Teachers! Parents' Evening rantette.

Is there a correlation between fascism and high educational attainment?

There is always a correlation between a country’s system of government and its education.

A recent, extreme example of this is communist Cambodia. Most of the Khmer Rouge leadership met while members of the communist party at Paris university, but once attaining power severed learning to keep the masses uneducated in line with the ‘worker’ ethic of their philosophies.

But I think you’re wandering massively off-topic and using a throwaway remark to digress.

I don’t know the definition of a “small cohort” but a cohort was nominally 480 men- 6 centuria of average strength. A centuria ought to be 60-100 men so let’s say a small cohort is 6 60 man centuria, 360. So by my reckoning minicat has around 7200 teachers.

If you’re unhappy I’d recommend taking it up with the pilus prior

Learning to deal with uninspiring, boring, incompetent teachers is good preparation for entering the workforce and dealing with uninspiring, boring, incompetent managers. Therefore, all schools should employ a minimum number of uninspiring, boring, incompetent teachers.

😉

I’m fairly confident we will make the time

Sadly you can’t make time if you’re on the road before the kids are even awake and getting back when it’s time for them to go to bed. I get this impression this is a genuine problem many families face.

There is no reason working parents cannot input positively into their children’s lives. It will probably mean sacrificing some of their social life or free time but it can be done.

MrsCat and I worked full time, me long hours and MrsCat on shifts but we put the boys front and centre. I cannot remember when they didn’t have time with us for help with schoolwork, reading, doing stuff and going places.

We were (and to some degree we still are) a 4 person unit.

well 2 out of 7200 isn’t worth worrying about. Just bad luck Minicat has both of them.

I think teachers do a good job. Still get too much holiday though; they should spend the summers doing community projects or something.

I don’t know the definition of a “small cohort” but a cohort was nominally 480 men- 6 centuria of average strength. A centuria ought to be 60-100 men so let’s say a small cohort is 6 60 man centuria, 360. So by my reckoning minicat has around 7200 teachers.

If you’re unhappy I’d recommend taking it up with the pilus prior

You seem to be basing your numbers on the post-Marian reforms, but even there I think you should also consider whether the OP was basing his numbers on legionary or auxilliary cohorts – in the second case we should also take into account the possibility of quinquagenaria or milliaria strength.

Truly this is a minefield.

Still get too much holiday though; they should spend the summers doing community projects or something.

😆

It will probably mean sacrificing some of their social life or free time but it can be done.

it’s alright we don’t have a social life

To be fair it is pretty difficult to remove an underperforming employee from any role in any profession. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the alternative is some of the good folk get booted out just because some jumped up nobber in a management role ‘doesn’t like them’

The other issue is that of measurement as mentioned above. Most jobs are very difficult to measure by non subjective means. Thus a compromise measurement is used and the employee (understandably) just focusses on achieving that.

I once ran a sales team and my manager decided that a good way of measuring their performance would be to see how many phone calls they made. We soon had the best set of phone call makers in the company – they didn’t sell any more mind.

Hence, for example we have primary schools totally focussed on achieving certain SAT results, but totally ignoring the more wide ranging, less tangible benefits of a broad education in a pupil’s formative years.

Not sure what the solution is mind 🙁

@theotherjonv – bugger off!! 😀

Back to more serious stuff – we’re touring secondary schools in our area currently deciding what order to put them on the school admissions form for our year 6 daughter who moves up next year.

By far the most impressive so far has not been the one with the best results, but the one where the staff we spoke to, and the HM in his address, pointed out that while exams results are important (and they do have good results too); to him it was sending kids out of the gate at the end of each day who are proper members of society and who are ready to play their part as employees and employers of the future.

And secondly; if that’s his aim within school hours, he expects each and every one of us as parents to play our part, which means we send our children to school properly fed, with homework done, in clean uniform, with the right equipment, etc. and follow up their work out of school hours.

Teachers only have our children for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 36 weeks a year, and the majority (77.77%, potentially more 😉 ) of them do a bloody good job. If our kids turn out badly, it’s not to them we should be looking completely.

Yup, could not agree more with that sentiment. We brought them into the world and I would suggest that, and at risk of another statistical flaming from the Maths & Roman History Depts) that we should shoulder the larger proportion of the responsibility, even as much as 90%.

