Tories move to raise the standard of teachers

Sir Graphus

Pay peanuts; get monkeys.

From my wife's experience, teaching is a badly paid and high stress environment (with virtually no support from parents, and none from her own management). She left a job with better money and lower stress in order to do it. A man in her position could not have possibly supported a family on the salary.

Don't look at teachers as if this is all their fault.

And the problem isn't bad teachers at all. It's bad parents.

Minnie Ovens

Michael Gove is one of the few shining lights in the Conservative party.
It is still quite terrifying that continued political correctness stops all politicians fron stating the obvious; That the 11+, Secondary Modern/Grammar Schools policy was the most simple and effective strategy.
Combined with Guild schools it provided a base of skills over the broad spectrum.
Not fair, you scream. And today's dysfunctional policies are?
Now while we are at it, I have this idea for teaching discipline and standards to today's youth. It's called National Service.......
OK, OK I'll shut up.

Paul Huxley

What we need is a simple voucher system (as little red tape as possible) implemented asap and given time to work. Most of the reforms necessary are going to be much harder if state-driven than market-driven.

PDM

Agree totally, the amount of politcally motivated nonsense teachers are required to pass onto pupils, the obscene micro-management and the crap money make me wonder why anyone would want to do it.

Likewise, the fact that you can't even stamp your authority on a class just makes the job even harder.

J R Hartley

Rubbish Sir Graphus - I have a few teachers in my family and they do it a) because they love it and b) because it's easier that the real world.

They deliver practically the same text/syllabus year in year out, ironically in some subjects which they had failed themselves.

They have umpteen holidays, short working days and gold-plated pensions. Whenever there is an inset/baker day it's held in term-time - I wonder why?

It is the most complacent, self-aggrandising system outside of Westminster. They are purely there to herd the 80% through to mediocrity. They haven't a clue how to manage the top and bottom 10%.

I hope Gove and the incoming government and radical from the start - it's a failing system with discredited standards, full of time-serving, pension-seeking failures.

Can the pensions, trim the holidays, extend the hours, raise the standards - not drop the bar and if you've done all that think about paying beyond "peanuts" for the top attainers - not for all.

dave, surrey

'And the problem isn't bad teachers at all. It's bad parents.' Totally agree with this, however the state has been undermining parents and absolving them of responsibility for 12 years now. It's little wonder when they (not all) start to blame the overbearing state for their childs lack of progress.

Michael Booth

Teacher bashing - cheap and nasty tactics. We are brilliant and pointing the finger of blame: unfortunately teachers seem to cop for everything that's wrong with society. Gove might be 'one of the few shining lights' but coming out with stuff like that just fills me with despair.
"Tough on teachers, tough on the professionalism of teachers" seems to be the mantra. Its all a load of b------s.

dearieme

What on earth is the point of "pass first time"? I see the point of not allowing attempts in perpetuity, but prohibiting the chance of one re-sit seems to run against the grain of humankind - and conservatives are meant to rule with the grain - it's the whole bloody point of them.

Colin

Can someone please remind me why Gove is still in the shadow cabinet?

Being clever isn't mitigation for his lack of integrity in relation to expenses...

EC

Yet another tedious and overrated Scot tinkering in English affairs. Will we never be rid of them!

Athanasius

These seem like eminently sensible proposals to me. I don't go along with the idea that it's just 'teacher bashing': the whole of the education sector will feel the benefit if standards are raise, and I believe that this is also the key to attracting more to the profession.

I speak as someone considering becoming a teacher. There is nothing so off-putting as the current system. As Sr Graphus says, part of the problem is that teachers are underpaid and overworked; but a more significant problem is the way that education has been dumbed down so much in recent decades. Schools have become the target of under-achieving graduates to get some sort of career; and this reputation puts more highly achieving graduated off entering the profession. Make it harder to become a teacher, while at the same time improving incentives; and the other side of the coin is remove all the c**p that teachers are expected to put up with, like ideology-driven initiatives, control taken away from their classroom, dreadful curricula and so on.

We need both, but it seems like Gove is ready to make a start.

Cynical Voter

- I have a few teachers in my family and they do it a) because they love it and b) because it's easier that the real world.

