Welcome back to the shit show.
First day back. Apparently, “we’re not where we need to be”… Fuck this! First training session. This industry is fucked! Within half an hour, the room is dead behind the eyes. Teachers go from looking ten years younger to one of the Olivia Atwood £100k+ atrocities: dead under stretched skin. Teachers are disengaged, already checking the clock. Instead of being inspired, we’re dry fucked with data, graphs, acronyms, and the same tedious obsession with results. Training isn’t training anymore; it’s a performance review in disguise, a guilt trip dressed up as “professional development.” It’s the opposite of motivating. But worst of all, the system pretends this is “support.” wtf?
Problem
What’s presented as training is actually a lecture on performance metrics. It’s not about improving practice; it’s about control. Teachers are drowned in stats that tell us what we already know: kids are struggling, progress is slow, grades aren’t perfect, and then subtly (or blatantly) told it’s our fault. The word percentage is thrown around more than a cricket ball (remembering summer). The linguistic tricks are always there: “closing the gap,” “raising attainment,” “driving outcomes.” What they mean is “you’re not good enough.” It’s not professional growth; it’s professional shaming. And it happens year after year, to the point where most of us stop listening. How the fuck does no presenter realise the irony of the fact they talk about trying to be wary of cognitive overload, whilst presenting 50 graphs over 100 slides of stats? Are you fucking serious?
Causes
But this is the issues, leadership and government are obsessed with measurable outcomes. If it can’t be shoved into a spreadsheet, it doesn’t count. Add in the fear of Ofsted, the fetish for league tables, and the endless recycling of buzzfuck from glossy “research” that no one in the room fucking believes, and you’ve got training designed to tick boxes, not develop teachers. Here is handy scapegoating; data sessions are perfect for offloading blame onto the very people keeping the system afloat. There’s a dark logic: keeping teachers anxious and guilty makes them compliant. Engagement theory, Jonah Berger, Ariely, Shotton—all of them make the same point: attention is precious, and if you want to hold it, you need value, novelty, and relevance. Instead, we’re spoon-fed monotony, designed to drain rather than energise. More white noise than a CEO golfing event.
Effects
The impact is fucking brutal. Morale tanks. Teachers feel undervalued, patronised, and constantly under suspicion. Instead of leaving training with ideas, you leave with shame and exhaustion. It’s corrosive, driving good people out of the profession, leaving those who stay burnt out and resentful. It kills creativity. When training tells you the only thing that matters is a number on a spreadsheet, why innovate? Why risk? And students feel it. A demoralised teacher is less present, less engaged, less willing to go the extra mile. The obsession with outcomes achieves the exact opposite: worse outcomes. It’s a feedback loop of failure, fuelled by bullshit.
Solutions
Stop using training as a weapon. Make it about actual teaching. Bring in sessions that spark ideas, that remind us why we got into this job in the first place. Use evidence properly—not fuck us with guilt but to offer practical strategies. Give space for collaboration, for teachers to share what works, not just to absorb the latest dick twat’s diktat. Recognise that morale matters: a teacher who feels valued and supported will deliver better lessons, full stop. And for the love of God, cut the fucking graphs. If I wanted to watch numbers dance on a screen, I’d go to the Excel world championships…. It must be a thing, right?
Conclusion
The first day of training should be about setting a tone for the year: energised, purposeful, hopeful. Instead, it’s become a ritual of demoralisation, an exercise in control that leaves teachers checked out before they’ve even finished their first caffeine kick. This isn’t good enough. If schools are serious about retention, about outcomes, about the wellbeing of staff and students, then training has to change. Less blame, more value. Less guilt, more growth. Teachers don’t wank over data; we don’t care… we’re educators. Treat us like it. And if leadership can’t grasp that, then it’s not just morale that’s fucked, it’s the “culture”, it’s the future of education.
