Sacking rubbish teachers

Great but what do we replace them with?

Kindles

Freshly qualified Teachers who just need a chance to prove themselves…

(my bro-in-law falls under this category – impossible to find a teaching post thanks to ‘lack of experience’)

really what subject?
Fact is NQT’s are often rubbish too…

Most teachers are rubbish. That’s why they become teachers.

Those that can, do, those that can’t…..

Pfft! Everyone knows that nobody who works in the public sector has ever been sacked. Ever!

I read that in the Daily Mail. It was next to the article about tube drivers demanding swimming pools made out of hollowed out, gold-plated Faberge pineapples, and being payed in still-beating human hearts

Something tells me the OP is worrying about something he needs to worry about

Most people would get sacked for not doing a good job. Why should teachers be any different?

people who are able and wiling to educate, inspire, motivate and discipline perhaps?

they do exist you know!

other teachers like in other jobs

It is nigh on impossible to sack a teacher as they can be sacked for health or competency and you can only do one at once

go off sick when they do competency with say stress and return when they do a health one and repeat for years and years and years
It is rare but it does happen.
We need a decent way of getting rid of poor teachers as we have all seen them and dealt with them

This why Academy and Free schools are so important. Let the head teacher hire and fire like any other walk of life.

Great but what do we replace them with?

Good ones?

Children effectively only get one chance of an education, they should get the best that the school (or you) are able to offer.
I didn’t like my French teacher at school so I ditched it as a subject. Uninspiring teachers have a huge effect on kids and should be removed to give others a chance.
I can also see how teachnig th same stuff year in year out can get stale and boring, which probably leads to a lack of motivation.

no acadmey schools are shit as they can opt out the national curriculum and wags structures and by getting pupils from other schools they also reduce the money in other schools

In my town we have one proposed yet all the 5 [ we have a RC and a C of E so all bases covered] schools are rated as outstanding by OFSTED…academy schools is about a BS tory agenda of choice in everything like it is always great FFS i allready have the choice of 5 schools why do i need one more?

We don’t need to replace them. Raising the retirement age means that there are more teachers around.

Ofsted says that teaching is unsatisfactory in around 3% of schools. If we assume that there some crap teachers scattered around the other schools, this matches the 4% that Chris Woodhead used to quote. That’s not many, really.

Fact is NQT’s are often rubbish too.

True; I was. In fact, I should never have been allowed to complete my NQT year, but I was. I then did less than a term in my second year, before walking out and quitting. That’s why so few crap teachers appear on the statistics as being fired: it’s almost impossible to stay in the job long enough to get to incompetency proceedings if you’re no good.

(In case any of my students read this: I should point out that this was in a really tough primary, where I’d replaced the previous NQT who’d also walked out (he’d gone into teaching from the police and did brilliantly in his next school).)

Most people would get sacked for not doing a good job. Why should teachers be any different?

Yep.

Pretty much any other business operates some kind of performance management process.

By all means, provide the necessary support and training to help teachers reach their potential (of course, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ teachers can all benefit from this – they should be continually striving to improve).

But, if after that they’re still not performing to an acceptable level then they’re clearly in the wrong profession.

I didn’t like my French teacher at school so I ditched it as a subject. Uninspiring teachers have a huge effect on kids and should be removed to give others a chance.

THIS x1000

I found English a deeply uninteresting and uninspiring topic. I could spell, construct sentences with correct grammar, and liked reading what I wanted to read. Being forced to read stale texts and Shakespeare, then eulogise over them in an exam wasn’t my idea of fun. Lacking a creative bone in my body, the creative writing part wasn’t my strong point either.

Thankfully, for my GCSE years, I had a teacher who was probably the most inspiring teacher in the school. He’s probably more responsible for my career success than any of the subject-specific teachers I was taught by; mainly because if you fail in English, you don’t get the chance to go to 6th Form etc…

So, do we keep a supply of good teachers unemployed to replace any possible sackings?
Or do we replace the sacked ones with other sacked ones who are not working?
Or do we allow schools to poach sought after good teachers midway through the school year, from rival schools, therefore hopefully improving their results at the cost of the rival (and the respective schoolchildren) and leapfrogging them on the all important league tables?
Maybe we could have a January transfer window ,ala football, were richer Arab sponsored schools could buy the star players from the less well supported(financially) mid-table schools to enable that final push for the all important results in May.

