This headteacher is right - so why suspnd her

[Whysomanyexcuses]

This headteacher has said what many parents have been saying yet suspended .....
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8463765/Sunderland-head-teacher-suspended-saying-staff-sat-home-doing-lockdown.html#comments

We need more head teachers like this - our children have been failed.

YABU - she should say nothing - let it go - ignore the ones who have done nothing to help children
YANBU - she is correct to say it as it is - children have been let down

@PrivateD00r

In a pandemic, you think heads are solely responsible for whether or not teachers fullfill their duties? Whilst all working from home?

The teachers are not at all responsible for their own work?

Why do you think that after many threads where teachers have said 'if your not happy email the teacher/head' we get a thread where it is no longer the heads's job to check up on what the teachers are doing?

It is clearly because this one head reflects your opinion about teachers.

The head's job has not changed, if she believes that teachers are not providing the correct work, or the correct amount of work then she should do her job and sort it out.

Not go and moan in the press.

Some teachers have taken the piss without reason, in every profession there's lazy bums and teaching is no exception. But as always a minority gets lumped in with others with justifiable reasons- shielding, childcare etc.

My friends are teachers, they all have worked flat out and have tales of a lazy bum or two. But again it's in the minority and those lazy bums were lazy far before them pandemic. The common denominator with all? Piss poor management. This head has done herself no favours.

Interesting that a pp lives close and has stated that she was already on her way out before this. Sounds like she wasn't the super head the DM is making out her to be.

It must be hard to get the balance of respecting your staff's professionalism and autonomy and still acting as a manager to ensure good service is provided to pupils/ students in general.

Some employees respond really well to being given full responsibility and autonomy to perform their roles with little intervention - they feel respected and it is an opportunity for them to really shine.

Unfortunately not all employees act like that, and the 'hands-off' approach for some just means their role is not adequately performed without someone overseeing what is achieved.

A manager may recognise these different styles in their workforce but would be liable to being accused of treating people differently if they took more time to manage some and gave defined expectations, but were 'hand-off' with those who demonstrated they were able to work autonomously and responsibly.

This is especially difficult for schools during lockdown, where there has to be flexibility and creativity in approach due to varying home circumstances for both staff and students - it's difficult to determine set expectations, and impossible to see what is actually happening when the working is done from home. Heads are depending on their staff's professionalism, and I think they are mostly getting it.

And leaders in education can make interesting decisions as well; in one of the places I work (not a school) the Principal told all staff at the beginning of lockdown that he only expected them to work a maximum of 3 hours per working day - and stressed that this was the absolute maximum!

Now this, on the face of it, was a lovely thing to do for staff; it acknowledged the external pressures many were under and the difficult home circumstances that might exist for some. But in all the weeks that have passed he has never redefined expectations, so some staff are still working to this - and it is our students that are being failed because of less contact time. I wouldn't be surprised if many of his colleagues on the management team were unhappy with this approach.

It's the same as how you can't say a bad word about people on benefits or women who choose not to breastfeed - they're completely untouchable

Why should anyone say anything negative about a woman who choses not to breastfeed, it's their body, their baby, their bloody choice!

You don't air disciplinary issues about your staff in public. You just don't. If it needed to be raised as an apology to parents, it should have been done professionally, with focus on the school not delivering the standards parents had a right to expect and the steps taken to address the problem. You don't publicly call your staff lazy.

She has been suspended for being unprofessional. As a manager you don't complain about your staff in the press, you use due process. She had already resigned and is due to leave soon, sounds like she had issues at the school and this was her parting shot.

She has been suspended for being unprofessional.

No she hasn't. Suspension is a neutral act, not a punishment.

She has been suspended so that an investigation can take place.

Whilst she should not have spoken about her own staff on air I agree that lockdown has seen some rise to the challenge whilst others quite happily leave others to put in the hard work. Not just in education but in all areas of work where most have been asked to work from home or go in occasionally. Some employees have acted as if they’re furloughed when they’re not or pick and choose what they feel they can do.

I can't access your link. But most teachers I know are working harder than usual. If her staff aren't, isn't that her issue to sort? Direction comes from a head. The fact that schools seem to be so different in what they provide / expect surely argues against any kind of national laziness?

