Militant teachers unions threaten to strike again

[longfingernails]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17644678

They can't stand the improvement in standards due to competition in provision, putting pupils rather than union teachers first, and the death of the bog-standard comprehensive.

More power to Michael Gove's elbow!

If all of this change is so good then why do so many people harp on about the good old days of education?

Clearly teachers haven't resisted all change since the 70s.

If you don't think that a large amount of teachers are box tickers, you are deluded.

I do think a lot of teachers are box tickers.

And I think this and previous governments have followed policies that will ensure that they all are.

It's pretty late in the day to be resisting that change, but better late than never.

Just looked up the Burt reading test.

A word on there is 'phthisis'
I have never come across that spelling for 'physicist' before.

'If all of this change is so good then why do so many people harp on about the good old days of education?'
No wonder people harp on about the 'good old days', when words like phthisis were tested for.

I think one of the reasons that we have change and the direction of travel always seems wrong is two fold.

The parent demands choice and change, the parent views education like any other form of commodity. The politicians respond by perpetuating the idea that we are consumers. Parents must have choice but obviously whilst they elude to choice they also seek to strip democracy away from the local level and tie schools closer to the white hall apron strings. (ie academies)

The other issue that seems to drive conflict and change is elitism. In order for private schools to maintain an elite status, they must be seen to out perform and they must act to shore up the principle of entitlement to those that have been through the system. We are told the state system is failing because we then "know our place"

It works like relative wealth, the inequality itself is what creates the poverty and the wealth. The conflict and the inequality must exsist in order to prop up notions of wealth, entitlement and power.

Anyone who goes shopping for clothes will notice this in very practical terms, "I buy Next because it is better quality" but what are you comparing it to? inferior products. Next is actually crap quality but is still better than primark!

Also, it's called the 'Burt' reading test. Wouldn't it be better to call it the 'Bert' reading test, for phonic simplicity? But they were probably using "look and say" in the good old day.

or maybe even 'Birt' for advanced students.

I would wager that even a current Bullingdon member, educated at Eton and Oxford, would struggle with the Burt reading test and 'phthisis', which was the common parlance of a 14 year old in the 70s classroom. They tell us we have had progress, but it looks more like regress, or as the Daily Mail may sometimes say, an almighty mess.

Back in the 'good old days', we were educated at Rack and Ruin Comp on the Isle of Swamp and the school meals were a struggle to chomp. But we left school knowing our 'phthisis' from our prognosis, there was no room for modern day hit and miss. Every morning at nine sharp, there was a test, and we all tried our best to spell 'phthisis', anything else would be our nemesis, up before the Head before you could count tio six. So when people sneer at the 'good old days' and say they're glad they've gone away, I tell them they don't know what they missed.

This is LFC's DH posting.

craigslittleangel, in answer to your question about how additional lessons for exams will run given the current work-to-rule, they will go ahead as usual.

The NASUWT work-to-rule action does not cover voluntary extra work done by teachers. Voluntary extra work, for example running a school sports club, is specifically mentioned as not covered and teachers are free to continue voluntarily doing this work without breaking the work-to-rule.

Additional lessons before exams are voluntary. As are additional lessons that run throughout the school year for pupils who are falling behind. And additional lessons for pupils to catch up when they have been absent due to school sporrts events, illness, family holiday etc. So teachers can continue to run all of these.

For example, next week I will be teaching an additional lesson after school for a target group of students who are borderline pass/fail, to prepare them for exams. On another day I will also be covering a voluntary session usually run by a colleague in my department because he will be taking some other students to an inter-school debating competition. I'll also then stay to teach a lesson to some of the students in the debate team because they have to miss the final lesson of the afternoon to travel to the competition and their teacher for that lesson isn't able to stay late enough that day to help them catch up. The next day I'll also be giving up one of my PPA sessions to teach a small group of borderline pass/fail students, withdrawing them from their normal lesson to give them more individual support just before the exam. So 4 hours of voluntary extra teaching next week (including time to plan those lessons and mark the pupils' work). This is on top of my normal weekly workload (see t0lk's post above for a rough idea of what that is).

