Only 18 incompetent teachers sacked in 40 years

No I meant I wanted staff being nice to each other!

Sorry I am trying to plan a lesson from hell which has clearly melted my brain. Have been trying all weekend and just can't do it.

I agree Fallen - but then if they don't have degrees from Oxbridge they probably don't know how to complement each other

Complimenting sounds much more friendly.

Just what a staff room needs.

Do you mean complement, DaisyM?

I agree with you re the GTC daphnedill. And TBH, I'm not sure I want my Head as the final arbiter of competency.

I agree that degrees are narrow but they are evidence that you can work at a high academic level. A good department will have people from a mixture of backgrounds so they compliment each other.

I use my degrees on a daily basis and ask my colleagues for advice when it involves their specialism.

I totally agree that the classroom management skills are as important as the good degree - we need both.

I agree about older teachers keeping up with changes. I remember an older colleague saying to me that teaching was just not the job that he signed up for. He joined in the days of corporal punishment ( which he did not approve of but acknowledged that it made teaching easier) when kids were set lessons from books and you worked from 8-5pm and went home to be with your family. Noone worked in holidays, revision classes etc which are now the norm were unheard of. He was bullied into early retirement, I saw him a few months ago and he looked so much happier. At work he looked like a tired, haunted gaunt man with the world on his shoulders.

Oi - T&F - do you think I'm a man?

"Thankfully academies and free schools will break the stranglehold of the teaching unions and local education authorities, and introduce real competition and accountability into the state school system".

So, do you mean, thankfully, teachers won't have any legal advice when parents and children decide to make false allegations against them? or for any support to be there for teachers when parents or children decide to land one on the teacher? Or any free support and advice for parents when the GTC goes?

Acadamies and free schools only serve the middle classes, they are expensive, they dont work according to Sweeden, they create a further disparency between education for the wealthy and the less well off.

Most parents it seems, are against the idea of free schools and simply say-why dont we put the oney into improving the exisiting ones? Acadamies and free schools will end up getting rid of any equal pay for teachers and work conditions that already exist and that they have had to fight for. Not to mention the fact that why should tax payers money go to companies to profit from or 'parents of schools' to profit from in order to educate our children. Just stop and think for a minute...those little schools set up by parents-just what sort of children do you think they will want there? Will they want a child who needs to go for outreach work at a special school, will they pay for a child with EBD to go to the special unit once a week? Will they pay for therapists to come into school and support particular children? I am guessing it's no, no, no?

And as for Chris Woodhead ? Wasn't it all a bit murky for him when everyone thought he was having a relationship with a pupil of his? please don't tell me this guy still has any credibility about education and how teachers should behave after that?

Anybody who really wants to know about this topic, rather than the headline grabbing stuff and anecdotal tales, should read "Failing Teachers" by the late Ted Wragg.

The majority of teachers deemed incompetent are older females. Most aren't sacked, because they retire or leave teaching.

One of the reasons teachers feel out of touch is because there have been so many changes over the last 20 years or so. At the same time, in-service training has become almost non-existent. Teachers are fobbed off by talks on INSET days from colleagues...there really is a limit to the number of times one can listen to the latest blue eyed boy talking about AFL, RAISE Online, peer assessment, questioning techniques, etc. I find it ironic that there is so much talk of individualised learning for pupils, while career development for teachers is appalling. The support available for teachers who are genuinely ill is variable. Peter Harvey (the teacher who hit a pupil with a lead weight) was a victim of this.

Another factor is that bullying in schools is rife. Read the TES messageboards, the Teacher Support Network or the late Tim Field's Bully Online. I have personal experience of headteachers wanting to bring in their own people and life is made miserable for those whose faces don't fit. Admittedly, this is common in business, but people move on...they don't have their whole career destroyed. I have heard so many times of competency procedures being misused by maverick headteachers.

I find this all quite scarey and dread to think what the spin doctors are planning. It seems to me that the public is being softened up for a witchhunt of teachers. My first thought when the GTC was abolished was that the government is planning something much tougher.

When I was at Uni, I had a lot of German friends who were studying in UK for a year.

They were universally surprised and incredulous to learn that an English graduate could spend a year doing a PGCE and then teach maths, physics, etc.

I'd like to know how many of those 18 have happened in recent years, i.e. since ofsted and then gtce - and with gtce going, who will haev the authority to strike them off in future?

wrt qualifications, it has to be a balance of SK and ability to deliver, I work in ITT and am astounded by the number of well qualified people who simply cannot deliver a lesson, whilst others with far lower quals are superb - it happens both ways of course, but there is no straight forward assessment whereby great SK = brilliant teacher and poor SK = rubbish teacher

I also want my DS's TEACHERS to have good subject knowledge

I just think too much balance is given to how good their degree is and not enought o how well they can teach the subject

"e get rid of applications without a relevant degree and below a 2:1."

My maths teacher (The school one - not the one that helped me achieve a 2 in Standard Grade maths) had first and PhD. HOW she remained in teaching for so long I have no idea, and I know I wasn't the only one that failed to learn from her.

Lol TFM

I have worked with student teachers who have 2:1s who have shocking subject knowledge, hence my reluctance to see people with anything below a 2:1 in a teaching job especially if they are teaching ALevel.

Maybe we need to pay teachers more so we get the best candidates. Having been involved in recruitment for many years at my school ( which gets a lot of appllicants) we get rid of applications without a relevant degree and below a 2:1.

Opps - misread the post

Sack me now!!

Are you saying that all teachers should have to have a first class degree? I think that's both unreasonable and unworkable TBH.

I don't see how you can work it that all teachers have excellent degrees and higher degrees. There isn't enough competition or enough remuneration.

I am astonished that schools can get lambasted for dumbing down, yet people like my colleagure are able to leave university with a "good" degree and lack a good understanding of some fairly fundamental concepts.

DH asks questions that test what he calls "common sense engineering" in his interviews for graduates. I can see why.

I think a 2:1 is good enough for teaching to be honest, is a 2:1 not the most common grade? If so it is probably the one that is most common in teaching.

Tut at daisymiller

I agree with T&F - up to a point. There was a PhD on my course who failed his teaching practice because he couldn't manage a class.

But I also work with one teacher whose subject knowledge is lamentably weak. She has a 2.1 though apparently, which I find astonishing.

You need a certain level of competency in both TBH.

Yes there is, but I think that is part of it. I want my daughter's teachers to have excellent degrees in a relevant subject and be great classroom practitioners. This is vital in an 11-18 school. I teach students who will go onto Oxbridge or equivalent in my subject, the fact I have already been there inspires them and
means I can meet their needs.

you can - but it doesn't guarantee that you're going to be good at it.

Likewise not having quite got your first doesn't mean you can't teach.

There's a heck of a lot more to teaching than how "good" you are at a subject imo

But you can have your first and be a great classroom practioner