Autonomy

[Piggywaspushed]

This is interesting:
www.tes.com/news/teachers-have-second-lowest-autonomy-11-professions

I have found the 'do as you're told, when you are told, exactly how we tell you'' culture increasingly stressful over the last maybe 10 years.
But I do wonder whether some people enter teaching because they think others will decide for them what to do, how and when, certainly many newer entrants.

Lots of the stressed posts on MN suggest to me that many of us in the state sector feel hamstrung by lack of ability to make our own decisions or to have a say in bigger decisions?

Having recently left teaching to help at my husbands business I am finding it really hard to make real autonomous decisions. But I was in a good school where I felt I had a high degree of autonomy in my classroom and influential input in my department. I hadn't realised how many decision were made for us at a school level.

My husband said to me on my first day at the office "research a piece of software to do this...." I was a bit taken aback....you mean I have to choose myself???!!!

Totally institutionalised after 16 years. I'm not even sure most teachers I worked with would realise being as it is a great school with valued staff.

I know at my school the maths department is currently extremely pissed off at important decisions regarding maths being made by SLT members who haven’t a clue about maths, and against the advice of the maths department.

I don’t think I could work in a school that had an extremely prescribed curriculum (e.g. Michaela), our SOL are along the lines of ‘teach fractions’ and I can do that how I like.

I don't think I could leave my school because of the freedom I have over what and how I teach. This is partly because our department is not prescriptive over those things. Most of us are specialists and people like me who have been there a long time (murderers have done less time than me) have shaped the department in this way.

However, the school itself, after years of light touch curriculum leadership, is definitely becoming more admin heavy, more prescriptive and our assessment policies and practices are entirely data driven.

But, so we are told, staff love working at Michaela!?

Who decides the entry grades for sixth forms and what courses you can offer?

Courses we can offer is decided jointly really. Our SLT is very open to new courses : we have a really broad curriculum. Some unusual GCSEs and A Levels on offer compared to most.

Entry grades to sixth form are pretty much decided by departments within parameters : but they could probably do with a little more control since some departments seem to be able to control intake more than others!