And before all the anti-teacher posters comment, yes of course if this is all voluntary I could just not do it. However, as experienced teachers we have performance-related pay targets to meet and without all this voluntary work we'd never hit them or make pay progression. So I choose to do it, because I care about the kids, want them to pass and I need the money. It's my choice and I am in no way complaining about it. But what we do complain about is a completely incompetent government with no idea what goes on in schools (Gove came to my school and was less-informed about education than any other visitor we've ever had) introducing bureaucratic reforms that increase central-government meddling in the choices of young people, increase paperwork and workload, introduce a myriad of pointless changes to procedure that we then need to do paperwork to fall into line with that won't help young people at all, refusing to honestly negotiate about pensions and refusing to listen to anyone in education advising them and instead respond to any criticism by using the press to paint us all as lazy, overpaid, selfish, incompetent and left wing.

Like that last post claig really hope you're a poet not a policymaker. Or a teacher.

None of the above, fotunately.

Nceguy2 - I think the article you remember reading was in the Telegraph.

I'd urge anyone with a genuine interest in this debate to read this blog entry. It responds to the article niceguy2 refers to; the comments made by readers about this article, and also Gove's ideas about the UK following the Finnish model of free schools. Here - its very good IMHO.

Further back on the thread - 2 postees called teachers "box tickers"
Are doctors box tickers? Lawyers? Accountants?

Why do people feel they can be so rude about teachers? I blame the negative rhetoric because of the perceived idea that they are left-wing, it's pure prejudice.

Trouble in schools is linked to post code and impoverishment.

Also, there has been much debate about Asian culture and un-due pressure on children educationally. I agree with Scandanvian models but the wealth in those countries is more evenly spread this affects society and education.

The Burt test is bizarre, even accepting that the idea is to keep going until a child makes ten mistakes and then count how many they got right. I doubt very much that 'phthisis' was the common parlance of a 14yo in 1970. How many young teenagers were using an ancient Greek term for consumption, exactly? Even those who had a clue what it was would have known it as TB.

Teachers are constantly blamed for standards but government after government have interfered without success. League tables have not raised standards as in order to keep OFSTED off their back, teachers teach to the test. They cannot be held responsible where pupils are not willing to learn yet they are. Teachers do care and most work very hard. Few people could do what they do yet many seem happy to criticise. it will be an inconvenience if they strike but it is their prerogative.

'League tables have not raised standards as in order to keep OFSTED off their back, teachers teach to the test.'

Is the 'test' the problem? Teachers teach to the test, but if the standard of the test has declined and if record numbers achieve As on the test, then are the compilers of the test at fault and not the teachers? Isn't Gove determined to increase the standard of the test so that as a country we can compete with the best?

'I doubt very much that 'phthisis' was the common parlance of a 14yo in 1970. How many young teenagers were using an ancient Greek term for consumption, exactly? Even those who had a clue what it was would have known it as TB.'

Speak for yourself, it was common parlance in our class and I still thank my teachers to this day for drumming it into us, and I mean "drumming" - rememeber we are talking about the "good old days". And as for TB, we were fortunate enough never to have heard of Tony Blair and New Labour in the seventies.

Don't like the comments about teachers in the article that oneofsue linked to. Very unfortunate that polarised opinions like that are held. But I also don't agree with the Finnish system of subjective rather than objective testing.

I think the OP's opinions are similarly polarised. I think teachers do a great job. I think there is a need for external testing, but far less observation, paperwork and monitoring of teachers and I don't believe that teaching unions are miltant or choose to strike easily.

Think that's the point of the blogger chap's comments re. the Finnish schools and also with Stephen Machin's findings: Gove has cherry-picked the bits he likes from these models/studies and simply ignores the parts that don't correlate with his very narrow views.

