PREMIUM: Why I write under a pseudonym

Efforts to silence teachers are common.

Adopting a disguise before blogging.

When I was a postgraduate at university, there was another Andrew in my social circle. He was an undergraduate. To distinguish between us, he became “Young Andrew”. I became “Old Andrew”. For that reason, I began using “oldandrew” as part of my personal email address. After becoming a teacher, I used that email address when I set up an account on the now-defunct TES forums, so it made sense to adopt the username “oldandrew”. Years of activity on that site led to me setting up my first blog. I stuck with that name and used variations on it, such as “Andrew Old”, on that blog and on social media related to my blogging activity.

My real name is no big secret, I will mention it in this post, once I get past the paywall. Originally it was a useful level of anonymity if I wanted to say anything controversial. I learnt in the '2000s that it was frowned upon to speak out as a teacher. A TES journalist had asked me for my opinion and, with my agreement, published it under my real name, describing me as a teacher at a Birmingham comprehensive. The article mentioned that I was concerned about behaviour in schools.¹ I was shocked when my headteacher came to see me to ask if it was me. He told me that he had been having phone conversations with other headteachers in Birmingham, who were all trying to work out who it was. At the time, there were over a hundred secondary schools in Birmingham. It seems ridiculous now that anyone cared, but England then was a lot like Scotland is now. Teachers were not supposed to admit in public that there was a behaviour crisis going on, and I had come close to doing that.

That incident made it clear to me that it was best not to express opinions about teaching under my real name. However, it was too late to have a great level of secrecy. My personal email address continued to have “oldandrew” in it for many years. Many people knew that I was active on the TES forums. One person, probably somebody I had known in real-life, revealed my real name in a comment on someone’s blog. As time went on, and people in influential positions began to listen to me, I stopped being as careful as I once was. I began attending education events and meeting up with like-minded bloggers and tweeters. This hardly helped maintain my secret identity. A couple of people,² who really wanted to silence me, started trying to expose me. A number of people used my real name by accident. However, it was no longer the case that I needed much secrecy.

There were several reasons for this:

• I was not seeking promotion.

• I no longer wrote directly about my recent teaching experiences.

• The political climate had changed. Many of my most unspeakable thoughts (such as thinking we should enforce rules; teach explicitly and pass on knowledge) were becoming orthodoxies in secondary schools, if not in the wider education establishment.

• I worked mainly on short-term contracts and, as a maths teacher, new jobs were usually easy to get.

• I used Twitter to find work. People were employing me because I was Andrew Old. There was no longer any risk of losing my job if my school leaders discovered who I was.

Various people have accidentally used my real name over the years with no great crisis. However, I kept my pseudonym for several reasons.