Opinion
Education Opinion

Oranges & Lemons

February 17, 2006 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The roof leaks. There is no library. The hall doubles as the school cafeteria. New teachers, overwhelmed by working conditions other professionals can barely imagine, drop out, burn out, or flake out.

This could be a description of life in an inner city school somewhere in the United States. But it isn’t. It’s a snapshot of Edith Neville School in King’s Cross, a run-down patch of central London. Wallace, a senior feature writer for the Times Educational Supplement, visited Edith Neville for more than a year and chronicles with articulate empathy the efforts of its faculty and staff to counter the many gaps in the impoverished background of their students, four-fifths of whom speak languages other than English at home.

Although American readers might find some of the terminology in the book strange— substitutes, for example, are called “supply teachers”—they will find the issues confronting English schools all too familiar. Educators there as here struggle with incessant government directives, erratic and shrinking budgets, lack of parent involvement, and the stress of mandatory tests. But the wonder, Wallace suggests, isn’t that the job is so hard; it’s that there are still bright, able, dedicated people who would rather do this than anything else.

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Education Briefly Stated: October 11, 2023
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
8 min read
Education Briefly Stated: September 27, 2023
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
9 min read
Education Briefly Stated: September 20, 2023
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
8 min read
Education From Our Research Center What's on the Minds of Educators, in Charts
Politics, gender equity, and technology—how teachers and administrators say these issues are affecting the field.
1 min read
Stylized illustration of a pie chart
Traci Daberko for Education Week