Homeschooling could have a long-term positive impact on education

I used to fancy myself as a good teacher. I don’t want to sound arrogant – I know how tough it is to master – but I thought that with the right training, coaching and support, I’d have been OK. I like public speaking, I have plenty of passion for my subject (history and politics, I guess) and I find young people fascinating.

But these days I have significant doubts. Despite having spent 13 years writing about education – in which I’ve visited hundreds of schools, watched hundreds of lessons, and delivered a fair few careers talks – I’ve pretty much never actually had a crack at teaching itself.

Now – thanks to Covid-19 – I have. And I’m fairly sure I’m crap at it. I don’t have the patience, insight or empathy. Trying to teach my four year old daughter maths, reading and writing, I get frustrated way too easily and I become grumpy when a lesson isn’t going well.

My wife, on the other hand, appears to be loving it. If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s trying to simultaneously give 100 per cent to her actual job, I’d say she’d be having the time of her life. When she’s holding the whiteboard marker (and I’m upstairs working) I hear cheers and whooping as yet another phonics lesson lands successfully. I hear the joy of learning.

The contrast with my efforts is striking. When she’s up in the office earwigging downstairs, all she’ll hear is me getting increasingly annoyed that 4+3=7 just won’t go in however many times I try to explain it.

It seems to me that the parent community has been divided into two by Coronavirus: those who, like my wife, are finding home-school a fantastic adventure, and those who find it – in the immortal words of a good friend of mine – “the worst thing that has ever happened to me”.

The good news is that both should represent good news for the profession.

Firstly, it is possible that those in the first category might eventually wind up plugging the never-ending shortage of new entrants to teaching. Having experimented with teaching at the kitchen table and found they like it, I wonder if this enthusiasm might, for some, ultimately convert to applications to teacher training courses. Some will be forced out of their current careers by the tsunami of redundancy notices hitting the economy and will turn to teaching as a fresh start, others will surely make the move in search of something that offers a greater sense of self-worth in a post-Covid world.

Secondly, respect for teachers, especially among those of us failing as part-time pedagogs, is surely only going to increase as a result of being forced to sub in: I suspect we’ll hear a lot less of the ancient and damning “if you can’t do, teach” slur in the years to come. (Personally, I feel certain that the Reception teachers who took my daughter from illiterate to reading during the Autumn term are members of some kind high priests of a cult of alchemy.)

It has become clear that I am in the latter category. Having visited many, many wonderful schools and witnessed many, many brilliant teachers, I have long been in awe of the teaching profession, but I never realised, if I’m being honest, quite how hard it is.

For too long the education sector has been hamstrung by a lack of public esteem for the teachers who work in it. The status of the profession has been a real problem for attracting the brightest and best into the profession. Generations of governments have tried to do something about this – and failed.

Is it possible that cracking this particularly tricky policy nut will be a significant silver lining to the darkest and bleakest of clouds? I hope so.