More money for teachers plus stricter discipline in schools - Tory leak

[noblegiraffe]

A government document leaked today suggests plans for pay rises for teachers and support for stronger discipline in schools including mobile phone bans. The exemption for outstanding schools from the Ofsted inspection cycle will also be lifted.

There may be concerns about the mention of the use of ‘reasonable force’ as part of disciplinary measures. This is likely to simply be a restatement that yes, teachers are allowed to restrain violent pupils.

www.theguardian.com/education/2019/aug/27/leaked-documents-reveal-tories-dramatic-plans-for-schools

Nothing there seems particularly dramatic, it just shows Dom Cummings is back in charge continuing the Gove era policies.

Although I am confused as to who on the thread you think has advocated reasonable force as part of disciplinary measures.

“Reasonable force” has always been allowed.

It’s just never used (or barely ever) because teachers would know that it would be likely used against them, they would be accused of assault and then sacked.

Telling teachers they have more “powers” is ridiculous. They don’t. And they don’t want more “powers” they want the support mechanisms to be put in place to help manage the kids who can’t or won’t learn.

"Team teach" is one of the most used techniques in schools around behaviour management and teaches positive behaviour management strategies emphasising de-escalation and positive handling in conflict management.
The majority of the course is about de-escalation of any incident.
It does however also teach how to properly handle pupils who are in danger of doing themselves or others damage. The other most important aspect is proper reporting of any such incidents so that teachers are protected against false claims.
Whether Woman likes it or not there needs to be the capability of restraint in appropriate circumstances to avoid a bad situation getting worse. She may change her mind about her version of things if she spent some time in behaviour special schools and saw the damage that some pupils can do to themselves and others.

as a parent I have to be blunt and say that I'm glad I only have one DC still at school, heading into Y12 this week. From my perspective - with all three DCs attending the same secondary school / sixth form - there has been a lot of deterioration since DS1 started y7 back in 2006. This seems largely to be driven by reduced funding and unrealistic societal expectations.

So first of a massive thank you to teachers in general. Whilst there are no doubt a minority the profession would like rid of, the vast majority deserve appreciation and respect - taking an interest, going the extra mile, seeking that extra effort - but

Money - clearly whatever spin is put financial resources are a massive issue. The class sizes for DS3 heading into sixth form look to be almost double that for Ds1 in the same subjects. Experienced and talented teachers across a range of subjects seem to have been pensioned off so to speak. This is not to denigrate younger teachers but Ds1 in particular benefited from this rapidly diminishing cohort. Maybe this is a just a local issue - however our sixth form is made up of three schools all with this issue.

£30,000 starting salary. Absolutely agree IF it is funded properly and not another case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and the consequences from pay bands for the next levels are considered.

Societal expectations I may be wrong but it seems that schools, and therefore largely the teachers working within them, are expected to be able to cure all society's ills and are blamed, along to a slightly lesser extent with Universities, when they can't. Silly me I thought it was mainly about teaching and pastoral care imbuing a real interest in a subject and desire to learn.

Much of the leak seems to be a continuation of obsessive dogma, as opposed to any evidence based policy direction.

first off even, large red SP in the margin for me

boys always good to hear from a parent who gets it!

I have had to use ‘reasonable force’ to restrain children. Here are a few examples from the previous school year.

1. Child A attacking Child B by using a laptop to beat her over the head.
2. Child C self harming in class using a pen.
3. Child D repeatedly hitting his head off a brick wall.
4. Child D pushing Child E to the floor and kicking her in the face repeatedly.

I am trained in team teach. I am a mainstream primary school teacher.

Would some previous posters really suggest that I should not have used reasonable force on these children?

A-level funding is a massive issue. It's been effectively cut as per pupil funding has been frozen since 2013. Obviously this means that small class sizes s are no longer really viable. I know more and more schools are cutting A-levels as they are no longer viable. In the county where I live, I know of at least one school that's closing its sixth form altogether- although there are other local factors involved.

I agree. The government will pay lip service to this issue, no doubt.

Gavin Williamson’s wife was a teacher, she’s NOW A TA.

So that leak went down well in the Williamson household

www.tes.com/news/new-education-secretary-shows-unusual-empathy-tas

Interesting.

Why did his wife change from being a teacher to being a TA?

I wonder this, too! I assumed it was after they had children, and she perhaps wanted to cut back working hours, given Gav must spend considerable time away from home. I reckon it is the closest we'll get to an Ed Sec actually knowing anything about the job (since Ruth Kelly, anyway). But if we think Gav is pulling the strings, I think we are deluded...

