A FORMER English teacher has used her experiences in the classroom as inspiration for a new dystopian novel.

After eight years in her profession, Hannah Glickstein, from Stroud, became disillusioned with teaching because of the results focused curriculum, which she has used as fuel for her book, Eyeball Computer.

“Working in a school, you get a sense of how power works,” she said. “Schools are like a little society and you feel the legislation of what you’re doing and the changes of legislation, and how managers impose it upon you.”

The book focuses on a woman’s search for humanity in a world facing extinction. The protagonist ends up caring for a child refugee, and the relationship causes her to lose all faith in her former bosses.

Hannah’s idea grew after she taught English to sixth form students in London, as well as teaching at a secondary school in Tewkesbury, and she believes the current education system is solely designed for test results.

“It’s become about constantly trying to get the pupils from one test to the next,” she said. “So, all you think about is the next test because it ends up being all about graphs and structured results which doesn’t really make sense for a human being.

“For instance, if a student is really interested in something then you don’t have time to follow that up with them really, because they need to stay on the track that the curriculum demands.

“It can feel like you’re a cog in a machine rather than someone who can actually respond to the students.”

In Eyeball Computer, Hannah’s characters also have computers inside their eyes, which was also inspired from her days inside a classroom.

“This was inspired by the impact that smartphones are having on teenagers and how they’ve become isolated by it,” she said

Eyeball Computer is out now on Amazon, https://amzn.to/34rDDJj