to ask WHY in the name of Gove are teachers striking again?

[loftyclopflop]

DD's school is closing on 1st October because they have chosen to strike. Is it over pay, pensions and conditions? Did they achieve anything by striking a couple of years ago other than massively inconveniencing a lot of parents?

I know Gove is a twat but do they really expect to change anything by taking the day off?

Spinkle you are so right.

I do think it is important that teachers in our toughest schools are the best teachers that we can employ, because their teachers are often their only chance. Too often we allow teachers to put in a mediocre performance or to make excuses for the children rather than driving the children to a better future. PRP may be one tool for doing that.

Quite the opposite Arisbottle, in the toughest schools (and many others as well) students have complex needs beyond being pushed to meet an academic target set by a statistician with no personal knowledge of the students. PRP is linked to academic achievement; there is little (if any) recognition of any other needs that are being met or skills taught (such as life skills, coping with emotional issues etc). Therefore teachers have to decide between meeting all the needs of the students or getting a pay rise - hardly a recipe for improvement!

Great teachers can do both, mediocre teachers can't or simply can't be bothered.

I was the dysfunctional kid, from a feckless household with a lot of crap to process. Some teachers were so hung up on trying to emotionally fix me that they forgot that my passport out of a shit life was my qualifications. Some teachers thought I was too much effort and as long as I was not rioting they left me alone. I suspect if my results affected their pay they would have tried harder or left the profession and let someone else - who was up to the job - take over.

Right.

I'm not trying hard enough then.

I give up.

And whilst PRP can be linked to academic achievement , it need not be linked to that alone. It can be linked to a wider contribution. We all know that there are great teachers and those who are at best mediocre. I don't really have a problem with recognising that in financial terms.

I don't know how hard you are trying, I certainly have not said that you are not trying. But you are naive if you think that all teachers are giving the job 100%.

League tables of results have lead to spoon-feeding kids the curriculum, and all sorts of tricks to boost exam results.
Making a teacher's pay rise depend on little Johnny getting a C would not end well, I fear.
If little Johnny were not going to reach his target grade, what is to stop me booting him down to a lower set for poor results, thus getting rid of him from my score card? While holding on to little Jenny who really would benefit from moving up a set but whose value added is too tempting to lose?

Great teachers cannot do both for every student that needs it, no matter how fantastic they are or how motivated! If only the world was so simple and the necessary time and resources so readily available....But sadly many people make judgments based on their own school experiences rather than finding out the reality of teaching and education today, hence why so many would agree with you.

But if PRP is done properly it will not all rest on Johnny getting a C. Just as teachers moving through threshold doesn't.

But if year after year your students are failing there is an issue .

"And whilst PRP can be linked to academic achievement , it need not be linked to that alone. It can be linked to a wider contribution"....

it can - but good luck finding one of the few Heads/Governing bodies who share your viewpoint when schools are judged on their results and league table positions by Ofsted and parents.

Great teachers can try to do both, Arisbottle, but surely you are not saying high expectations = total solution?

I agree high expectations are essential. But bloody hell, you must know, having been there, that sometimes all the high expectations in the world just won't be enough to solve something that is tragically, despite your DAMNEDEST best intentions, as far as you can go as a teacher (and usually beyond) and it still isn't nearly enough?

Penguin I am a teacher, so I think I know about education today. Why is it that when someone says something that a few teachers disagree with - we must be talking nonsense?

I never said teachers can help all the children pass all of the time. I do think that teachers have a duty to not only help children develop emotional reliliance and life skills but to guide them to the best qualificiations that they can.

I know of colleagues who are trying far harder now there pay will be linked to performance.

I am part of the senior management team in my school putting together our PRP policy, we do not intend to link pay solely to one year's results. No school I know of is doing any different .

"Just as teachers moving through threshold doesn't" - our head refused to consider anyone for threshold whose students had not achieved at least their minimum predicted grade this year regardless of reason -he was not alone in the LA.

