Tories show their true colours at last

but this minister does specifically say "imposing discipline."

I think possibly as opposed to most of the teachers you see these days who wont/cant say boo to a goose. I presume it's intended to be combined with the reduction in political correctness that they mention (i.e. discipline will return, rather than kids running the schools – a good thing IMO, within reason).

I think possibly as opposed to most of the teachers you see these days who wont/cant say boo to a goose.

Have you actually been in a school lately? I was working in a primary school recently and the discipline there seemed very strict – the teachers were quite scary!

combined with the reduction in political correctness that they mention

What does this actually mean?

I think possibly as opposed to most of the teachers you see these days who wont/cant say boo to a goose. I presume it's intended to be combined with the reduction in political correctness that they mention (i.e. discipline will return, rather than kids running the schools – a good thing IMO, within reason).

That's quite a clutch of sweeping statements there.

But it doesn't answer the question.

discipline will return, rather than kids running the schools

Kids run schools these days? That would explain why maths, science and English have been replaced by Top Trumps, 20-a-side football, and running into the girls' loos. 🙂

I have worked with an ex military teacher and his biggest problem was trying to "impose" discipline, the kids just used to laugh at him. Its pretty much impossible to "impose" discipline if you cannot intimidate the kids (which is tricky without being able to smack em one). Its sounds **** but you have to engender or create discipline or somesuch other word which I cannot think of.

Teachers!

ridiculous burden of planning and evaluation paperwork that teachers have to do

While I genuinely sympathise, planning must be done and kids must be assessed. Propose how it should be done.

planning and assessing must be done of course – but the level of assessment required at the moment is counter productive

as a teacher I dont think the level of assessment is too much its just the sheer numbers of lessons you have to teach which makes the quality suffer. Planning a lesson that is being observed for performance managment takes at least 2 or three hours if you have 26 or so lessons a week that you would like to all be of that quality you can see how problems arise and thats before you add marking and assesment. No amount of sargent majors will help that.

Planning a lesson that is being observed for performance managment takes at least 2 or three hours

Do you really think you need to spend 2-3 hours planning each lesson? I had some great teachers at school and I sincerely doubt they spent anywhere near as much time as that planning a lesson.

If you have teachers of the right quality, who are sufficiently motivated and know their subject, you wouldn't really need to do a huge amount of planning. Unfortunately most of the people I know who would have made great teachers are either demotivated and stressed, or have left teaching.

Do you really think you need to spend 2-3 hours planning each lesson?

In order to have them at the required standard yes for performance management/offsted yes. Obviously this is impossible which is why people like me get demotivated when told my lesson is good not outstanding when I spent 3 hours planning it. What must normal lessons be?

"If you have teachers of the right quality, who are sufficiently motivated and know their subject, you wouldn't really need to do a huge amount of planning."

But all kids are different and every child matters.