Teachers, or people who know about the education system..

[HappyYoni]

...can I ask for your help?
I am doing some research for a project and I need to have a good understanding of the main issues that are affecting teaching/teachers today, I have looked on the bbc and guardian websites, plus a couple of teacher forums and the education today website, but i still don't feel like I have a clear idea.
Do any of you have any thoughts you'd be willing to share? Or tips on websites I could look at?
What I know so far is that Gove has introduced changes to the pension, pay progression and curriculum, but I'm not clear whether those changes have come in or are just being discussed?
Sorry for waffling but if any of you can spare a few minutes to point me in the right direction I'd be really grateful.

Get this paper online through a library subscription.

The 'Big Society', Education and Power

What are the targets on? I presume exam results? Does that mean less able kids won't get entered for exams in case they affect targets?

Thanks BoffinMum will have a look at that now :)

www.gov.uk/government/collections/mandatory-and-useful-timelines-information-for-schools this might give you an idea of what's in, out and what's to come.

rubbish... sorry about lack of link

No - PM targets are based on how students perform against their targets.

So if you happen to teach the bottom set in year 11, with all D/E targets, & they all get Ds, you've done OK.

You can't not enter them & then claim they've hit their targets.

I have 3 PM targets. One relates to teaching & pupil progression (ie. my observed lessons are all Good/Outstanding, & my GCSE students make at least as good progress as their prior performance would predict), one is data-y (I'm in charge of monitoring KS3 performance, so lots of faffing with spreadsheets, organising intervention for students not making sufficient progress, etc), & one is enrichment-y (I'm the Department's Trip Bitch, basically).

It's all monitored via a minimum of 3 annual meetings with my line manager, wherein everything I've done re: these 3 targets is recorded in red (crap), amber (getting there) or green (superb, have a banana). By the end of the year, the expectation is that everything is green.

If it isn't, I can be put forward for competency procedures.

Wow, that sounds really full on. I really appreciate you taking the time to write all that, thank you. I hate to keep coming back with more questions...but... ( and I know you can prob only speak for your own school) if teachers are getting ambers or red do they get offered support/help before being taken to competency procedures? That's how it would work at my job but not sure if it's the same in education.

Also do all these sort of things apply universally across primary and secondary? Or is it mainly secondaries that get hit with all the targets etc?

Happy - I did have a snort at your question on P1

How/When did the curriculum change? ...... the tricky part will be trying to find a year when it hasn't changed. That's not just under Gove, but in the 26 yrs since I started teaching, and before that I'm sure. Almost exclusively driven by Education ministers who have no knowledge or training or experience in education other than having been at school themselves.

No, it's not just secondary.
Main problem is the goalposts moving with every time you are assessed / measured / inspected.

Ah so the problem is not some much the specific changes but the regularity of the changes? That makes sense and ties in with what I've been reading. Thank you, and apologies again to all for my lack of prior knowledge, it's not really something I've known about since I left school, but the more I learn the more I'm thinking this is a bit of a crazy system.

Can't speak for primaries, but I believe it's pretty similar.

The idea is that at the start of the year, you're looking at lots of red writing ('Have you organised that visiting theatre company yet?' 'Er...no') but by July you've done all this stuff so can turn it green.

Support/help - well, that is the theory. In practice, the 'support' after two dodgy lesson observations might well be someone sitting in the corner of your classroom with a clipboard & a frown on a regular basis. You can imagine what 30 teenagers might extrapolate from that.

Or - for example - I hadn't done a (not very essential) spreadsheet-y thing for a meeting earlier this week...HOD gave me a bollocking...I told her that I'd stay late & get the damn thing done, but she might like to consider which of the other six impossible things she'd asked me to do before breakfast I should neglect instead. She said fair enough & we agreed that it would have to wait. I finished it off today.

If HOD didn't rate me as a teacher, or disliked me personally, for that matter, she could have used my failure to do the task she'd delegated to me by the deadline she set, as a reason to put a question mark over one of my PM targets.

I've seen people forced out quite quickly in this way. It does mean that one spends a disproportionate amount of time identifying the tick-boxes that are seen to matter this week, by this line manager, & making a hoo-ha about ticking them. Not the best use of our time IMO.

beatrice, pinch one of the teaspoons from the staff room and start digging out under that security fence.

Bump

The reality of performance related pay;

I have a target, to use my maths lessons to improve literacy. I already do, we do filing, spelling, reading, writing, listening, question types, etc, etc ,etc

If someone misspells a word in maths, I write the correction at the back of their book, and in my register, and expect them to learn it, and the next time I have a chance in a lesson, I test them on it.

The trouble is, to achieve my PRP, I need to PROOVE I have improved literacy through maths lessons.

I have to test them on literacy (in my maths lesson), I have to mark and assess their levels ( 2 six hour evenings, or one over nighter every term) I have to set targets, I have to include time to check their progress (in my maths lesson) ie, I have to write it into the lesson plan, and arrange my maths lesson round it, rather than just checking with individuals as and when the opportunity arises. then at the end of the year I need to assess them all over again. I am not an English teacher. I am a maths teacher. Nevertheless, I was in fact helping support literacy. Now, for absolutely no educational benefit to anyone, i have to use lesson time and family time to generate all this useless paperwork to "prove" it -

We call these tasks the Goveshit

I am looking for another career.

I have a target, to use my maths lessons to improve literacy.

In sorry, but that really made me laugh-how ridiculous! The world has gone mad; there is no way I want to do this job for another 5 years, let alone 35 :(

here's another good joke, we got slated by ofsted for teaching too much about Britishness (yep, in my maths lessons) and not including enough about diversity, ( in my maths lesson); the report was finalised two days before the instruction came down to teach more British history, culture and values. (particularly in maths......)

I was marked as 'failing' in one lesson for not directing/managing any Teaching Assistants well, in a lesson where I had no Teaching assistants
Another one was that I didn't incorporate technology in a short 20min lesson I was doing with Infant children who had difficulties with writing, and I was doing exercises with them to help them learn to control their muscles - in a room that had been converted from an old toilet and didn't have any electricity sockets

Sadly, every teacher I know can recite story after story like this.

goveshit.

Actually, goveshit seems to have been round for longer then gove, but he does cultivate it in special varieties!

Yes - mine were pre-Gove, but he does seem to have cranked the bar up several notches.

Like allowing schools to opt out of LA control, then blaming the LA when things go wrong (recent case in point in Birmingham) - how does that work then?

Luggage carousel-I hope you're teaching plenty of Spanish and Latin in your maths lessons, too? And competitive sport.

Tsk, teachers today-all they do is play with kids ;)