Every week my company has several calls from teachers and Heads looking for drug rehab services. The majority are people with alcohol problems, although a minority are for other drugs like cocaine and prescription medications.
Our business is helping people and companies find the most appropriate treatment facilities for their addiction that fit within their budgets. Our advice is free for clients and our income comes from a small referral fee paid by clinics, after the client has successfully completed their rehab.
After a highly successful career in the music industry I set up Re-Cover because of my own experiences in addressing my addiction problems. After rehab, I realised that I wanted to put something back into society and for me the way to do this was to try and provide people with better impartial advice about what centres and approaches might help them overcome their problems.
What made me think about education came from the number of educators who call us, from seeing the tremendous pressures teachers work under as the father of child at an inner London school and finally from seeing recent reports about the drinking habits of professionals, specifically young teachers. On the Times Education Supplement’s website, drinking and teaching in a forum debate attracted an exceptionally high response rate with over 1300 postings.
Are teachers more likely to abuse drugs than any group of professionals? No, but they make up a far higher percentage of our callers than many other professions. While researching this issue it became clear that part of the change stems from the huge influx of new young teachers into the profession and their very different attitude to drugs, particularly to alcohol and to binge drinking.
What concerns me is both the personal impact of drug addition amongst teachers but also the potential impact this has on educational standards. How can a teacher teach effectively if they are hung-over or drug affected? The simple answer is they can’t and their students’ learning suffers. Alcohol alone is thought to cost the UK £6.4bn each year just through absenteeism. That’s more than the government is spending on Building Schools for the Future and two-thirds of the current cost of the 2012 Olympics.
If we are serious about improving educational standards, we need to ensure that those in charge of the classroom each day are fit to teach.
Rehab will only be an option for a small percentage of teachers with addiction problems; what is more important is addressing the wider issue of drug impairment amongst teachers, particularly the belief that it’s safer (from a career perspective) to suffer in silence in front of a class of students, than it is to seek help.
David Gilmour
www.re-cover.org.uk
