Who really wants to be a teacher today?

The ‘battle against mediocrity’ must be fought to improve school standards across all parts of England, says the head of education watchdog Ofsted. Launching Ofsted’s annual report, chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw said the regional gap was like ‘two nations’.  The report showed that eight in 10 schools were now good or better, the highest in Ofsted's history but there were still nearly 250,000 pupils being taught in inadequate schools and 1.5 million in schools that require improvement.  Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt said the ‘postcode lottery’ of regional differences needed to be tackled and he accused the government of weakening rather than improving standards.  The solution seems to be calls for greater accountability and more assessment—because that’s what countries who scored well in the recent global Pisa tests. 

Central to improving school results, it is generally agreed, is having good teachers and good school leadership.  But why would you really want to be a teacher today?  If things go well then clearly you’re coasting and need to do more, get even better results and if not, we always knew that teachers were rubbish anyway.  Well if you have a good degree, the chances are that you wouldn’t.  Whatever the incentives—financial or in terms of rapid promotion—teaching lacks the advantages or status that people who go into financial or commercial services or the law gain.  This is not to say that all those with good degrees do not enter teaching but often do so as part of a career plan that frequently takes them out of the profession.  For those who do become teachers, there is no guarantee that having a good degree will make them into ‘good’ teachers anymore than having a lower degree will make them ‘poor’ teachers.  Although teachers can be trained to be better teachers, I have always believed—and my experience in teacher training sustains this—that individuals can either teach or they can’t and no matter what the training you can’t turn someone who can’t teach into someone who can.  Yes, you need to know your subject but if you can’t communicate your enthusiasm for that subject in ways that appeal to students, then you’re never going to be an effective teacher.  In reality, you’re not going to be a teacher at all. 

Eardley-Wilmot as governor

During Eardley-Wilmot’s tenure as governor, the colony experienced further depression and he tried to reduce the expense of the public service without seriously affecting the police.[1] He courted Stanley’s anger by intimating that the colony would require some help with police costs in future to deal with the large influx of convicts from Britain, NSW and other British colonies. Police numbers would increase as prisoners graduated from punishment gangs to become probationers, ticket of leave men and conditional pardon men. This freedom would provide greater opportunities ‘to indulge in vice and to commit crime, with little or no means of Employment’.[2] While under punishment, they were a charge of the British government, but when free on licence they became an expense of the colony, increasing the cost of the police and courts. These developments called for an increase not decrease in police numbers and improvement in the means of ‘surveillance and control’.[3] Police expenditure had to be further increased to meet the growth of bushranging.[4]

Photograph of Sir John Eardley-Wilmot

Colonists became increasingly angered by Stanley’s refusal to help. The Legislative Council rejected the imposition of new taxes in the Highway and Lighting and Drainage Bills until the British Government paid for the police.[5] A placard supporting the rejection exhibited ‘an inflammatory tendency, if not directly leading to riot and violence’, Eardley-Wilmot informed the Colonial Office but Stanley was unmoved merely expressing dissatisfaction with the growing budget deficit and warned against future excess.[6] Opposition grew. The first public petition pleading for justice from the Colonial Office was sent to England in late 1845.[7] On 1 November 1845 six non-official members of the Legislative Council, who became known as the Patriotic Six - Swanston, Dry, Kermode, Gregson, Kerr, and Fenton - resigned their seats rather than vote for the police estimates.[8] Eardley-Wilmot regarded this as an ‘improper and unconstitutional’ act disrupting all public business. The disaffected members should have prepared their own Estimates and he would have sent them with his for decision by the Colonial Office.

Eardley-Wilmot’s representations had some effect and on 18 July 1845 Lord Stanley, speaking during the second reading of the Waste Lands Amendment Bill, admitted that Britain had financially mistreated VDL by forcing it to bear a large sum for police and gaols.[9] The Bill transferred to the British Government the meagre proceeds of land sales and relieved VDL of police and gaol costs. Not long afterwards, the new Secretary of State William Gladstone provided further details. After discussions with the Treasury, the British Government agreed to pay two-thirds of the current police costs of £32,923 5s 2d or £24,000 per annum: in return, his government would assume control of the Land Fund and expected closer fiscal control.[10] Gladstone hoped this decision would be seen by the non-official members of the Legislative Council in ‘a Spirit of Liberal Justice’ towards VDL and would end ‘a controversy which could not be continued without serious injury to the interests of the Colony’. Eardley-Wilmot’s critics did not allow him to claim the credit for Gladstone’s concession. The Hobart Town Advertiser saw it as ‘the first instalment of our rights’, which owed little to the Governor’s efforts.[11] The Courier thought the petition from the people of VDL was the crucial factor because it ‘roused equity from its slumber’.[12] Although the problem of financing police costs has been resolved, Eardley-Wilmot was dismissed later in 1846.[13]

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[1] CO 280/167, Eardley-Wilmot to Stanley, 9 February 1844.

[2] CO 280/179.

[3] CO 280/171, Eardley-Wilmot to Stanley, 26 August 1844.

[4] CO 280/184, Eardley-Wilmot to Stanley, 25 September 1845.

[5] CO 280/184, Eardley-Wilmot to Stanley, 26 August 1845.

[6] CO 280/184, Colonial Office to Eardley-Wilmot, 20 April 1846.

[7] Hobart Town Advertiser, 1 August 1845.

[8] CO 280/185, Eardley-Wilmot to Stanley, 5 November 1845.

[9] Colonial Times, 11 November 1845

[10] AOT GO1/61, p. 211, D.67, Gladstone to Eardley-Wilmot, 14 March 1846; AOT GO 33/55, p. 1332, D.124, Eardley-Wilmot to Gladstone, 24 August 1846.

[11] Hobart Town Advertiser, 7 August 1846

[12] Hobart Town Courier, 12 August 1846

[13] On this see, Fitzpatrick, Kathleen, ‘Mr Gladstone and the Governor: The Recall of Sir John Eardley-Wilmot from Van Diemen’s Land, 1846’, Historical Studies: Australia & New Zealand, Vol. 1, (1940), pp. 31-45 and Gilchrist, Catie, ‘“The Victim of his own Temerity”? Silence, Scandal and the Recall of Sir John Eardley-Wilmot’, Journal of Australian Studies, Vol. 84, (2005), pp. 151-161, 250-254.