Only 32 Troops to Teachers

[noblegiraffe]

There were 180 places in the first round of recruitment, only 41 places were taken up and only 32 teachers have emerged at the end.

www.tes.com.c.tes.ent.platform.sh/news/school-news/breaking-news/troops-teachers-scheme-misses-target

What a stupid waste of money.

Still, teacher recruitment crisis, what crisis? Eh, Nick Gibb?

[Piggywaspushed]

Oh no... some of them were In Business.

[Verbena37]

I think that’s a bit unfair.

It’s a bit of a sweeping statement to assume military personnel can’t empathise. My DH spent every day empathising with his soldiers.
It’s not all war games and getting muddy every day....it’s supporting your soldiers with suicide prevention, it’s standing up for them in court, it’s helping them save their marriage, it’s helping them understand the education system for their children who are constantly moving schools, it’s being parent governors or community school governors, it’s supporting them to get training to move their career on, it’s making extremely tough decisions for the safety of other people where your own safety might have to be compromised, it’s making sure the entire fleet of army helicopters doesn’t fall from the sky or it’s taking control of an entire aircraft carrier for 9 months in a secret location, it’s flying sortie after sortie, not knowing if you’ll see your wife and kids again, it’s plannning operations and the movement of 10000 troops into and out of a war zone......
All of that whilst being a leader and motivator of people!

I’m pretty sure I could name dozens of officers who could successfully run a MAT.

[noblegiraffe]

Did you not read what I just posted about needing domain-specific technical knowledge, Verbena?

[Piggywaspushed]

Interesting! Schoolsweek just tweeted a link to the breaking news story of Troops' bursaries. By the time I clicked on it, it was 404 page not found.

Conspiracy theories abound!!

[Piggywaspushed]

There's a trainee primary school teacher on Masterchef at the mo who used to be in the Military Police! Dying to know if she is on a 'scheme' !

[Verbena37]

Yes noble I did see your post about specific technical knowledge but high calibre officers can easily take on continual, new knowledge.....especially with a couple of months of training.

[noblegiraffe]

couple of months of training.

If the research shows that doctors run hospitals better than those without medical knowledge, do you think that these officers could pick that up with a couple of months training? Or is it just schools that are lightweight?

[Verbena37]

Out of interest, who were the other people (non doctors) who ran the hospitals? Were any of them military officers?

I just think that your way of thinking about leadership and management is flawed.
Take my FIL for example....was an operations factory manager for a large ready meal company. He couldn’t work the machinery or cook the food but he ran the factory extremely efficiently. On any scale, it could work.

A person can run a hair salon without being able to style and cut hair.

Take for example a management consultant who spends 6 months working for John Lewis....they have never sold clothes or iPads on the shop floor but they’re expected to help John Lewis remodel their staffing structure.

[noblegiraffe]

I just think that your way of thinking about leadership and management is flawed.

It’s not my way of thinking, it’s what research is suggesting is the case. The best leaders have domain-specific technical expertise and leadership skills do not transfer between domains. Sure your Fil could run a factory, would you want him to suddenly take up running a squadron?

[Piggywaspushed]

I am not sure people who run hair salons can't cut hair, to be honest!

Schools have unfortunately been run like large conglomerates for the last 15 -20 years and are huge employers. Anyone from a high flying background (LOL)would indeed cope with this issues but otherwise I'm with noble on this. Most teachers are waiting and waiting for the day when the education secretary actually knows anything at all about schools or - perish the thought - has taught. The decisions they make are sometimes so teacher and student unfriendly that it beggars belief : and this is surely largely because of lack of empathy and insight about the profession on the ground . I do think verbena that you are thinking the issues are all structural. One of our big complaints about our recently departed head was that he hadn't taught for 15 years at least so was making policy that was increasingly sort sighted and draconian because he had lost sight of the nuts and bolts of the job.

I would not begin to resume that I could go and run a military unit! And you did lose me a bit on the couple of months to learn everything about teaching and learning and schools. Goodness.


And, anyway, talking of sweeping generalisations, not all MAT heads are bad at it. Many are superb. Do you not think teachers who have worked their way through layers of management and years of teaching can do many of the things your senior officer can do, and more educationally specific things besides? And know about crucial things like actually how to deal with and inspire children!

But anyway we digress, as the new scheme definitely will not be aimed at solving the crisis in recruiting heads : that's the real eason why so many heads are not great . they were often the only applicants for their job.

All Academy Trusts are the spawn of the devil should go on the MN myths thread currently running!

[Verbena37]

piggy, I didn’t presume that all MATS and schools are poorly ran. I was explaining why many ex officers could do the job well.
I understand what you’re saying about having education knowledge but for high flying leaders, learning new ‘programmes’ is not difficult.

And no, I really don’t think many teachers are best equipped to run schools and MATS.
In a prefect world, MATS wouldn’t exist and schools would be ran how they were when I was little.

Anyway, as many have said, I don’t think the scheme mentioned above is able to achieve what it set out to do.

[Verbena37]

When I said ‘a couple of months’, that wouldn’t need to be learning ow to teach. Why would a school manager/MAT leader need to know how to teach? That’s my point. You can know how to run a school/company inside out without being a teacher. I know you disagree.

If you look at CEO/ops director/quality manager jobs etc, those recruiters aren’t asking that the person has worked for that compnay at base level before they’re allowed to apply. You don’t need to know how an aircraft carrier is built, bolt by bolt to know how to command it for example. You need to know what everybody’s job on that ship is and the protocols needed to enable them to do their job within the team.....Exactly the same for schools.