I have relatives in teaching and all of them have said the same thing as this woman.

I too privately suspect that one or two of my colleagues might not be pulling their weight at the moment. The difference being that I don't name my place of work and then air my grievances with specific colleagues on national radio! I'd expect to be sacked before I was even off the air regardless of where I worked - beyond unprofessional.

Have the people who think she's some sort of brave whistleblower actually read the linked article? She's not talking about education in general - she's having a whinge about specific members of her own staff being lazy and 'undermining her'. You might be fine with your boss slagging you off personally on national media, but I most certainly wouldn't be.

@psychomath, exactly. Everyone has colleagues who don’t pull their weight, and in some cases lockdown will have exacerbated this. That’s called ‘working life’. There’s something quite sinister about going to the press to complain about your own staff.

I too privately suspect that one or two of my colleagues might not be pulling their weight at the moment

Definitely yes to this, I have typed out then deleted a whole thread ranting about my partner teacher who has done next to nothing the whole time leaving everything for me to deal with. Everybody has stopped asking him now

However, as pp said there will be lazy pisstakers in every profession, it doesn't mean that most of us are.

This was a management issue for the head to deal with. Instead she went on the radio and publicly shamed the whole school. Of course she was suspended

The comments about her wanting staff to come and do admin work in school, even though people had obvious childcare issues do make her sound like she was a poor and unpopular manager.

I've been working a lot, I've rang parents and I've also filmed myself reading stories
, singing songs etc, teaching phonics...

What has been demoralising is the lack of engagement from parents! Often I think "what is the point"... I've also been homeschooling my own 4 year old and have a 2 year old too... husband still out at work 12 hours..

I have been far from lazy! This headteacher was rightly suspended...if there was an issue with teachers then deal with it the proper way!

Also she wanted teachers in to do appraisals for the pay review in September? The unions have advised this is not appropriate unless a teaching was failing prior to Covid, then a support plan would have had to have been in place and they would have had to be sufficient evidence that this was not improving... I've had the updated policy regarding this from my school.

As for childcare, there has been no childcare! My childminder is critically vulnerable so she can't take the youngest, the 4 year old was not offered a place at school as my husband is not a "key worker" despite still working out of the home. My head has been amazing! I'm also part time yet have done my share on the rota as many times as the full time staff due to some staff shielding!

Final point... just because a school was outstanding in 2011 (against a completely different ofsted framework) I am doubtful it would be outstanding were it inspected tomorrow! In any event, it is the teachers that make the day to day difference not a head teacher who can't keep her mouth shut!

This has been reported in The Telegraph and The Times, it's not DM tittle tattle.

If you read the article about the interview, the example she gives is asking teachers to go up from 2 days in the school to 3 days to accommodate more vulnerable children. She didn't think this was unreasonable as the teachers are being paid to work a 5 day week but some of her staff thought it was, got their union involved then the governors prevented her from mandating that they worked the extra day in school.

So for those saying she has failed as a manager to get them to work harder, well she tried but the unions stopped her.

Do we really want to live in something resembling Soviet Russia where the unions are all powerful and can stick up for lazy employees who want to be able to choose whether they work?

Who would you rather was the Head at your child's school, this teacher Mrs Wood, or the Head in Manchester I read about a few weeks ago who posted on Facebook to tell all parents that he didn't deem it safe to open schools again. I know who'd have my vote.

She may have a point.

However, as a sitting head teacher, the buck stops with her for her staff. If they're doing nothing it's on her watch. Her responsibility and her job. So has she failed there?

Also, saying this in the papers about her own staff is hugely unprofessional.

I mean, who is going to pull out all the stops for her? She sounds like the worst sort of bitchy backstabbing manager who rules by fear. Note I didn't say a leader. Because she isn't one.

So for those saying she has failed as a manager to get them to work harder, well she tried but the unions stopped her

Unions can only stop managers who fuck up on procedure.

I would rather have the second head. It would tell me he prioritised my child's safety, the community's safety and his staff's health!

How about the opposite? China which bans unions , unless party controlled? Excellent safety standards (irony klaxon). America which controls union membership and tries to prevent them via non democratic votes.

