Webchat with Tristram Hunt, Labour education shadow, MONDAY 27 April at 12 midday

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to announce that the first of our (three!) politics webchats this week will be with Tristram Hunt, the Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Labour candidate for Stoke-on-Trent Central.

As Shadow Education Secretary, Tristram has been been involved in policy issues ranging from teachers’ qualifications, free schools, and partnerships between state and private schools, to vocational education and leadership in education. He also got into a spot of bother concerning nuns when on BBC Question Time recently.

Tristram is also a history lecturer at Queen Mary University London, and has published several books, as well as presenting TV programmes about the English Civil War and Isaac Newton.

Do join us on Monday 27 April at 12pm for a live webchat with Tristram or post your questions in advance on this thread. And please remember our usual webchat guidelines.

Thanks
MNHQ

Tristam
Are you going to go into schools? Maybe the schools in Stoke on Trent, many of which are operating under challenging circumstances. Are you going to speak with a range of teachers, teaching assistants and students about their views on the ever changing landscape of education? Ask the students how they feel about linear GCSEs. Ask teachers about workload and the efficacy of data and constant assessment ? Unlike Gove, are you going to go to the chalkface. If you do, please have a long think about why some of the Academies (plenty in Stoke on Trent, thankfully not so many across the LA border where I am) have senior management observing and assessing teaching staff when they are not and have never been qualified teachers themselves. Please have a think about what actually benefits the child and what actually inspires them.

Might schools function better if they had less non-teaching membership management?

The sole job of our SMT is to scrutinise teachers. I'm in a 3-form entry primary. We have 5 non-teaching members of SMT. They do lesson observations, book scrutinies, learning walks, climate walks, interview the children about how they feel about x teachers etc etc

My school would be a better place with half the SMT gone (put back in the classroom maybe, to sort the massive recruitment problems?) and the money that had been spent on their salaries spent on pencils and reading books.

Would teachers really stop teaching if nobody was obsessively watching them?

I would like to second Sjmccormick's question about the issue of summer-born children.

Isn't it about time faith schools funded themselves? My local best schools are fairh schools and I think it's so unfair they can pick and choose while using taxpayers' money

What is your opinion on TAs within the classroom? The current government seems to think they do nothing more than wash up paint pots. I feel they have a huge positive impact on the classroom. What's your opinion?

Another request to ask about the teacher MOT.

Please can you ask Tristram what the exact details are (no politician answers, please) and exactly what it will achieve. If it's to 'raise standards' and to 'bring teachers in line with other professions like doctors' then I think you need to think again. Teachers are respected professionals and paid accordingly. Teachers are treated like dirt by the government and the media. How will an MOT help?

There is a huge recruitment and retention crisis in teaching. You need to step back, stop paying exorbitant sums of money to large numbers of managers to watch everything teachers do.

You need to read the results of and do something about the results of the teachers' workload survey. Make some actual specific reductions to the level of tracking and marking that is required. Stop allowing heads to say-we need to do this, and this and this and this-Ofsted expect to see it. Stop allowing Ofsted to dictate how teachers teach and try a little bit of independent research for a change.

Sorry-that was a rant. Another vote for a question about the MOT though...

Yes-absolutely. Please don't offer to commission another workload survey IF you get elected. Read the one we all spent ages filling in in December and make some concrete specific changes.

And now the coalition want to test four year olds. We have to stop this be encouraging parents to opt out. and we have to persuade Tristram to stop it if elected.

In the US parents are opting out of tests - we have the most over-tesetd children here and there is now a new test for four year olds, baseline assessment. Will Tristram listen to experts who say the tests are wrong?

Hello Mr Hunt…you appear a to be a rare politician, in that you can look back at your party’s record in power and both honestly 'put your hands up' and elaborate on the theme ‘we made mistakes’.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/labour-admits-great-crime-on-education-tristram-hunt-says-his-party-encouraged-schools-to-aim-too-low--and-pupils-paid-the-price-9053693.html

And that is important, as all too often there is a lot of political and professional jibber jabber, excuses and blame, with few thoughts to the ‘end result’, which is especially important within education as the child’s future options, ability to provide for them and theirs, and future growth of this country.

So on the generalised assumption (based on results & employer reports/requests) that after nearly a decade of formal education, the ‘end product’ of our children’s skills re numeracy and literacy was not sufficient for the general workplace – so possibly there was too much of a political ‘lets not rock the boat’ relationship between your party and the teaching establishment dismissing those results;

My question therefore is, would you be mentally and politically hard enough to take on the education establishment and some within (and connected to) your own party, if England reverted back to the previous ‘lowering of the bar’ education standards you identified?

Would you like to confirm what exactly you mean by capping infant class sizes at 30 or less. That is what the situation is now, with some exceptions, so what exactly are you as a party offering that is new? Suggesting a cut in class sizes is pie in the sky, given the current population trends you need every primary school and every class at 30 pupils that you can get.

Hello

I'd like to know if the Labour Party plans to make registration with the Local Authority compulsory for Home Educators? Especially within the term of the next Parliament.

Do you agree with Barry Sheerman and the Badman review or has the party's view changed?

I have traditionally always been a Labour voter but I am now also a Home Educator and I am hugely concerned by what I read online regarding Ed Balls (when he was education minister) and the Labour Party's stance on this.

Thanks. By the way I did email you twice on this issue a while ago and received no reply, not even an acknowledgement.
A link to actual detailed policy would be very helpful as trust is low with me these days I'm afraid.

I would like to ask what measures you propose to put in place in order to retain the teachers that you have - whether training, newly qualified or experienced? Retention is looking pretty bleak at the moment and my seventy plus hour working week has had me looking on recruitment sites quite regularly to see what else I could do. One of my fantastic trainees left her previous profession to retrain, has spent a year with me having what has been rated as an 'outstanding' training experience and yet she is not continuing. Why? Because she has found zero job satisfaction and can't see much evidence of anyone enjoying what they do. She is exactly the kind of teacher you want to recruit and retain. It is so disappointing that I can't reassure her - she can see quite clearly the pressures we are under and wants no more of it.

Policies in the last four years have seen the arts sidelined, the focus on performance measures for example have resulted in some primary and secondary schools reduce choice and provision in arts subjects. How would labour support the arts and provide a broader and more balanced curriculum?

How does continuous testing help our students creativity develop?

Why is creativity being ousted from education?

Mental health issues within adolescents are increasing what is going to be put in place to help these children?

Motherhood and teaching are the most under rated jobs.

Their importance is beyond measure and until proper professional pay is implemented you will not attract the right caliber of person
When you do then you can implement far tougher measures to gauge performance

To expect to gather in highly motivated well qualified individuals on salaries of less than£30k is totally unrealistic

Do you agree that teacher pay has become completely out of line with other professional jobs? I have two relations who would love to become teachers at the age of 40+ but it would involve a staggering 60-80% pay cut. All the bursaries towards PGCE fees don't help, it's the straightforward salary that is the insurmountable problem. Actually having a proper payrise would be great, but won't solve this structural problem.