Pity your family isn't bigger then ! I am tired of my wife spending evenings preparing lessons for oiks to wreck with lousy discipline and pig ignorant behaviour. Funny how a supply teacher gets to do the heavy workload while the rest of them glide along and she is covering for a woman that takes annual maternity leave. Of course being Supply 50% salary goes to the Agency; no sick or vacation pay, no pension, no LEA rates or contract....pay for the day...and she has to mark, prepare, and take public holidays all unpaid.

The education system stinks and I'm not sure whether it is the runts that sit in the classrooms or the pigs that sit in the offices; but it is a waste of time trying to impart any learning to zoo animals.

John Moss

Teachers are often the bottom rung of the funding food chain with vast amounts syphoned off at Local Authority level.

Vouchers going in at the bottom, with schools buying the services they want from LEAs will see, well, the end of LEAs. What do they do, actually?

Can't come a moment too soon. They are another manifestation of the socialist settlement every Government since 1945 has bought in to, Thatcher included!

TimC

I only remember one thing from my PGCE (and I think that was incorrect). Ten years teaching - no challenge and boring- next 26 years in computer industry fascinating and useful. build up the 'try teaching for a year or so scheme for new grads?

ex-teacher

It's easy to bash teachers, but they should be set free to teach and they should have the sanctions to do the job. Children know they have more rights than teachers and many are prepared to exploit that knowledge. The profession is feminised (equal pay, but at a female level). It's also high stress and many pupils are doomed to fail because they are all supposed to be "equal", whereas clearly they are not. Concentrating on their strengths would enable them to succeed at things they have talent for. Those who think teaching's a doddle should try teaching MFL in the target language to pupils not functionally literate in their own language, when such pupils comprise one quarter of the mixed ability class (7/28). Forget 9-4 hours - the amount of marking and preparation, not to mention reports, eats up evenings, weekends and often the beginnings and ends of holidays. Inset means the children have extra days off, usually at the end of their holiday, but teachers come back to work early. It's the only profession I know where the minimum hours of work were stipulated, but no maximum hours and evening work (with no unsocial hours allowance) was compulsory. Despite the system, many teachers do a good job without any support from the media and the general public. Bring back grammar schools, develop equally good technical schools to cater for the less academic and good, old fashioned discipline. Let's celebrate excellence in ALL its forms and encourage aspiration.

billy roberts

JR Hartley - 'They have umpteen holidays, short working days and gold-plated pensions. Whenever there is an inset/baker day it's held in term-time - I wonder why?

It is the most complacent, self-aggrandising system outside of Westminster. They are purely there to herd the 80% through to mediocrity. They haven't a clue how to manage the top and bottom 10%.'

I have to agree, though that kind of comment is going to get some teachers' backs up.

My girlfriend is a head of department in a secondary and in her defence she works very hard. However, in my experience, teachers fall into broadly three categories:

- those who are capable, dedicated and hard working (a minority)
- those who are in it for the holidays, the pension and quite frankly would never be able to get close to earning 40k per annum (60k prorata if you include 1/3 of the year off in holiday) in the private sector (the majority - i know lots of these)
- an unpleasant and militant hardcore who think they're owed a living, always off with stress and always pushing the NUT or NASWUT let's go on strike agenda. Once woman who'd been off for six months with stress actually came into my girlfreind's school, not to teach but make sure everyone signed the strike ballot! but i guess you get these kinds of people right throughout the public sector...

Charlie

Did not Sir Isaac Newton only receive a third and obviously Sir W Churchill completely lacked the intelligence to teach.

Wonderer

Does this mean they will be able to spell 'n that?

an' sorta kno wot they are a talkin abart?

Ian Walker

Much as I like Michael Gove, it's a laughable idea that the class of your degree and the results you achieved in GCSEs has any effect on how good a teacher you might be, especially at primary level.

Good teachers are good teachers, bad ones aren't, and like the 'quarterback problem', the only real way to find out is to put them in a classroom and carefully observe them.

He'd be better off scrapping B.Ed and PGCE courses and expanding the excellent GTP scheme.

He might also want to look at some way of making it possible for non-graduates with real-world industry experience to become teachers. At the moment, there is a shortage of ICT teachers and a surplus of degree-less ICT experts - surely it's not impossible to marry those two together?

