What does Nicky Morgan not seem to understand?

[theluckiest]

Nicky Morgan urges teachers' unions to 'do their bit' www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35899478

No Nicky, teaching is not wonderful at the moment. No, teachers are not just moaning yet again (because that's what we usually do, isn't it?). No, your constant interfering, moving of goalposts and unnecessary 'reforms' are not helping anyone. In fact, you are damaging education irreparably.

Here's an example: the 'more rigorous' testing that you insist all 11 year olds should be put through are actually damaging. They are demoralising teachers but much more importantly, they are seriously damaging children's mental health. Yes, really. The stress these children are being put under is unforgivable this year. As a school we are held to ransom because of these tests (let's be honest, tests that we teachers, parents and schools know are bullshit).

They feel like they have failed already because your 'rigour' is inappropriate, unnecessary and completely pointless. They despise learning this nonsense and I can't blame them. At a time of their lives when learning should be exciting, they are force-fed inaccurate, archaic grammar and given the message that their writing cannot be good enough if it doesn't have a semi-colon.

Sounds crazy doesn't it? Because it is. So forgive me if I don't "Use the tools available to them to build up teachers, promote the profession and tell the story of what a rewarding job teaching really is" at the moment. (how I laughed when I read that one!!)

And don't get me started on academisation....Nicky, take your fingers out of your ears and listen. Before it's too late.

So teachers can never make any complaint about any new political initiative that the latest govt comes up with? We should just put our heads down and just get on with trying to teach amidst the ruins of the state education system.

So teachers can never make any complaint about any new political initiative that the latest govt comes up with? We should just put our heads down and just get on with trying to teach amidst the ruins of the state education system.

There's an element of Henny Penny about it - every change proposed as far back as I can remember has been resisted and fought against with dire warnings of catastrophe, which fail to materialise. Some things work, some don't.

Legislation that was resisted years ago is subsequently defended when reversals are proposed, often by the party that was supported by teachers originally.

Ok, so teachers are always wrong and unnecessarily object to new initiatives. All new initiatives, whatever they are, should be greeted enthusiastically and teachers should put up and shut up about them.

I agree with you, PrettyBrightFireflies, for what it's worth.

Well, I teach in a private international school now, which is a bit like the Shangri la you described at 16:38.

We are very much left to use our professional judgment - far less 'monitoring' & other mucking about, & we don't have to pay much attention to the latest fads. I'd say my workload has halved.

There are downsides.

One is, as you are implying, that a relatively laissez faire school is a good place for a crap teacher to hide. My own ds has had some rather ropey teaching this year.

Another is lack of job security - people get 'disappeared' occasionally because they've upset some little horror whose dad is on the Board.

I can't see that academies, as opposed to LA schools, have the answer to either of these.

I'd like some of the 'autonomy' that constantly gets trotted out as a virtue of academies (so why not just abolish the NC etc for all, if it's so unnecessary?), please, at school level.

Then I'd like an elected, not for profit overseeing authority to look after all the macro stuff. A good local authority, in fact.

Pretty surely it can't have escaped your notice that the rate of change has been rather more rapid recently than in a very long time?

New primary curriculum, new KS1 and KS2 SATs including new grading system, new KS3 curriculum, scrapping of levels so entirely new assessment systems that we've had to invent ourselves, new GCSEs (major changes including to the grading system, not minor tweaks), new A-levels, including structural changes in the removal of AS. New compulsory resit rules at both KS2 and KS4. New league table progress measures. And now new compulsory changes to the school system. All within a handful of years, alongside pay freezes and pension cuts. Tell me when Labour did anything similar?

You don't think schools now deserve a bit of breathing space to implement these changes?

Let's not forget that previous major changes like the switch from O-levels to GCSE were a decade in the making, with the changes being piloted and carefully considered, not just dumped on schools at the last minute and the fine detail worked out after the first cohort went through.