Despite me always looking for ways to beat AA down, due to his hideous one eyed partisan nature on other topics.. I am actually going to back him on this one, 100%. 😀 .

In fact there is considerable difficulty in the UK in finding teachers, never mind decent ones. The fact that there is a shortage of teachers, one has to wonder why. I would postulate that its under paid, quite difficult, and quite personally risky (not just physcially but in terms of legal responsibility etc).

The truth is that there is an excellent system to remove crap teachers, it’s just that heads, governors and LEA’s often do not know how to use it or are too timid to use it (heads especially). Secondly, there are not that many crap teachers, often they are in very difficult circumstances and measuring there effectivness is pretty much an unproven science. OFSTED is often abritray in its assessment.

sounds like a load of hot air righty crowd pleasing nonsense to me

In fact there is considerable difficulty in the UK in finding teachers, never mind decent ones.

Is there? Depends a lot on what level and what subject. I bet if you’re looking for GSCE physics teachers, there is a shortage, whereas if you’re looking at primary, there is not.

Our nearest primary (nice, small town local school) had about 100 applications for their last vacancy. A lot of people coming off primary courses are finding it hard to get their first job.

Most people would get sacked for not doing a good job. Why should teachers be any different?

Yep.

Pretty much any other business operates some kind of performance management process.

Whilst in theory that is true, I dunno, I’ve worked in a bunch of private sector organisations which supposedly have ‘performance management processes’, and I’ve never seen anyone get sacked. The only time I’ve ever seen someone lose their job, was when they just completely disappeared for 6 months (complete with various work equipment), at which point they were written off as gone.

I’ve worked with people who basically didn’t do any work, and worse, with people who were actively damaging to the ongoing progress of the projects we were working on, and they were never sacked. I think there is a lovely utopian ‘private sector efficiency’ idea that a lot of people have, but in fact the depressing nature of having to sack people, and the fact it would probably mean doing some paperwork or employing new people or whatever means that the vast majority of managers don’t do it even when it is clearly what is needed.

I blame the parents and the courts. That means you lot first and foremost if you have children.

I’ve not met many incompetent teachers but I’ve come accross too many kids that make difficult maintaining order in the classroom at a level where teaching is possible. Contact the parents and they are as likely to insult you as help with disciplining their kids.

Those that can, do, those that can’t…..

Which either neatly proves your point, or prima facie demonstrates your “opinion” is not worth listening to on matters of education.

Edukator. One of my mates has just jacked in teaching. She’s just had enough

At primary age they were having kids literally kicking off, to the point of physically assaulting teachers.

When the school then attempts to discipline them, the kids parents would then storm into the school and threaten to physically assault the teachers for daring to questioning young Daz, Tommo or Kylie’s right to do whatever the **** they damn well like!

Who the **** would want to bother with that every day? I know I wouldn’t!

(Hand wringing, natch) Guardian article on police in Texan schhols

The truth is that there is an excellent system to remove crap teachers, it’s just that heads, governors and LEA’s often do not know how to use it or are too timid to use it (heads especially).

This. There is no reason for a bad teacher to remain in post other than the incompetency of management.

This is mostly true

it’s almost impossible to stay in the job long enough to get to incompetency proceedings if you’re no good.

As is this

I’ve come accross too many kids that make difficult maintaining order in the classroom at a level where teaching is possible. Contact the parents and they are as likely to insult you as help with disciplining their kids

ScottChegg – Member
Most teachers are rubbish. That’s why they become teachers.

That however is bobbins.

My wife teaches, before that we ran a very successful business. She teaches as a vocation and lifestyle choice. She’s also a historian and has turned down work at the university. She most certainly can and would no doubt do again if teaching conditions in France ever became as depressing as they were when we taught in the UK many moons ago.

You get what you pay for. If pay and conditions were better there would be more competition for teaching posts and good teachers would stay.

JY – good morning!

no acadmey schools are shit as they can opt out the national curriculum and wags structures

I am merely thankful that my kids’ school ignores the national curriculum, takes proper exams and refuses to hire wags!

