Thought Pieces
Matt Johnson, Chairman of Mando Group writes a weekly column for the Liverpool Daily Post on Small Business and Enterprise. Education and HealthON one of the UK’s flagship national news platforms last week two unrelated topics were given air time on each of the five days’ broadcasting I tuned in to. A glance at some newspaper websites confirmed that the two topics were covered in print too. Nothing particularly unusual about any of that you may think. We are after all consumers of a media operating in a perpetual frenzy where the search for stories and topics to share with readers, listeners and viewers is becoming more intense. But by the end of my unscientific week’s survey I started to imagine how it must be for the professionals working in the two featured sectors to hear people discussing or arguing or debating their function and performance out loud day after day. The two sectors are education and health. Not a day went by without coverage relating to each – and coverage that included integral criticism by some of existing practices or procedures or policies in the way our wards and classrooms are run. True, each of these topics (along with defence it currently seems|) are rarely off the top of the political agenda. But for teachers, doctors and other NHS professionals it must sometimes feel as if some sort of water torture is being applied – a drip, drip of stories that at best undermine what people are trying to achieve in each sector or at worst de motivate those whose vocation is to teach or make people better. Our teachers must surely be getting weary of the constant changes they are required to make to the way they teach our youngsters? If they are not, they display a resolve and patience beyond the norm. And what’s the result of all these changes on the pupils themselves? One commentator has reported changes on a scale that beggars belief. To its credit the teaching profession has kept its collective cool over the scale and extent of change. What’s sorely needed now, surely, is a period of stability and consistency that gives us a state education system that attracts bright, inspiring and innovative teachers for all the right reasons. In the avalanche of last week’s media coverage about schools and teaching one contributor spoke with clarity of purpose that made his plea sound like one from the heart rather than the vantage point of a vested interest holder.
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