Parents becoming teachers? Is it me or has Gove totally lost it?

[sogrownup]

How do you feel about going into school to cover for a teacher who is on strike? Is there anyone out there who believes that this is a sound idea.... I think it's madness!!

manicinsomniac- the people I know who work between 45 and 80 hours a week are paid a hell of a lot more than £26k. Most of them are in the medical profession, and are earning £60k, £70k, and some over £150k. Others are in IT (£70k+) or accountancy (£40k min) or law (again £40k min).
£26k is actually the national average, so I'm not sure why you think that is particularly fantastic. As was pointed out above- teachers aren't actually paid for the non-term time weeks, salary is paid across 12 months to make it equal.
(I'm not a teacher; I don't earn £26k)

Why is it that...

so gove is inviting me to be a scab strike breaker? tosser

I didn't say it was fantastic, I said it was decent. And especially decent if it's actually for 9 months work instead of 12.

And I'm in an independent school so they don't have to follow mainscale pay if they don't want to. Makes sense that we get less than state I guess, private's an easier job I think! (I've done both)

Well, that would explain the reason you get a week or two's extra holiday.

I don't know how much easier it is than state teaching, but as a state teacher I, and all the teachers at my college, certainly do NOT only work 9 months of the year.

Yes, Gove has lost it over this one. Must try harder - or should I say, start trying. Such as holding emergency talks with the unions instead of begging headteachers to bail him out.

Do you all really believe that teachers work harder than everyone else?

I have taught in my time and I still do. The art of showing and explaining is part of a great many jobs, and behavioural control is part of many more. Most of us don't have such extensive paid holidays, though.

If you want to strike, perhaps you should be striking about those things that take time away from doing your job in a satisfying way vs the pay per se. I teach and mark at NVQ3 level and it is ludicrously time consuming because of the strictures placed on it - a positive comment, an improving comment, a positive comment etc. It takes far more time than I would like it to and I only mark work for 16 learners, so I do have sympathy with marking, particularly at second-level and beyond.

But is it really necessary to write a mini-essay on everyone's work? I'd rather spend the time talking it through with the learners, to be honest. Particularly in primary!

There are massive issues with education and the bureaucracy that goes with it. So many meetings and justification and meaningless paperwork. The Speaking and Listening Curriculum, for example, is a farce that bears no relationship to typical development or learning but was dreamed up as a means of educating the workforce by business people. How much time is spent by staff having to "cover their backs" in case x parent sues because Johnny grazed his knee etc? So much taking away from the actual job.

There are layers and layers of management getting paid a lot of money to sit around and have Big Important Meetings. Bullying is tolerated in some settings in a way it would never be in the private sector (both staff and student). There is a stranglehold placed on creativity.

These are issues. But no, most parents couldn't come in and do your job because actually, most people who are untrained to do a job can't do that job (shocker!). It's not because it's the hardest job in the world and no one can possibly appreciate the hardships you endure in a classroom.

Incidentally, I work in schools and chose to work term time only after my son was born.

The difference is that I don't get paid for the holidays. Any of them. At a cost of about 5K to me. As I have a broadly similar salary to most teachers, I see it that the holidays are a 5K perk. I chose to take TTO because I felt it is a massive bonus to have holidays at regular intervals while you have small children in and of itself and in effect I am paying for that choice. Don't have any sympathy for any teacher who discounts TTO working as a very real benefit-in-kind.

I don't think anyone has argued that teachers work harder than everybody else. A certain section of mumsnet, however, insists that teachers are lazy, thick, and only work 9-3 39 weeks a year. This is patently untrue. I think MI was right when she said that if you average it out over the year, a teacher's working hours are probably similar to the usual 9-5 48 weeks deal.

Teachers only want that recognised. We don't think we work harder than everybody else, just that we work AS hard. Some teachers achieve this by working very long hours during term time. A 12-14 hour day isn't unusual. Others even it out a bit more by doing a significant chunk during the holidays.

And before anyone says 'loads of professions work long hours', I would argue that the majority of jobs that require this pay you significantly more than teaching.

working9while5 actually we don't get paid for our holidays

but you are right about the paperwork ... reduce that and let us teach!

I am a Childminder with an Enhanced CRB check. I will not be going in to 'teach' at my daughter's Secondary school, because my specialism is in Early Years and I like little people, not hormonal girls and boys who are bigger than me! I also work in a 1:6 ratio, not 1:30+.