Which either neatly proves your point, or prima facie demonstrates your “opinion” is not worth listening to on matters of education.

Not really, it’s just a well-worn twist on a very corny, and factually incorrect advertising campaign, that probably wound up many members of the public who either suffered being taught by poor teachers; or, watched the low achievers at uni go: “I dunno what I want to do, a PGCE will keep me at uni with my mates dossing about for another year”

I believe there is an excess of teachers in most subject areas in Scotland – so you should have no problem replacing them.

4% doesn’t sound like a lot, but if a typical large secondary school has say 80 teachers – they would have 3 teachers who are so bad at their job they should be fired. Whilst everyone will have experienced crap teachers – were there really that many who were so bad to be sacked?

Will the teachers be sacked from their current post but free to go elsewhere or will they actually be “struck off” the register – as without doing that its hard to see that you do anything other than reshuffle the poorest teachers into the schools with the poorest management / recruitment / reputation?

You get what you pay for. If pay and conditions were better there would be more competition for teaching posts and good teachers would stay.

…..and the solution is…….omg…..worms, can, open…….

Not really, it’s just a well-worn twist on a very corny, and factually incorrect advertising campaign

Whosh! The sound of my point going straight over your head.

(Oh, and the ad campaign came long after the cliché….)

Poly to put a spoke in that, I have been a teacher for 7 years in three different schools and met one person who could not do their job. So less than 1% is my experience,and the one person had poor classroom control. Which opens another can of worms; at what point does not controlling some feral little sod become the teacher’s inability to maintain discipline?

In fact there is considerable difficulty in the UK in finding teachers, never mind decent ones.

28000 teachers qualified last year. Of those, 3 had computing-related degrees so I reckon I’d be quite hard to replace 🙂

It’s very difficult to feel dispassionate about teaching, as we’ve all spent some time in schools as pupils.

We all remember the teachers we used to bait mercilessly, the odd really inspiring one, and the fact that the teachers, in loco parentis, were the ones who made us sit through double physics on a sunny Wednesday when we’d much rather have been outside smoking/fighting/playing football/feeling wendy smith’s t-ts.

On the whole we have no further adult interaction with teachers until we become parents, whereupon we pick up where we left off, side with our greasy oiks of kids and blame the “teachers” for little brandon’s poor attitudes to education and self-discipline.

And that’s ignoring the group prejudice we have developed based on the half dozen thickos at university who said they were off to become teachers because they couldn’t think of a career as stimulating as working on a help desk telling other drones to switch it off and on again.

It’s little wonder nothing ever changes..!

Lets talk about sacking crap pupils

Back in the depths of time when I graduated a PGCE meant a guaranteed job. Why? Because the pay was so bad that the best graduates opted for more money for less work – I did. If you want the best graduates to teach you’ll have to pay them more and cut the mountains of admin they plough through. There will then be so many candidates headmasters will be able to choose the best and they won’t disappear off into the sunset when soemthing appealing appears in the jobs pages of New Scientist or The Economist.

Zokes,

“I dunno what I want to do, a PGCE will keep me at uni with my mates dossing about for another year”

I know half a dozen people who did PGCE’s, I’d be delighted if any of them were to teach my children – they are all really committed to education. I would consider it now if someone would pay me even half my current salary whilst I was training and guarantee me a job without having to move house and family. I was put off even giving it more than a passing thought by a few people I know who were in the profession who criticised it; of course like most teachers they had never done anything else and believed the grass is greener.

I’m sure like all walks of life there are some people who drifted into it because they didn’t know what to do – but from what I can gather the selection criteria and training process in the PGCE is reasonably tough and weeds out most of the people who are “dossing about for another year”. The application process is well ahead of most of the “dossers” thinking about what to do “next year”, and usually oversubscribed. In many cases people will be doing a PGCE at a different institution, and having finished their degree most of their “mates” will be off to pastures new too – so I don’t see how a PGCE is an obvious choice to spend it with their mates?

And that’s ignoring the group prejudice we have developed based on the half dozen thickos at university who said they were off to become teachers because they couldn’t think of a career as stimulating as working on a help desk telling other drones to switch it off and on again.

Don’t get me started on the prejudices I have based on the career choices of the people I was at uni with 😉