Well of course it’s a shame about all the illiteracy says the

“Well, of course it’s a shame about all the illiteracy,” says the minister to John Humphrys, “but what can I do? I can’t very well intervene, can I?”And professions in Britain have sometimes exhibited not a sensitivity, but rather a contempt, for their clients. In one episode of Channel 4’s brilliantly subversive documentary series on the NHS, The Trust, the consultants were shown to have the most appalling and manipulative attitudes towards their patients’ views about resuscitation. For years teachers I knew used literally to believe that what went on in schools was no one else’s business at all.An illustration here. Professor Brighouse is a great believer in the school being a community in which the number of what he calls “specialness opportunities” – the creative relationships between teachers, support learning staff, peer tutors, mentors and learners – should be expanded.

This clearly means breaking down some demarcations between the various adults who work in schools. Yet the teaching union response to the plan to enhance the role of classroom assistants has varied from the “peasants in the classroom” of the NASUWT, to the “Oh, it’s OK, they’ll just help with the registers” of the others.Let’s take another related example Most agree that teaching workloads are too great It would be a good thing to reduce contact time. This week the Government announced that it was setting up a pilot in 32 schools, under the general supervision of a working group composed of teacher, headteacher and staff unions, employers and various national bodies. The idea is to explore how all staff can be used to better effect and how technology can help.Immediately the NUT complains that the pilot does not specifically include its own demands. The Government, according to the union, “should have been prepared to pilot the proposals.. of a limit to the teaching week”. This completely negative approach would have meant death to idea of schools, as units, attempting to solve their own problems.Here we are all in a bind. The unions want to set limits to the working week which would compromise their own professionalism and tie the hands of local heads.

And they are prepared to threaten parents with strike action if they do not get their way. Well, you can have the odd one-day stoppage – it’s not so different from an Inset day or the school being used as a polling station. Much more than that, though, and what trust there is between parents and teachers will evaporate faster than you can say Doug McAvoy.Yet if we demand professionalism, we must begin to concede autonomy. It is time, in primary schools at any rate, to begin to relax the curriculum and allow Professor Brighouse’s communities to flourish.David.Aaronovitch btinternet . One wouldn’t normally accuse Tony Blair of naivety or the Labour left of missing a trick when it comes to anti-Americanism.