Are there other jobs where you are micromanaged and fear for your job the same way as teaching at the moment?

[Letseatgrandma]

There appears to be the belief at the moment that if teachers aren't continually watched, observed, assessed and improved that we will not do any work! Where did this belief come from. I am sick of people looking through my books, studying my data and watching me teach. The assumption is always that I'm fine at the moment, but that 'you're only ever as good as your last observation' so watch your back!

My DH has a 'normal' job in the city. He's a graduate and has a job with decent pay and some stress, but it's not even within the same league. His boss would question him if he did nothing, I'm sure-but there's no assumption that he needs to be watched. I'm sick of it to be honest.

Are other jobs the same on a daily basis-with the threat of SMT and Ofsted ever present? The feeling that if you're over 30, you're very expensive and frankly just not valued any more.

[MrsUltra]

It would be okay if they were not mandatory, but available, and with no stigma attached to using them.
For newer teachers would be a godsend and would help with retention of new teachers which is very low currently.

[kjwh]

The franchising model is surely the way to go, so that all teachers and schools have access to core materials produced by experts that they can print off as and when called for?

I know - such materials could be called "textbooks", but in today's climate you're made to feel bad if you use them, like you are a lesser teacher!

I'd rather go back to textbooks rather than scrappy home-made worksheets or online resources. I can't believe how little text books are used today. Yet, when you look around the classrooms, there are piles of dusty text books on shelves clearly not be touched for years. Talk about reinventing the wheel!

Classic example of the limitations of online was the floods a couple of weeks ago. We had no power or comms for several days and the schools were closed for two days. Ideal opportunity to catch up on homework and revision or get ahead even, but in reality, our son couldn't do a thing. No internet due to no power and even when the power/internet came back, the schools's VLE and homework system were both down, so our son had literally nothing he could do. If he'd had textbooks and a written note of his homework, he could have done it, but instead, he had a couple of evenings of pure hell when it all came back on to catch up.

Give us textbooks any day!

[rollonthesummer]

I loved textbooks when I was at school!!

[DorothyL]

I totally agree but textbook use is really sneered at

[MrsUltra]

At my DC indie school they have textbooks for every subject- high achieving school so seems to do them no harm.

[noblegiraffe]

The current textbooks for maths are truly dreadful. I've got some in my classroom that are at least 10 years old that I still use because they're great, but they're falling apart and covered in penises. I wish the publishers would get their act together and produce something decent for a change.

The ones that have been rushed out for the new GCSE are so bad that we didn't even buy any even though we were planning to.

[Letseatgrandma]

I have to say, my DD's grammar still uses text books!

[ArmchairTraveller]

The wheel turns, I've seen many things that were unfashionable come back into education, often with a shiny new label and the collective amnesia of the proposers.
I think selective use of textbooks will return, it's getting harder to justify the huge number of photocopies, many in colour, that are largely single-use.

[unimaginativename13]

I worked in a job where my reporting just kept my like manager in a job.

We had to write down what we did every minute of the day, how long it took and how many times I breathed doing it. Report it in one way then report it another way.

Then when it came to her gathering the info for her reports she couldn't make make head nor tail or what system she had.

So night before meetings we emailed again how many toilet trips we took on Monday 2nd.

Then cue sudden 'change of procedure' as we clearly didn't get how to report as we were all stupid.

I left after being accused, as a team, of purposely filling out a spreadsheet wrong. Which we were told to use our common sense to fill out.

I just wanted to do my job! Which BTW didn't include bloody excel spreadsheets.

[rollonthesummer]

The problem with textbooks is that when the syllabus changes so often, they quickly become obsolete. Yet, they are too expensive to shell out on regularly. Unless things stop changing so regularly, it's just throwing money away.

[kjwh]

The problem with textbooks is that when the syllabus changes so often, they quickly become obsolete. Yet, they are too expensive to shell out on regularly. Unless things stop changing so regularly, it's just throwing money away.

The vast majority of the book will remain the same in most subjects, so you ignore the sections that are no longer relevant and just prepare scrappy worksheets to cover the new bits that aren't in the book. Simples.