Incompetent Teachers

There’s been quite a lot of educational news this week with teachers who have been declared as incompetent by the (oh so useful) GTC are able to find work in other teaching jobs. The most common scenario appears to be incompetent secondary school teachers becoming primary school teachers. This doesn’t say a lot for the country’s current crop of teachers, whether they are primary or secondary, although the article would imply that “if you aren’t good enough for secondary teaching, then try primary”, which is more than harsh on my primary teaching colleagues.

The article made out that are up to 20,000 incompetent teachers in the classroom nationwide. The trouble is, what defines “incompetent”? There are obvious cases, and one is given in the article I read, that the teacher allowed one student to use an aerosol as a flame-thrower in order to set another pupil’s uniform alight. This person is lucky to hold down any sort of job, let alone one that requires them to look after young people.

There are a number of issues here though:

·         There are a number of trainee teachers who are not up to the job, but universities will not fail them if they last the course. In my first teaching job we had one and tried to fail them, but the university disagreed and passed him. They got a job locally and had been removed from their post by the end of the first term of their teaching career. You will be relieved to hear that many of the poor trainee teachers never actually get employed, as a reference from a school in which they did teaching practise is always sought, and the school won’t give them a glowing reference.

·         There are some teachers who have one or two “good” lessons up their sleeve for when they are observed, but their day-to-day teaching is incompetent. The system of observations of lessons means that many poor teachers will get under the radar. More observations is not the answer though, but regular “drop-ins” or “fly-bys” from senior staff (if they can bear to leave their coffee machine for long enough) would soon root out those who aren’t up to standard.

·         The paperwork, as with most public service jobs, is extensive when going through competency procedures. Even if I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed, there’s still no guarantee that the teacher will be “struck off”. As a result, incompetent teachers are usually pushed into another job at another school and given a glowing reference to aid their cause. I’m not saying it’s right, but I can understand why it happens.

The problem facing education is that there are plenty of competent teachers out there who are leaving the profession for various reasons, and this means that incompetent teachers are more likely to be employed. The government keep saying that we want/need more teachers, but panic buying normally means the acquisition of sub-standard teachers.

Yes, there should be something done about a teacher who is clearly not up to the job, but you do have to bear in mind what is out there to replace them. Is it sometimes the case of better the devil you know in some subjects?

Teaching's Vocational Pull

I had never entered the National Lottery until around Christmas last year. I now regularly buy two “lucky dips” (the name is rather ironic to a mathematician who knows that the chances of winning are around 14 million to 1) and even watch the draw on a Saturday night, which although not stooping to the levels of X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent, is still a bottom feeder in the televisual stakes. There are only so many parts of the human body that can be crossed at any one time, but it hasn’t worked yet.

So why wait 17 years until finally buying a ticket? I have always known the odds of winning, and let’s be honest they aren’t great, but somebody’s got to win and it is just as likely to be me as anyone else. I have a mortgage that drains half my resources every month, but that’s Ok and I can budget for that with my wages. The problem is just that though: my wages. I’m not complaining that they are too low (although I wouldn’t gaze into the gift horse’s mouth if someone offered me more), and any teacher who does complain that they don’t get paid enough shouldn’t have joined the profession in the first place. The wages in teaching are very well advertised, so if you don’t like it, don’t do it.

The fact is that I don’t want to have to do the teaching bit anymore. I have been a teacher for over 10 years now and my enthusiasm for teaching itself is untainted, it’s just the other stuff that goes with it, stuff that barely existed when I embarked upon the career all those moons ago.

I have just read a book called “On The Edge” by Charlie Carroll (available on Amazon and worth a read) about a young teacher who decides to do supply in the most difficult areas of England in which to teach. I would suggest that every teacher who’s a bit down in the dumps read it, as you will quickly realise that it’s not that bad where you are (unless you are in one of the schools he taught in obviously, but then we all know that supply teachers suffer more from unruly students).

Carroll teaches in deprived areas to length and breadth of the country, including Pupil Referral Units, and some of the stories are truly horrifying. There are many situations which many teachers will recognise, like being threatened, feeling totally hopeless in front of 30+ screaming, seemingly out of control children and many others. The author suggests changes to teaching conditions that have been implemented by different governments of different coloured rosettes, most of which have been to the detriment of the educational system in the UK.

He points out that schools and teachers have little or no power to discipline children for poor behaviour for fear of litigation from parents or chastisement from Local Education Authorities/Ofsted. As a result children essentially do what they want, when they want without fear of rapprochement. He also points out that when schools do lay down strict discipline rules, the children appreciate it (everyone likes some kind of structure) and the school thrives, but it takes a brave Senior Management Team to do so. Although a visible SMT would be nice, as most headteachers are locked away in airtight offices pouring over Excel spreadsheets or attending “strategy” meetings rather than being seen in school but staff or students nowadays.

