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.

Haeadteachers - worth the money?

It's probably no secret that headteachers are paid a lot of money. It depends on the size of the school (the more pupils there are, the more responsibility, the higher the wage) and whether the school has control over it's own budget i.e. it's an academy. Some academy headteachers are paid more than the prime minister gets at over £100k per year.

But are they all worth it and what is their actual role in a school?

I've worked under a number of headteachers in my career, of varying effectiveness. But since my teaching career started I've never really been sure what a "normal" day as a headteacher entails, other than a whole load of meetings. What these meetings are about, I have no idea and many will probably have little or no bearing on my existence as a classroom practioners.

Almost all are qualified teachers, but I've only ever had one who actually taught any lessons, although I should say that they taught a lesson per week, compared to the 20 or so that a regular teacher would teach, but at least that head had some contact with students other than just to tell them off or congratulate them in assembly.

The lot of many headteachers now involves little or no contact with the students themselves due to the apparent mountains of paperwork and endless meetings. I find it a little odd that someone who went into teaching wants to minimise their contact with students. But maybe the pound signs are too great a pull for them to resist, and on their wages I can kind of understand that.

The trouble is that with so little contact with students, a headteacher's effectiveness as a disciplinarian becomes less and less. Another head I worked under came out of their office one day (a rare occurance I should add) to be met with a well-known troublemaker swinging on the bannisters of the stairs. I happened to be descending those same stairs at the time. The head chose to challenge the student, and this is how the conversation went:

Head: Where should you be? (The head couldn't remember the child's name)
Child: What's it to you?
Head: I'm your headteacher.
Chuld: I don't believe you; I've never seen you before.

At that point the head went back into the office they'd just vacated, not to be seen again. I managed to chivvy the student along to where they should have been because I knew his name and he recognised me as a teacher and a person in authority, of sorts. There's another story as far as this head goes, and it's not too dissimilar to the first, just quicker. The head upon leaving the office stumbled into a fight between two girls almost on the welcome mat to the aforesaid office. A 180 degree turn and the head assumed a position back behind their desk, office door closed.

It would be less funny if it wasn't true to be honest, and when you find out that this particular headteacher was paid around £100k per year, the taste of bile become difficult to ignore.

So what is their role? You know, I have very little idea if I'm honest and I have a feeling that the money could be better spent, but people expect them so I suppose we will just have to put up and shut up. Some can be very effective, and are headhunted for struggling academies, only to get sacked when results and behaviour don't improve. I suppose that they are the "face and voice" of a school, but unless the children know who they are, what real use are they?

All I really know is that I'll never be one, and that doesn't give me insomnia.

No Notice Ofsteds

Sir Michael Wilshaw has made his mark barely fortnight into his tenure as Chief Inspector of Schools by announcing that from Autumn 2012 schools will not receive any notice of an Ofsted inspection. Is this a major thing? No, is the short answer, and it should have always been like that in my view.

Currently schools get 2 days notice, so removing that will make little or no difference. It won't allow schools the opportunity to make certain troublemakers "disappear" through exclusions in those 2 days. Inspectors will get to see schools how all the students, teachers and parents see it, which should be a good thing.

I only have one worry with regards to this, and that is a knee-jerk reaction from headteachers so desperate for a good Ofsted judgement in order to further their careers, I mean, to ensure that the children at their school receive the best education available to them.

Headteachers and their underlings are constantly trying to second guess Ofsted's views/judgements. Ofsted seem fixated on paperwork and data, a fact that Wilshaw states that he want to address, although I doubt that he will. I am therefore awaiting the announcement from the head at our school that all staff must hand in full, written up lesson plans at least a week in advance. Other schools apparently do it, but the turnover of staff at those schools is far higher than at others because there simply aren't enough hours in the day. Also, what use are they? None, in fact most teachers when forced to wrtite them, barely take any notice of them at all - they are just a paperwork exercise. They take at least an hour to fill in, and if you have 5 lessons one day, that 5 extra hours to find. Whatever happened to the work/life balance?

Now you may think that I'm advocating that teachers don't plan lessons, and I can assure you that I'm not. What I am suggesting is that you don't need to break every minute of every lesson down into specific activities. I also think that having every possible detail of every child in a class on a lesson plan is completely unnecessary as teachers, I'm not sure if you'd noticed, are generally quite intelligent, and tend to remember important information like a child who struggles with English or maybe has a torrid home life. That's not to mention the cost of photocopying (about 4p per copy); the bill for the photocopying alone would run into tens of thousands of pounds per year. And on top of that the extra server memory required to save all the plans electronically.

You won't hear me say this too often, but Wilshaw's idea is fine in itself, I just worry about the repercussions.

Ofsted - clueless!

