Performance Related Pay - A Heads' Bully Charter

The "Heads' Bully Charter" is a comment I read by author Michael Rosen (follow him on Twitter, he's a genius on @MichaelRosenYes" and he's absolutely correct.

All those who work in the private sector will be sitting there wondering what the problem is - they've been doing it for years after all. The difference is that they work on sales, teachers work on attitudes and aptitude/willingness for pubescent teenagers to learn. Gove, in his wisdom, says that this will encourage hardworking young, good teachers to join the profession and encourage poor teachers, whose pay will stagnate, to leave the profession. Once again it's the talk of porr teachers that is amusing, because you will never find anyone argue that poor practioners should not leave the profession (if it 's still considered that) but those "poor" teachers are the best of those who applied. Get rid of all the "poor" teachers and there won't be enough people to teach. Plus, "poor" teaching is generally an opinion of a headteacher.

What you have to remember is that headteachers often don't teach at all nowadays and haven't done so regularly for years. Those wishing to become a headteacher are weird in the sense that they have entered teaching and then opted to do as little as possible, if any at all. I have been the victim of a headteacher who has prejudged my lessons based on the fact that they don't like me or don't understand the banter that occurs in a healthy classroom. The very same headteacher also told a new head of department that they would see an inadequate lesson when they observed me despite having no idea what I was doing. This same headteacher will control my pay soon. How is that fair?

Now I would never describe myself as a brilliant teacher, but I have had enough decent feedback from parents, students and colleagues to know that I'm not rubbish, but Gove's plans will allow a headteacher who isn't keen on me as a person to freeze my pay indefinitely unless I move, which I may be forced to do.

Once again the unions are objecting, but due to the various policies Gove have introduced since he came to office, the unions just seem like moaners. It's been a very clever campaign from Gove as he essentially outlaws unions and isolates teachers more and more.

The bloke has been and will be a disaster for education in this country, mark my words.