Transcript: Gove on sacking teachers

This morning, the Education Secretary went on the Today programme to explain his plans to make it easier to sack teachers. Here’s the full transcript:

James Naughtie: From the start of the next school year in England, head teachers will find it easier to remove teachers that are considered to be under-performers.  The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, thinks the process is too cumbersome so it is being streamlined. The National Union of Teachers, as we heard earlier, says it could become a bullies’ charter.  Well Mr Gove is with us. Good morning.

Michael Gove: Good morning.

JN: Bullies?

MG: I don’t believe so. I think that actually if you have got a problem with bullying or indiscipline it is often as a result of an individual teacher not being able to maintain effective discipline in the classroom or in the playground. So if we believe in playing fair by our children, then we’ll want to ensure that those teachers who aren’t doing an effective job are first of all given the support to change their ways and to improve and to get back on track, and then if that doesn’t work and only if it doesn’t work, then ease them out.

JN: There are two questions here, one, what do you think is wrong with the present system but the second question which is related, is how big a problem inadequate or bad teaching in the classroom is, how many teachers do you think in England are in this category roughly speaking, I don’t mean give us an exact number?

MG: I’ll give you the classic politicians no-no answer which is I don't know – I dinnae ken. And the truth is that it’s ultimately a judgment for individual head teachers and as I was trying to imply in the previous answer, there are some teachers who are not doing as well as they should and who are stuck frankly at the moment, who with the right leadership and the right support can raise their game and transform it.  So there are a group of teachers we know, there are 3 per cent of schools where teaching is judged inadequate.

JN: That’s by OFSTED?

MG: Exactly and we know that there are real problems there but we also know that some of those schools with the right head teacher and the right support can turn things around, so it’s difficult to quantify precisely but that’s a guide.

JN: As I understand it, the process which at the moment takes a year, if someone is found to be underperforming, the point at which they say well the efforts to retrain and so on haven’t work, you’ve got to go, is about a year.  You want that to be possible in a term.

MG: Exactly. Before we even get to the process of saying right, that’s it, we’re now going to have to say whether or not you should stay, then teachers will have been observed and there will be data on whether or not children have progressed term by term.  If the alarm bells are ringing and the red lights are flashing, then we move to this process. It used to take a year, we’re now concertinaing it – to use an ugly verb – in order to make it work in a term.

JN: How do you guard against the obvious abuse of a system where somebody can be victimised because there is a personality clash with the head?  If you say more power to the head teacher everyone will say hurrah, that’s what head teachers are for but what if there’s a bad head teacher and he or she wants to get rid of a member of staff who is troublesome? Won’t that make it easier and in that circumstance isn’t the NUT right to say look, how does a teacher protect himself or herself against that happening? 

MG: Firstly, all teachers like all workers will continue to enjoy all the protection that employment law gives so if you have someone who is a victim of genuine bullying, intimidation, prejudice, racism, whatever it might be, they will have full protection and a possibility of going to an employment tribunal. What we’re talking about here is people where the evidence is really pretty clear that children haven’t been improving and they’re not doing as well as they should, they have a chance to address that and if they don’t address that appropriately then we move quickly to a conclusion. At every stage there is an opportunity for the teacher to be represented, for evidence to be assessed and for a fair judgement to be made.

JN: Under this system, do you want head teachers to be more willing to try to intervene in problems of this kind than they are at the moment?

MG: Yes, I think head teachers should feel liberated to intervene earlier and I think sometimes what’s required …

JN: And more often?

MG: Yes, I think sometimes what’s required are some tough words about teachers who haven’t been doing as well as they should because I don't think any of us want to be in a position of terminating someone’s employment unless it is absolutely necessary, but turn it round just slightly.  I do want teachers to be in receipt of fair treatment but critically I most of all want children to have quality teaching.  Nothing matters more than the quality of the time that a child spends interacting with a gifted adult. And we all know that if you have a poor teacher, dull, uninspiring lessons and misbehaviour, then children will drift and they become disengaged, they won’t achieve their full potential. And I think sometimes a head teacher intervening early, having a few brisk words, knowing that he or she himself is being held to account for the performance of the school, can get things right.

JN: Let me just, before we go, ask you about one other matter, it’s Scotland.  You are a high profile member of the Cabinet and of course have a natural interest in Scotland because of your background.  The Prime Minister made a decision earlier this week to intervene, quite dramatically, and you know that there has been a familiar chorus in Scotland of some people saying ‘about time, that’s a good thing’ and others saying ‘come on, stop hectoring and lecturing’ and the SNP talking about a return to the 80s and trying to invoke an unpopular Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, of that time.  How tough do you think the government should be in pursuing its idea of an area binding referendum with a simple question than Alex Salmond wants?

MG: I think the timing is a matter obviously for discussion and consultation and that’s clear but I think what’s important is that we need to have a decisive yes or no question on whether or not the people of Scotland want to be independent or not. Alex Salmond has been trying to play a tactical game here in order to strengthen the political position of one party, by doing so he has avoided and dodged so far some fundamental questions. Do the people of Scotland want to have the pound, the euro or an alternative currency?  Do the people of Scotland want to have the same level of welfare benefits as the rest of the United Kingdom?  Do they want to be part of the same nation that has a British Broadcasting Corporation and a National Health Service?  Do they want the Royal Navy and the British Army to remain institutions that embody patriotic feeling and sentiment or do they want to sunder and separate them?  Do they want you and I, Jim, to be forced to choose between being British and Scottish, to have a narrow exclusive ethnic nationalist identity as our only choice or do they believe that we should be plural, multicultural, modern and 21st century?  These are big questions that Alex Salmond has dodged; he shouldn’t have to dodge them forever.