Semtex, no CAPITALS? Is that how we tell you've gone from angry-shouty to condescending?
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Sacking rubbish teachers
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Posted 4 months ago #
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I've just heard on the radio that it can take up to a year to sack an underperforming teacher, is this correct?
Posted 4 months ago # -
don simon - Member
It is now
I've just heard on the radio that it can take up to a lifetime to sack an underperforming teacher, is this correct?Posted 4 months ago # -
Most people would get sacked for not doing a good job
Not easy to fire people unless they do some gross misconduct. You have to demonstrate consistent under performance, and that means having a credible benchmark and the means to measure what they are doing in some way.
Posted 4 months ago # -
just like any other job then.
Posted 4 months ago # -
is this really a sackable offence?
[pedant mode]No one was actually sacked. [/pedant mode]
However I am able to inform you Ms Johnson and Miss Roberts have decided to relinquish their posts at Westcott Primary School from December 2011 and will pursue other opportunities.
As I said before if they objected to their treatment then they could have gone through disciplinary and got the union to help them and then the courts could have decided if it was sackable.
Posted 4 months ago # -
Speakng as a teacher I see no issue in principle. The thing is though that those judged as poor teachers are not always so. They just don't jump through the ridiculous hoops that are called teaching by a succession of governments. dunno about the secondary schools but at primary level you are as much an administrator as educator. Chuck in a much too large chunk of police officer and social worker and its not always those who can't teach who "fail". Just those who won't play a very silly game.
Posted 4 months ago # -
Don Simon - it would take the best part of a year to fire anyone in the public sector who was just underperforming (i.e. not some gross misconduct issue - just a bit rubbish). Especially if they are the member of a union.
Buzz Lightyear - credible benchmark probably much easier in teaching than many other jobs. There are thousands of other teachers all with the same curriculum, and other teachers in the same school dealing with the same pupils.
Junkyard - I don't think you can have the full conversation there (or there was something more than this) as Ms Roberts appears only to have said "You're really on one today mrs... !! Xx". Unless of course she is an English teacher in which case the use of the phrase "on one" should immediately have resulted in her contract being terminated.
Semtex - standard employment contract stuff. Welcome to the real world - if you bring the company in to direpute, see you later, there are plenty of other people looking for work who are quite happy not to.
Duckman - it might = cheaper; but what it really means is driven by market forces not by the unions! That could mean the very best get more too.
Posted 4 months ago # -
Don Simon - it would take the best part of a year to fire anyone in the public sector who was just underperforming (i.e. not some gross misconduct issue - just a bit rubbish). Especially if they are the member of a union.
I am actually quite dismayed at this. In many areas there is a demand for excellence, yet in the futures of your children there is an acceptance of mediocre or lower. Further to this I am shocked but not surprised at the unions stance of not wanting to do anything about it.
I'm not saying the govt is going about it the right way, just that currently by being too difficult to remove deadwood, surely something good teachers would want to see as a few rotten apples anre giving the good a bad name, your children's education is going to suffer.Posted 4 months ago # -
How long until children are asked to rate their teachers as part of some metric to decide which teachers are good, which are bad?
Posted 4 months ago # -
Don Simon - I agree but sadly this is nothing new. It is the history of UK education over the past 30 years in a nutshell.
Posted 4 months ago # -
I and this is tough to say broadly support Gove in this. But i have issue with how we wil recruit better teachers and what incentives there are for me to excell. I get paid the same as shit teachers!
Posted 4 months ago # -
CaptJon - 360 appraisals in education. Now there's a wheeze for some consultant to exploit.
Posted 4 months ago # -
I've worked in a place where someone got sacked for really screwing up. I've also been sacked myself! Funnily enough, for not screwing up, and whilst doing some quite good work.
Posted 4 months ago # -
Said on the radio today that in the UK only 17 teachers had been sacked for incompetency in the last 10 years.
So is it really such a big problem that the process needs to be changed.
Or is the lack of sackings for incompetency over the last 10 years due to it being too difficult to do ?
(rather than a lack of incompetent teachers ?)Posted 4 months ago # -
So is it really such a big problem that the process needs to be changed.