I don't disagree with you noble but my issue is (and this may be a personal feeling) that there is a lot of exaggerated shock horror but not very much engaging with the curriculum which is after all what would most benefit the children in the long run.

but not very much engaging with the curriculum

How do you know there's not very much engaging with the curriculum? IME teachers are working their arses off to get up to speed in a very short space of time.

Of course teachers engage with the curriculum - they have to in order to teach it. Why should that stop them pointing out any issues that they see with it?

I know that, certainly whenever I could, I contributed to any consultations about proposed curriculum changes. I also was involved in a fairly major change to my subject specialism, at the very beginning, engaging with higher education and industry to change what was actually taught from KS1 to KS5. But maybe that wasn't enough.

I think there's a huge amount of anxiety about the new curriculum, and this is petering down to young people, in other words.

Yes, we all know teachers work hard. It isn't the work ethic I'm cynical about.

Now that I do take bloody huge offence at, raining.

I'm currently implementing international baccalaureate, gcse, igcse & a whole new ks3 long term plan simultaneously, thank you very much.

Now that I do take bloody huge offence at, raining.

I'm currently implementing international baccalaureate, gcse, igcse & a whole new ks3 long term plan simultaneously, thank you very much.

Of course there is a huge amount of anxiety about the new curriculum. If at work you were suddenly dumped two years worth of work in your in tray and told to do it in one year, and that not only your job depended on it being done to a high quality but also the jobs of your department, then you'd be anxious too! You'd get on with it, but it would affect your entire disposition.

Teachers aren't robots.

In some ways crowy you couldn't have proved my point better - many teachers take everything so very personally. There is absolutely no need for it.

Noble, I am a teacher

Then what, raining is your actual point?

And that's just the teachers 'disappearing', Crowy. I'm not sure that the issues about pupils that 'disappear' in academy chains has been touched on yet.

Why does the education system need to be an 'experiment'? It's not like this is a completely new experiment either. It's been tried elsewhere and usually ends up with falling academic standards. There's a very good reason why most places aren't doing this.

If many teachers take things so very personally, perhaps it's because they care?

I've just spent the first five days of my Easter break 'engaging with the curriculum'.

It does rather push my buttons when someone suggests I'm not, yes.

Ooh, we were asked up thread what teachers want, weren't we?

What we want is for lessons to be learned from the Shanghai model that has been banged on about in such glowing terms and for teaching contact time to be reduced from 90% to 30%.

That would certainly give us time to implement the changes and is a proven international success.

Depends how you define success. But we can use whatever they use if you want to reduce your teaching time.

My point was/is that it is happening so rather than continue to wind ourselves and students up into a state, work with it.

Oh yes, raining, it's so easy to 'work with it' when you don't know what it actually is you're working with and kids ask you pesky questions like 'what is my predicted grade' and parents ask you unreasonable questions like 'will my DC pass this GCSE' and not only can you not answer with any reliability you also have to explain that it depends on what they mean by 'pass'.

It's hard to just work with something that's rubbish. In fact it's embarrassing to have to try to justify it to the kids.

Well, teachers are going to have to work with it, of course they are, as always. I don't know any teaching colleague who would wind the students up into a state about it though! The absolute reverse in fact. Don't all teachers try and shield the students from the behind the scenes machinations?

I don't see why that would stop teachers from pointing out the issues where they see them?

That's pretty much the pro-academy position on all these threads, isn't it?

'It is happening...work with it'.

Or in other words, suck it up serfs.

Not doing that, sorry. It's not good enough for my children or for me.

Don't all teachers try and shield the students from the behind the scenes machinations?

Not in my experience - both as a parent and while in school professionally.

And, of course, students and parents can hear and read what teachers, and their representatives, say and write publicly.

This thread hardly demonstrates a concerted effort by the teaching profession to protect students from the negativity, does it?
Neither did the weekend conferences.

Personally, I don't think that students need protecting - DCs as young as 9 can be quite astute about the issues; but it's disingenuous to say that teachers make efforts to protect them from it!