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Blog post for Sunday 8 March 2026.
Deskilling Teachers Part 2
open.substack.com/pub/andrewold/…
Andrew Old
254.3K posts
Andrew Old
@oldandrewuk
Teacher. Any attempt to suggest that the word battleground in my blog title refers to my classroom or my students indicates you have lost the argument.
Joined December 2009
- Seeing Theresa May accidentally throw away 4 guaranteed years in high office, makes me feel better about the time I lost an Amazon giftcard
- It's accepted that the worst-behaved children and the most selfish and incapable parents soak up a huge proportion of schools' time and resources. However, nobody ever really analyses how much worse this makes school for the average child.
- If you have never been responsible for teaching a class of thirty teenagers, please assume that you don't know what it is like to teach a class of thirty teenagers. Humility about this will help us all get along.
- Replying to @Miss_Snuffy @LordLucasCD and @arc_forumThe only lies I've seen about what happened have been from the far right. Please reconsider your tweet.
- Replying to @Miss_Snuffy @LordLucasCD and @arc_forumThey were literally attacking a mosque. If that cannot be described as far right, what can?
- The point of a school is for children to learn. Teachers aren't therapists, priests, politicians or substitute parents. We are there to teach.
- If you are a consultant who is claiming schools shouldn't exclude here's what you should do: 1) Quit. 2) Become a teacher. 3) Get a job in a tough school (not in leadership). 4) Tell the time tabler you'd like to teach the toughest classes they have because you're such an expert.
- Teachers are in the classroom to teach and manage the class. They are not there to give therapy; stand in for parents; make friends, or entertain.
- It’s striking how much education research concentrates on the experiences of excluded or suspended children, while ignoring the far larger group affected by their peers' misbehaviour.
- If teachers in a school have an excessive workload, then pretty much any full-time teacher can get into trouble for not keeping up with all that is required of them. This is a gift to bullies in positions of authority, and we should probably pay more attention to this.
- "Kids don't learn from people they don't like". Of course, they do. We all do. And it would not be remotely realistic to expect every child to like every teacher.
- It's not possible to differentiate a lesson so that is equally useful for those who already know the lesson content, and those who do not have the prerequisite knowledge to understand the lesson content.
- Edtech gurus seem to be the only people who are unaware how much stress and wasted time is caused by technology in schools not working. Teachers don't need new software; we need hardware that works reliably. It's absurd that anyone is arguing for exams to be taken online.