It’s this powerlessness in teaching that has ground me into the dirt professionally, with the actions of a few disruptive teenagers influencing the lives of so many of their peers so heavily and being able to do little about it. I was told to “F*** Off” by a student last year; their punishment: an hour’s detention, and my punishment: I was told off for goading them and since have not been backed up in any similar situations by certain members of SMT. I can only assume therefore that if told my headteacher to “F*** Off” I would just have to stay for an hour after school planning lessons as my punishment, rather than picking up my P45. Hang on, I do that anyway, without the P45 bit (so far!).

So fingers crossed every Saturday night as I watch those 6 balls, plus the bonus trickle out of Lancelot. The worrying thing is that I know that I’m not the only one who is doing it. My department has a syndicate that if it won the school would be down at least 5 teachers, if not more the following Monday morning. I would not miss the job, and would probably still do something related, as long as it didn’t involve trying to control 30ish kids who have few goals in life other than to ensure that no-one else in the class gets a chance to learn.

Teaching is no longer a desirable vocation, it’s become a necessity for many who are trying to make ends meet and pay the rent/mortgage. And that’s not a healthy situation for the teachers or young people of Britain.

Has Jamie Oliver Got A Point?

The celebrity chef has generated headlines recently by saying that the youngsters of Britain are “wet” and are not prepared to work hard and therefore have become almost unemployable. Had anyone bothered to ask any secondary school teachers in the last five years, they could have found that out far quicker, but celebrity chefs sell magazines/newspapers and teachers don’t in the media I suppose, unless they are incompetent, and that’s another story.

Youngsters today are being accused of being under their parents’ wing until well into their 20s, with Oliver claiming that he has parents of young people phoning in to say that their child is unable to attend work because they are being worked too hard. But is it all the fault of those young people?

The answer is “No”. In modern education young people are not allowed to fail. The grades for GCSEs go down to G, with each one being seen, in some circles, as being a pass. If they are unable to achieve a grade in maths and English they sit what is called a “Entry Level” qualifications, which many of the general public would laugh uncontrollably at if they saw it. All youngsters must leave school with a qualification of some sort or other, and then the pressure to attend further/higher education is pretty great, where the colleges and universities are funded based upon the numbers of students they have on role, no matter what the standard. One can’t run courses on thin air and good will after all.

The whole system is broken and developing a culture where if you can’t be bothered to meet the deadline, someone will either do it for you or you will be forced to come back in your free time (and the teacher’s) in which to complete an acceptable piece of work. Schools cannot afford to allow students to fail for fear of upsetting Ofsted or their league table position, but perhaps that’s what all schools need to do, and that is make deadlines actually deadlines.

If the young people of Britain are being encouraged to be lazy during their school/college life, why are they going to change when they reach the big wide world of employment? They aren’t, they expect to get what they want, when they want, like what happens at school (and possibly home), because teachers have no choice – everyone has to pass, whatever it takes.

Until the mentality of education in Britain changes and young people end up with what they deserve out of their school careers, nothing will ever change and those entering the job market will remain “wet” and under their parental wings.

An article in a Sunday broadsheet today had various quotes from unemployed twenty-somethings bemoaning the fact that fellow youngsters from other parts of the EU are taking all the jobs, but those jobs are too low paid to even worth considering. Lots of people moan about economic migrants in this country, but if it weren’t for them the country could well grind to a halt. The youngsters of Britain need to realise that you don’t walk out of education and into a £40k per year job, you will almost certainly have to graft for a bit first. The trouble is that grafting is hard work, and that’s where it all falls down – they don’t learn to work hard in school, because they can get what they need by expending a minimal amount of personal effort.

Not all youngsters are lazy, be reassured, but I reckon the percentage of those who are lazy is on the increase.

After all that typing, I may have to have a lie down.

School league tables - what do they mean?

Every August teachers up and down the land flick through the newspaper searching for the school league tables, which is based upon the average points score of a student in their exams. If you are unaware, each examined subject has a number of points assigned to it based upon what grade a student achieves. Maths and English get more points as they are perceived as being more important. Schools are then placed in order from the highest average points scoring schools to the lowest.

In my view this is totally unfair – different schools have different intakes and it is therefore extremely hard to directly compare them. You wouldn’t expect a school set in an area of high unemployment to perform the same as a school set in a leafy, middle class suburb. Attitudes towards education can be wildly different in different neighbourhoods based upon upbringing and prospects.

I can see how they could be useful to compare schools that should be of a similar standard, for example private schools. If you are going to fork out thousands of pounds on your child’s education, you need to ensure that your money is being spent wisely, and that the school has a good track record with other students’ grades.