One of my daughter’s teachers made me want to go back to school

She’s dropped that subject now; parent-teacher evenings have lost some of their lustre 🙁

stilltortoise – Member

I’m fairly confident we will make the time

Sadly you can’t make time if you’re on the road before the kids are even awake and getting back when it’s time for them to go to bed. I get this impression this is a genuine problem many families face.

It can be tough, but if you can get home to read them a bedtime story it helps, bathtime, then as much of the weekend as you possibly can. I found spending time with the boys to be the single most rewarding thing in life. Even better than getting down The Beast on by rigid singlespeed.

And here’s my complaint. Without knowing how many teachers there were in total, we can’t tell whether you finding 2 bad ones is representative of the whole or a statistical anomaly. If there were 20 in total, I’d be inclined to accept your finding, but if there were 1000, it’s possible that you just found 2 bad ones at random and are basing your findings on anomalous data.

The sample size is what matters, not how far you’re going to extrapolate it. If there were 20 teachers, I’d be expecting 4, possibly 5 bad ones. If there were 1000 I’d be expecting 222 (based on available data). The real problem however is that selection isn’t random as Minicat chooses his subjects.

This type of basic misunderstandings of statistics is something that really should be improved. I blame the teachers!

I reckon at least 5% of parents are crap too.

Sample size is important. At our parents’ evenings, parents see one teacher per subject and students only take 3 or 4 subjects. That means anyone meeting me will assume between 25% and 33% of teachers are uninspiring, boring and incompetent, but their sample is just very small.

I reckon at least 5% of parents are crap too.

About 50% are below average.

About Exactly 50% are below average.

FTFY 😉

anagallis_arvensis, I would not agree with you.

Well I’m only a teacher that employs and trains other teachers. Its not an easy job and no one wants to be shit as being shit it the worst job in the world, if they could do it better they would. Not in all cases but in general.

FTFY

You’re assuming that none are precisely average.

How parents who are both working long days support their children through school is beyond me.

This why the standards and commitment of the school and teachers is so important.

Friends of ours dropped kids of at breakfast club at 7.30, pick them up after school at 6.30 between them, rarely both home before 8pm. Struggled to make parents evenings. Both incredibly intelligent, well educated, hard working and well paid.

Horrified to discover when eldest was 7 that the school thought he was dyslexic, and how far behind his peers he had slipped. Some intensive and expensive support is getting him back on track, but not realising your son was struggling to read at 7, and not having been warned by the school, is pretty worrying.

I admire anyone who teaches, really tough job. Some who do it may not be as good as others, but very few are properly “bad” teachers.

miketually – Member

Sample size is important. At our parents’ evenings, parents see one teacher per subject and students only take 3 or 4 subjects. That means anyone meeting me will assume between 25% and 33% of teachers are uninspiring, boring and incompetent, but their sample is just very small.

Not a secondary school I assume? MiniCat is taking 11 GCSEs so that’s 11 subjects, it’s just that science was covered by one teacher at the parents evening rather than three. I would estimate that there were circa 40 teachers last night, or XL for the pilus prior.

molgrips – Member
they were never going to find Chemistry teachers in Oban whent they could go live elsewhere and earn more money as Chemists

You’re assuming good chemists make good teachers. This is completely wrong. Being a good teacher is a skill in itself. You do of course need to know your subject but it’s from different perspective.

He’s also assuming Chemists get paid well elsewhere…

In Scotland, salaries range from £21,438 to £34,200. In addition, there is a Distant Island Allowance of £2,100 and a Remote Schools Allowance of £2,100 or £2,124. NQTs will receive an additional payment of £8,000 under the Preference Waiver Scheme if they agree to work anywhere in Scotland for their induction year.
Now Oban doesn’t qualify for DIA or RSA but £21.4k is OK money for a graduate chemist (and the £8k bonus would put you well above most of your peers), and Oban is not the worst choice of place either.

We definitely support our children’s learning but it is massively hard work… By the time we are all home c5:30pm the children are incredibly tired after working hard all day at school. As a result it can be an uphill struggle every day, which is very, very wearing. Whilst we should not put the onus of education exclusively on teachers, we shouldn’t put enormous pressures on parents or children either. As a parent I am also not a qualified teacher with the tools and techniques at my disposal that training and professional practice provide.

Teachers are like any other group in my experience. Some brilliant, most good, some terrible. Not every teacher can be as truly inspirational as we would like but they are just normal people. There are others who could do most of our jobs better than we could…

Friends of ours dropped kids of at breakfast club at 7.30, pick them up after school at 6.30…

So that’s 11 hours at school?

