Primary vs Secondary

 

I’ve worked in both primary and secondary sections of schools, coached in both and tutored both age groups.  I don’t see any problem with working in either but I do know that some of my ex-colleagues have issues with ‘those other lot’ who work within a different age group to them. 

Let me share some of the comments that I have heard or been directed at me over the years.

The most common one aimed at me as a primary school teacher is “All you lot do is play.”  When I first met my wife it was something that she joked about as it is a common refrain amongst most secondary school teachers who are, let’s face it, rather ignorant of what happens in the primary sector.  I have double checked, triple checked and quadruple checked over the years, and she was joking.

She was definitely joking.  She has assured me of this. 

Definitely.

No doubt at all.

Absolutely no doubt. 

Unfortunately quite a number of senior school associates have spoken those words rather scornfully at me and most definitely not in jest.  Some have genuinely believed what they stated.  One, a deputy headteacher of our entire school, said them to me just to try to wind me up since he also mocked my volunteering as a football coach for girls.  I don’t think he liked me very much. 

He didn’t seem to be a very happy soul either.

I digress.

One ex-colleague once implored me to answer the question that seemed to vex him greatly, namely “Don’t you get bored?” as we were on holiday in the tropical island of Sri Lanka and surrounded by natural beauty that you rarely see.  He appeared quite agitated by the idea that I, as an intelligent human being, would be bored by teaching a group of pre-adolescent inquisitive and highly intelligent students.

The man had obviously never taught a primary class in his life.  How on Earth, if you’re doing your job properly, would you be bored teaching a bunch of key stage two kids?  And, seriously, you want me to believe that coaching a bunch of teenagers to pass an exam by endlessly going over past papers isn’t boring?  Really?

It just displays such an ignorance of what teaching is about, to say that primary school children are unworthy of teaching because they’re not writing essays on the effects of various wavelengths of light or ionic bonding (he was a science teacher)

Let me, as I’m on a roll, tell you what a fairly recent DP co-ordinator told me what she thought of primary school teachers who dressed up for Book Week.  She said they were pathetic.

Well, quite.  She was, and still is apparently, an appalling DP co-ordinator who feels that cheating by selecting students for the easier language exams just to massage the figures is a morally correct thing to do.  So I reckon we can disregard her vile opinion. 

She was another who rarely smiled or seemed happy.

For some balance here, let us hear some opinions on secondary school teachers from my primary colleagues, some of which aren’t nice…

“pretentious ********”  (that one comes up often)

“pompous *****”

“inflated opinion of their own importance”

There are a lot more like that and I won’t bore you with them. 

But why do these rather horrible opinions persist?  We are, after all, all of us teachers.  Why do we have these ideas of what other teachers do?

Well, part of it is obviously that thing called subject specialism.  In primary, it isn’t such a huge thing.  Yes, you can be a co-ordinator of a subject such as science or maths but your knowledge of the subject doesn’t have to be very deep.  In a senior school, it does. 

And when your knowledge of a subject becomes very deep you become ignorant of what it means to be a teacher of all things to your students and to recognise what subjects they like or are good at and which of those they dislike or are rubbish at.  This is inevitable when your range of subject teaching is so narrow.

But a part of why teachers are so dismissive of each other over the age ranges is this idea of hierarchy within teaching. 

I was a year six teacher for decades.  I was good at it, really good.  I was only chosen to be one in the first place because I was a six foot tall man who could terrify pre-adolescent children into behaving and getting good KS2 results for the school. 

At the time of first being appointed I did not realise that it was seen by some as the ‘glamour’ role in a primary school because of some bizarre idea that being  the teacher of the last group of students to be in a school as well as the gatekeeper of those all important SATS results was somehow more important than the role of other teachers.

Let me clear here though, this is not a view held by everyone and not even by a majority of teachers but it is one that latently creeps into the consciousness of many parents, many students and many people who rely upon good SATS results making themselves look good.   It is a view that pervades.   And pervading things so like to pervade relentlessly.

Thus if you’re an ‘A’ level teacher then you are supposed to have more, well, more gravitas or kudos or prestige than a mere GCSE teacher or a Key Stage 3 teacher.

Yes, I know it makes no sense but this thing that pervades is still pervading and it will probably still keep on pervading until AI takes over teaching and then the world and we’ll all be out of a job anyway.

You see, my idea of who deserves more kudos are the teachers of year 3 and year 7 students because they’re the ones dealing with the shock that those poor kids are going through as they enter their cruel and scary new educational worlds.   And Reception teachers!  Teaching kids how to use the toilet properly and not ‘play’ with your private parts and not eat something you find on the floor – that is something I just shudder at.

But!  Back to the battle between primary and secondary where rather ignorant yet well educated teachers can make disparaging remarks about their colleagues and, at times, even mean it.

It’s all a bit silly, isn’t it?  We’re all teachers at the end of the day and, I will let you into a secret, it doesn’t matter what age the students are because they all want the same kind of things from their teachers – honesty, hard work, openness, care, praise, discipline when needed and for their teacher to enjoy their job.

Sure, some of it will differ – year 9 boys wouldn’t be expected to be shown how to use a toilet unlike a Reception boy would (although given the state of loos in secondary schools…) and we wouldn’t be expecting year 12 girls to write letters to Santa unlike in year 2 but the fundamentals do not change.    Your year 11 kids wouldn’t expect you to dress up as a pirate for Book Week but your year 4s would love it.  It doesn’t make anyone ‘pathetic’. 

So can we stop being all ‘huffy’ about what our colleagues teaching different age groups do please?  We’re supposed to be teaching them about respect for differences and empathy for those who are in a different position than ourselves so let us practise what we preach.

And, whilst we’re at it, let’s give thanks to all of those Reception teachers out there who do the things that need to be taught so that you don’t have to.