New teachers strike wtf
Discussion
Countdown said:
Joey Ramone said:
So you advocate the 'if you don't like it, then f
k off' school of management which, logically, would lead to the creation of a miserable and demotivated profession where the only people left in it are those who are unable to secure an alternative career due to their lack of skills.
Yes, those are certainly the people I would want teaching my kids. Much better than some ludicrously clever, multi-talented graduate who foresook a career in the City because they thought they might be able to do some good as a teacher. And would I begrudge them 40k a year for a 60hr week, 39 weeks a year? Nope.
And no, I'm not a teacher. And I never could be, because it's too much effort for the money. As for the pension, putting up with other peoples over-entitled brats for 30 years should result in a knighthood, let alone a good pension.
I couldn't agree more. Given how comparatively "well paid" teaching is supposed to be (in PH-world) you'd think more PH-ers would be teachers.k off' school of management which, logically, would lead to the creation of a miserable and demotivated profession where the only people left in it are those who are unable to secure an alternative career due to their lack of skills. Yes, those are certainly the people I would want teaching my kids. Much better than some ludicrously clever, multi-talented graduate who foresook a career in the City because they thought they might be able to do some good as a teacher. And would I begrudge them 40k a year for a 60hr week, 39 weeks a year? Nope.
And no, I'm not a teacher. And I never could be, because it's too much effort for the money. As for the pension, putting up with other peoples over-entitled brats for 30 years should result in a knighthood, let alone a good pension.
Edited by Joey Ramone on Monday 21st April 15:52
all the teachers i know, seem to relish retirement.
many retired early, and seem to make good money come summer and marking exam papers!
retirement pots cant be that bad, as they tend to be on one of many cruises every year. or spending large chunks of the summer on holiday.
so i dont think its stress that will be killing them in retirement!
many retired early, and seem to make good money come summer and marking exam papers!
retirement pots cant be that bad, as they tend to be on one of many cruises every year. or spending large chunks of the summer on holiday.
so i dont think its stress that will be killing them in retirement!
The older I get the less sympathy I have for the NUT. Lots of ranting regardless of who's in charge of government and constant whining.
What exactly do they want now? I know it's fk all to do with the needs of the children they're supposed to be serving.
They get paid well, many of them would struggle landing a job in the private sector and whether they like it or not they need to be held to account for their performance.
So come on NUT members, what are you striking for now?
What exactly do they want now? I know it's f
k all to do with the needs of the children they're supposed to be serving. They get paid well, many of them would struggle landing a job in the private sector and whether they like it or not they need to be held to account for their performance.
So come on NUT members, what are you striking for now?
FwdConvert said:
As for better pay and avoidance of pension revisions, that's fine, at least that's honest. Fight away but let's have some detail. What's at risk of being taken away? What's wrong with existing pay?
RedTrident said:
FwdConvert said:
As for better pay and avoidance of pension revisions, that's fine, at least that's honest. Fight away but let's have some detail. What's at risk of being taken away? What's wrong with existing pay?
FwdConvert said:
They are striking and - unfortunately; unavoidably - inconveniencing children and parents alike to protect the education system, the quality of learning derived and the well-being of children
Harming the kids' schooling for the sake of education.An analogy might well be shagging for the sake of virginity.
FwdConvert said:
/\
But you miss the point about the quality of education being dependent on early access to pensions, smaller contributions to such and not having to go through all that bothersome improved performance to gain reward nonsense.
If you can point to a fair method of measuring 'improvement in performance", you might have a point. But, unless we were adopt an education system more like the French - where exams are more strictly benchmarked and teachers aren't expected by government to be social workers - it's practically impossible to measure one teacher against another.But you miss the point about the quality of education being dependent on early access to pensions, smaller contributions to such and not having to go through all that bothersome improved performance to gain reward nonsense.
Kids aren't widgets, they aren't alike and this makes it hard to measure 'improvement'. One year cohort of children in a school is different to another cohort at the same stage. A fantastic set of GCSE results might owe nothing to the current teacher of a cohort but everything the the efforts of the teacher they had two years before. How do you measure that, how do you make it fair?
Teachers are right to be suspicious of a system that can't be made to work without changing the system from top to bottom (again!) no matter how much you think it would help.
Mr Snap said:
If you can point to a fair method of measuring 'improvement in performance", you might have a point. But, unless we were adopt an education system more like the French - where exams are more strictly benchmarked and teachers aren't expected by government to be social workers - it's practically impossible to measure one teacher against another.
Kids aren't widgets, they aren't alike and this makes it hard to measure 'improvement'. One year cohort of children in a school is different to another cohort at the same stage. A fantastic set of GCSE results might owe nothing to the current teacher of a cohort but everything the the efforts of the teacher they had two years before. How do you measure that, how do you make it fair?