As a parent I am also not a qualified teacher with the tools and techniques at my disposal that training and professional practice provide.

But you do have a 1:1 relationship with your child and a lifetime of experience to share. That’s not a dig, but ‘teaching’ and ‘education’ are not all about what happens in the classroom and dictated by the National Curriculum.

So that’s 11 hours at school?

Latest government initiative is that schools need to be ‘open for business’ from 8am to 8pm. Heads are being encouraged to come up with ways to achieve this.

Until we start to recognise the brilliant teachers, pay them lots for taking care of our future and stop promoting them out of the classrooms

The reverse happens in my job (Ambulance Service), the awful clinicians are usually the ones who want to get out of a patient contact role the soonest and end up managing!

We then end up with managers who were terrible at being Paramedics and only went for promotion because of the money or the fact they hated being a Paramedic so much but couldnt/wouldnt leave and do anything else!

I’m sure my parents must have spent time with me in the very early years and perhaps I simply can’t remember, but (a) I don’t remember having homework at primary school (b) I don’t recall regularly working with my folks on secondary school homework. I was incredibly bright though 😉

I’ll preface this with I don’t have kids

I would think that kids going to school isn’t an education more remembering by rote the items that some members of society deem important that we all know and thereby creating some weird/false average.

I would think an education is gained through life and the most important thing for a parent to instil is an enjoyment of learning and an amount of tenacity to keep going when the subject gets tougher.

But then what do I know

jimoiseau – Member
About Exactly 50% are below average.

FTFY

🙄

What’s the average of [1, 1, 1, 10]? How many are below average?

Latest government initiative is that schools need to be ‘open for business’ from 8am to 8pm. Heads are being encouraged to come up with ways to achieve this.

I didn’t realise it was quite that long. I’d imagine there’s plenty of grants to help fund this and make sure time is spent in a meaningful and educational manner too. 😐

I would think an education is gained through life and the most important thing for a parent to instil is an enjoyment of learning and an amount of tenacity to keep going when the subject gets tougher.

I believe in this too and I have every intention of making sure my kids are exposed to a variety of sports and we travel when and where we can.

It is arguable that this is where parent ‘education’ comes in. In this stats-driven culture of ours producing well-rounded and decent human beings cannot currently be measured or quantified, so instead we have tests and exams which are run by schools which focus on academic subjects.

My personal thinking is that outside this parents should spend time with their kids, which is an education in itself (hopefully usually in a positive way…)

Sample size is important. At our parents’ evenings, parents see one teacher per subject and students only take 3 or 4 subjects. That means anyone meeting me will assume between 25% and 33% of teachers are uninspiring, boring and incompetent, but their sample is just very small.

Not a secondary school I assume? MiniCat is taking 11 GCSEs so that’s 11 subjects, it’s just that science was covered by one teacher at the parents evening rather than three. I would estimate that there were circa 40 teachers last night, or XL for the pilus prior.[/quote]

A sixth form college. Some classes have more than one teacher per subject, so they might have more than 4 teachers but only see one per subject at parents’ evenings. There are around 100 teachers altogether, so easy to work out percentage crapness overall 🙂

My eldest has just started secondary and has 14 different teachers.

You’re assuming that none are precisely average.

You’re also assuming that average is the same as median 😉

It is arguable that this is where parent ‘education’ comes in. In this stats-driven culture of ours producing well-rounded and decent human beings cannot currently be measured or quantified, so instead we have tests and exams which are run by schools which focus on academic subjects.

My personal thinking is that outside this parents should spend time with their kids, which is an education in itself (hopefully usually in a positive way…)

Exactly what the head at the school i referred to was saying. Sure, he and his staff will teach them academically but that’s not enough. He needs us to ensure they are well rounded individuals rather than simply relying on schools to do that as well, and by working in partnership we can be more effective.

It’s not one way either…..I’m pretty sure I’m a better person than i was before my kids came along. I have better priorities, I am less selfish, I am exhausted, broke, and i wouldn’t swap with anyone.

But you do have a 1:1 relationship with your child and a lifetime of experience to share. That’s not a dig, but ‘teaching’ and ‘education’ are not all about what happens in the classroom and dictated by the National Curriculum.

Totally agree.

Good teacher:

“Hi, how are you? Let me start by giving you a brief run through of little Johnny/Jemima and how they have been getting on this term. Feel free to ask any questions during or after.”

Bad/can’t be arsed teacher:

“Hi, so is there anything you want to ask me?”