When I started my career in teaching, I was encouraged to be creative and experiment. I loved that freedom and I think it helped to make me a good teacher. I got used to reading around my subject and trying out different ideas. I made some mistakes, but I was always thinking, always learning, always trying to do better with my students. I got good results. I enjoyed my work.

My school has a head teacher, two deputy heads and 12 assistant heads ... there are just too many chiefs

Contrast that with the situation I and many of my colleagues face today. My job and so much of what happens in my classroom is being controlled and my teaching hindered by excessive micromanagement. My school has a headteacher, two deputy heads and 12 assistant headteachers. Large numbers like this aren’t unusual – such appointments seem to be an increasingly common way to retain staff who have their sights set on the leadership team.

The result? There are just too many chiefs telling us what to do. Almost every year there’s a new marking policy, a new assessment policy, and a new homework policy. Our school has posters in every classroom outlining what should happen in each lesson, in every subject.

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One minute we’re told that assessments must be done on paper, the next we’re told to use books. Schemes of learning that worked so well last year have been abandoned for the new (untested) curriculum. Mixed-ability classes were introduced and then – after much upheaval – scrapped.

We have endless inspections by senior leaders. The visitor will check that the learning objectives are on the board and in students’ books, that the date is written in full and underlined, that students know their “working at” grade and target grade. They’ll collect a sample of exercise books, often without notice, to check past lessons.

The management team argue it’s about raising standards. But we teachers are so focused on making sure everything looks good from the outside that we sometimes lose sight of what we’re really there for. Who’s our audience? The students or school leaders?

Anyone who doesn’t meet these strict directives gets a warning. They may have to be retrained or can be denied performance-based pay progression. They might even lose their job.

Much has been written about the micromanagement of schools – particularly by Ofsted – and the impact this has on our students. But teachers are caught in the middle. According to the National Education Union, the “pressures of a punitive and non-productive accountability system” are contributing to what’s being called the “epidemic of stress” in schools.

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I can appreciate that management think they are working to make the school better and that some level of monitoring is needed, but when creative and conscientious professionals are robbed of any autonomy, something very important is lost. It chips away at a teacher’s self-esteem, confidence and expertise. You never feel like you’re doing all you should, or that you have the space to use your own judgement.

A colleague recently told me she had just had her best lesson for years. It was a discussion that was not part of the English curriculum. Students were engaged and thoroughly immersed in what they were doing, though it would have ticked very few official boxes on my school’s checklist. Sadly those experiences are now few and far between. Isn’t it time school leaders put experienced, effective teachers back in the driving seat?

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本文來源：https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/jan/13/secret-teacher-micro-management-changing-schools-ofsted