To be getting fed up with this hatred of schools and teachers.

[Pipbin]

In another thread (this is not really a thread about a thread) about schools some posters have made it very clear that they hate schools, see teachers as jumped up nazis and feel that everyone is feeling superior and looking down on them.

Am I alone is feeling upset and insulted by this?

I am a teacher and surely we both want the same thing, the best for your child?
We are not the enemy. We are on the same side.

"but anything up to GCSE and the academic stuff is not that relevant, is it?"

You woud be surprised. I would probably have agreed with you (I am unusually well-qualified for a primary teacher - Oxbridge PhD - but would absolutely have said that academic qualifications did not equate to being a good teacher.

However, I have had recent experience of a primary teaching student, who simply wasn't intellectually up to the job (despite decent A-levels and a final year BEd). Although the subject knowledge required to teach primary isn't as in depth as in later years, a certain level of 'quickness', of ability to master the breadth of subjects required, and to really analyse in detail where a child might have difficulty or misconception IS required, and I hadn't appreciated how critical it is until I saw it missing IYSWIM?

Sorry, Goblin, had come late to the thread and missed the irony.

That's my planning solved then! One lesson fits all, no differentiation, one worksheet for everyone. Sorted!
The fact that I have children who range from level 1 to level 5 in my class, some with EAL 9 with IEPs and 3 statements is irrelevant.
All for one and one for all!

Interesting how the people who complain the most about teachers are the ones who don't seem to have a very good grasp of the English language, or spelling, or grammar in their posts
well, I should think so! If they themselves have had crap teachers, who haven't taught them the basics, then I should think they wouldn't be praising teachers to the heavens!

Quotes from the report on the PISA tests:

'Part of the reason pupils do so well in Shanghai, according to the OECD's deputy director of education, Andreas Schleicher, is that they have the drive and confidence to fulfill their potential.
"In China and Shanghai, you have nine out of 10 students telling you, 'It depends on me. If I invest the effort, my teachers are going to help me to be successful'," Schleicher told CNN's On China program, which will air later this month.
Similarly, in Japan which ranked 7th overall more than 80% of students disagreed or strongly disagreed that they put off difficult problems, and 68% disagreed or strongly disagreed that they give up easily when confronted with a problem.
Hard work
"Practice and hard work go a long way towards developing each student's potential, but students can only achieve at the highest levels when they believe that they are in control of their success and that they are capable of achieving at high levels," the PISA report said.'

'Jiang also told CNN that Shanghai's success is a product of a culture that prioritizes academic achievements over other pursuits.
"A lot of it is that the students are engaged in learning. The parents, the students, the community are engaged in making sure their child succeeds," he said.'

Could we say that we do the same in our country? That 90% of students see it as essential that they put in the effort required? That parents prioritise academic achievements above other things?
I wonder what Shanghai does with those students that don't?

"I wonder what Shanghai does with those students that don't?"

In the main, they are not allowed to go to school in Shanghai. There are numerous articles about how using Shanghai as represntative of 'China' for PISA hugely distorts the results...

www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2014/03/18-pisa-shanghai-loveless is an example of such articles - there are many others but Brookings is quite a respected research name.

If there are any grown adults who really do still blame their lack of literacy skills on the odd teacher from their past, then words fail me.

How interesting.
I did wonder where the rest were.

Some people don't see education as a life-long skill Feenie.
You do your time and that's it. In the same way that many don't own dictionaries, or bother with learning new things for fun, rather than because they have to for work.

Goblin,

Essentially, my understading is that what china has done in the Pisa tests is that they have chosen:

• To select the results of one of its wealthiest cities.
• To include the results only of certain social classes (due to exisiting law and custom about residence) AND
• To remove 25% of stidents from the test, even within this very selective cohort.

Our results would look rather different if we did the same!

This is quite a useful summary - though it pklays down the fact that 'China' in PISA terms, is represented solely by the city with the very best educational system even BEFORE the selection of students tio take the test happens..

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/20/so-how-overblown-were-no-1-shanghais-pisa-results/

There are aspects of our school that I like, and aspects that I dislike. I have my reasons for being very unhappy with some aspects of the school. One thing that I find very irritating is how defensive they are - I find I can barely ask a question without them assuming I am complaining, which actually I have never done. I have sought out a certain teacher on a few occasions as she gives my dd support with her maths, and I never get to see her - so now and again I find her to thank her, and I gave her a Christmas gift. I also regularly thank dd's class teacher as she is fantastic. However previous teachers have refused to differentiate my dd's work despite me asking lots, and kept saying that she was doing fine, despite later being diagnosed with ADHD and ASD, and an ed psych diagnosed dyscalculia as her maths skills were 3 years behind average. I still cannot understand why all the teachers kept saying there was nothing wrong, when there clearly was.

Anyway, I also don't understand why teachers on here get so defensive. Staff from my profession are also criticised too, and I agree that there are good and bad, like any profession.

Also, here in NI, I have never heard of a teacher working 60+ hours! School seems to be a shorter day here, with p1-p3 approx 9am-2pm and p4-p7 9am-3pm. My P5 dd has a different teacher (a p1-p3 teacher) from 2pm-3pm three times a week to enable her teacher to do marking etc. The school carpark is always empty by 4pm at the latest. My teacher friends say they rarely bring work home in the evenings, though they do sometimes in the holidays. I think this seems a much fairer system, and I think our school day is more than long enough. It is ridiculous that teachers should be having to work such excessive hours. We also don't have OFSTED and as far as I know this means much less paper work.

I find many teachers have poor planning skills working long hours when it could be done more efficiently

I have to admit that I often wonder why my job takes so long. I teach for 15 hours a week, I am a senior teach so on a reduced timetable.