Teachers are right to be suspicious of a system that can't be made to work without changing the system from top to bottom (again!) no matter how much you think it would help.
All of which is really just a smokescreen. Keep in mind that teachers have been telling us for years that nothing is ever their fault. Bad results are only ever due to "external influences", and never due to poor teaching performance. It is one of the reasons why so few teachers have been fired for their performance.Kids aren't widgets, they aren't alike and this makes it hard to measure 'improvement'. One year cohort of children in a school is different to another cohort at the same stage. A fantastic set of GCSE results might owe nothing to the current teacher of a cohort but everything the the efforts of the teacher they had two years before. How do you measure that, how do you make it fair?
Teachers are right to be suspicious of a system that can't be made to work without changing the system from top to bottom (again!) no matter how much you think it would help.
My own experience in modern secondary schools and as a school governor in years gone by is that teachers just hate being held to account. Often this is because they have never had to be in the past, but frequently its because many teachers recognise that by any objective analysis they are crap at their job!
Anyone with management experience in any walk of life will tell you that employing people who bring THAT approach to their work will more often than not result in underperformance and poor outcomes.
For the past 40 years teachers and their unions have been very clever in positioning the debate on the grounds of " measuring improvement in performance" rather than absolute results. This is all the educational establishment talks about these days.
And of course, "measuring improvement" on an individual (micro) basis is an impossible task , given that you can claim you don't know where the kids start from and its impossible to model all the variables (and their interactions) that could affect things. Moreover, you can mask the macro levels of underachievement by deciding how many people are going to get an A B or C in exams after you finish marking the papers. It may be that in any given year, in any given subject you would only need 50% correct answers to score an A*. Yes, Grade inflation was another tool that allowed teachers to assert that they were doing a fab job when the truth was the opposite.
Anyone who gets anywhere close to measuring performance will be met by a barrage of "new factors" that teachers and unions will claim have now been identified and must therefore be taken into account. The goalposts constantly change.
Its a brilliant ploy by teachers - ensure the debate is about something that, on analysis, cannot be measured!
The only sensible thing to do is to make exam results absolute and no external factors will be considered. It won't happen of course, and as a result thousands of kids will be short changed by their teachers and a system that swallows huge resources but delivers so little in return.
Mr Snap said:
FwdConvert said:
/\
But you miss the point about the quality of education being dependent on early access to pensions, smaller contributions to such and not having to go through all that bothersome improved performance to gain reward nonsense.
If you can point to a fair method of measuring 'improvement in performance", you might have a point. But, unless we were adopt an education system more like the French - where exams are more strictly benchmarked and teachers aren't expected by government to be social workers - it's practically impossible to measure one teacher against another.But you miss the point about the quality of education being dependent on early access to pensions, smaller contributions to such and not having to go through all that bothersome improved performance to gain reward nonsense.
Kids aren't widgets, they aren't alike and this makes it hard to measure 'improvement'. One year cohort of children in a school is different to another cohort at the same stage. A fantastic set of GCSE results might owe nothing to the current teacher of a cohort but everything the the efforts of the teacher they had two years before. How do you measure that, how do you make it fair?
Teachers are right to be suspicious of a system that can't be made to work without changing the system from top to bottom (again!) no matter how much you think it would help.
If that can't be used for the excuse that it is unfair to teachers to make any comparison, because they don't all operate on a level playing field, would be unfair in itself. Unfair to the better, harder working, more effective teachers; unfair to students; unfair to parents; unfair to the tax payer; unfair to society.
Why should teachers, almost uniquely, have and continue to expect, as if entrenched in the rightness of the Universe, progression through pay scales just by dint of staying the course and not through ability and impact?
FwdConvert said:
The battling against society's ills and inequalities aside - and it is true that lack of parenthood, declines in respect and personal discipline, falling expectation, do-gooder mentality LA and govt. hand-wringing hand-shackles etc. do make some teachers' work far harder than others, of equal ability - it is very easy to spot which teachers are 'better' and more effective. Certainly within a school and groupings of local and 'like' schools. Observation, work scrutiny, pupil feedback, assessment etc. all tell a clear tale.
If that can't be used for the excuse that it is unfair to teachers to make any comparison, because they don't all operate on a level playing field, would be unfair in itself. Unfair to the better, harder working, more effective teachers; unfair to students; unfair to parents; unfair to the tax payer; unfair to society.
Why should teachers, almost uniquely, have and continue to expect, as if entrenched in the rightness of the Universe, progression through pay scales just by dint of staying the course and not through ability and impact?
How much money do you want to spend on observation, work scrutiny, pupil feedback, assessment etc.?If that can't be used for the excuse that it is unfair to teachers to make any comparison, because they don't all operate on a level playing field, would be unfair in itself. Unfair to the better, harder working, more effective teachers; unfair to students; unfair to parents; unfair to the tax payer; unfair to society.
