The situation in teaching is absolutely dire and parents would be up in arms if they knew the true extent of the effect it was having on their children's education.
So what can actually be done about it? There is an issue with workload because while some is pointless, some actually does benefit the kids. e.g. In maths, the new GCSE has 3 papers instead of 2. My school also introduced a second mock in March as well as November. This has tripled the amount of mock marking compared to previously. In addition, we have to enter each mark for each question for each student by hand onto a spreadsheet which then generates a list of all their strengths and weaknesses. Huge extra workload. But if it was suggested that the second mock and the analysis was binned, there would be a pang of guilt because it is actually useful. Think of the children!
So what can be done?
- My school should have considered workload before it introduced the second mock. What we didn't have already, wouldn't be missed. If any new initiative is seen to increase workload, then workload has to be decreased elsewhere to compensate. Always. That might focus a few minds on what is really necessary.
- Ofsted are considering dropping the outstanding rating. This would have a huge impact, but they are being held back by the fact that parents like it. The views of education professionals should outweigh parents in this instance.
- Scrap any notion that teachers' pay should be linked to individual student results or class results. Unions already advise against it, but Ofsted should ask to see appraisal objectives and any school that has results in there should be not allowed to get higher than requires improvement. Student and class results are too volatile to be used as a positive performance indicator. Cohort results for those with a cohort responsibility I'm not sure about...
- Cap CEO of academy pay linked to how many schools they are responsible for. School funding should not be lining individual pockets. On top of that, increase base funding for schools so that they have enough money for sufficient TAs, support staff and so on.
- Way more funding for SEN. Open more special schools, review the EHCP process, better training for teachers and so on (there are people way more knowledgeable than me with ideas about this).
- Behaviour - do not make having a poorly behaved class increase the workload of a teacher to an unreasonable degree. Centralised detentions. On-call support that actually turns up. An escalating series of sanctions/intervention that is actually followed, and doesn't involve the class teacher doing anything once the kid fails to turn up to their lunch detention/persists in being a pain/is a pain across the school. This should be verified by Ofsted because otherwise SLT will get away with not doing it.
Any other ideas?