What do we think these things mean?

However he did mention “the need to make teaching a more flexible profession” and talked about “sharing resources so planning of lessons can be made more straightforward,” Mr Barton said.

Is this teaching by PPT?

Teaching more flexible = stop making it so difficult for teachers to be part time

Sharing resources - as a maths teacher I’ve got access to excellent free resources on every topic in the curriculum. I assumed this was true for all teachers, but when I tried to find some phonics stuff for my kids online, you had to pay for pretty much everything. Why do maths teachers share and other teachers don’t?

Most don't even actually want restraint in schools
I don't want pupils in my class who need restraint. Being inclusive should still mean excluding those who endanger others.

We don’t all have a lovely Mr Barton equivalent, sadly! Wish we did. Have spent so much of my own money on activity resources in there past . Was extremely grateful to mrbartonmaths when I’ve had to teach KS3 as part of my timetable before.

However, when I first started teaching ICT back in the day, Tony Blair had commissioned a set of resources (yes, lots of powerpoints, Piggy!) for the then KS3 ICT Curriculum and I would rather eat my own feet than have something so prescriptive and dull again (Pat’s Poor Presentation, anyone!?)

since Ruth Kelly, anyway

I’ll never forgive Ruth’s mass cull of PRUs and specialist schools, whilst making sure her own son’s specialist school stayed open in Tower Hamlets for just enough time that he was able to get his education. Then even that one went ‘poof’

There are lots of shared resources in both my subjects...and they are free , mainly but many need huge quality controlling first( lots are shit). I also enjoy planning, and teach subjects where teacher individuality is precious and endangered. I don't want everyone teaching the same texts to the same PowerPoint presentations. I'd rather endless assessing for data gathering and the concomitant marking demands were addressed. But someone has told the government that teachers spend most if their time planning. If they can reduce this, build in so called no marking policies, can we perhaps see a point at which they can say we need less planning time??

I am in a Facebook group for teachers and many new entrants really do not expect to plan anything.

Yes, Ruth was a disappointment and , frankly, odd

Who was the last truly OK ed sec?

The use of reasonable force document was updated in July. (Or maybe June).

Schools and teaching staff/admin staff etc have a duty if care to safeguard.

Reasonable force is pretty much what a parent does. It sickens me that if a child was about to run Into a main road and a teacher grabbed them and pulled them back - a parent will complain. Because I'd bet my life the parent would react the same way. Same as separating fighting siblings, stopping them injuring themselves in a kitchen etc.

What the HT did above is not reasonable force. That was using force for power and control.

I also laughed at the comment re TA getting in the way. In a local special school and new teacher made a comment to his TA basically saying they were a hinderance and he didn't really need them. (When truth was they were far more knowledgable about the pupils and special ed than he was).
They then all 'happened' to have a sickness bug that lasted 5 days all at the same time.
Things had gone tits up 2 hours into day 1.
Fantastic HT smelt a rat.
He never made those comments again - although the attitude remained.
He's currently being managed out

I remember people talking fondly about Estelle Morris but to be honest, can’t remember anything about her. I just think it is too big a beast to ever make a decent positive dent in improving things, pessimist that I am.

I also laughed at the comment re TA getting in the way.

I’m sure people also have anecdotes about awful TAs too, to be fair. The main issue is having the funding to have well trained TAs, where they are needed and that they are not pushed about due to funding proposals. Something has to give and I hope it isn’t the TAs.

Personally, I couldn’t give a toss about any pay rises unless they come from a separate budget. Where I would like the money to go is on school buildings, specialist staff, resources and the correct support for all pupils. The problem currently is that a ‘pay rise’ makes for a good sound bite but when it has to come from already low existing budgets, it doesn’t help (as an experienced teacher, my school didn’t pass on the last ‘pay rise’ to us)

TAs need to be well trained, but they also need to be well used. A good friend used to be a TA in a primary school and had some depressing stories about how she was used by some teachers. As an example, for a certain number of hours she supported a particular child on a 1:1 basis. If the child was absent, she'd ask the teacher what they wanted her to do instead. She was often told just to sit quietly at the back of the class. Such a waste of a resource.

piggy

I am in a Facebook group for teachers and many new entrants really do not expect to plan anything.

Absolutely. There are quite a few trainees we have had whose idea of planning is typing in the topic they are teaching into the TES resources and just printing out the first thing they find, regardless of age, appropriacy, level.

Interesting article on the reification of the 'resource' on TeacherTapp today coincidentally. Have no idea how to copy and paste it..
But basically, yes, says subject knowledge is being eroded.