I do keep saying this : watch American Factory and then come back and tell me unions are a bad thing.

So for those saying she has failed as a manager to get them to work harder, well she tried but the unions stopped her

Presumably the union stopped her from asking them to do things that were unreasonable like come in to school to do planning, putting them at increased risk.
A good manager would negotiate with and support staff in doing things at school that are useful to the school long term but don't put staff at risk in the short term.
It sounds like she had an idea of what she wanted done then bad mouthed them on the radio when it wasn't done her way.

@Noconceptofnormal

This has been reported in The Telegraph and The Times, it's not DM tittle tattle.

If you read the article about the interview, the example she gives is asking teachers to go up from 2 days in the school to 3 days to accommodate more vulnerable children. She didn't think this was unreasonable as the teachers are being paid to work a 5 day week but some of her staff thought it was, got their union involved then the governors prevented her from mandating that they worked the extra day in school.

So for those saying she has failed as a manager to get them to work harder, well she tried but the unions stopped her.

Do we really want to live in something resembling Soviet Russia where the unions are all powerful and can stick up for lazy employees who want to be able to choose whether they work?

Who would you rather was the Head at your child's school, this teacher Mrs Wood, or the Head in Manchester I read about a few weeks ago who posted on Facebook to tell all parents that he didn't deem it safe to open schools again. I know who'd have my vote.

1. She asked them to come in aon a third day to work on Powerpoints about their performance. This has nothing to do with working with vulnerable children. You can make Powerpoints at home and people who are not actually needed in school should be doing just that.

1. Governors will have been mindful of the DFE / Government guidance which says that people who are not needed in contact roles should be at home.

1. The unions stopped her - I'd be thrilled to belong to any union that could stop a bully like this but unfortunately in the real world they don't. This woman has been 'stopped' because she was acting against DFE / Government guidance and probably her own risk assessment.

1. Soviet Russia Here we go. Full froth now. Hilarious comparison.

1. Because you want your child in school, full time and nothing else will do eh? Well so do teachers. Safely.

No one said it was tittle tattle :s he was interviewed on the radio!

The two papers you mention have very specific agendas, of course.

I haven't read The Telegraph article, but the only source I can find about the extra day states that was to do on site admin, not to teach more children.

She is clearly a head who views HR and regs as red tape and , extrapolating, anyone with specific difficulties as a nuisance.

None of the papers mention the school became inadequate under her watch.

Governors will have been mindful of the DFE / Government guidance which says that people who are not needed in contact roles should be at home.

She also isn't the only employer wo has done this : my head did the same. Government guidance said employers should allow as many people as possible to work from home to contain the spread.

But as always a minority gets lumped in with others with justifiable reasons- shielding, childcare etc

Not Necessarily

We know some teachers are working their butts off , I know some
But we also know some teachers are chilling at home , I also know some !

Also this childcare is a red herring
We are many of us WFH , I work such long hours I really can’t do homeschool some days
I don’t , work has to prioritise

So yeah I get a bit annoyed when teachers can’t work cos if kids but I have to ! It’s not an excuse for anyone , work is unfortunately a priority over home school

@justasking111

Not sure what any head can do if teachers are working from home. The head cannot stand over them physically to make sure they are doing what is expected. Are teachers not expected to use their own initiative and come up with ways and means to teach children in a remote setting. When you say it is the heads responsibility to ensure the teaching staff do their work it makes them look a bit dim.

Teaching remotely/online requires a completely different set of skills and competencies to face 2 face teaching. Therefore without some direction or support from SLT or even something as simple as access to training/the correct technology it's not as simple as expecting people to just get on with it, and expect them to be able to produce high quality online lessons over night. Even in HE were there is much more access to technology and software teachers have struggled to adjust content and sessions to online learning and the quality of such resources has been varied. And these are lecturers who are much more comfortable with using the technology and software available. So it's not surprising that without good guidence and support from slt that many teachers are and have struggled.

Thisisworsethananticpated

The implication is that the teachers stayed at home and did no work but we don't know that and given the lack of objectivity form the head what she says can hardly be trusted.