Not Proud Of Britain (But Would Like To Be): To encourage the others

Sunday, September 11, 2005

To encourage the others

Why should teaching unions be fearful that plans to expose under-performing teachers will be bad for the morale of teachers!?!

It should only be bad for the morale of under-performing teachers.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: I'll tell you why! Because the Teaching "profession" in the State sector is cossetted beyond belief and concepts such as "performance evaluation" are alien concepts. These people are Gordon Brown's slave army and cannot be judged!; 7:04 pm
Aiden Truss said...: "Because the Teaching "profession" in the State sector is cossetted beyond belief and concepts such as "performance evaluation" are alien concepts."

That's bollocks (if you'll forgive the lapse into vulgar Anglo-Saxon!)
:)

My wife is a teacher in a state school and is constantly under pressure to perform. She's expected to wear several different job titles, take responsibility for different subject areas and has to deal with lack of funding, overwhelming bureaucracy and monitoring and interference from OFSTED and the local authority.

And then there are the over-competitive and abusive parents who object when their child has been disciplined or is not on the same level reading book as the next child.

Nearly every night she has to bring home work to mark because she's not given the time to do it during school hours and she spends several (unpaid) hours every weekend producing a mandatory lesson plan for the week in case of a sudden inspection.

Next time she's near to tears because the profession she loves is being ruined by constant interference and underfunding, I'll remind her of how 'cossetted' she is.

As I understand it, morale in the teaching profession couldn't get much lower anyway. They do a thankless job and get blamed for the results of the educational policies that are imposed upon them.

And let's face it, everyone has peaks and troughs in their careers - successes and failures. Would you like your poor performances made a matter of public record? Of course it would undermine morale in any job. In any job, there should be career management and guidance - not public humiliation.

And they wonder why they can't attract people into the profession...; 12:07 pm
Snafu said...: Astolath, it sounds like you have far more teaching experience through your wife that I could ever imagine and raise a number of important points.

I understand that teachers will shortly be allowed 10% of their working week to prepare their lessons.

As for being a thankless job, I totally agree. I have absolutely no desire to ever enter the teaching profession as it does appear to be a thankless task these days. Unfortunately, teaching no longer appears to be a 'respected' profession. That is despite the enormous respect I continue to have for my school teachers and my gratitude to them.

Having said all that, my observations are that unions and left leaning educationalists are starting to reap the whirlwind of child centred, discipline and knowledge free teaching methods.; 12:40 pm
Aiden Truss said...: Teachers are already allotted 10% to prepare work etc. but this means them having to juggle resources as someone has to take the class in their absence. In my wife's school, this means having to swap free time with another teacher or to pay a class-room assistant or a supply teacher to come in to take the class. Only trouble is that they're not given extra funding to pay for this. Another great half-cocked idea from the brains in the education dept. (I get dragged into these issues when Mrs A bends my ear each evening!); 2:43 pm