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BOOK OF THE WEEK

HEAD TRAUMA: THE BRUISING DIARY OF A HEADTEACHER

by Nick Smith (Michael O'Mara £16.99, pp304)

Have you ever thought about a career in teaching? Well, jolly good luck. Please, I beg you, read this book before making any rash decisions.

To give you some idea of what to expect, here is what happened to Nick Smith on his first day of teaching practice at a London boys' school.

He arrived at the main entrance to be confronted by a 'big and scary' group of boys in hoodies, all smoking. One of them demanded to know who he was.

On learning Smith was a trainee science teacher, the boy's attitude softened. He politely gave his name as Dean, said that the main gate was out of use, and directed the new arrival to a staff entrance.

At the chalk face: Inspirational former headteacher Dr Nick Smith. The first thing he did as a new head was to tackle poor behaviour by making the school rules and uniform code clearer

Ah, perhaps teenagers aren't so bad after all. Smith marched over to the door indicated with new confidence, pushed it open, and found himself in the toilets: 'I had the extreme humiliation of having to walk out to the raucous cheers of a triumphant pack of 15-year-old boys.'

It was pretty much downhill from there. During his stint at the school, pupils set fire to his lab, stole Smith's trousers, locked him in a cupboard, and made him cry. And he just about managed to stay conscious after being hit on the back of the head by a flying textbook.

If you think the pupils sound bad, you should meet some of the parents.

One afternoon a mother turned up during chemistry, ignored Smith completely, and told her son to identify the classmate who had been 'disrespecting' her.

She then removed a plastic cricket bat from her bag, and launched herself at the offender (it was Dean, by the way).

One afternoon a mother launched at her child's classmate with a cricket bat, Dr Smith recounts in the nook

Smith, fending off whacks from the bat, managed to drag her away, but it took the aid of two teaching assistants and a caretaker to escort her from the premises.

On another occasion he introduced himself at a parents' evening to a boy's father, explaining that he was his son's tutor. 'So bloody what?' the father replied.

On learning that the lad had a gift for drama and might audition for the school play, the father prodded Nick in the chest and ranted: 'Listen, short-arse, don't you go putting ideas into his head. I'm not letting him mess about with a bunch of poofters.'

The boy did attend auditions. When his father found out, he beat the boy senseless, breaking his jaw and fracturing his skull.

It was for this that Smith had given up his job as a junior doctor, but he did discover there were moments at school that made all the trouble seem worthwhile.

Such as the time when Dean, coyly making sure he wasn't observed by his classmates, arrived with a present — and an apology for being so difficult — on the trainee teacher's last day of placement.

Right from the start, Smith had ambitions to be a headmaster, and this diary tells the story of his journey from a junior job at a school in Cornwall (where he discovered 'it was not humanly possible to make the nitrogen cycle exciting') through 15 years' hard slog at the whiteboard to a headship in Devon at Torquay Grammar School for Girls.

As far as I can tell, he never failed an interview — even when his car rammed into the back of a Mercedes owned by the vice-principal who was about to interview him.

Ofsted might have admired Dr Smith, but he doesn't return the compliment: 'The Ofsted inspection regime is unfit for purpose', he writes. 'It does more harm than good'

The first thing he did as a new head was to tackle poor behaviour by making the school rules and uniform code clearer and demanding that both were enforced.

He introduced house competitions, and wrote the words for a new school song. And he must have been doing something right because results improved and the school was upgraded to 'outstanding' by Ofsted.

In fact, it was all going so well that he felt able to boast in morning assembly: 'We have all had a ridiculous amount of success recently.' That was the plan.

What he actually said was: 'We have all had a ridiculous amount of sex recently.'

It took four minutes and 42 seconds for order to be restored.

Ofsted might have admired Dr Smith, but he doesn't return the compliment: 'The Ofsted inspection regime is unfit for purpose', he writes. 'It does more harm than good.'

Well-educated Finland, he notes, abolished school inspections in the early 1990s.

Right from the start, Dr Smith had ambitions to be a headmaster. And it wasn't badly behaved children or difficult abusive parents that eventually drove Smith out of education

He is also scathing about the Department for Education.

During his time as a head, he served under seven different education secretaries (16 over his entire career), six of whom have not lasted two full years in post, he says. 'This has not stopped each of them from trying to impose their vision of education upon schools.'

Quoting a recent survey, he notes that teachers in England work an average of up to 50 hours each week — more than their counterparts in any of the world's developed countries. Much of this is devoted to administration, caused by changing policy.

Quoting a recent survey, he notes that teachers in England work an average of up to 50 hours each week — more than their counterparts in any of the world's developed countries

So it wasn't badly behaved children or difficult abusive parents that eventually drove Smith out of education — it was Gavin Williamson, whose 'golden age of educational mismanagement' during the Covid crisis proved to be the last straw.

In the first 90 days of the pandemic, his education department issued more than 200 pieces of guidance to schools. 

Sometimes five memos arrived on a single day: 'Management of schools throughout this period was characterised by 11th-hour announcements, policy flip-flops and an impenetrable tsunami of rules, updates, guidance, press conferences and bulletins.'

Setting aside the dreary routine of memos and admin, it's easy to get the impression that teaching would be a wonderful career if it weren't for all those rude, badly-behaved children.

Smith even quotes a teacher in support of this idea: 'Children nowadays are self-indulgent; they gobble up sweets and prefer gossip to exercise.

'They have terrible manners, they argue with their parents, they are contemptuous of authority and have little respect for their teachers.'

That was the teacher and philosopher Socrates, writing more than 2,500 years ago.

But at least the children of ancient Greece didn't steal his trousers.