I'd say yes because the rest of the incompetent bunch haven't been fired yet...
Posted 4 months ago # -
Nothing in teaching is simple.
My wife is an outstanding teacher in an outstanding school. The school is outstanding despite, not because of the head who (from what I hear) is poor, verging on incompetent. She is disliked by governors, teachers and parents due to her total lack of empathy and chaotic management style. However, the LEA think she is great because of their results and it really is virtually impossible to get rid of a poor head.
Several times a week she stuns me with some tale of idiocy from the school.
Last night she was asked by the head to fill in a risk assessment for driving her own car to and from courses that she might attend!
It is a complicated form supplied by the LEA and needs to be returned with copies of her driving license and insurance!
If my wife were to complete it it would probably take an hour. She already works a circa 60 hour week.
There is a note on the form saying that it should be completed annually.
This is the reality of teaching.
Posted 4 months ago # -
My wife, who is now a music teacher, used to sing in school choir at special events. Parental involvement was stopped by perceived hassles of all the form filling and checks etc. But no one turned a blind eye to parents helping with transporting kids. Nothing ever happened, but which puts children at more risk? And which one does the government (of all parties) obsess over?
Education is too important to be left to the politicians.
Posted 4 months ago # -
don simon - Member
Don Simon - it would take the best part of a year to fire anyone in the public sector who was just underperforming (i.e. not some gross misconduct issue - just a bit rubbish). Especially if they are the member of a union.I am actually quite dismayed at this. In many areas there is a demand for excellence, yet in the futures of your children there is an acceptance of mediocre or lower. Further to this I am shocked but not surprised at the unions stance of not wanting to do anything about it.
I'm not saying the govt is going about it the right way, just that currently by being too difficult to remove deadwood, surely something good teachers would want to see as a few rotten apples anre giving the good a bad name, your children's education is going to suffer.In reality anyone in any job who has been there for more than a year is actually quite difficult to sack. Probably as difficult as a teacher. You can make teachers redundant using the same process as industry, and the competency process is just a formalisation of how it should be done in industry. The issue is that the perception in industry is that it is easy to to be fired, well it is if you are happy to roll over and take it, but with union backing anyone in industry can hang around easily as long as a teacher if they know how to play it.
Posted 4 months ago # -
Don simon what do you think the role of a union is if your disappointed by their stance?
Posted 4 months ago # -
To protect the good hard working teachers and not protect the incompetent, to work towards removing the red tape and allow the good teachers to teach.
Posted 4 months ago # -
To protect the good hard working teachers and not protect the incompetent, to work towards removing the red tape and allow the good teachers to teach.
A person is only incompetent when the process proves them to be, the union ensures that the process is applied correctly. They don't work to keep anyone who has been proven to be incompetent. It sounds like you have fallen for the Daily mail, where just because someone has been accused of being incompetent then they should be fired easily?? It needs to be difficult-ish otherwise innocent hard working types will lose their jobs when circumstances conspire to make them look incompetent.. (like crap heads who will blame their staff?)
Posted 4 months ago # -
A person is only incompetent when the process proves them to be, the union ensures that the process is applied correctly. They don't work to keep anyone who has been proven to be incompetent.
Where did I say anything that makes you think that I believe the contrary?
It sounds like you have fallen for the Daily mail,
I would wager not but I do tend to think for myself though.
Which union do you belong to?Posted 4 months ago # -
Other than say Orange bikes i have never known a topic field such a load of irrelevant pish for people who know the square root of **** all regarding the subject topic.
Well done.
p.s. if you cant teach you shouldnt be in the profession, but you find most who cant teach will leave within a year because they cant take it. Its not an easy job despite what many think.
Posted 4 months ago # -
Other than say Orange bikes i have never known a topic field such a load of irrelevant pish for people who know the square root of **** all regarding the subject topic.
Well done.
p.s. if you cant teach you shouldnt be in the profession, but you find most who cant teach will leave within a year because they cant take it. Its not an easy job despite what many think.
You're not a teacher, are you?Posted 4 months ago #
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