My Dad was a teacher and worked hard in his evenings and 'holidays'. I also know that my DD's teachers work long hours outside school, because her work is marked very thoroughly and I know exactly what she is doing wrong and right and what she should aim for on the next piece of work. Even on the pieces where the teacher has noted that she answered 'the wrong question' , it has still been marked and graded.

and ... her spelling is dreadful

Slacksally has it spot on. My DH is a teacher, I work in the private sector so I think I have quite a good perspective as I see it from both sides. I also work for a company that have just got rid of their final salary scheme for the lucky few people who were still in it, so have got a pretty good comparison of how the private sector do things vs the public sector.

My DH works very hard (as do people with a similar level of responsibility in my job). Excluding his commute he does an 8 - 5:45 day at school, and then probably a couple of hours Monday - Thursday evenings. He freely admits the holidays are great and I reckon in those he probably works on average 1 day a week, i.e so rather than the 13 weeks of holidays it works out as about 10-11 (so still much better than my full time equivalent).

Salary wise he is definitely on less than his equivalent grade at my work - but then again he has twice the holiday. So I think he's pretty fairly paid for what he does and he would agree. He also absolutely loves his job and that counts for so much.

What's crap is the way you do get a lot of people who do assume it's an "easy" job for people who couldn't do anything else. Academic qualifications are clearly not everything, but someone with a 1st class degree from Durham Uni (like my DH) obviously had more options than just going into teaching. I am quite often asked why he doesn't go and do something else more challenging or more useful and I think that's quite a shame - we should be doing everything we can to encourage good people into teaching.

There are major bad points about the whole system though, not least the appraisal system. It is very hard to either incentivise excellent teachers, or to get rid of crap ones. There should be something brought in so that there is some element of flexible pay (i.e. bonuses) where HEADTEACHERS could determine who gets them, as well as making it easier to get rid of bad teachers. This is an area where the private sector is streets ahead of the public sector.

As to the pensions and strikes - again, most of the teachers I know agree that changes need to happen and are very pragmatic about it all. But I also know that there aren't many jobs in the private sector where you'd be told your pay was being frozen for 2 years (universally across all people, good or bad performers), pension conts going up by 3%, you would have to work longer, all to get less pension. Things would be brought in more gradually or better (i.e. less of a pay increase one year to make sure the extra bit was going towards higher pension conts), increasing conts by 0.5% each year etc rather than hitting people harder all in one go.

And yes Michael Gove is a plank but then again I can fail to think of one education secretary from recent years who hasn't been. The last reasonably decent one was Estelle Morris who was in the position of actually knowing something about the profession having once been a teacher. My DH is no more scathing of Gove than he was about Blunkett, Balls et al.

Haven't read the thread, just responding to OP;

Terrible idea - parents would need supervision because even if they are CRB checked, they are NOT TRAINED AS TEACHERS. Would the school's insurance even cover this? Surely the kids would all end up in the hall, watching videos! And what if there was a fire/gas leak etc - the parents are not trained in evacuation procedures, so there would be a major safety implication.

Will read thread now!

i was more worried about his suggestions to change cgses, he seems to want to take back education about 20 years.

my education in a comp in the 80s was dire. i'd hate my children to be subject to that sort of educaton again.

i wanted to hit him yesterday on the andrew marr programme. he really is a jumped up little man

Replying to a point earlier on this thread that 'in the past all children left school able to read and write because I can and so can my friends', I did wonder why then, in 2003,

"75% of the working-age adult population had numeracy skills below the level of a good pass at GCSE and 56% had similar literacy skills"

I don't think that it is reasonable to assume that only working age adults (at that point) who were at school PRECISELY between when the poster was at school and 2003 could be responsible for ALL of those with substandard literacy and maths??

The truth is that, during all eras of teaching, some children did not learn to read and write well....

I've read a good chunk of the thread - just a few thoughts...

First off, I support the teachers going on strike as I would support anyone who was having their terms and conditions changed like this.

Secondly, anyone who thinks they can go into a classroom and teach 30 primary children, or up to 6 classes of 30 children from 11-16 per day, without training and for those children to succeed is an idiot. It takes 4 years or 3 years of a degree plus a post grad to get QTS and then a lifetime of continual development for a bloody good reason.

Gove is an idiot.

Lastly, I used to teach. I then moved into Private sector and went from having the supposed 13 weeks holiday to 20 days paid leave a year. But you know what, I could take my leave when I wanted to, when I was on leave, I didn't have marking, planning and reports to write and when I went home at the end of each day, it wasn't in the knowledge that I had at least another 3 hours of work to do in the evening.

According to the government, the key to the future success of this country is to have untrained people running services. Anyone who thinks that the best outcomes can be achieved by using untrained people are idoits.

