"Bad teachers clampdown"

[HowlingBitch]

What on earth is going on here? I have literally just seen this on the news (Do I live in some sort of bubble?)

Can someone explain how this works because it feels all wrong to me.

I don't think its fair comparing train drivers and teachers salaries.

Train drivers: £30,000 (Nexus) to £47,700 (Eurostar).
(Trainee train Drivers Website)

Teachers: £21,000 (first year of teaching) to £73,000 (secondary head) with many academy heads on over £100,000. It is not unknown for a secondary head to be paid £150,000.
Teaching Times).

The record currently stands at £236,000, the no doubt immensly gifted Mr Elms trousering this vast sum as head of an inner city primary. OK it was a one-off but even so...
(BBC)

Although train drivers may progress into management and thus earn more than their scale salaries, the opportunities to do so in the 33 or so TOCs (Train Operating Companies) are considerably less than in the 25,000 or so state schools.

All well and good, but the last two poor teachers I've known have been headteachers and staff have been trying to cover up for them. If they don't, the school's reputation suffers.

Pendeen

There's a primary school teacher I know who is so bad she's made other staff ill with stress (signed off work) from covering for her, and the school can't sack her despite her deserving it several times over. This has been going on for years.

Surely it would reflect better on the school if they were seen making an effort to better it? I mean don't bad teacher lead to bad grades?

I think it's a good thing too. The impact of one bad teacher is considerable when you think how many children it could affect.

Not sure about parents sitting in on classes though. The practicalities of that would be ridiculous and children behave differently when their parents are about. It would be too distracting for everyone to be informative.

teachers *

I think I may have spent too long living in Sweden. When they were talking about parents observing, I just thought 'meh'. Here any parent can sit in any class their child is in at any time. Nobody bats an eyelid. They find the idea of not being able to do so preposterous.

It's about bad teachers, not victimising good ones, surely?

exactly hairy

I believe the statistic that only 17 teachers have been sacked - it is difficult to sack a teacher.

However, it is quite possible to push a teacher hard enough to squeeze them out and leave them option but to leave.

Schools can be brilliant places to work, but HTs and colleagues are very skilled in 'getting rid' of staff who are not up to scratch or whose face doesn't fit.

Don't know about secondary, but it certainly happens at primary.

Pendeen the average salary for train (and tube) drivers is (according to Evening Standard and the Trainee train drivers website) is around £42k , and whilst Head Teachers may earn higher salaries (and frankly, in a job of that size, why not?), most teachers earn quite a bit less than train drivers (wish I'd used a different example - I don't hate train drivers nor wish to take away their wages!).

There is a process in place for removing underperforming teachers and I'd be surprised, in the vast majority of cases, if it takes anything like a year (though no doubt there are examples of when it does). It would be useful to have a teacher's view on the current process v new process.

About time too! Almost every other profession has the means to get rid of people on a capability basis.
When I was at school. my dad had a conversation with the rector about a teacher who was known to be crap...the rector acknowledged this, and said that there was no mechanism by which he could be got rid of

"Michael Gove seems to have focused all of his energies on making sure that teaching as a profession is undervalued and underrewarded. Teachers (who are paid much less than, say, train drivers) haven't had a pay rise for years and their pensions will be seriously devalued if Gove gets his way (and that's after previous negotiations had already substantially increased their contributions, and their pension pot is not in deficit, unlike some other civil service penions, especially the non-contributory ones). Also, teachers in schools that become academies/free-schools will find that they no longer have the same rights or pay scales as current state schools (they may have initially have payscales that 'mirror' the state schools but for how long?)."

I think that it is quite the reverse. If you allow crap people to well within a profession, it devalues everyone else within it. I suspect great teachers will be cheering these proposals as, with the crap gone, the whole profession will gain respect. Finally, why on earth would a free school want to undercut the state sector? People who set up free schools aspire to create excellent schools. They prefer to pay for the best teachers they can get.

Most professionals are accustomed to being held to account by regulators, clients/service users and would expect to be performance managed up or out if their performance was inadequate.

No one has ever explained on countless threads about the teaching profession why teachers should be an exception to this.

I don'gt think there is any point comparing train drivers salaries to teachers. Train drivers are very well paid for what they do. It is a bit of a historical anomaly combined with willingness to take strike action that keeps their wahes high. Driving a train steam is a difficult skilled job and so wages were high. This is no longer the case, but strikes have scuppered attempts by management to downgrade wages for many many years.