Why should teachers, almost uniquely, have and continue to expect, as if entrenched in the rightness of the Universe, progression through pay scales just by dint of staying the course and not through ability and impact?
Who is going to do it - the teachers (in which case who is teaching their class, marking, planning etc. while they are doing this)? External moderators (how do you ensure they have the skillset to judge, how many do you need, how much are they paid)?
How will you stop it becoming a slide to a single denominator (pupil performance) because that is easier and cheaper to measure? Which will penalise good teachers with an under performing cohort, and reward bad teachers with an over performing cohort. Yes, basing the main-scale progression purely on time in seat is not ideal, but to throw that away and replace it with an arbitrary and/or expensive alternative seems ridiculous.
In the perfect world the actual people who hire teachers would be fully responsible for removing the bad ones and deciding who gets pay increases (just like most businesses). You would need have a head and board of governors who are fully up to speed with education (practical and theory), immune to influence from the parents, or pandering to the latest fad or strategy from the government, who were fully invested in their schools and capable of both judging good teaching from bad, and having the strength to remove bad teachers.
In reality, this is not the case and would be too difficult to implement, so it seems the short-cut is to screw over hard-working teachers because it is too complicated and expensive to get it right.
mattmurdock said:
FwdConvert said:
The battling against society's ills and inequalities aside - and it is true that lack of parenthood, declines in respect and personal discipline, falling expectation, do-gooder mentality LA and govt. hand-wringing hand-shackles etc. do make some teachers' work far harder than others, of equal ability - it is very easy to spot which teachers are 'better' and more effective. Certainly within a school and groupings of local and 'like' schools. Observation, work scrutiny, pupil feedback, assessment etc. all tell a clear tale.
If that can't be used for the excuse that it is unfair to teachers to make any comparison, because they don't all operate on a level playing field, would be unfair in itself. Unfair to the better, harder working, more effective teachers; unfair to students; unfair to parents; unfair to the tax payer; unfair to society.
Why should teachers, almost uniquely, have and continue to expect, as if entrenched in the rightness of the Universe, progression through pay scales just by dint of staying the course and not through ability and impact?
How much money do you want to spend on observation, work scrutiny, pupil feedback, assessment etc.?If that can't be used for the excuse that it is unfair to teachers to make any comparison, because they don't all operate on a level playing field, would be unfair in itself. Unfair to the better, harder working, more effective teachers; unfair to students; unfair to parents; unfair to the tax payer; unfair to society.
Why should teachers, almost uniquely, have and continue to expect, as if entrenched in the rightness of the Universe, progression through pay scales just by dint of staying the course and not through ability and impact?
Who is going to do it - the teachers (in which case who is teaching their class, marking, planning etc. while they are doing this)? External moderators (how do you ensure they have the skillset to judge, how many do you need, how much are they paid)?
How will you stop it becoming a slide to a single denominator (pupil performance) because that is easier and cheaper to measure? Which will penalise good teachers with an under performing cohort, and reward bad teachers with an over performing cohort. Yes, basing the main-scale progression purely on time in seat is not ideal, but to throw that away and replace it with an arbitrary and/or expensive alternative seems ridiculous.
In the perfect world the actual people who hire teachers would be fully responsible for removing the bad ones and deciding who gets pay increases (just like most businesses). You would need have a head and board of governors who are fully up to speed with education (practical and theory), immune to influence from the parents, or pandering to the latest fad or strategy from the government, who were fully invested in their schools and capable of both judging good teaching from bad, and having the strength to remove bad teachers.
In reality, this is not the case and would be too difficult to implement, so it seems the short-cut is to screw over hard-working teachers because it is too complicated and expensive to get it right.
What do you think Ofsted and LA Advisory & Inspection Services are for?
What do you think head teachers and senior leaders/managers are for (and paid more for), especially? More of them need to get out of their offices, away from the emails and phone and around their school.
School Governors, if we must have the old, it's tradition so it must work, amateur hour system of control - at least they could do something useful? Been a Governor in two schools btw.
No, not the teachers themselves - of their own pupils and their work - obviously.
Are you really advocating a system where no one knows whether a teacher is as good at their job and as worthwhile as others, yet still retains the same advancement? Because it might cost a bit. Or need some thought?
Edited by FwdConvert on Tuesday 22 April 19:54
with respect to the previous poster aobut 'amateur hour' and governors
they are supposed to be the NEDs to the SMT's Executives ...
most governors especially in lEA schools are hardly 'amnateurs' given they are political appointees
the 'amateurs' on most governing bodies are the people who have some of the most to gain / lose - Parent governors ...
they are supposed to be the NEDs to the SMT's Executives ...
most governors especially in lEA schools are hardly 'amnateurs' given they are political appointees
the 'amateurs' on most governing bodies are the people who have some of the most to gain / lose - Parent governors ...
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