"But I also know that there aren't many jobs in the private sector where you'd be told your pay was being frozen for 2 years"

I disagree wholeheartedly with this. My DH and I have been in IT for about 20 years respectively and worked/work for large multinational companies in the private sector. In times of crisis without fail our companies have frozen all salaries for 2 years (no matter what performance) and last year and the year before scrapped all bonuses for everyone.

This came at a massive cost to people, considering that we were told just a month before bonuses were awarded, so people had been working extra hard to hit targets. Also a lot of people like "Sales" have a very low salary as most of it is made up by on target bonuses, so some people were very badly hit. Also, all promotions have been frozen for 3 years now, so that means you have worked your backside off on a higher position not to get any recognition whatsoever for it. Leaving is not an option as work is thin on the ground and most companies are trying to get rid of people rather than hiring.

I think you must work for a wonderful company and are very lucky, but please do not assume that it is the same for everyone out there. It's been a tough few years for most people in both sectors.

Back to the OP though, I loathe Gove and everything he has proposed so far, so it doesn't surprise me that he is coming up with more nonsense, I don't think anyone takes it seriously!!

Hi LovetheHarp - no you need to read the whole sentence. I have had pay freezes in 2007 and 2008 and am very aware of how hard things have been. Our company did however wait another 18 months before bringing in substantial pension changes, i.e. they didn't do it all at the same time, and the changes have been more gradual and better implemented. My point is just that the private sector tend to think a little bit more about how they do things as they realise it is much easier for people to just walk off to a competitor.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I agree you'd have to be very lucky to be somewhere where you hadn't been affected by the downturn.

"And yes Michael Gove is a plank but then again I can fail to think of one education secretary from recent years who hasn't been. The last reasonably decent one was Estelle Morris who was in the position of actually knowing something about the profession having once been a teacher. My DH is no more scathing of Gove than he was about Blunkett, Balls et al."

Interesting. Teachers are usually quite scathing of OFSTED, too. And SMT. Is there anyone in the educational field that teachers rate? (apart from themselves, obv )

Purits - I think to be fair that you have made exactly the point teachers would make. Most politicians are not in the "educational field" - they are politicians. I work in finance and anyone making decisions about my career at least has some experience or knowledge of finance - most politicians have very little experience of education (other than being at school). I honestly do see it from both sides and I can see how frustrating it must be to be in a profession where people are making political points where they just don't have the background or knowledge of a situation.

Off topic - but re OFSTED - I don't think my DH would be particularly scathing of OFSTED - scathing of parents who rely totally and utterly on OFSTED perhaps, but he would appreciate something needs to be in place to monitor schools etc.

I think some people are missing the point about what Gove is suggesting here.

I don't believe he is daft enough to think a bunch of random parents can actually teach. All they need to do is babysit, under the supervision of the teachers who aren't striking.
School does two things, it educates children and it provides childcare while parents are at work. Obviously from the longterm perspective of the needs of the child the former is vastly more important, but in pragmatic everyday terms, if schools have to close for a day that will vastly inconvenience parents and have a cost to the economy, whereas if you can keep the schools open most people will barely notice the strike. The people it will most inconvenience will (ironically) be the teachers themselves as they have to find ways of cramming the syllabus into fewer hours of teaching, and to a lesser extent the children as they might have a very boring day and then have to work harder later, but teachers aren't in the business of making children suffer and will do their best to mitigate the effect on their education. If Gove could ACTUALLY get a 'mum's army' out there to keep the schools open it would indeed undermine the strike.

The reason why his idea is loopy and unrealistic is just, as people have said earlier in the thread, that there are very few SAHMs without younger kids who can just drop everything and go into school for a day. And of those that could they are probably more likely to support the teachers than the government on this one. He's just not living in the real world....

I have a CRB check, I might go in and spend a day off-curriculum explaining to the kids why Michael Gove is a cunt who hates them.

although I do not agree with having 'stand ins' on strike day I believe it would give some people a bloody great shock as to how difficult it is to just be with a group of 30/40 kids for a whole day , never mind teach them

i am enhanced CRB check as a sports coach and have spent full days coaching in schools, both mainstream and special needs and there is NO WAY that i would want to do this all day for a full time job

regarding no pay rise for 2 years though, this seems to be the norm at the moment and perhaps they may be well served not pushing on this one at the moment, although the government need to prioritise the share of monies available and put it where it will do most good - it does not do us a lot of good in this country to continue paying crazy 'consultants fees' within local government - or sending out 4 guys to fix a street light ( my street, last week) -