What he (and others) also don't seem to grasp about the comparisons with many other countries (e.g. those in the Far East and Scandinavian countries) is that these countries tend to have a very different attitude towards education, and indeed to teachers. Education is valued by society, schools are well-supported and teachers are respected.

Tim Oates' paper on the review of the National Curriculum "Could Do Better" highlights this.

Ironically, Gove's constant criticism of teachers is contributing the already low opinions held by much of the press and of society, sadly.

hahahahah Socialist Workers Party, which speaks for a tiny handful of voters on the extreme Left who want to change the government via a workers? revolution rather than a democratic election from the Blog which Oneof linked.

Silly me, I though direct action by the people was democracy but no I have been deluded, it is in fact a tick box exercise, a right I can expect to enjoy once every four years. Teachers are now what.........revolutionaries??????? maybe some are but I'm highly sceptical about the SWP having infiltrated the teaching unions. It's yet more proof that teachers are being systematically devalued by the press. Yep band all the subversives together, make teachers look dangerously anti government and that should thoroughly discredit their cause.

Academies seem to give more power back to whitehall, is that a truely democratic thing?

what makes me cross and very very sad is that teachers are assessed on their effectiveness by looking at what their pupils manage to do on the day of a test or exam.

DD1 was in the last year to do Y9 Sats. We had a long discussion about whether she would use them as preparation for GCSEs and do no additional work (which would let her see how much revision she personally needed to do for exams); or do the revision and extra work. I told her it was entirely up to her which option she chose, and that I would fully support her either way, but that she needed to be aware that her teachers would be assessed on how she performed in those tests.

Fortunately for her teachers she went with the "revise" option, but it could very well have been the case that teachers lost their jobs based on an arbitrary decision made by a 14 year old.

And that's not even considering the teenager who wakes up in a hormonal foul mood one morning and decides "sod it, I can't be arsed today". Or DD2 who has missed almost half the year so far due to illness, and just getting through an exam without being ill will be a massive achievement (despite being predicted As for the two GCSEs she's sitting this year)? Where's the recognition for the hard work put in by those teachers in getting her through the course despite her time off school?

How may other professionals careers are entirely in the hands of Kevin and Lauren deciding that actually, yes, today they might actually be bovvered?

Looking at the books my kids have handed in you would think that I was absent for most of the term...imagie if I had to be paid on what they produced....I would be working for nothing. Children dont or wont copy up and refuse to attend detentions because mummy says I dont have to! Dont get me strted on equipment. Education isn`t valued anymore. Until it is we will be the whipping 'boys' for every parent, govt etc because everyone thinks we should be working 24/7 ....oh hang on I work 7 days a week but luckily I sleep for at least 6 hrs a night when I am working in the week!

I blame computers. Rather than respecting our own brains, we rely on the crap spewed forth by computers which are only as good as the data put into them (by humans) in the first place, something we tend to forget when we bow down at the shrine of the statistics. And we don't like to be told that there are variables involved that cannot be programmed into the computer - instead we run ever faster in the direction of robotising ourselves. Of course we've tried to turn teachers into box tickers, because we are obsessed with recording everything on the computer and then running around like pathetic little hamsters in a wheel, trying to get the computer to say yes. And politicians shove their snouts into education statistics they have b*gger all genuine understanding of and then use them to foist ideological changes onto people who have a better understanding of education than they do - and then blame the people who told them their ideas wouldn't work when the ideas don't work and the computer still says no.

Claig - I wasn't actually old enough to be at school in 1970, so you may well be right that phthisis was common parlance amongst 14yos. But given only 3% went to university in those days, I'd be surprised... I'm all for education for education's sake but really, a seriously outmoded medical term for a disease that was common in previous generations (before antibiotics) and had been renamed anyway was required knowledge for the average 14 year old?