I think it’s naive to think MATS and schools can only be run by teachers and heads.

[noblegiraffe]

Why would a school manager/MAT leader need to know how to teach?

It's not about knowing how to teach, it's the experience of the classroom. That's partly what Teach First is about, getting people who will go onto high-flying careers in education/politics/journalism to get classroom experience which will mean more informed decision-making down the line.

[Piggywaspushed]

If you look at CEO/ops director/quality manager jobs etc, those recruiters aren’t asking that the person has worked for that company at base level before they’re allowed to apply

No but they usually ask for experience of the sector and business experience. MATs do have business managers : entirely different job from the CEO / principal and they don't usually have teaching experience. they don't even need to speak to the teachers.

[noblegiraffe]

I've been thinking a bit more about this, and I think if you're going to be the Head of a school, or the CEO of a MAT, you need an educational philosophy. When I worked in the private sector, my company had a Mission, Vision and Values that was a bunch of shite everyone sniggered about because we all knew the real mission was to make as much money as possible, please the shareholders and crush our competitors.

But a school or chain of schools are not a business. It's not about profit, it's about the lives of young people. What is the purpose of your school? Is it about results? Creating citizens? If you have a badly behaved student from a terrible background at what point would you expel them? Do you welcome students with SEN or try to shuffle them off elsewhere? Moral purpose?

I don't think you can simply acquire an educational philosophy with a couple of months of training. God knows I changed my mind about a lot of stuff I pontificated about in PGCE essays once I actually hit the classroom and I still don't have a coherent answer to the above questions after over a decade of teaching.

[Teenmum60]

I think with MATS you are turning a school into a business and people trained to educate is not necessarily the right people to run a business, therefore, you need a combination of both.

Unfortunately, see article below - The Headteacher Management team within some MATS have tried to take easy options AND in doing so have wasted a lot of funds and used unethical practices. So there clearly needs to be a more transparent system and perhaps bringing in a team of experienced management (that has managed a public sector budget) alongside the HT team the funds will be used more appropriately and more money can be spent on actual education rather than offering work on mates rates.

www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2017/jan/18/financial-transparency-schools-academies-uk

[Piggywaspushed]

yes, but that is down to the schools not employing proper decent business managers. Leadership of teaching is a different issue. As you say above the idea; would be a multi skilled team. Most MATs do have this. It tends to be the non academy and old fashioned (for want of a better word) primary schools that are really mismanaging budgets.But probably not their staff!

[Piggywaspushed]

To be fair, though, my school does feel like a military zone today. Not sure what's eating the kids !

[Teenmum60]

There is no shortage of evidence for this. Two years ago, an investigation by the Guardian found that academy chains had paid millions to private businesses run by the schools’ directors, trustees and their relatives. Examples included the Grace Academy Trust, which had paid more than £1m to or through various companies with links to Lord Edmiston, who set up the trust

[noblegiraffe]

What on Earth makes you think that bringing in business leaders would lead to more ethical management of money in schools?! There’s masses of totally shady practice in the private sector!

There needs to be more transparency, more regulation of MATs and fgs a cap on CEO pay. I think the assumption was that School leaders wouldn’t act like the private sector and Lord Adonis admits that was an error.

[Teenmum60]

Yes, I totally agree there is shady practice in every sector but it is so disappointing to see HTM act in the way they have....which even puts schools at risk of closure. If you read my post then you will see that I stated that teachers should teach and appropriately qualified business managers should look after finances because these are businesses now.

I can understand your concern like many teachers I know of a certain grade or age who are concerned that they will be replaced by lower paid NQT's if someone looks at costs independently so they fiercely defend any outside involvement or any dilution of their roles (by Ex Military changes to qualifications etc). This happens on a daily basis within the private sector too. I know one teacher who lost her post three times in three years because she was replaced by a younger cheaper NQT.

[Verbena37]

But a school or chain of schools are not a business. It's not about profit, it's about the lives of young people. What is the purpose of your school? Is it about results? Creating citizens? If you have a badly behaved student from a terrible background at what point would you expel them? Do you welcome students with SEN or try to shuffle them off elsewhere? Moral purpose?

Military personnel (on the whole) have more moral purpose than anyone I’ve met! Morality and what is fair is the backbone of the forces.
I get what you said about CEO/directors and school business managers though. I think the educational perspective for non ed. background leaders could be gained from say 3-6 months of intense training.

In line with what teenmum60 was saying though...In my county, the 2 tier school system was pushed through, even though the town didn’t want it and the middle school system worked fine. However, once it was pushed through by a county council director/leader person, he suddenly became one of the new directors of the MAT in charge of the now 11-18 school! Dodgy as you like and absolutely no morals!

Fast forward to now and the county has just gone bust!
Not good moral and educational decisions being made at all.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

Why not let the Armed Forces run all schools as military academies? Sounds like it would be a great idea for state education.

@Teenmum60 do you genuinely think that older teachers are simply being driven by a fear of being replaced by younger cheaper teachers? That's why they object to any proper independent scrutiny of finances? To protect their jobs above all else?

[Piggywaspushed]

Northants verbena ?!?

I work in 3 tier : 'just fine' depends on whose angle you view it from to be fair.

[noblegiraffe]

teachers should teach and appropriately qualified business managers should look after finances because these are businesses now.

Schools do have business managers and finance departments. What makes you think that they don't? You think the Headteacher spends their time paying invoices?