The Education sector has caught my eye this week as the National Union of Teachers threatened strike action over pay and the government announced a new advertising campaign to persuade people to join the profession. I also heard a radio phone-in on the subject which included an interview with the so-called ‘Frank Chalk’, an ex-teacher who has written a book called “It’s your time you’re wasting: A teacher’s tales of classroom hell”. Frank painted a vivid picture of life in the classroom that bore no relation to the inspirational scenes portrayed in the new adverts (which you can see online at the link below). While some classrooms in some schools may be like those featured in the adverts, there are also many that are filled with the kind of anti-social behaviour we hear about on the news and which Frank Chalk describes. It left me wondering where this aspect of school life is in the adverts.
This got me thinking about the advertising strategy being employed here. Yes, there is marketing capital in the inspirational aspects of teaching children, but you can’t expect to bury the less attractive parts of the role and hope that nobody, including existing teachers, notices. In one important respect, recruiting for teachers is no different to recruiting staff in any field – there has to be congruence between the promises made during the hiring process and the reality that is experienced when the person starts work. In the recruitment trade they call this a ‘realistic job preview’. For example, you wouldn’t show an aspiring accountant the CEO’s office at interview and then set them to work in a store cupboard in the basement!!
In the same way, it’s no good promising teachers a zen-like learning environment full of engaged and ambitious students and then sending them into a battlefield of verbal and physical abuse played out to a soundtrack of mobile phone ringtones.
So maybe it’s time for the government’s advertisers to show a more realistic picture of what life is like for teachers – good and bad. With 24 hour media and personal publishing on the Internet, stories from disenfranchised teachers will always be out there. That’s why everyone now knows that there are many more administrative moments for teachers these days than there are inspirational ones.
Ensuring that people feel good about their jobs and have a sense of purpose every day is the secret to retaining employees and attracting talented new ones. I think a more productive strategy would be to invest in improving the reality that teachers have to experience and then report that in the advertising campaigns. If well-being and engagement levels were raised significantly for staff the good news stories would soon start to flow.
See the ads here: http://www.tdanewadvertising.com/uyh_tvads.htm
Read more about the story and a phone-in on the subject here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/fivelivebreakfast/2008/01/our_schools_need_you.html
Posted by Cary Cooper
