to entirely agree with Michael Gove's laudation of Lord Harris

[longfingernails]

Though I think it's a waste of time for Gove to go chasing Guardian readers, he makes an excellent point:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/29/hero-conservative-millionaire-saving-schools

Lord Harris has done more to transform the prospects of the working class than any number of Labour union stooges. The way Labour treated education (pre-Blair/Adonis) was sheer evil in my view; they ripped up the life chances of millions of children just to keep incompetent teachers and the unions which backed them happy.

No - so what? I have strong views on politics and though I greatly respect academics in the hard sciences, by and large I have nothing but contempt for those who work in 'education policy'.

long you still haven't mentioned whether you have any personal experience of Lord Harris's educational expertise

The PGCE is a one-size-fits-all qualification designed by ivory tower non-entities designed for conformity and mediocrity - hence the reason it is so beloved by the teaching unions. In my view it is not only useless; it is actively damaging. It blunts creativity and inspiration.

Who do you know who works in education policy to have nothing but contempt for?
Actually, forget it. Can't be arsed getting into debate with someone who knows fuck all about the topic they have such strong views on.

No, I have no personal experience of Harris academies, beyond seeing the transformation in many local schools which used to be failing LEA comprehensives.

on the MN Blog by Camila B from Kids Company, there's a teacher at a school that has set up a nurture group for troubled kids. It has been a great success. Now the school's been taken over by an academy chain. They are getting rid because they don't want 'that kind' of pupil.

OP

When will you stop posting opinion as fact?

How have you seen this transformation? Is it through speaking to people who attend these schools? By visiting them?

And, re. Gove, I'm hugely encouraged to hear that a parent is challenging Gove's punitive fines for parents taking kids out of school - in this case, for a family funeral. The parent in question seems to have deep pockets and is taking it to court. Good for him.

I think teaching unions should be disbanded also. I cannot see what benefit they have brought over the past 40 years to the education of children.

edamsavestheday That sounds like a bad decision. There will be many academies and free schools that are not run well and which fail, whichever metric you use (though through the magic of competition, the number of failures will be fewer, proportionally speaking, than the number of appalling LEA comprehensives run for the benefit of NUT/NASUWT members rather than the pupils).

I thought Xenia had returned! But then realised op's link was to the guardian and not the ft. Never mind, it's still mildly amusing.

edamsavestheday I support staggered term-times across 'natural' geographical divisions (for example, county council boundaries). Though there will always be a small number of people who are further inconvenienced by it, it will lead to a less 'peaked' peak season, thereby allaying some of the concerns around holidays. I do think it's broadly important that children are in class during term-time though.

"the number of failures will be fewer, proportionally speaking, than the number of appalling LEA comprehensives run for the benefit of NUT/NASUWT members rather than the pupils"

Do you have any evidence that schools are run for the benefit of the unions?

I thought unions were for the benefit of the members.

BoneyBackJefferson One particularly striking fact: only 17 teachers were sacked for incompetence in England between 2001 and 2011.

fullfact.org/factchecks/teachers_dismissed_incompetence_Sun-14365

It shows pretty starkly how the unions have held back the education of pupils. Fortunately, Gove has been on the case:

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/9011225/Poor-teachers-to-be-sacked-in-a-term-under-reforms.html

Is it Michael Gove's job to micromanage every school in England? No. Is it the government's job to enrich a few of their mates at the expense of the taxpayer? No. Is it Gove's job to tell heads they aren't allowed to permit children to travel to family funerals abroad? No.

And Tories claim they are libertarians... what a joke.

NB I'm not a teacher. Used to be a school governor, though, and have every sympathy for good teachers trying to do a decent job and getting constantly bashed by Gove and Wilshaw.

Why are teaching unions damaging? Why do they need to be broken?

Given that teaching unions have little power to influence anything and Gove is riding roughshod through what's left of them, I wondered that too.

Why don't the unions realise that bad teachers need to be sacked as they bring the whole profession into disrepute when they are not? 17 teachers out of 400,000 or so is simply ridiculous.

That's it? one piece of "evidence" is all you've got to prove that education has been held back by the unions.

You ignore that most of goves's initiatives are failing in the countries that he has cherry picked them from.

You ignore that the reason only 17 teachers were sacked for incompetence is not due to the unions but from the now disbanded GTC.

Again all you put forward are opinions pretending they are facts.

Only some Tories are libertarians (David Davis being one example). Some are 'paternalist one-nation' wets, like Cameron. Some are socially conservative authoritarians (like Anne Widdecombe). Some are socially liberal but economically very free-market (like Osborne). I don't think Tories (or small c-conservatives) are 'meant' to be libertarian - though my personal political instincts lie in that direction. Overall, it is somewhat true that via its natural tendency to see the state as the solution, Labour tends to be more authoritarian on average than the Tories.

TucsonGirl

Can you give me another profession where the leaving rate is so high?
And again the GTC had the power to remove teachers that were "bad". They failed to do so.

OK, time to sleep. I will try to return to this thread soon if I get time.