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

Yet we have managed to follow both DfE and union guidance and opened as required. In fact, it was the ever changing DfE guidance that caused more problems than the union!

@Whysomanyexcuses

In her 15 years at the school, Wood has overseen its transformation from ‘inadequate’ to ‘outstanding’.

That should be praised. What an amazing head and not tainted because she merely spoke the truth.

That would depend on whether she hounded out staff that she didn't like, Forcibly managed out disabled and sick members of staff.

And if she thinks this of her own staff then she hasn't been doing her job.

So whether she should be praised or not will be down to your perception and bias.

Why are people blaming the head for teachers under performing? Are teachers not autonomous professionals responsible for their own actions or in-actions? It really hasn't been the time for performance management, has it Obviously managers have their role to play, but ultimately if someone is under-performing, they need to take responsibility for that.

Anyway I also don't agree with the head going on and making these comments. There are lazy people in every single profession, but you don't see other managers taking it to the media. They deal with it through the proper channels, professionally. It really is very silly to be further adding fuel to the current criticism teachers are getting. For goodness sake, give teachers a break!

From your link

’Mrs Wood claimed that some teaching staff had reportedly refused to work on site for three days a week - instead of two - citing problems getting childcare cover‘

That doesn’t sound like ‘generalising’ to me.

She was not generalising. It says quite clearly that she was talking about staff at her school.

Yes,
Headteacher was telling the truth, but it was also a confession of her failing and incompetence as headteacher. She should have been suspended because as headteacher it was her one job to ensure that her teachers were teaching and not sitting around doing nothing. So it’s because she did not do her job, she has let the children down and therefore, should be suspended.

She's neither right or wrong.

She's right some teachers haven't been doing as much as others.

She's right schools have been very varied in what's delivered nationally.

She's right to speak out.

But she's the head! What's she been setting for staff to do?
Our EHT and HoS have set targets to compete (eg curriculum overviews) with online training etc and deadlines alongside the week in and week WFH bubbles we have.

Teachers at my school couldn't be accused of doing nothing - because they were given stuff to do!

Whysomanyexcuses
She was generalising, following comments from parents about their own experiences.

Either she was generalising and she shouldn't be commenting on how other schools have approached learning during lockdown because she doesn't know.

Or she was talking about her own staff and she should be sorting out her own in school issues.

Either way she was wrong.

@PrivateD00r

Why are people blaming the head for teachers under performing? Are teachers not autonomous professionals responsible for their own actions or in-actions? It really hasn't been the time for performance management, has it Obviously managers have their role to play, but ultimately if someone is under-performing, they need to take responsibility for that.

Anyway I also don't agree with the head going on and making these comments. There are lazy people in every single profession, but you don't see other managers taking it to the media. They deal with it through the proper channels, professionally. It really is very silly to be further adding fuel to the current criticism teachers are getting. For goodness sake, give teachers a break!

Teachers would have been following the guidance issued to them government, local authority and from their SLT. No teachers would have worked through a pandemic like this before so in this situation I don’t think you can expect them to just do the work without management input.

Under normal circumstances yes you’d expect teachers to mainly manage doing their own work without needing input. If they are doing what is required though that’s obviously the heads job to address.

PrivateD00r
Why are people blaming the head for teachers under performing?

Its their job.

Sorry I meant she's right to speak out - should have said to staff though. Not on national radio!

Irrelevant of the job she does / her staff. It simply cannot be allowed to publicly call out your staff on a radio show for not pulling their weight of that’s what you deem it.
Yes she should have been sacked completely unprofessional.

If her own staff are lazy and not doing their jobs, then she is the manager and it is her responsibility to deal with that. If she is talking about teachers from other schools then she has no personal knowledge of their circumstances and shouldn't be commenting. Saying teachers - any teachers - are lazy, is immature, inappropriate and unprofessional. I'm pretty sure that there's some lacy Headteachers, and maybe she's one of them. Her job is to manage the school and the staff - not give contentious interviews making sensationalist allegations about some fictional teachers.

I do think that maybe some teachers haven’t been working ‘flat out’ and some may have even been lazy but she was in the wrong to slag off her own teachers publicly.

She should have been managing their performance privately and supporting her ‘team’ publicly. What she did was very unprofessional.

Totally agree! Some schools have been shit! A perfect example is my child’s school.

@FrippEnos

PrivateD00r Why are people blaming the head for teachers under performing?

Its their job.

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?

As a Chair of Governors I would have not been pleased by what she said. Clearly anything to do with the operational issues in her school is her responsibility. I have a deal of sympathy that she has probably got to breaking point in trying to get some of her staff to make a greater contribution. Nobody knows how much she might have been thawted by the staff member, the unions, the local authority and even her own governing board. But that is no excuse and saying it in public on the radio was totally wrong. If she felt so intense about the situation she should have had the sense to not say anything or even refused to have the interview.
That is a massive shame as her career ends in a few weeks with a large cloud over her retirement, when people should have been applauding her achievements.

I haven’t been working flat out.

I’ve been following the directions of my school though so if there’s a problem with what I’ve provided they need to tell me.

Of course heads are responsible for what their staff do, whether working from home or not. I check work set each week, monitor feedback given and sit in on zoom meetings between staff and children. I check on all training completed and admin tasks carried out. If I don't know what my staff are doing, it's my responsibility to find out . If they are not doing what has been agreed should be done, it is my job to find out why and what support is needed to enable them to do so. It is NOT my job to go slagging them off to the media.

I thought it was common knowledge that it is nigh on impossible to get rid of a crap teacher, perhaps she has had enough and this is the only way to highlight it. If she had staff that refused to come in for 3 days instead of 2 and she can't discipline or sack them then it must be very difficult for her. Perhaps she is also aware of the very many parents who have been dismayed about the poor performance and support they have received from some schools/teachers - note the 'some'. I am amazed how the teachers on here all seem to defend every other teacher regardless, this is the only workplace I know that does this!

I'm getting really bored of explaining this on these threads, but if your school is not set up for online/live teaching/delivering work packs/whatever (which would be the Head's decision - these things cost money and have to be centrally organised) as an individual teacher, you cannot teach. What are people suggesting - that a teacher would set up lessons independently of school? You'd get fired and rightly so! And if there is no childcare in a global pandemic, there's no childcare. I say this as a teacher who has taught my full timetable throughout. Because my school had the facilities.

The staff were on a rota to come into school to teach keyworker children for two days a week and then work from home on other admin/ home learning tasks for the other three. She wanted the staff to come in for one of the three days to complete their admin tasks in the school. This was then against the health and safety and government guidance which said workers should work from home whenever possible.

@Justheretobeclear

She's absolutely right. My husband is a teacher and he hasn't even been expected to do anything. But, in teaching, she's an idiot for thinking you can say anything against any member of staff. The unions have all the power and they'll have her blood for even thinking that any teacher isn't perfect. 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 is he not doing end of term reports/data analysis/working on risk assessments and policies/planning for next term/ Teachers at my school are working crazy hard..pupils in school and pupils at home, I don’t get this

If her team (in this case her teaching staff) were not performing, it’s entirely her responsibility. She’s exposed herself as much as she has criticised them.

Much more problematic than getting rid of a "crap teacher", is replacing them...