ABSTRACT
The vital element within the educational system responsible for children’s learning is the class teacher. No Act of Parliament, no reform in educational policy, no rhetoric from political platforms, no increase in resources, and no educational research or theory, can have any impact upon the quality of children’s learning or lead to improvements in children’s educational opportunities unless in some way they enhance or inform the practice of the teacher in the classroom. Within the classroom there is, in the final analysis, only one expert and one person who can be responsible for children’s learning-and that is the class teacher. Whatever our opinions about teachers, however much politicians or parents may wish to control them and what they teach and how they teach, we are stuck with and had better accept the fact that once children enter the school we hand over to the teacher responsibility for their learning. The awkward paradox is that while we must necessarily accept this, it is also the case that teachers are increasingly scrutinised by those educational experts in all their political, administrative, inspectorial, and academic guises who legislate for and seek to shape and control class teachers’ professional activity. The teachers who hold the chief responsibility for the education of children are (and it is probably by virtue of this fact) being increasingly subjected to outside influence and control. This state of affairs needs to be redressed and the means have to be found whereby class teachers become a major source of educational knowledge, expertise and authority. Teachers must be recognised as professional people who have a distinctive body of expertise and whose authority in matters to do with teaching is acknowledged and respected by those members of the education service who determine policy and allocate resources. Even if politicians and educationists find this hard to accept they may as well do so because once the door of the classroom closes it is the class teacher who is responsible for educating our children.