Mr Chipping, BA (Oxon)

OK Let's just focus for a second on INSET Days: five days were taken away from the holiday and made into Baker Days by Kenneth Baker. So they were originally holidays and not term time. Now of course they are taken as standard and it is assumed they are depriving kids of term time teaching. Don't know about you, but I would want any teacher responsible for my child to be up to date and involved in professional development. Billy Roberts, the majority of teachers I have met work hard and are dedicated to improving learning: the only real militants seem to exist in big cities, notably London. Being in charge of a class of thirty children all day, responding to their needs, demands, enthusiasm, downright cussedness, and having parents ever-ready to jump on your back, and being told by everybody that you are doing a bad job, is not something for the faint-hearted and a world away from quiet, peaceful office work where you can have a cup of coffee when you want and close the door (unless the office is open plan of course). Of course, its a great idea to drive people away from the profession through constant knocking and undermining... but where would we be then?

David Cram

How about just leaving it to the market? Good teachers in good schools attract good families. Haven't we all had enough of some pathetic minister whining 've haff vays of making you learn, ja?'. Get government out of education. You know they haven't got a clue.

patently

Under a Conservative government, those in state-run teacher training would not be allowed to retake the literacy and numeracy tests multipile times.

Did you mean to say that? I need to know....!

Alf Tupper C.R.O.F.

What is Michael Gove doing with all that simmering smirk stuff on the photograph? And photoshopped or what.
Somebody tell him.

Hawkeye

Mr Chipping said: "I would want any teacher responsible for my child to be up to date and involved in professional development"

What training do they need since the previous term? Do teachers forget how to mark homeworks? Are refresher courses needed on handing out assignments? Do they forget how to teach after a week or two off?

I would believe the INSET days were useful if they were done on the last week of the holiday, but shoving them into teaching time just makes it look like an excuse for another day off with pay. As for "professional development", what are they keeping up with? New trendy ways not to fail exams? The thoughts of Chairman Gordon?

Children don't change and most teachers just do the same thing from year to year so why do we need to spend 5 days of term time going over what should be known already?

The one thing I would concede is that teachers need to be protected from false accusation by children and an accusation should not result in an automatic suspension - especially if the child has "form" as a known liar/troublemaker.

A. Teacher

@Mr Chipping:

Until recently, I was a primary school teacher, so I can say that you have (in my experience) hit the nail on the head.

Before teaching, I had what you would call a regular office job, meet deadlines, have meetings, draft reports, drink coffee, go home at 5:30 type office job. Nothing could have prepared me for the harsh reality of life as a class teacher in a primary school, especially not the sub-standard teacher training I received on my PGCE. I learned a lot about "Assessment for Learning", but not much about what to do when a child is about to lob a chair through a window
because you took his Pokemon cards off him.

As a teacher I received generally "Good" gradings on my lesson observations, but you are constantly made to feel you aren't doing enough. To all those who believe deep down that "those who can't, teach", I would say try to prepare (and imaginatively resource) 20-25 exciting lessons a week, with each lesson containing at least three different sets of relevant work for children in the same class, who range from those who are able to read The Lord of The Rings to others who are not able to spell their names correctly (not forgetting the girl from Somalia and the boy from Qatar, who have just arrived without any warning and speak no English, and need to be assessed for EAL purposes). Obviously, all this has to be done when you aren't teaching, so weekends and those famous long holidays that people whine about aren't all they are cracked up to be.

Add to this the endless political flip-flopping, from Ed Balls down to the Head, (who may decide on a whim that it would be nice if your year group could put on an hour long spectacular about the importance of maths in future life, to be performed to the school in three weeks time complete with dancing, singing and costumes, with no extra rehearsal time granted because "we can't really afford to have children missing out on topic lessons or PE".) and you can see why many teachers do leave the profession, having been trained up on tax-payers (and their own) money.

I left mainly because I couldn't put up with the lack of support and woeful management at my school, but still I feel real anger that the government spends millions on advertising to get professional people into teaching, only to let them down with multilayered bureaucracy and education policies that are thrown up in the air whenever Gordon's having a bit of a nightmare in the Press. Finally, I would say to those who moan about teachers, if teaching is so easy, give it a go.

That was very cathartic. Apologies for the stream of consciousness!

J R Hartley

INSET days are routinely being used as Christmas-shopping days, post holiday travel days in schools I'm aware of.

I know many teachers work hard - but they have no concept that this hard work thing extends beyond schools though. How would they like to be performance managed as we poor buggers paying their wage in the private sector put up with.

