Guest Blog: Playwright Alex MacKeith On Education and SCHOOL PLAY

School Play is set in the headteacher's office of St Barnabas' Primary School on 5 July 2017, the day SATs results are released. The headteacher, Jo Fell, knows that these results will determine the school's future as well as her own: over the course of one day her impulse to retain control brings her into conflict with her staff and superiors.

Her administrative assistant, Lara, needs to know the results to apply for the Pupil Premium Awards. Tom, a private tutor employed through the premium to raise literacy and numeracy standards, won't leave the office. As demands for answers and explanations grow, the fault lines of responsibility and accountability in our current education are brutally exposed.

The landscape of British primary education has not yet been explored on stage, but it demands our attention. It is impossible to answer what it's like to be a primary teacher in the UK today; teachers are not a homogenous mass, and answers will vary between schools, councils, catchment areas and year groups. School Play doesn't so much answer that question as encourage it to be asked all the more vigorously, exploring the perspectives of educational practitioners at various stages of their careers: the head teacher, the trainee, the private tutor.

The research process involved visits to primary schools around London for Charlie Parham, the director, and Anna Reid, the designer. Their attention to detail has been meticulous: they have created a space that teachers recognise and in which this fiction can be told truthfully. The process continued during rehearsals, with the entire company dedicated to the honest portrayal of teachers and commitment to better understanding of primary education in the UK.

Teaching is a vocation; every teacher interviewed during research for this piece has been engaged, enthusiastic and inventive under immense pressure. School administrative staff who gave time to offer guidance and consultation are likewise resolute in their commitment to their schools and pupils. Though a work of fiction, the play was shaped by their testimonies and attitudes.

Media coverage proclaiming an education system in crisis has become so prevalent that there is a real risk of normalising what is an unacceptable state of affairs. Teachers are tasked with often unmanageable workloads, growing class sizes, bureaucratic systems to record pupil data, progress and staff performance, and the overhaul of the National Curriculum and SATs testing (compounded with leaked test papers and a retroactively altered assessment system).

The need to satisfy Ofsted inspectors is exacerbated the implicit threat that any failing school can be converted into an academy by the Secretary of State. On top of this, the National Audit Office has announced that schools face 8% cuts in real terms by 2020.

There is a minatory and borderline aggressive posture mounted by those in government, one which refuses to trust teachers even as it limits the resources by which they can better innovate and nurture the pupils under their care. Now, more than ever, education deserves preservation, renewal and investment: empowering teachers, not cutting their funds, is a step towards those requirements.

Many of those interviewed have expressed a desire for greater freedom to practise their discipline; autonomy is curtailed by the sheer weight of bureaucracy imposed upon them. An issue raised repeatedly is the lack of teacher involvement in crafting education policy. Refusing to call upon their expertise is not only arrogant but shockingly regressive.

Education is the foundation of any democratic society. Educated citizens are better able to criticise institutions and campaign for their improvement. They are better able to sympathise with the positions of fellow citizens and make political decisions accordingly.

Perhaps most importantly, they are better able to develop as inquisitive, emotionally and mentally healthy individuals. School Play is aimed directly at a Government which refuses to listen or respond to the concerns of teachers. Successive Education Secretaries have lacked both imagination and sympathy: that is no excuse to deny future generations the ability to develop their own.

Inconsistent and incoherent education policy is a dereliction of duty to teachers and pupils alike. School Play is a social realist insight into a world many of us only glimpse, a story about a group of educational professionals who approach teaching from different stances but with the same intention: to better educate their pupils.

In their cultivation of sympathy, imagination, joy in the spoken and written word, primary education and theatre have much common ground. Teaching is in itself performative, an aspect of the production which resonated strongly with the teachers who have seen the piece. antic | face's production and their wonderful cast have crafted a show aligned with these values and in deep solidarity with teachers.

School Play at Southwark Playhouse until 25 February

Read our review of School Play

Photo credit: Guy Bell

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