It's not just me who thinks that Ofsted are totally clueless when it comes to assessing schools. There was a letter from a teacher to Chris Woodhead (former Chief Inspector of Schools) in The Sunday Times this week bemoaning a glowing recent Ofsted on their school. The report had stated that the behaviour of the students at the school was "exemplary" whereas in reality the students ran the place with the headteacher being totally ineffective and using the Ofsted report as justification for doing essentially nothing.

The stories from this teacher, whose name is understandably withheld are truly shocking. Female staff are called "stupid bitches" to their face, students regularly "go on strike" and corridors are urinated in (by students rather than staff!). The place sounds like a candidate for academy status to me, but apart from one minor quote about behaviour in the corridors being occasionally "boisterous", the inspectors have clearly no idea what really goes on in the place, relying heavily on data to form an opinion.

You have to give credit to Woodhead who attempts to defend Ofsted, as he always does. He claims that maybe the troublemakers amongst the student body were "mysteriously disappeared" for the visit, which does happen regularly. When our school was last inspected the board listing those students on external exclusion was pretty jam-packed with the usual candidates. Woodhead does admit that due to the inspectors' reliance on data and the brevity of a visit, their judgement can be far removed from the reality of what's going on. Which would suggest that the entire inspection process is a bit of a waste of time, would it not?

The teacher is clearly exasperated with their head's totally ineffectiveness and Woodhead suggests writing, as a staff body, to the head explaining what the issues are. He then says that if the head does not accept the view from the staff then you should go to the school's governing body and/or the local authority.

This only goes to show how far removed from the reality of school life Mr Woodhead is. The member of staff would be committing career suicide by writing to the headteacher, and if they tried to drum up support from other members of staff, news would quickly get back to that headteacher about who was behind it. Bear in mind that the teacher requires a reference from that headteacher to move on, and if moving on isn't an option, they would almost certainly find that next year's (and all subsequent years) timetable would be shocking for them, and leadership drop-ins/observations would increase. On top of that teachers are very good at moaning about something, but not always so good at doing something about it.

Writing to the school's governing body would have the same result as writing to the headteacher in that essentially most of the governors don't want any grief and are doing the job either to further their career in the local community (mayor anyone?) or because their child is at the school and they want to know what's going on. A few might do something about it, but as it's not a paid position, can you blame them for wanting an easy time of things? The headteacher will often hoodwink the governors into believing that everything's going swimmingly, and they won't know any different, so won't realise that there's a problem.

The only possible action would be to write to the local authority, but that would almost certainly get tied up in red tape and take an eternity for anything to happen. Even then, when they visited, who would be the only person to have contact with the local authority employees? The headteacher. So ultimately, headteachers are untouchable. I suppose the new Chief Inspector of Schools' proposal to have local troubleshooters is an attempt to tackle this, although it remains to be seen if these troubleshooters will be effective.

The letter just highlights the fact that Ofsted are clueless, overpaid and of no use to parents, schools or children.

New Head Of Ofsted Starts Early

He's not even in the job yet and he's already begun in earnest - Sir Michael Wilshaw has made two statements to brighten up every teachers' Christmas holiday:

1. Local troubleshooters should be employed to speed up the dismissal of incompetent headteachers, as the time elapsed between Ofsted inspections can be too great and the damage will already have been done. These troubleshooters would report to central government.
2. Scruffy teachers should be "rebuked" and the attire of the staff should be mentioned in Ofsted inspections.

The first idea seems a good one in theory, but where are these troubleshooters going to come from? Are they going to have teaching and/or management experience or be former headteachers themselves? Aren't they Ofsted inpsectors?

How are they going to judge whether a headteacher is incompetent? Are they going to look at data alone or seek the opinions of staff, students and parents from the suspected incompetent's educational establishment? Ofsted already hand out a questionnaire to those three groups which appear to be largely ignored, certainly as far as the staff one is concerned. The parental one (which is only ever filled in by those who want to gripe about something) appears to be the only one they actually take any notice of.

When they report back to central government, what will actually happen? No-one actually knows, although I reckon that a piece of paper will end up on a civil servant's desk at a cost to the tax-payer of thousands of pounds.

As usual it will boil down to league table positions alongside unrealistic target grades and whether they are met or not. Pointless therefore, and for the job of"troubleshooter" more "jobs for the boys" for those who have no place or desire for a place in education for real, although I know of a few potential candidates for a position as one.

As far as the "rebuking" of scruffy staff, this is a total nonsense, although a practise that has been going on in my current school for a few years, and is verging on bullying. Wilshaw cites the fact that we expect doctors and lawyers to be smart, so why not teachers? The fact that doctors and lawyers get paid far more money than teachers might have something to do with it; it's not just the cost of a suit that's the issue, it's the regular dry cleaning bills that need covering on top.

