How easy is it to get rid of poor teaching staff?

[Amaaazing]

Rumour has it that DD's primary school is seeking to improve by getting rid of poor performing teachers, but how easy is it for this to happen?

I don't work in education but I would have thought that performance managing staff out in schools would be tough.

Any Govenor that doesn't challenge the SLTs data is a poor govenor. We have several ways of judging validity of data presented to us - does it tally with the local authority monitoring visits? Does performance in SATS correlate with the school's judgement? Are our school results in line with similar schools? And that's just of the top of my head.

And yes, I expect all our children to do well at school. If they are not doing well, then it's our job to ensure the school is identifying children who aren't and deliver improvement strategies. If whole class data is failing to meet expectations, then you can be very sure we are investigating teacher performance. And it is rammed home to us that evaluating teacher quality is not our job, but it is our job to make sure the SLT are doing so in an appropriate manner.

But it's not all about data!

What do you do then, when the data is excellent across the board, but the head has other concerns??

Because that was my colleague's argument. How could she be failing is the data was good?! Nope. The head 'saw' enough to concern her and the excellent progress was down to the children not the teacher.....

They do not make judgements on teaching performance in classrooms but they do scrutinise data and listen to the Head regarding evaluation of the school and what needs to improve.

You know that it's the very same teachers imputing the data don't you? It is very easy to make data look good, or bad.

Very few members of SLT or even data managers know anything about statistical methodology and yet use that data to come to all sorts of decisions. Interesting thread on this on TES forum:
community.tes.com/threads/how-is-data-misused-and-misinterpreted-in-your-school.759680/

This is also a very interesting read on observations from CEM at Durham University; an important read for governors I would think:

www.cem.org/blog/414/

"The few of us on this thread who are Governors have to rely on the SLT" our governors observe teaching and share work scrutiny with subject leaders.

our governors observe teaching and share work scrutiny with subject leaders.

well, they are not fit people to do so, and have absolutely no right, speaking as a teacher and a governor, if I was told to do this, I would refuse, and if s a teacher I was told a governor was doing this, I would leave the classroom and ring my union.

I have to agree with user1497480444 we had an OFSTED inspector in our school last half term to give us advice about the facts and myths and one of the things they said is that no governor is qualified to be observing lessons and giving feedback and making judgements. They can observe WITH a member of teaching staff but they alone are not allowed to make judgements on teaching and learning. They CAN make judgements about the state of the classroom and behaviour but that is it.

Afterall, I have my hair styled at a hairdressers. But I am not qualified to judge the work of a hairdresser nor any other profession that I am not trained in.

"they said is that no governor is qualified to be observing lessons and giving feedback and making judgements" where did I say they make judgements or give feedback? The governors observe lessons at the staffs request. We have good working relationship and they are extremely supportive.

And yes I do make judgements about the person cutting my hair - I don't go back if I'm not satisfied with their skills.

About your hair yes!!! As we all do!!

But are you going to stand in a hairdressers, with a clipboard and watch a hairdresser cut and style someone else's hair and pass judgement on it????? Could you absolutely know what you are talking about when it comes to the skills???

A governor who may be have the skills of a forklift operative would not know the knowledge and skills needed to successfully teach a class and pass judgement on learning behaviours, whether the activities and work was suited to differing abilities and progressing the students and providing sufficient challenge for different types of learners.

Would you know the suitability of shampoo and conditioner for each type and condition of hair?
Would you know which pairs of scissors to use?
Would you know whether a hairdresser had mixed the ingredients, the CORRECT, ingredients to colour hair?

You make the judgement based upon what is done to YOU, not others.

Likewise, I would pass judgement on the delivery of a course leader and the content based upon my needs and whether the content and objectives were delivered successfully by assessing what I knew and could do before the course, against what I know and could do when the course had completed!

But also apologies if you think I meant that I was agreeing with User (whats the name above) over your comment. Merely agreeing that governors should not be observing and making judgements unless they were observing with a qualified member of staff (or maybe someone external, but qualified nevertheless) who could then support, clarify or dubunk their comments, opinions etc if they believed in their professional opinion it was unwarranted or not applicable.

As many have said teachers are not sacked they are just bullied until they can't take it any more and resign.

And with that goes many excellent teachers who just don't quite have the right face for the powers that be.
One school I worked at had an amazing reputation. Over a dozen members of staff left one year. Some by choice. Others just vanished and we were never told what happened.

Banging my head who said the governors are standing in a classroom with a clipboard or passing judgement?

''Also makes me chuckle that parents/the media et al think they are qualified to assess what good teaching is, based on a few observations or conversations here and there.''

makes me chuckle harder when teachers and slt who have a teaching degree think they are suddenly child psychologists and come up with reasons [mostly delusions] as to why kids misbehave or 'what sets kids off' and in their delusions believe that if a kid behaves with them or in 1 subject then if they misbehave with another teacher then it must be the teacher's fault or because of some underlying issue with the child... Amazing how little those 'professionals' in education sometimes seem to understand about children and behaviour.

No Governor should make judgements on the quality of lessons and never go in with a clip board. I do, however, monitor my section of the Improvement Plan and I am always accompanied by the Subject Co-ordinator for my area. We discuss what the school needs to improve upon and I look at how they are doing this. Nearly all schools have good teacher/governor relations these days and if Governors do not go into classrooms, they get a big black mark from Ofsted - and so they should. They must know the school. Governors and staff work together. I have only experienced animosity from one teacher about 20 years ago but these days it would be rare in most schools. We are, after all, wanting the same good outcome for the children.

Regarding the original point of removing a teacher, this is when it really is up to SLT. The Governors make no judgement on the professional competence of a teacher. There is a lot of support available and we also have our learning trust in to look at teaching to verify and what we are being told. Sometimes they do not agree and they look again. Lots of mentoring is available if needed and relevant courses and advice. That is a perfectly healthy situation. A Head that lets poor teaching go on and on loses the confidence of the other teachers and the parents.