The teachers' real grievance is status

Strikes

Miss Bennett has a lot to answer for. She it was who disabused myfive-year-old self of the belief that all teachers were fine,unimpeachable figures of authority - more often than not clad ingowns - like my father. I had started school expecting to beinducted into the mysteries of the three Rs. Instead, I found myselfon most days begging to leave the Wendy house for the sandpit.Worse, I glimpsed Miss Bennett applying her lipstick and reading aglossy magazine, while we, her charges, were "working". It was onlyin the second class, under the stern but kindly instruction of MrsUnwin, that school took a turn for the better.

My early - and temporary - disillusionment may be nothingunusual. Pupils, even at five, have always been quick to take themeasure of a teacher. Equally timeless is the nostalgia of themiddle-aged and older for a time when Miss Bennetts were few and farbetween and the teaching profession was personified by the respectedand beloved Mr Chips. Small matter that literature is punctuatedwith incompetent and cruel schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, it isthe model teachers of our yesteryears who abide in grown-up minds.

There is a mystique about teachers of the past, as there is aboutmuch else, and the idea that change is always and only for the worseis as ill-conceived as it is pervasive. Yet over a generation or twosomething does seem to have changed. Not necessarily in the calibreof teachers - arguably they must now be better qualified than ever -but in their social standing and the regard in which they are heldby the population. An aura of respect - which may always have beenexaggerated - has dissipated. And instead of being bracketed withdoctors and lawyers, teachers are now more likely to be classed withthe local council staff whose strike they shared yesterday.

Teachers and college lecturers were the largest and most vocalgroup taking part in the public-sector protest and almost half ofall state schools in England and Wales were fully or partly closedas a result. The suggestion from the Education Secretary, MichaelGove, that parents might take a turn filling in seems to havefoundered, whether from solidarity, fear of reprisals or moremundane concerns about insurance.

It would be easy to blame teachers' own conduct for the shrinkingpublic regard in which they are held - and to cite their willingnessto strike as supporting evidence. In fact, though, teachers are notparticularly strike-happy. Their last strike, mounted by only oneunion, was three years ago, over pay, and it was the first nationalstrike for 21 years. The inflammatory rhetoric heard at teachers'annual conferences gives the impression of greater militancy thanactually exists. And while their unions might consider whether somany threats so rarely acted upon serve teachers' interests, thereality is that yesterday's strike is a rare event.

Something more has to be going on. As it happens, a survey on thestatus of teachers in England was compiled for the Department forEducation in 2007 - and it is telling. Not only does its veryexistence show that the then Government had the status of theprofession in its sights, but a central finding was that teachers'status had declined sharply over 40 years: from a high of 4.3 (on ascale of 5) in 1967 to a low of 2.2 in 2002, although it hadrecovered a little, to 2.5, by 2006.

The survey reported that rank-and-file teachers were equated inthe public mind with social workers, while the analogy for headteachers was with management consultants. At both ends of theseniority scale, therefore, teaching had lost its association withhigher-status professionals - medicine and the law. At the lowerend, it was seen as akin to a social service; at the top, more likea business.

Another salient conclusion was that the decline reflected theview of teachers themselves as much as that of the public. And theirsliding sense of their own status was linked to feelings ofpowerlessness, as government initiatives came and went, and theperception that they had lost professional autonomy with theproliferation in national tests and league tables.

Tests and league tables had further repercussions. While theyraised the standing of teachers in high-performing schools, theydepressed that of teachers in poorly scoring schools. And by givingparents more information, they helped to "demystify" teaching,making it look more like a skill or a craft than a profession. Thisdid not happen in medicine or the law, whose practitioners retainedtheir exclusivity. (Whether this will also break down eventually, asthe internet affords wider access to specialist knowledge, is aquestion for another day.)

There are other considerations that could be added: the greatervariety of careers open to graduates than in the past and the highrewards in sectors carrying commission and bonuses (such as bankingin the 1990s), which may have reduced the pool of would-be teachers.Like it or not, the perception of teaching, especially primaryteaching, as a female profession - with mostly women seeking family-friendly hours and holidays - may also have had the effect ofdepressing its status.

Both this government and the last tried to reverse the trend. Anearly move was to raise pay for outstanding teachers, so thatadvancement was not only into management. The Teach First schemeencourages the best graduates to sample teaching without committingto studying for a diploma first. Higher pay means that teachingcannot be described as poorly paid, even at entry level; academiesand the new "free" schools may set their own rates, while lump sumsare to be offered to graduates to enter teaching in proportion tothe class of their degree (more for those with a first, and so on).

Despite these efforts, there are few signs either that teachingis becoming more of a first-choice career or that it is reclaimingthe professional status it used to command - and still commands inmost of the European countries that outperform England and Wales ininternational tables. The strict academic requirements for teachingin Finland (which routinely tops international leagues), thenational concourse to enter teaching in France, and the stiffcompetition in Germany, where teaching's solid civil service termsand conditions are seen as a plus, have no parallels in Britain.

Why is teaching stuck in the doldrums here? Partly because payfor doctors and top lawyers has spun off into the stratosphere in away it has not on the Continent. Partly because, despite rewards forexcellence, the cult of management, with its super-heads and super-schools, is destroying the professional solidarity that existselsewhere - and communicates some strange messages about whatconstitutes educational success.

But mostly it is because so many teachers today denigrate theirown profession - quite unreasonably - as low-paid drudgery. Untilthey take more pride in what they do, parents and public have littlechoice but to accept teachers' negative self-image as their own.

m.dejevsky@independent.co.uk