Sacked Them All!

Michael Gove continues to bait the teaching profession by announcing that headteachers can sack incompetent teachers far faster, in fact within about a term.

See the article here!

In essence I have absolutely no problem with this new policy, but there will be a major problem with it, and it's a problem that many others have pointed out in various chatrooms and forums. That problem is that a number of heads will use the new powers to get rid of people they don't like rather than only those who are poor teachers. Many cases will end up being personality issues rather than teaching issues, and that is simply wrong.

Gove has opened the door for headteachers by suggesting that there are loads of poor teachers out there, and this carrot will be too tempting for many heads. The previous system encouraged heads to write good references for poor teachers to "move them on", and this clearly needed addressing. Genuinely poor teachers need to be removed from the profession.

The only probelm is the judgements upon whether a teacher is capable or not are based on the following:

• Results - these are affected by both the ability of the teacher to get the information across, but also on the willingness of the students in front of them to learn. Target grades that should be hit by the class are often "challenging" in the first place and set in concrete, meaning that if a child suddenly has a change in attitude for the worse, the teacher will get it in the neck through no fault of their own.
• Observations by senior management - these are totally subjective in that unless a lesson is completely awful, which would be obvious to anyone, the judgement could range from "outstanding" to "satisfactory" depending on the perconceived ideas of the observer.

All teachers have suffered from the first issue - teenagers are an unpredictable bunch (assuming that you teach in secondary schools) and therefore often surprise their teachers with their ability to self-destruct and throw away any potential they may have.

The second issue affects more teachers than you may think. It won't be a problem for those teachers who bow to every request from their head without question, but a teacher who dares to have an opinion will certainly have suffered from senior staff trying to "get their own back". It may sound petty (and actually, it is petty) but it definitely happens, presumably to remind the teacher who's in charge. I get told after every lesson observation by one particular member of senior staff at my school that essentially my character in general is a major issue. I presume that I will therefore be fairly near the top of the list for this implementation of this new policy at our school, not because I am rubbish, but because I don't teach like the automaton automaton the senior member of staff clearly craves.

What you often find is that the senior manager forgets their own time in the classroom (if they ever spent any), when they had very little power to discipline and they taught 5 lessons per day rather than 5 lessons per year, if as much as that. I had one deputy head say to me during feedback once, "you don't teach like me", to which I replied "you are absolutely right, I never want to teach like you, I don't even like you if that's all you can come up with by way of feedback." I obviously don't help myself, but bullies like this need tackling, not cowering in front of.

It's similar stories like this that have led to Gove's policy being described by teachers and unions as "a bully's charter". Along with the pensions debate plus the news that everyone will have to work until they are 105 (or whatever), teachers are feeling pretty got at currently. On top of this political drive to demoralise teachers, the public will also throw in their tuppence-worth. Popular soaps create new characters who are teachers (they like to have their fingers on the pulse these shows), with these new characters doing something abhorent, giving the public more ammunition to have a go at the profession. It sounds silly, but it's what happens I'm sorry to say because soaps are real life to some sections of the general public.

There is also the problem that having got rid of these apparently poor teachers, they need replacing with (presumably) better teachers. Where are these better teachers going to come from? I have been at schools where perfectly good teachers have been "moved on" only to be replaced by imcompetance. The grass is not always greener. Some subjects (maths, science and ICT spring to mind) struggle for numbers, both good and bad.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: these politicians really do have no idea.