He even stated that a comment should be made in official Ofsted reports regarding the appearance of the staff. Why would people have any interest? Another waste of money.

Studies have also found that the appearance of a teacher to be irrelevent when it comes to their classes' learning. This is the tyrannical Wilshaw showing his true colours with idiotic statements and policies.

Teaching has just died a little more.

Link to the article: Here!

Crisis In Teaching - Just Wait Until 2012

Sir Michael Wilshaw was on The One Show the other night, and alarm bells are now ringing for when his time as Chief Inspector of Schools begins in 2012. He states that he's going to target coasting schools (hang on, that sounds like David Cameron from last week's press), because if he can do what he has managed in Hackney, then anyone can do it.

The worst thing was his response to the statement: "I can't work out if this is a modern technique or it's very old fashion".

Wilshaw said: "If old fashioned means high expectations, sure. If old fashioned means [that] we're asking them to respect each other, respect us and respect staff. If traditional means ensuring [that] there are no excuses for poor behaviour, then I'm happy to be called traditional."

You can see why politician like him.

He goes on to deny that his school is any different from any other school, other than the fact that it's been rebuilt and that he has total control over the budget.

What the report does include, interestingly, is a short interview with one of his staff who says that the pressures on the staff are too great at times - presumably he's now polishing his CV.

What the report failed to mention is the expectations on staff to provide extra lessons both before and after school for no extra pay (although due to the school being an academy, Wilshaw can pay extra initially), plus having to staff detentions and lessons on Saturdays.

It also doesn't mention stories such as when the PE GCSE results came in last summer and had dropped by 5% he phoned the head of departemnt (during the holidays) telling him that he care where his department were but they would all be at a 7.30am meeting the next morning to verbally lay into them.

Is this really the way forward? Is the profession, that is struggling for quality numbers already, really going to encourage more people in the fold?

The answer's "No" - who would choose to do extra work for nothing?

This bloke is a real worry for the teaching profession, and could be the final nail in the coffin, what with pay, pensions and conditions issues. Teacher's aren't afraid of hard work but Wilshaw's demands of teachers are unreasonable. More strikes on the way? Or are people just going to find something else to do?

It May Be The Holidays...

It may be the holidays but not all teachers are sunning themselves on a beach in the Caribbean you know. What with the recent announcement that I'm going to have to find an extra £400 per year for my "fantastic" pension (the reason it's "fantastic" Mr Gove/Osbourne is because we don't get paid as much as the private sector workers and don't receive any bonuses, you muppet(s)).

In fact I'm actually working for a couple of days each week on quite an exciting project to do with learning via the internet and children in remote parts of the world. It has legs and I'm being paid very well for it, although I would like to point out, not the hourly rate of £30ish per hour that the unions suggest we get paid, but I'm grateful, not only for the cash but also for the opportunity to be part of something that I believe could be truly revolutionary in the world of education across the planet. I can't say too much at this point (dear oh dear, I sound like a poor man's James Bond), but if it gets off the ground, and the signs are good, I will no doubt bore the pants off you all about it.

I would like to say that it's really nice to be working with people who actually value my opinion (and I have a few gems amid the piles of rubbish I throw out on a daily basis) as opposed to being told by certain members of my leadership team and Ofsted that I'm essentially worthless on a regular basis. Please, put those small violins away, I don't want sympathy, I'm just making the point that perhaps your staff, Mr/Ms Headteacher, would be more productive and open to your ludicrous ideas about pushing the school "forward", if you actually praised them on occasions when you didn't actually want something from them in order to give you more leverage when you go for your next, better paid job. Just a thought.

Anyway, I digress.

It's funny but the first thing you hear from people when  they talk about teaching is "great holidays". What people don't often realise that a teacher's day doesn't begin at 9am and end at 3.30pm, and the 13 weeks (yes, I know it's a lot) holiday isn't always spent on a sunbed with the latest Jilly Cooper novel, or whatever may float your particular boat.

When I first startedteaching all those moons ago, I spent most of my holidays labouring on a building site of a friend of mine. The money I was paid was essentially what I got for being a teacher - so it was "double bubble" for those weeks. The great thing with the labouring was that I didn't have to do anything outside of my working hours, I'd just turn up, break stuff up/wheelbarrow/shovel stuff, and go home. Plenty of tiredness but no stress. I'm not saying that all teachers should give up teaching and become labourers, but I'm just trying to convey the fact that teaching is not just about your contracted hours - 13 weeks holiday is often not 13 weeks holiday.

Unless you're the headteacher, when you can actually afford to pay for holidays offered by travel agents during school holiday time, and you can just tell your 100 or whatever staff to essentially do your job for you.

Who's the mug?