Last week, shortly after David Cameron declared a  ‘war on mediocrity’ in schools, I returned to the classroom for the first time in 4 years; this time not as a teacher, but as a volunteer parent-helper in my son’s reception class.  I volunteered partly out of a sense of duty: my younger child attends pre-school 3 sessions a week, so I – at least in theory – had some ‘free’ time that I could put to good use, but also so that I could keep in touch with my son’s learning in a more meaningful way than simply trying to decipher the symbols written in his reading log each week. I was also intrigued to find out about the mechanics of a lower school day. What proportion was explicit teaching? How much ‘play’ was allowed? Just how do you teach a child to read and write? After six months’ attendance I had been able to garner very little information from my son: Me: ‘What did you do today?’ Son: ‘Ummm…we went on a school trip.’ Me: Really…?! Son: ‘No, just joking, Mummy. Do you have chocolate in your bag?’ Generally speaking, the more I ask, the more absurd the responses become.

In my teaching career as a secondary school English teacher, I had often grumbled about the small group of students each year who arrived with very poor reading and writing skills and had wondered aloud with colleagues just what primary schools had been doing with them. By the time they arrived at our gates, there was very little we could do to improve their basic skills. It was too late; and we were not equipped to teach children the basics of reading and writing.  Moreover, the curriculum required that these children write lengthy coursework essays and speak fluently for several minutes: the demands placed on them were dramatically and cruelly out of step with their abilities.

One year it was my task to coach – although ‘coax’ seems like a much more apt term – a class of students just like this through their English GCSE. For once, our department had been allocated an extra class in a year group, so instead of the usual 25-30 students I was faced with just 5. Any teacher in the state sector will tell you what a luxury this is. For one whole year I was largely able to focus upon basic reading and writing skills. We played word games, had competitions, talked about our lives and largely escaped the pressure and antagonism that inevitably comes with a larger class of more able students, where expectations are higher. In two years I didn’t achieve miracles but the almost-equivalent: one student achieved a grade C. Oh, and most teachers won’t be surprised to learn that after this small success, the following year the extra class was taken away to meet budget cuts not continued.

I hadn’t thought about this class in a while, but I was reminded of my time with them last week when I was given charge of small group of pupils in my son’s reception class. This group was finding number recognition a challenge and I was asked to take them out to the playground, draw a number line from 1-10, call out numbers and get them running and jumping to the correct place. In between the girls (who wanted to draw pictures of themselves on the ground) and the boys (who generally wanted to run anywhere on the playground, as fast as they could) we managed to do some number recognition, some counting and some number sentences (new-fangled name for sums!), which the children drew on the playground themselves.

What struck me about this experience was that by the time we came back into the classroom and the teacher asked me how we had got on, I was able to describe to her precisely what each child had been able to do and what they had struggled with. It was possible to outline each child’s current position and to work out their next step. Moreover, the rest of the class had been working in similarly small, focused groups, roughly according to their ability. In total, there were 4 adults in the classroom, working with a class of 28: one qualified teacher, one parent-helper, one childcare student and one teaching assistant. As someone used to teaching in the secondary classroom, I felt like my cup was overflowing.

However, I am aware that this is not necessarily the case for all lower/primary schools and I am also aware that this bounty of help gets less the further we progress up the year groups. To a certain extent, fair enough. If help is available, then surely it is best to concentrate it upon the early years, where the foundation skills of reading and writing are being taught. This is obviously wise, but it leads me back to my class of 5 GCSE students. I spent two years knowing – and teaching – them as individuals. I could tell you precisely where they were academically in detail and what they needed to do to improve. I knew them as people, which is far more important also a bonus. Now, I know that the great, invincible, omniscient, god of Ofsted would say that it is a teacher’s job to know every student in such precise, academic detail, no matter how large the class. But back on the human (and humane!), fallible, imperfect earth it is simply not possible to do this when your average class size is 30. Teaching assistants get scarcer in secondary schools and are largely concentrated upon individual students with specific learning and/or behavioural issues. The cup gets emptier the further up the scale you go.

So is it at all possible to apply the primary model of learning to the secondary school? Well, yes, I would like to hope so. But few people in positions of power will listen. And they certainly won’t listen to teachers who – after all – are not really professionals (but surrogate parents/social workers/doctors, financial advisors, sexual health counsellors – jack of trades) and who are content with mediocrity. We’ll be told that there’s no money/it’s not what they do in Japan/it’s not a sexy enough idea/ that’s why private schools exist.

Now, I have sat through years and years worth of training days and meetings which have introduced the next transformative teaching method: interactive whiteboards, hand-held whiteboards, laptops for every student, Ipads for every student, AfL, active learning… Governments have been voted in and out again, and still I feel like the little kid at the back of the class whispering the same heresy to his friend, ‘Smaller class sizes, more teachers…’ Is it radical? No. Is it sexy? No. Will it cost a lot? Yes (but I refer you to the above list of endless, money-wasting, futile initiatives). And we keep being reminded of our chain of expenditure  – a strong healthcare system relies upon a strong economy first goes the refrain. Now, I’m certainly no economic genius, but I would bet that there has to be a link between a strong education system and a strong economy…

As I prepare – with genuine excitement – for another week of helping in class, I really hope that someone is listening. Because, it’s really not complicated: like my little group playing with chalk in the playground, it’s just a case of simple numbers.