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Hero to Zero: Teaching throughout a pandemic

September 11, 2020
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Mid-March was an unpleasant time in most schools. With large swathes of students and staff isolating, and no guidance from the government, teachers pulled off a near impossible feat. They changed their crafted face-to-face lessons into online workable content in a matter of days.

Parents, now realizing just how tricky their children can be when confronted with five hours worth of lessons, took to Twitter to declare teachers should be millionaires. Although teachers were pulling their hair out trying to navigate the complexities of working remotely, they were being applauded (literally!) for their role in this worldwide crisis.

It didn't take long for the media to use teachers as a punching bag for societal ills. 'Let our Teachers be Heroes' declared the Daily Mail in May - portraying 'evil' teaching unions as the reason why the government could not get the country reopened, and teachers were clamoring to get all kids back in the classroom. But The Daily Mail failed to realize that teacher's unions - well - are made up of teachers.

The claim that teachers across the nation were desperate to get back into the classroom in June was false. Five percent of teachers felt it was safe to get students back to that point. That slowly lead to the drip-feed narrative that teachers had been given the chance to be heroes, shirking their moral duty by opposing the idea of returning without enough guidance.

Yet teachers rose to the challenge.

They spent hours upon hours studying documents from the Department of Education, ensuring they could reopen more classrooms in a safe environment. Again, they completely modified everything about how their job operates in a matter of days, with completely inadequate advice from the government.

Deserves a pat on the back right? Nope.

In August, The Daily Telegraph published a story about teacher's being accused of submitting 'implausibly high' predicted grades.' in an effort to defend the disastrous policy of standardization the government pursued after normal examinations for A Levels and GCSEs has been cancelled. Not only have teachers moved all curriculum and feedback online, kept key worker provisions going and dealt with educational issues surrounding the BLM, they also meticulously worked on their Centre Assessed Grades.

This involved trawling back through years worth of work, amassing as much quantitative and qualitative data as possible, giving each student a grade showing they were capable of receiving ranking of every student in the class. This was checked by senior leaders, who made further changes to ensure grades were fair and accurately reflected the individual, as well as the prior attainment of the school.

What the Telegraph failed miserably to understand, is teachers were awarding grades to students who were capable of getting them. Exams don't work like that. If I have five students who I think will all get an A, not all of them will actuallyget that A. They might get a topic that throws them off; they might misread the demands of a particular question; or they could just be having a bad day.

All of those students are capable of getting an A. Teachers cannot whack out their exam crystal ball and decide who will or won't flunk the exam. The teacher has done nothing unprofessional or unethical in accurately judging what a student is capable of getting.

To make matters worse, the algorithm that Gavin Williamson defended so much seems to have shown only state schools were off in their judgements. Whilst the the number of grades at A and above rose by 4.7 points in private schools, it rose by just 0.3 points in state colleges. Even today, the government has started to call these grades Teacher Assessed Grades, rather than their true name, Centre Assessed Grades (CAGs).

This reflects yet another element of this narrative, being played out as teachers who have inflated grades because they really couldn't be bothered and simply played lucky dip.

With a teacher retention crisis like never before, it's hard to see how the government will entice more people into the profession.

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Can tech help female entrepreneurs break the bias?

Women founders continue to come up against common challenges and biases
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Written by Kelly Devine, Division President UK & Ireland, Mastercard

Starting a business may have historically been perceived as a man’s game, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Research shows women are actually more likely than men to actively choose to start their own business – often motivated by the desire to be their own boss or to have a better work-life balance and spend more time with their family.

The recently published Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurship 2021 found that in the category of 'Aspiration Driven Entrepreneurship’ – capturing those who actively choose to start their own business – women in the UK surpass men: 60% vs 56%. And Mastercard research from February 2022 found 10% of female business owners started their business in the past two years compared to 6% of men – meaning women were 67% more likely to have started a business during the pandemic.

Yet, there are common challenges that women founders continue to come up against - not least the gender imbalance in the household and long-held biases which are still prevalent.

In the UK, women are almost three times more likely to be balancing care and home commitments than men, and this was exacerbated during the pandemic as the additional barriers of school closures and lockdowns meant that the care time of dependents rose significantly on a day-to-day level for women. In addition, women were less likely to have access to a home office, greatly impacting the work they were able to accomplish when working from home was the only option.

It's also widely known that female business owners are still more likely to struggle to access funding for their business ideas. According to Dealroom, all-women founding teams received just 1.4% of the €23.7bn invested into UK start-ups in 2021, while all-male leadership teams have taken almost 90% of the available capital.

Without financial support, and when juggling significant time pressures both at home and at work, how can women grow their companies and #BreaktheBias (as this year’s International Women’s Day termed it)? What tools or support can save them time and money, and give them the headspace they need to focus on building their business?

With female owned businesses collectively estimating revenue growth of £120 billion over the next five years, solving this problem is bigger than supporting women – it’s about supporting the national economy.

Using tech to level the playing field

There are clearly societal issues at play that need to be resolved. But when we look at the rise in technology businesses during the pandemic, we can plainly see an alternative source of support critical for business growth: digital tools.

A third of female business owners say new technologies will be crucial to the success of their business in the future and one in five say it is the most important thing for business growth.

With new technology comes new ways to pay, create, and work. And yet there are barriers that prevent business owners accessing this technology. Women are significantly more likely to say they want to use more digital tools but don’t know what is best for their business and also more concerned about the security of digital tools.

When technology is adopted by businesses – whether using online accounting solutions or messenger services for communicating with staff – it saves them time, allows them to maintain and grow their customer base, and ultimately increases cost savings and profit.

By drastically improving the training and support that is available to women-owned business to access and utilise technology we will allow these businesses to grow and succeed. And we know there is demand for it.

Research done by the IFC and Dalberg shows that female entrepreneurs are more likely to invest time and money in business development. This includes product development, customer base expansion, and digital tools and training and there are plenty of services available offering this type of support – many of them for free.

One such programme is Strive UK – an initiative of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth – which aims to reach 650,000 micro and small business owners across the UK and empower them with the tools they need to thrive in the digital economy through free guidance, helpful tools and one-to-one mentoring.

Working together with small business experts – Enterprise Nation, Be the Business and Digital Boost – we hope to ensure hundreds of thousands of UK female business owners have the tools they need to succeed and reach their ambitious goals. Because this ambition remains strong in the UK, with female business owners largely optimistic about the future despite the multitude of challenges they are facing. Four in ten say they will grow their business in the next five years – compared to only a third of male business owners – and they’re also 35% less likely than men to say they plan to downsize or close the business.

But if we do not empower female entrepreneurs to access the tools and technology they need to grow, there is a risk this optimism could be misplaced. Support programmes that provide business owners with guidance and mentorship can help ensure this isn’t the case, allowing female entrepreneurs to not only survive but thrive in the months and years ahead.