However, the league tables are just a stick with which to bash a school, whether it be the senior staff of the teaching staff being bashed. Within a town the results have some benefit. In the town I teach there are a number of secondary schools and we are all going to have a similar academic standard of intake. As a parent I can therefore see some use in the league tables when choosing which secondary school to apply for.

Countrywide however the practise is of little or no use. The same schools appear at the top each year, and they are selective with regards academic ability, so of course they are going to get a high average points score when all their students have been chosen for their academic ability. They don’t have students who don’t achieve high grades.

League tables are also constantly being manipulated by schools. There are courses that are supposedly equivalent to 4 GCSEs that entail exclusively coursework. These are historically “easier” for students who might not achieve a C grade in GCSEs to achieve a “Pass” in one of these. You can’t blame the schools, they are just utilising a loophole in the system, but the moral of the story is: “Don’t believe everything you read in the league tables”.

The problem for schools is that people do believe everything they read in the league tables, so schools are forced to send students down academic paths that will get them the highest grades rather than an academic path that they might enjoy and eventually take further, onto further education or university.

League tables force schools to focus purely on results and ignore the enjoyable side of education, which in the long run means that people are scarred by their school experience rather than enthused by it. The knock-on effect to future generations’ attitude towards education could be irreversible as they are pressured into covering a curriculum and not getting their teeth into the subject to develop a passion for it.

GraphJam Website for amusing graphs (yes, you did read that correctly)

Funny stuff in places, and may have uses in the classroom: GraphJam
Here's a couple of examples:


see more Funny Graphs


see more Funny Graphs


see more Funny Graphs


see more Funny Graphs

Do schools prepare young people for the big, wide world?

How many jobs could you do the following and still be allowed to turn up the next day?

·         Call your boss every name under the sun.

·         Regularly turn up late.

·         Walk out if you’ve been asked to do something difficult.

·         Smoke in a non-smoking area.

·         Not turn up with the tools required to do your job.

·         Wear the incorrect uniform regarded as part of the job.

·         Forget to do the work you were asked to do.

I could go on, but you get the idea. At school you can do all these things with the worst sanction being spend 5 days at home. Ok, so if you repeatedly do these things you may find yourself searching for a new educational establishment, but that assumes that reports have been filed with meticulously crossed t’s and dotted i’s.

Is it any wonder that a huge percentage of school leavers fail to hold down a job? They are used to being able to do pretty much what they want, when they want, with a detention being the punishment for overstepping the mark, a detention that they may well fail to turn to, so it escalates to… another detention.

As far as I’m aware, in most jobs it’s the “three strikes and you’re out” system:

1.       Verbal warning

2.       1^st written warning

3.       2^nd written warning

4.       Sack

In fact, if you are on your probationary period, you don’t even get that. It’s understood and therefore adhered to by those who want to hold down a regular job.

You may argue that children are not mature enough and therefore make mistakes, from which they learn, but unless some sanctions are put in place that are going to make a difference (detentions don’t cut the mustard really), then behaviour in schools will continue to deteriorate.

The problem is that the children are pretty legally savvy nowadays, although they are under the false impression that they have rights (they don’t really, their teachers are legal guardians whilst they are at school). An even bigger problem is that parents believe what their children say, and children will say some pretty serious things without realising what the repercussions could be. Children are far cleverer than most adults give them credit for and will know what buttons to push in order to dig themselves out of a hole.

I’ll give you an example:

3 boys played truant and missed an assessment. Their teacher wasn’t pleased and told them off in no uncertain terms. The boys faced quite severe sanction s for truancy so claimed that the teacher had intimidated them. He hadn’t, I saw the incident. All the focus went onto the teacher who was dragged over the coals, and the students got off scot-free.

What children don’t realise is that in the workplace they won’t be listened to, they will be expected to listen to and follow instructions, something that they may not have done for a relatively long time.

Being on time is habitual, so all those students who have said to me in the past “I won’t be late to work” are liars unfortunately, not that they know it at the time. Plus the fact that they all think that they are going to walk into a well paid job straight out of school, or become famous and therefore rich. I do like asking students who want to be famous exactly what they are going to be famous for. Most just look confused.

I had one 16 year old tell me that he could earn “£80 per week” if he wanted to. I pointed out that he may have to keep on his parents’ good side if he wanted to live anywhere other than under a bridge in a cardboard box on those wages, then did the sums on the board. He came around to my point of view, that £80 probably wasn’t going to get the baby bathed.

The education system is failing children as a result. The lack of consequences for actions is the biggest problem society has at the moment, in my view, and the more people who have little to do with the actual doing of the job (I’m thinking government and the media here) get involved, the worse it will get. These people who make the rules/laws, think that they are doing the right thing, and in some cases they are, but in the majority of cases, they are hindering the children’s discovery of the real world.

