School funding to move to Whitehal

[onimolap]

Link to BBC story here

Is this a good move? Is cutting out the LA really going to make the system more responsive to teachers?

Is it really, though, a hostage to fortune got when the political pendulum swings again to an era of either Big or authoritarian government?

And has anyone seen anything on the formula for, or likely level of, the Pupil Premium? Or will that all follow after agreement on this new funding formula?

tethersend Sorry, the headteacher in charge of both my school, and my DCs school was male. I have no problem using "headmaster" (or "headmistress") for that matter, in a generic example.

"The bottom performers should be fired - after being given one, or maybe at most two, chances to improve. It keeps everyone else on their toes, creates openings for bright, young teachers."

That makes for an alarming turnover of staff. But of course, you know all about how a high staff turnover impacts on children's education.... right?

huddspur New teachers are recruited all the time.

chibi No. Exams need to be far, far more rigorous, and grade inflation kept under control! I regularly get job applicants with many GCSE A*s who can't do elementary mental arithmetic.

But those are completely separate matters of education policy.

Good Lord. But what if the bottom 10% are still achieving acceptable outcomes? You get rid of them because they are the least good teachers in their school? No objective measurement of effectiveness, just a relational thing? Do you work for OFSTED?

I have worked in corporate life in a wide variety of roles and industries, and also in education.
I would say that the principles of corporate life are extraordinarily, totally and completely inappropriate for education.
the two have very little in common.
children, and their education, are not analogous with commercially produced products and services.
to apply the principles of one to the other is wrong-headed and potentially very damaging to something very important.

tethersend A really bad teacher can be worse than no teacher. Pupils can lose their motivation, discipline, and their zest for learning - often forever.

LFN- you can't keep sacking the 10% worst teachers every year, it would lead to a ridiculous turnover of staff if you include those that leave for other reasons on top.

longfingernails, I'm afraid I don't believe you would know a bad teacher if they shouted in your face, judging by your ideas. Appalling teachers will still be in a job under your proposals.

TheFallenMadonna In practice, bottom performers rarely contribute anything. In theory, you might have a point - but in the real world, it just doesn't work like that, in my experience. The worst performers tend not to be "OK", but absolutely useless at their job.

It doesn't have to be 10%, or any fixed percentage. Even roughly 1% would be a vast improvement.

good grief this reminds me of conversations with hvs about how dc need to be on the 50th centile for weight or there is a serious problem

you cannot demand rigorous exams and simultaneously insist that all students perform well on them - someone always performs poorly, even if it is only relative to the performance of other students

unless all students score the same grade, some of them will be in the bottom 10%

can you clarify, i must surely be misunderstanding because what you seem to be describing is BONKERS

Me too, Riven.

Arf at the private sector being 'the real world' and schools being... well, not

Unless you're a coalminer or something, longfingernails?

i had a high ability set last year, they al got A* or A grades

this year i have a support set - if they get less than A or A* i must have become crap in the last year right

then again maybe i will be assigned another top set next year and redeem myself

chibi I am talking about improvement in exam performance, not exam performance itself.

So, a teacher who turns pupils scoring 20% to 50% regularly might be judged to be doing a good job, even if 50% isn't that good.

In practice LFN, teachers of construction, and public services, and ICT, would still be in work. And teachers of English and Maths wouldn't.

So you better hope the class you get is more academically able than last years, chibi. Oh, no, sorry, I forgot they're all blank canvases when they arrive in the classroom.

Silly me.

don't forget tethers SEN is the result of poor teaching

Well, I had wanted to talk about the proposed new funding formula, implications of increasing DfE bureaucracy (even a new quango!) at a time of rhetoric of reducing the size of central government, and a(h)other the LEA and it's services.

Oh well, so much for that.

A different viewpoint perhaps. At the moment, each LEA pays a different amount per pupil to schools. This is an absolute nonsense leading to some schools being seriously short of cash. The LEA in which I work gives one of the lowest funding figures per pupil in the whole country. The neighbouring LEAs receive between £300 and £500 per pupil more every year. In a class of 30, that's £9k to £15k per class. The teaching/TA overheads are the same in schools, as are the heating, lighting, books, pencils so why shouldn't schools receive the same basic amount per child. Obviously, there then need to be variations re. SEN, deprivation, EAL etc.

Perhaps central funding might even out some of these disparities. I really hope so. Working in a school with a hideously tight budget, even when oversubscribed, is very hard work.

Most parents want to move away from exams every year LFN. Whilst I'm all for improving the performance of poor teachers I'm not sure your idea would go down well at all.

Schools are unique environments in which to work.

Agreed Littlefish.

OK have to go out.

But before I go - I don't think I am going to agree with you lot! Fortunately, I think Michael Gove agrees with me. For that matter, Nick Clegg, David Laws, and the other sensible Lib Dems agree with me. Indeed, even Tony Blair, Andrew Adonis, Alan Milburn and the more sensible elements of Labour agree with me.

what happened to the 5 year licence MOTs for teachers that the socialists wanted to bring in? Are they now law?

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8127085.stm

I'd be a tad concerned about that LFN