Micromanagement

[TeacherPrimaryabc]

My school is a good school, with better behaviour than most, but it is so intense. Part of the reason behaviour is good, is because the children arn't given an inch -that's the good part I guess.

But SLT scritinise everything, absolutely everything. They do book looks every week, all planning is looked at and they nitpick about the slightest thing (Your LO for that lesson wasn't quite right, this lesson needs a 4 way adaptation, not 3, you learning wall needs children’s work changed weekly, it needs this it needs that and so on). We have to have a PowerPoint presentation for every lesson, marking must be progressive and need I go on. They are just onto us for absolutely every small detail.

We do planning, only for a member of SLT to redo parts of it because they are so particular. We get micromanaged to an inch of our lives. Even today, on the final day of term, I get called in to change a plenary for lesson 5 of a DT lesson next term! It is just a 5 minute plenary!!! Thank goodness it's the Christmas break because I am absolutely exhausted. I don't think I can continue working under these conditions. Looking at an Easter exit, but what can I do. It's all so stressful!

As someone who has been a HT for almost 18 years, I have always found what you’ve mentioned above very counterproductive for SLT. HODs would usually do this but not as often as it happens in your school and definitely no pointless intensive scrutiny!

I am a HT who was appointed into a challenging school in special measures tasked with turning it around; NONE of my teaching staff, HoDs have this amount of pressure - yes they are challenged but it’s more productive than counter - there are no pointless tasks.

Thanks for your response. The school I worked at before this one, monitored teaching and learning, not planning. That seemed a better approach. As long as children were learning and making good progress, SLT weren't bothered what planning there was. We were able to have skeleton plans, with lots of room for AFL.

At this school, SLT seem to think that inch perfect, rule driven planning, is the way to go. They think that it results in consistency across the school, because everyone must follow the same particular set of rules. But it's just overkill and takes up so much time. There are also too many people getting involved, one person saying one thing and another person another.

I don't get the point of monitoring your planning because unless they actually sit and watch you teach (whilst following the planning document) how would they know you have taught what's written down?

You could teach it in a totally different way and they would never know.

I teach in a good primary school with a realistic SLT but we still have been having book trawls and more scrutiny as Ofsted are looming. It's quite positive scrutiny though.

I'm retiring next summer after 28 years and my mind is in a totally different place, because I know I'm going I don't really care as much.

There are loads of jobs out there you could do (I'm going to get a part time job to top up my pension) I've been looking at loads of job sites.