Marking - is there any point?

The bane of any teacher’s life is marking. I get off fairly lightly with mathematics apparently because “it’s either right or wrong”, which is fair to a point, but one has to check the working out, especially if the answer is wrong. How to teachers of essay subjects cope? I’ve no idea.

Marking is, unfortunately, a necessary evil in teaching, but what to the teacher or the student gain out of it in the long run?

The latest fad in teaching is “assessment for learning” where you go through a child’s work with a fine toothcomb and pick out areas of development. APP (Assessing Pupil Progress) some call it, a process where you colour in a chart of what the child has learnt and can therefore “do”. Ofsted like to see that every child’s book has been “marked” regularly, meaning that some staff, and I jest you not, go through ticking every page that has been written on (not actually looking at it) and then write a vague comment at the end, along the lines of:

“You have worked very well Johnny, but make sure that you show some workings out”

“A little less chat will see you achieve your target in this subject Mandy”

“Try to use more commas when writing a long sentence Katie”

“Confidence is the key to your success Billy. Your confidence will grow with the more work that you complete”

Etc.

This process will take a teacher at least an hour for each class of 30 kids, and to what end? The best I can come up with is the following:

The teacher sees whether the child is actually doing some work in class, because kids are very good at pretending to work when in fact they are doing anything but.

The child’s work in class is acknowledged by the teacher and they hopefully have an encouraging comment, with the bonus of something to bear in mind the next time they do some work.

Other than that, what a pointless waste of time. Many students won’t even read the comment anyway, and surely it’s better to say something positive/constructive at a relevant time, rather than writing a comment about it out of context? The trouble is that you have no proof of a verbal comment, and Ofsted or your line manager will want to see proof. So it all boils down to Ofsted once more, the virus that’s infected education and is slowly eating away at its core.

It is line managers that send emails along the lines of:

“Please bring 3 exercise books from each class so that we can compare each other’s marking and maybe learn from it”.

My living nightmare – what could I, a maths teacher, possibly find of use from what an art teacher has to say about a student’s work? But this is all Ofsted again, proving that we are “all singing from the same song sheet”.

All that is rubbish about teaching is linked to Ofsted – a stain on education that just won’t shift, no matter how much stain remover is applied. They have a lot to answer for, and when they do, I’ll go through it with a red pen, correcting their spelling mistakes and suggesting where commas should be inserted.

It probably won’t be polite.

Count to 4 with Sesame Street and Feist

And they love this one too!

James Blunt on Sesame Street

Have shown this in class - the kids love it!

Teachers are a funny breed

We all had them, the nerdy bloke with elbow patches or the old spinster with tweed skirts, in fact some of us had both teaching us in our distant past. Teachers are a different breed in some ways. Many would struggle out of the educational system – you are more likely to find these people in the traditional public school, as a house tutor or whatever. They get their bills and accommodation provided and are very self-sufficient, filling their holiday time with research or visiting places of historical interest.

Not all teachers are like the “Mr Chips” described above, and some have a lot to say for themselves (I’m one, obviously). The trouble is that when something major happens to their working conditions lots of teachers moan. Pension contributions, having to teach extra lessons for no extra pay or being bullied by senior staff (a more common occurrence than you may think) the average teacher will say a lot about it to people who don’t matter (eg. Friends and colleagues) but nothing to people who do matter (i.e. their union or senior staff).

It’s funny but most teachers just grin and bear it, not wanting to rock the boat. Some unions will strike, but all they end up doing is giving a day’s pay to the local authority that employs them. The best form of protest in my opinion for any teacher would be the “work to rule” policy.

Teachers are contracted for 1265 hours per year that include lessons and meetings. If staff just stuck to their hours and refused to do anything else, the whole system would collapse. When do you think most of the fun activities that children remember get planned? In a teacher’s free time, that’s when. And that free time is not being financially rewarded, only professionally rewarded with a child thanking you for the experience.

A lot of teachers will say that they do the job for those occasional students who really appreciate a lesson or lessons. Most of the thanks won’t come whilst the teacher teaches the child but afterwards when they realise the hard work that (most) teachers put in.

Increased pressure on teachers (league tables/results and Ofsted) means that teachers are bogged down in meaningless stuff rather than planning memorable lessons. Teaching is a bit like acting. A colleague once said to me this:

“We are selling them a product they don’t want in general, so it’s our personality that sells it.”

A tired teacher will struggle to sell that product purely because they haven’t got the energy to do so. So if government, local authorities and senior management want to get better results then they need to stop bothering teachers with new initiatives that will just die a death in a couple of years. Just leave them to teach, with energy and enthusiasm that may rub off on a child and therefore get the grades those targets the people in suits are so desperate for.