My girlfriend is a TA in a primary school. She’s one of two in her entire school. I don’t know where you’re getting one teacher and two TAs per class from, that seems ludicrous to me. Maybe what they need there is smaller classes…?

It’s all complex … depends on the amount of “care in the community” that school does and if the kids needing additional help bring their own funding… how many of them require a full time TA to stop them hurting other children etc.

As I say complex… the more violent and/or disruptive they are generally the more funding they bring… the TA’s get cycled because they get worn out being spat on and punched .. so it often takes more than 1 TA to cover a particularly disruptive child

(OH is actually a qualified teacher but was employed as a SEND TA)

Plenty of ways to encourage people to become teachers like free bursaries for them to teaching qualifications.
We have a health service heavily dependent on immigrants because Osbourne cut the bursaries for nursing degrees – like someone is going to want to enter a profession where you end up with £30k+ debt to earn £16k a year.

The reason foreign companies would come to the UK is to access a profitable and thriving market and has a motivated, skilled workforce. So you’d chose a country where a significant part of the population are work-shy xenophobes and intent on building a barrier to trade with its neighbours exactly fits that bill?

Edit: a good opportunity for me to agree with TJ wholeheartedly. It’s been too long! Listen to him.

Rather than getting insulting, Kelvin, try a reasoned argument against the points I make. TJ hasn’t posted on this thread in while so you must be making a reference to the we’re-not-racist-but thread where TJ did his best to insult me but in fact just did a TJ.

Teachers are undervalued, underpaid, overworked, insulted, derided, threatened… change that and there will be more teachers than teaching jobs.

Now check out teachers payscales compared with other professions requiring similar qualifications and commitment.

Now check out the amount of admin, meetings, preparation, marking and yes, teaching, that teachers do for that pay. And the amount of hassle they deal with from their bosses, parents and pupils.

Now check out the number of threads started on STW over the years to attack teachers. Check the number of anti-teacher posts while you’re at it.

There are many more ex-teachers on this forum than teachers and that should tell you soomthing. The medical scientists are still medical scientists, the IT people still work in IT, the taxi driver still drives a taxi. What other profoession that requires similar personal investment to get in has so many people quit and do something completely different, or move abroad for better conditions?

I know I’m wasting my keystrokes, your personal attitude to me is programmed by my ex-profession, as is that of some other forum members. It’s one of the reasons I chose the pseudo, if you want to get a handle on someone’s mindset really quickly, tell them you’re a teacher.

If the UK wants an education system to match Finland then start by treating teachers the way Fins treat their teachers.

Yeah, apologies, I got confused. Anyway, I agree entirely with the bit I quoted, whoever said it (sorry Ed).

Teachers are undervalued, underpaid, overworked, insulted, derided, threatened… change that and there will be more teachers than teaching jobs.

This is the truth.

I did wonder why Ed went postal at someone who appeared to be agreeing with him.

DavidB

Subscriber
Has #page48 been done in this thread yet? This above all else is the most compelling reason to vote anything but Conservative

It sums up this election

‘getting brexit done’ the tory manifesto is so vague, but their supporters dont care about anything else

it truly is a victory for the hard right, Tories are simply Blukip now

-See BXP ltd defections to Tories, as much as I like to see them attacking each other, it helps Johnson solidify even more leave votes

…was employed as a SEND TA

Thank her from all of us, please. Bloody tough job. Schools (and LEAs) are current stuck between being mandated to provide this care (it’s much more than teaching) and not having the funds to do so (which again makes it harder for those doing it as they’re over stretched).

do we think Johnson is waiting for all his Home Counties postal votes to come in before sitting down with Neil (refusing to answer his question and repeating his slogans), or will he duck doing so entirely

I think he’d lose less votes ducking it than doing it at and therefore doing it would be a mistake. I think the same probably applied to Corbyn.

For all the other smaller party leaders they’ve got more to gain doing it than they have to lose so avoiding it would be a mistake.

Yeah, apologies, I got confused.

LOL – haven’t written that for a while. Or felt so irritated by what thankfully turned out to be a typo.

I was so pissed off at being so gratuitously picked on that I never even considered a typo, and I’m so used to teachers being slagged off it didn’t surprise me from anyone, even ever reasonable Kelvin (in fact that pissd me off even more). So pissed off I looked outside and decided it was time for a thrash on the MTB in some glorious sunshine, I’m now back sweaty, grubby and doubly happy having caught up here.

Thanks for great afternoon, Kelvin !

I see Sajid Javid has been lying again, this time about the current levels of homelessness, he really is an odious lying little toad and deserves an old fashioned re-education as to why lying is wrong.

Yawn…yet more tory spun lies on homelessness

(Six Form entry seems like a staggering number to me, where did you live Shenzeng?)

I never really stopped to think about it. It was a regular “county high school” at the time, I’ve just looked on their website now (they call themselves a ‘technology college’ these days and it says their “admission number” – which I presume to mean the annual intake – is 158.

My junior school was smaller – similar sized classes but two per year so circa 250 kids in all I guess. Infant school I don’t really remember now.

Which one of the suggestions here:

https://www.linguee.fr/francais-anglais/traduction/agression+gratuite.html

would you prefer, Chromolyolly’? Unless that’s just a piss take.

General election 2019: Andrew Neil issues interview challenge to Johnson https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50679252

This is a strong challenge!

I don’t pretend to fully understand this stuff, but isn’t the BBC in breach of, uh, something if BJ doesn’t agree to an interview?

If he won’t interview, then the BBC and ITV should use those 1/2 hour slots to analyse his past honesty and trustworthiness by other means.

Dear Mr Blowhard Johnson, if you don’t want to answer questions about your integrity, then we will ask those who have worked with you in the past 20 years their views on your honesty and integrity.

Even Prince Andrew agreed to an interview and he was shagging kids.

(not my words)

I don’t pretend to fully understand this stuff, but isn’t the BBC in breach of, uh, something if BJ doesn’t agree to an interview?

Good sense maybe. Unbiased behaviour, possibly.

The less openly dismissive of partisan concerns at the Beeb have admitted it was a huge mistake to broadcast one leader’s interview without having all of them in the can.

harcelées ou pris ou tyranisee as opposed to agression, n’est ce pas?

As above, the BBC or any other entity can’t force him, any more than I can force some other random person to do an interview.

As I said, I don’t really know anything about it. But I caught a paragraph as I was running out the door the other day, something like they’d told Corbyn that Johnson had agreed to an interview, so he agreed to do one also, then they said “well, we’ve asked him but he’s not actually said yes yet.” Something about Prada or Purdey or some such, some kinda of impartiality clause?

More poll analysis.

Could ALL the polls be wrong?

I've been looking at the data – and the short answer is yes.

We've had two elections (2015 and 2017) where pretty much every pollster was wrong.

So, what fresh polling disasters await us in 2019? Let's find out…

A thread, with data.

1/15

— Dr Moderate (@centrist_phone) December 5, 2019