I guess that on average I do about 75 hours a week.

I have 30 A level students. They do a homework once a week and an essay every other week. I guess each student gets about 15 minutes of marking time from me a fortnight. That is about 4 hours a week.

I teach about 75 GCSE students. I mark there books on a fortnightly cycle, they will have at the end of the fortnight five pieces of class work and two pieces of homework. As a very rough estimate each book will take me 20 minutes to mark. ( that is less my than 3 minutes per peice of work- so it could be longer ) . That is about 13 hours a week of marking.

I have two key stage three classes, about 55 students. Their books get marked every fortnight, they will have 3 pieces of class work and 2 pieces of homework. Roughly 15 minutes a book ( again 3 minutes per activity) so about 7 hours a week.

So before I have planned anything, attended a meeting, provided any pastoral care or carried out any management duties I have worked 39 hours a week just on teaching and marking.

Because of the way that our school works I do very little individual planning, so let's allow 30 minutes to tweak each lesson in light of their previous work - about 8 hours.

We are on a rolling programme of rewriting schemes of work as a department, I would guess that I allow about 5 hours a week for that planning. So added together that is 13 hours of planning.

I have an SLT meeting every week which is about 2 hours, I have at least one if not two other meetings a week in school with other staff so again 2 hours a week.I have 2 1/2 hours a week to meet with students. I will meet with parents, social services, other professional staff regularly, let's say about 3 hours a week. So all together 9 1/2 hours meeting staff, students and outside agencies.

I run two clubs so that is 3 hours a week. I do revision classes twice a week, another 3 hours. I run a detention once a week which is a further hour. So 7 hours a week on extra curricular, mentoring and sanctions.

That is 68.5 hours a week and I haven't marked any exams yet, haven't written any reports, done any duties, put up any displays , sent letters or postcards home, attended any school events or done much in the way if my management role.

As I said I think that I work quite efficiently. I do get less efficient as the term goes on because I get tired.

I don't teach maths I am sure someone else will take delight in telling me of my sums don't add up.

Gosh having looked at that lot, no wonder I keep getting pregnant.

I am a teacher. Some teachers are truly crap and, in Scotland at least, the school can do nothing about this. In fact, the school can be criticised by the teacher ( and the union) for failing to "support" a poor teacher.

However, in my school of 20 teachers (tiny secondary) there are probably only 2 I think are terrible, 2 more who are a bit iffy (fortunately not important subjects to my DC) and the rest are good or very, very good.

Most parents are supportive, if a bit arms' length, at secondary. Some are a bit of a nightmare ( wanting daily updates on wee Jimmy's progress or keeping children off school for holidays and then moaning about results).

The respect thing is interesting. I think teachers, in the whole, are far more highly respected in Scotland than in England. I am admired by many for my job choice and not pitied; nor is it assumed I teach because no other job would have me. I have brought up my own children to respect every human being, to be polite and kind. However, they are allowed to argue a case too, or have high expectations of others.

And I teach both my children.....imagine the complaints at that parents' evening!

In my education and my 3 DCs 13 years of education there was only one teacher who I had a problem with. Oh, well maybe two, but that's a lot of teachers who were fine or certainly good enough.

some people have a perfectly good reason to dislike certain schools/teachers or indeed the state education system.

I am one of those, I do not hate schools/teachers, I dislike the system that let my child down for the first 6 years of his school life.

I dislike the fact that some members of staff during those 6 years showed no understanding or knowledge for my sons condition, chose to ignore aspects of his statement and made him the scapegoat of classroom/playground disturbances.

I dislike the fact that the HT didn't seek help from the outreach service, nor did she approach the LEA for extra training as she had been asked to do.

I dislike the fact that reports weren't sent to the LEA so they were unaware of the true situation in the school, until it all came out in an interim review meeting.

I dislike the fact that the HT would not admit that they could not meet my sons needs until the situation became totally untenable.

I do not hate any of those people, however I do hate the system that makes it very hard for a child with disabilities to access an acceptable level of education.

I am chortling at the suggestion that teachers are disorganised, inefficient and/or bad at planning.

I teach 40 hours per fortnight, have 50 yr11s, 60 yr 10s & 240 KS3 students, plus 12 in the 6th form. My subject isn't heavy on marking for KS3 but if you assume 15 mins per folder per KS4 student and 20 per KS5 student per fortnight then that's 35.75 hours per week of teaching and marking. I then need to do meetings, clubs (only 3 hours per week at the moment but it fluctuates) duties etc etc and THEN planning. I fail to see how I could be more efficient.

One thing that I find very irritating is how defensive they are - I find I can barely ask a question without them assuming I am complaining.

I totally agree - this is true of every school that I have had dealings with. I would add that I have been a Governor and PTA committee member in the past so am not unsupportive of schools at all. However, any time I have had to raise a totally valid concern or complaint they have taken it way too personally and have treated me as if I was something on the bottom of their shoe.

One school even threatened legal action if I dared to mention again an issue where they were blatantly breaking the law and causing harm to a child. So perhaps you can understand why some people have a mistrust of so called 'professionals' who always claim to be acting in your child's best interests.

who exactly are "they"?

'they' are school leadership and teachers

oh, and the threats were from a Chair of Gov's.

I am a teacher and a school leader and I hope I am not perceived as defensive, certainly not my intention.

However do people only become defensive when they are attacked?

I am not saying that all staff are like that *philoslothy, just my experience so far. I have friends and family who work within the education sector and even they have been shocked at some of the things I have encountered.

Not sure what you mean by becoming defensive when attacked. Surely if a complaint is made policies should be followed and the matter investigated accordingly. If errors were made then apologise and move forward, don't issue threats and bury your heads in the sand.