Writing for The Leaders Council, Andrew Clowes, headteacher of Hey with Zion Primary School in Oldham, Lancashire, questions how abusive behaviour has been normalised in society and calls on the government to look again at British values and where kindness fits in.
For those who do not know me, please let me introduce myself.
I am, so I have been told, a xenophobic, patronising a*****ole and a writer of nasty emails. Not a word I say is to be believed and I am simply hanging around doing nothing, waiting to receive my final salary pension. I prey on young women, have assaulted a mother of two of my pupils. I am a disgrace of a man.
That is what I have been told, while going about my work as a church school headteacher.
I actually disagree with all of it and have used CCTV evidence to disprove the assault allegation when it was investigated. However, you will have to take my word for the rest of it.
I signed up to the Leaders Council Charter and that is how I try to conduct myself.
I try to get the job done, nicely.
Yet, like other public sector workers, maybe private too, I am on the receiving of so much verbal abuse. Much like the anonymous headteacher who wrote to The Leaders Council in a terribly sad opinion piece published earlier this year, I too have been “verbally abused and threatened too many times to count.”
I therefore must ask the question: what is wrong with our society that this abuse is so widespread?
It is not just headteachers, it is not just school staff generally that suffer this. I have seen television news reporting that NHS staff suffer it too. At its most extreme, we also must contend with the killing of MPs.
Self-help books sell well, and we can look to manage it individually. We know not to seek happiness in the approval of others, we have known this for thousands of years.
One of my favourite writers, Seneca, told of how we are moulded just as pebbles are smoothed by friction, and that a sign of strength is not to be hurt by insults. As a fist hitting a wall will only hurt itself, so we should be unfazed by the insults, rise above the emotions and concentrate on the goal.
Before him, Plato talked of a “bird’s eye view.”
The weathers, clouds and storms of our planet are insignificant within the immensity of the cosmos, they exist but are irrelevant to its progress. We can look to emulate the cosmos, rise above the rudeness so it becomes like a toast crumb in bed: irritating but insignificant.
But the unwelcome noise wears. The Teachers’ Pensions website is so overloaded with the avalanche of teachers and headteachers looking to get out, that it is currently unable to cope with the demand. It has taken on extra staff but is still unable to provide straightforward answers to enable prospective retiring staff to get the information they need to make their decision.
We had better get ready for some very large class sizes or alternatively confront the following questions:
What are our society’s values?
Is this really what we want?
If not, what are the big leaders planning to do?
A few years ago, there was some noise made about “British Values.” They are good values. Why are they not promoted more?
All I ask of my children at school is that they are hardworking and polite. It is simple.
All I try to do myself is to get the job done, nicely. I try.
Yet I am insulted, headteachers generally are insulted.
I was told before being appointed that some headteachers are threatened with solicitors, the rest threatened with being thrown through windows.
Public sector workers suffer abuse quite routinely now. It has become an expected part of the job for some. Nobody is surprised anymore when there is social media abuse of footballers and celebrities, and I have even known it to be directed at foster carers. No sector of society is exempt.
We have had Covid. We were sick of it. Now there is the war in Ukraine. We want it to end.
We have had, and still have, big things to deal with.
When government gets the chance, I urge ministers to spend some time looking at society’s values. We would all like it to be nicer.
A good place to start could be for the prime minister publicly to distance himself from the disgraceful 2011 comments made by Oliver Letwin, who said that the public sector needs “discipline and fear.”
These comments were made a whole decade ago, but clearly, they have not been forgotten and their impact is being felt.