And there are other professionals who are paid less than teachers, study for a long time to reach their position and have stressful jobs.

I knew when I went into my line of work that in spite of the skill level required and stress involved, that it isn't a well paid job. Thats fine, I chose to do this. And most teachers I would think make the same decision. So either be prepared to put up with salary or strike and fight for more.

But levels of wages are NOT an excuse for professionals to perform poorly.

i think that very shortly we will be hearing about a lack of teachers. I'm not saying that bad teachers should be tolerated... i'm just saying that in some subjects it is practically impossible to recruit teachers. and if the problem is as big as everyone seems, there will be more vacancies.

what happens now? what happens when we dont have enough teachers to put in front of the kids? Does Michael Gove intend to retrain and teach politics?

IF we end up with a teacher shortage (which I doubt) the usual two methods will be used to attract more candidates for posts - increase wages and recruit from abroad. It's what other professions do.

So how do you define a crap teacher?
What about the teachers in the inner city school where some of the pupils are impossibly hard to teach- they could be excellent teachers in a different school. What about the ex army head of PE who teaches in the leafy suburburn school who everybody says is too harsh and all the kids (and therefore) parents hate him?
Im a teacher and like any human being- I do have "off" days. I have lessons where I think "thank god nobody else saw that". I have kids that refuse to take part in the lesson sometimes. I also have kids that perform outstandingly and have had some excellent lesson observations. If the head gets wind of the bad days- she will find any which way possible to get rid of you. It has happened in my school before- my head can be a bully to those that they do not like and those members of staff have disappeared.

Which is why I argued against the example of comparing the salaries of train drivers with teachers.

By the way I think lack of teachers will be a very real problem in the medium term. With such a huge increase in tuition fees- you would have to have about £35k (in tuition fees alone, never mind living costs) of debt before you start on your career of a starting salary of circa 20k.
The average teacher does not earn what average heads earn!

chubfuddler, they are not an exception. They are monitored constantly.
Anyway I am glad. As a teacher, I don't want other, poorer teachers making my job harder, and undoing good work for the pupils. It should be based on observations and parental and colleague feedback, not just results though.

Actually there is a lot of focus in schools on removing bad teachers but a lot of this unfortunately comes from parents and students deciding whom they don't want teaching their children. Some of their reasons are valid whilst others are ridiculous but a mob mentality is created, pushing the teacher out of their job.

Teaching is a very very difficult profession. It isn't just about imparting knowledge in an interesting way, if it were it would be much more enjoyable! It's about controlling classes of 32 kids, a significant proportion of whom don't want to be there, are rude or aggressive, with just you in the room, only 28 desk spaces and no budget for resources. After a day spent teaching and breaking up fights, doing detentions, revision sessions and other such activities at break and lunch you then have to spend countless hours after work and at weekends planning, marking and putting in place interventions for students who are underachieving.

In a school, we too get fed up with carrying bad teachers since this invariably increases our workload too. However, you need to remember that we are people! Sometimes good teachers are going through some sort of private issue meaning that their mind is not on engaging students to the best of their ability and often times it is these who are hounded out because they don't need the criticism at that time.

Please step back and consider everything we do do and consider what it actually means to be a good or bad teacher before getting on our case!

John,

So what would you like to happen? Would you like anyone who is qualified as a teacher to have a guaranteed job for life? I am not an expert but are there not metrics based on individual student improvement?

I don't think Gove is suggesting sacking someone based on a bad day but a teacher whose pupils consistently do worse in his subject than all the others should surely be under scrutiny, amd eventually sacked if he/she were unable to improve.

IME (and anecdote is not evidence, I am aware)- those that are bad at teachers- are painfully aware of it- and usually leave of their own accord.
I have some colleagues that are slightly, erm... lazier, than others but Im not sure I would define them as bad teachers- the pupils still make progress in their lessons and achieve well.

Teachers don't have guaranteed jobs for life now. The same procedures apply currently, Gove is just suggesting a move to speed up the final phase. It's not a great innovation, it isn't a particularly big decision. It's a tweaking of a system, which the press have pounced on, 'cause everyone loves to discuss teachers - especially bad teachers: it's one of those subjects everyone feels to be an expert on, and it makes for good eyecatching headlines, to sell papers. Specially the DM