gets one period per week of teaching.
Where was the pedagogy in all this? I could find absolutely no educational thinking which supported this new tactic of examining the children until they were cowering little stress bunnies. What happened to Inside The Black Box? To formative assessment? To giving students the chance to grow and understand before we stuffed them in a scary exam hall?
So far, my questions remain unanswered. I wonder if I'll ever again know the joy of teaching a genuinely great lesson (I hate the word "outstanding" – sounds as if we've forgotten our homework). The kind of lesson when the kids' faces light up and you know they're learning something and having a whale of a time doing it. I don't think I've taught a lesson like that in the last year – I certainly can't remember one. I wonder if I'll ever be able to change my plan mid-lesson based on one child's brilliant question, and we all go off on a wonderful, exciting tangent of learning? It's a bit difficult to do that when you have to keep reciting the doom-laden mantra: "exams in two weeks".
You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned Gove yet. Well, that's mainly because I actually think that it's not just about him. It's about the way that schools have reacted to his changes. From what I can see, the main way is with knee-jerk panic. No pedagogical thought and intelligent debate went into the decisions at my school. It was fear. Education has become a horror film in which senior leadership teams are just trying to keep the wolves from the door by any means possible, and it's happening everywhere.
I used to help out with a local community group, which I was forced to give up due to all the admin. I also wanted to continue doing my job properly, and so it didn't seem feasible to be out two nights a week. One of the kids I used to work with, a girl in year 10, stopped me in the supermarket a couple of weeks ago and asked me where I'd been. I told her, and she replied cheerfully: "Oh, that's nothing. All the teachers at my school want to leave. We're doing exams every half term."
This week's Secret Teacher works in a secondary school
Would you like to be the next Secret Teacher? Got an idea for an anonymous blog post about the trials, tribulations and frustrations of school life? Get in touch: kate.hodge@theguardian.com.
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