Trivium 21c ltd.

Schools will  face even more of a funding squeeze after the next general election. Savings will need to be made. The biggest cost year on year that most schools face is staffing. Cheaper staff costs means savings can be made. The Schools’ Minister Lord Nash has said that: “Savings could come through … a more efficient use of teachers and teaching assistants and a better use of IT… We all know that teachers spend a lot of time preparing lesson plans rather than focusing on how well they deliver those lessons. This is a complete waste of time.” What does this mean for the future of our schools? I have a dystopian view of where this might lead, as it makes absolute sense I offer these ideas to Lord Nash with my regards, for his due consideration:

The teaching force should be shorn of all its older, expensive, workers. A few of the best ones should be retained to write lesson plans. Young teachers should be given bigger classes and smaller classes should be taken by teaching assistants. Each classroom should be monitored by CCTV to allow a ‘Low Level Disruption and Discipline Enforcement SWAT’ team to intervene at the first sight of trouble. Rather than waste time out of the classroom the teachers and TAs who are good at delivery should be in the classroom all the time and read the prepared lessons out from an autocue which is either positioned at the back of the class or transmitted to the Google Glasses that all teachers will be required to wear. The pupils should give in their work at the end of lessons and this work should be sent off to be marked by other elderly teachers maybe even the same ones who write the plans, or by computer software that can read essays. Maybe the work could be marked immediately if written directly onto a tablet computer.

Instead of PE all pupils will play Rollerball.

Mindfullness training will be provided by a sleep inducing gas that is pumped into classrooms at the end of the day, this will enable staff and students to sleep to cue and enable them to wake up next day already in position for a day of learning… This will save on travel costs and also free our roads up from that bloody awful school run traffic that is a blight in many of our cities.

Companion post: 51 Year Lesson Plan