Hot air won’t give our kids a better class of education

No one would argue with Nick Clegg’s statement in his somewhat flabby conference speech last week that every child in the country deserves a decent education.

Of course they do but this seems to just be something politicians say in order to get a round of applause from the party faithful.

Talk is cheap but improving education standards will take a lot more than hot air.

Those who haven’t been in a classroom since they left school would do well to tune into the new Channel 4 series Educating Yorkshire, which shows what life is really like for teachers at the coal face.

This is a very different scenario from my school days back in the ’70s when you viewed your teachers with a mixture of fear and respect.

I regularly got the “strap” for talking in class, blathering in assembly and generally always having far too much to say for myself.

Anyone who really disrupted the class was dealt with very firmly and we wouldn’t have ever dared “answer back”.

Those days are long gone, especially in our big secondary schools.

I used to think TV dramas like Grange Hill and Waterloo Road were exaggerating just how tough it can be in the classroom, but it really is a jungle out there in some parts of the country and I am full of admiration for teachers who daily go in to do battle.

In the TV series we see how difficult it can be to control the classroom and to encourage the pupils to knuckle down and learn. There is no faulting the dedication of the teachers and they do sometimes achieve remarkable results.

It’s also clear how much they care about the children in their care, but it can be a thankless task.

In classrooms up and down the country teachers have to cope with everything including stroppy huffs, insolence and even threats of violence.

So what’s the best approach?

Well I don’t think pupils want teachers to be their “friend”. I reckon a lot of them would actually prefer a sense of order and structure, and for disruptive elements not to be tolerated so the majority can get on with actually learning something.

I also think it’s time dedicated, hard working and conscientious teachers were rewarded and lazy, ineffective ones weeded out.

Apart from parents and family, teachers are the biggest influence on young hearts and minds.

They can turn a potential tearaway into a valuable member of society and inspire a raw, bright kid to reach for the stars.

Increasingly bogged down in red tape and health and safety regulations, and in certain schools not getting the support of parents, it’s tough out there for teachers.

While I’m not at all sure the “softly softly” approach works, neither would I want us to go back to the days when kids were beaten like gongs.

There has to be a balance between the strict disciplinarians of old and the teachers who try to be too chummy and can’t inspire respect in the classroom.

It’s common sense, but until there are fundamental changes and proper investment rather than cuts, Nick Clegg’s desire for every child to have a good education, regardless of how much money their parents have, is as far away as ever it was.