PRP is another money-saving measure, it doesn't act as an incentive and certainly doesn't improve the whole school experience for many students. But the Government have put a fantastic spin on it and so many people have fallen for the spiel.......sad but true.

We have moved teachers through threshold who have had students not achieve targets, most teachers will have students who miss target for whatever reason - it does not mean they are not a great teacher. However if it is a significant number of students and a pattern that repeats itself - there is a problem.

If that is true then I wish you were in our LA. I sadly know of far too many good teachers who have worked all hours to help students with no recognition who are now leaving the profession or who are so disillusioned at the thought of PRP who are doing less....I guess it all depends on what is happening locally as to how valid you think points made by others are.

Perhaps, somewhere in the midst of everyone's worries about their children's academic futures, the fact that teachers are people, fellow humans with their own families, dreams, wishes and hobbies, is forgotten. Teachers aren't real people who matter, yes? That's the attitude I see on here.

I think the strike is about the level of government meddling. If no-one does anything, that gives them the green light to do whatever they want, doesn't it?

"However if it is a significant number of students and a pattern that repeats itself - there is a problem". True - but is the problem always the teacher? How about curriculum design/changes to syllabus/exam board/lack of timetabled teaching hours/lack of support for those who require it/lack of resources.... I could go on.

Our bottom set always has negative value added, no matter which teacher teaches it. It's the set that ends up with the often-excluded, or the ones who miss lessons due to college placements.

Our top set is hard to get positive value added on as they are mainly targeted A*, the best you can do is meet their target. One misses, and you can't make it up with an over-achiever.

Academic performance of groups of students against their target isn't just down to the teacher. If I were in charge of setting I'd be tempted by the C borderline group, because they are going to have a lot of intervention on top of my teaching to make them meet their target.

PM/appraisal is a 2 way thing isn't it? If you are set unreasonable targets, and/or fail to meet them owing to lack of support, then the Head would be on dodgy ground when failing to progress you. I think an advantage of PRP is that staff might get more bolshy about demanding the support they should be getting. Another is that people will actually get to grips with the data and read it properly. If only 70% of your bottom set gets their 3 levels of progress target, but the national transition matrix shows that only 55% of level 3s convert to a D in your subject, then actually, you could argue your results are actually pretty good.

Soured stones - irrelevant comment IMO. You could have that about 95% of jobs other tha teaching, many of which involve people doing less for more money.
I FULLY support teachers, the issue is about more than pay and pensions- it's about providing a better education system ( which includes but is not exclusive to rewarding not burning out staff)
Gove is systematically destroying yp's prospects. Imo Any parent who opens their eyes to the bigger picture will recognise finding childcare for 1 day as nothing compared to fighting for better provision for all , including their OWN children ( these changes are current and/or imminent) in the future.

I can't even read this thread. I have tried several times, but the posts from still-serving teachers are giving me panic attacks.

I didn't have a negative OFSTED judgement in my time even when I was a lone parent to a three-month old baby and HAD to go back to work and face the chaos my maternity replacement had left two days before they came in. It nearly broke me.

I tried to go back when DD was three. Just for a term and in my class of twenty, one YR 3 child was raped by her GM's BF, another child came to school stinking of faeces in the same trackie clothes every day. He stopped attending when his mother fell foul of the dealers on the estate and the entire family didn't dare leave their house, was taken into care, given a proper uniform then disappeared.

Another child battered into unconsciousness by a pupil two years older who heard voices in his head and had NO intervention from mental health services because mental health services don't kick in until ten years old.

Chairs brandished at me. Pupil jumping from table to table so that the whole class had to be evacuated. Parents chemically dependant.

Seven year old girls telling boys to lick their pussies and a delightful child who would be taken to London every weekend so that his Dad could batter drugs with his GF and would not be fed.

I have two disabled children and a mother with severe dementia. My Dad rings me ten times a day to sort out his admin and I am trying to run a business from home and yet this is all much easier than teaching. I still have nightmares about it and this is from someone who was mostly rated by OFSTED as having outstanding or excellent lessons / assemblies.

God help the next generation and to those who are still doing it.