Yeah they work longer hours - after 3:30 poor souls. I'm just into the 11th hour of my working day and will finish off when I get home.

I think they become institutionalised in to thinking that it's normal to become "really tired" every 6 weeks or so and need that half-term break.

Pensions are merely the elephant in the room. They'll have to stop sadly but no-one has the balls to do it.

I hope Gove goes in with a wrecking-ball and shakes the thing out of complacency.

Jane

Hawkeye,
I think you'll find that the inset days are there for senior management to present the latest Government Initiative to staff. I'm thinking "Every Child Matters", "Excellence and Enjoyment", "Context for Learning", "Assessment for Learning"... I could go on.

Why should teachers be painted as the bad guys- all this comes from the top. And just when a school gets to grips with it, guess what? Yes, the government brings in a "new" initiative.

Alf Tupper C.R.O.F.

I had a brief spell teaching some years ago.

Every INSET day I attended was totally useless, some to the point of embarrassment. This view was shared by everyone except a small coterie who said yes to anything which might lead to an invite to one of the Head's parties.

The thought always struck me how a profession of so many intelligent people, allowed itself to be herded into the partaking of such shambolic and unproductive performances.

Probably just as well I left seeing as Clive Davis thinks my sort are not quite the thing to be allowed in the company of kids.

John Moss

Most Inset Days are spent being told what the latest initiative is to come down from on high, what the latest targets are and how the school is to manage "behaviour issues", all within the prevailing socialist/PC agenda.

Scrap all this. Fund with vouchers to parents - and do the same for 18-23 year olds. One book of vouchers worth £25k to be used within five years on college, university or training.

How many jobs in DCSF/DUIS and at LEAs might that free up?

Mr Chipping, BA (Oxon)

"Children don't change and most teachers just do the same thing from year to year so why do we need to spend 5 days of term time going over what should be known already?"

Well now where do we start? Classrooms contain children who cover the ability spectrum sure enough, but then you could well find there are children with aspergers or mild autism, children with dispraxia, petty mal or even grand mal, children with brittle bones, respiratory problems - teachers need to learn how to deal with innumerable situations and conditions. Then there are children who don't have English as their first language - all these require the development of skills and a degree of expertise (or at least knowledge). Also you miss the point - INSET days WERE part of the holiday - its just that it was done so long ago that everyone has forgotten the fact. Schools and teachers provide the only continuity and stability in some children's lives...

As for things not changing from one year to the next...WELL... this government have sent out initiative after initiative and teachers are expected to learn how to implement and manage them: Literacy and Numeracy Startegies; three new versions of the curriculum; legislation affecting the role, e.g. Inclusion, Equal Opportunitites. 'Every Child Matters', Excellence in Schools, Healthy Schools Initiative, APP (Assessing Pupil Progress) and AfL (Assessment for Learning). I could go on but why bother. Teachers are obviously scum and deserve to be trodden into the ground and spat on. Way to go, Hawkeye.......

Mike Croydon

This is the conservative party going to wrong way on an area of policy they don’t need to touch. Schools and Education act as a closed shop, we need more people in with a variety of backgrounds, insisting on academic standards people achieve when they are 16 (GCSE) doesn’t help that. Teaching in large part is about control and engagement in the classroom neither of which you can learn from a written test. Clearly we don’t want teachers who can’t spell or add up, but these pedantic rules will put off people from different backgrounds entering the profession.

CCTV

Children don't change

Course they do. They are lazy, fat, smug, complacent, arrogant, ignorant, opinionated, money-obsessed, learning-lite, plagiarisers and superficial poseurs without ambition or drive expecting to coast into affluence like the aristocrats most of these oiks have been brought up to believe they are as parents lavish Chinese-made consumer goods on their narcissistic offspring.

Of course children have changed and are mutating constantly into the kind of repulsive self-satisfied non-achievers that litter our streets, offices and classrooms before graduating to estate agency and prison in a sort of selective further education

John Lea

EC: Your anti-Scottish comment says more about how pathetic you are than it does about Scots.

Serenissima

Do we not all remember the teacher who was totally unable to explain clearly the finer points of a poem, or a mathematical theorem, because it was so blindingly obvious to him/her? However, teaching skills can be taught; intellect cannot.