Missing

Tomorrow morning - Monday - England's roads will be doubly busy as children return to school after the long summer break but for the first time in thirty two years, I won't be there. I have hardly thought about my job all summer.

Clearing out our study ready for redecoration, I came across an old hold-all type schoolbag - still filled with various papers from five years back. I carried that particular bag to and from the school for at least ten years - it always seemed bottomless - containing never-ending evening jobs. Cursorily, I flicked through the papers, letters, lists, brochures, reports, minutes, agendas etc. before flinging them all into our blue recycling bin while the tormenting bag itself was jettisoned gleefully into the general waste wheelie bin.

There are lots of things I won't miss about my job which had two main strands - being a classroom teacher of English and leading and managing the progress of the English department. I won't miss:-

1. Children who habitually arrive at school without pens to write with - the same children who - after being lent pens - conveniently "forget" to give them back and then appear at the very next lesson penless again.
2. Parasitical "experts" who don't teach, probably never liked teaching and yet shake or nod their heads like sages as they pass judgement over other people's best efforts - OFSTED inspectors, National Challenge advisers, "critical friends" from "partner" schools, deputy headteachers in sharp suits spouting hollow words.
3. Being expected to display lesson objectives for each and every lesson and having children write them in their books - even though some lessons may have been for the continuation of essays in progress or reading for pleasure.
4. Being told - without justification or explanation - that the entire staff had to start marking in green pen.
5. The lack of meaningful sanctions to combat unwelcome pupil behaviour. I mean... how ridiculous that in order to give a child a ten minute after school detention, we had to give them a detention slip, put the duplicate in our detention box, fill in the detention book and then write home, explaining the reasons for the detention. Then copies of this letter had to be lodged with the Head of Year and in school files. Very often the culprit wouldn't turn up so there'd be a whole lot of further rigmarole before the child might possibly be put in the headteacher's special detention. What a joke!
6. Never ending marking demands - exercise books, assignments, exam papers, Assessing Pupil Progress tests. English teachers are expected to mark more than any other subject teachers and yet none of the parasites who pass judgement from the wings seem to recognise or applaud the fact that this marking mainly happens in teachers' homes late at night or at weekends. The "free" time you are given for marking and preparation in school is absolutely paltry.
7. Lost holidays. This is the first summer vacation when I have not been into school. Some summer holidays I would have been in for two or three weeks of the six - making intricate action plans, building new schemes of work, making new classlists, ordering books, planning and generally playing catch-up.
8. Eating my sandwiches at my desk while using lunchtime to keep on top of my work.
9. Regular ten hour days and then coming home with more stuff to do.
10. The self-obsessed headmistress who seemed high on amphetamines most of the time such was the staccato speed of her one-sided innovatory thinking aloud. In several ways, she seemed barmy to me - not least her crazy obsession with tidiness. One summer she ripped down an English colleague's personal corner display containing family photographs and other cherished items and I expect she was the one who trashed the old Swiss cheese plant that I had donated to the school library when it outgrew our home.
11. Parents who didn't give a toss about their children or their parental responsibilities - even though many students were very well-supported.
12. Change. Never ending change. No sooner had you got one initiative half-embedded than another would rear its head. New theories. New dictats. Why couldn't they just leave us alone to get on with the job?
13. Targets. It got to a point where it was clear that the people who cared most about numerical targets cared least about the children that those figures represented. Bizarrely, some of the loudest commentators would have been totally unable to put faces to the pupils' names. They really didn't care. It was intellectual gameplay.

Obviously, there are things about it all that I will certainly miss - notably relationships with my immediate work colleagues, outlets for my creativity, the monthly salary cheque and of course the children who could surprise you with their good efforts, good humour and goodwill. I taught thousands of the little blighters and do you know every one was different from the next. Perhaps regretting will come but on the eve of a new academic year, I am just so relieved to be out of it.