IT is a long established and common sense fact, that what and how people learn can never be set in tablets of stone.

Children and adults of both sexes, of all cultures, learn at different rates at different times. There are a multitude of factors which affect learning, negative and positive, many of which teachers have no control over at all. Nevertheless, it is this unpredictable and exciting aspect of learning that initially motivates people to want to teach. Add to this the seemingly boundless energy of kids, the constant noise of human contact, and the enormous amount of knowledge and understanding that schools generate in the course of a single day, then the scene should be set for a rewarding job in teaching.

Unfortunately, as your excellent feature on teacher shortages pointed out, many graduates either don't want to teach, or leave soon after starting, because reality and common sense just don't match up. Add to this a bitter concoction of cynicism, anger, disillusionment and alienation among long-standing teachers, then the scene is set for a deep crisis in learning and teaching, which no amount of cheap financial trickery masked as "incentives" will solve.

So what has gone wrong? The rot began to set in at the end of the 1980s. The Tories pushed and legalised two false ideas. One, that educational "achievement" and "failure" were down to the individual. The proven notion that economic background affected educational attainment and job prospects was ditched. From now on, if a child "failed", it was the fault of the child and the teacher. Never mind that the child's parents may well be unemployed, or use English as a second language, or have special needs of their own, etc, etc. None of that mattered any more. Pressures on both pupil and teacher edged up.

The second false idea was that education could only be provided through control and management. The 1988 Education Act introduced league tables, monitoring and inspection, regular testing, a national curriculum and OFSTED. Schools were encouraged to opt out. Competition was now the order of the day. Head teachers began the process of becoming, not better teachers, but accountants in charge of their own fiefdoms. Layer upon layer of managers were created within schools with all the paperwork that necessarily involves. Draconian inspections by OFSTED, added to a climate of pressure and stress, has claimed untold numbers of personal tragedies among the teaching profession and continues to do so.

Privilege

The promise that things would get better under New Labour was an illusion. Blair, himself a product of educational privilege, agreed with every jot and detail of the idiocy unleashed by the Tories in 1998. Indeed, their Green Paper, a hotchpotch of carrots and sticks, intended to take schools into areas Thatcher wouldn't dare take them -- the private sector.

Under New Labour, the commercialisation of childhood and schooling proceeds at an ever-faster pace. The outcome is that education policy is no longer driven by educational research which tries to enlighten all of us as to how, why, and what people learn, but by private industry who tell us what kids should learn to make them cheap and flexible workers and consumers. The so-called "standards" for all this that Ministers, MPs, and their mouthpieces constantly bellow about are hitched to examination results. They keep getting better. That's fine. But as long as our pupils end up in the drudgery, stress and alienation that Blair is pleased to call "work", all talk of "standards" is meaningless.

Successful pupils become teachers. They enter a world of drudgery and stress legalised by both Tories and New Labour because the former are contemptuous of learning as anything other than an exercise in getting a job, and the latter have neither the wit nor spine to offer an alternative. Is it any wonder that education is in deep crisis?

Urgent

There is an urgent need for a debate on the future of education. But given the utter contempt with which classroom teachers, parents and pupils are treated by career politicians; the arrogance that masks the ignorance, and the complete dearth of alternative ideas that challenge educational policy within the ranks of New Labour, then the crisis will continue.

If we want more teachers in schools, we need to show that teaching is worthwhile, meaningful and full of the excitement that fresh knowledge and understanding always generates. In the meantime, as a union, we will continue to fight and campaign alongside other unions and parents' groups to improve the quality of our working conditions and those of our pupils.

Barry Conway

Secretary, Bolton NUT.

Georges Lane, Ince